According to the NY Times (published October 2, 2010):

American scientists deliberately infected prisoners and patients in a mental hospital in Guatemala with syphilis 60 years ago, a recently unearthed experiment that prompted U.S. officials to apologize Friday and declare outrage over “such reprehensible research.”

The discovery dredges up past wrongs in the name of science — like the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study in this country that has long dampened minority participation in medical research — and could complicate ongoing studies overseas that depend on cooperation from some of the world’s poorest countries to tackle tough-to-treat diseases.

Uncovering it gives “us all a chance to look at this and — even as we are appalled at what was done — to redouble our efforts to make sure something like this could never happen again,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.

The NIH-funded experiment, which ran from 1946 to 1948, was uncovered by a Wellesley College medical historian. It apparently was conducted to test if penicillin, then relatively new, could prevent some sexually transmitted infections. The study came up with no useful information and was hidden for decades.

“We are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Friday.

Wellesley College historian Susan Reverby made the discovery while combing the archived records of Dr. John Cutler, a government researcher involved in the Tuskegee study that from 1932 to 1972 tracked 600 black men in Alabama who had syphilis without ever offering them treatment.

She discovered that Cutler also led the Guatemala project that went a step further: A total of 696 men and women were exposed to syphilis or in some cases gonorrhea — through jail visits by prostitutes or, when that didn’t infect enough people, by deliberately inoculating them. They were offered penicillin, but it wasn’t clear how many were infected and how many were successfully treated…

While secretly trying to infect people with serious diseases is abhorrent today, the Guatemalan experiment isn’t the only example from what Collins on Friday called “a dark chapter in the history of medicine.” Forty similar deliberate-infection studies were conducted in the United States during that period, Collins said…

The revelation of abuses by a U.S. medical research program is only the latest chapter in the United States’ troubled history with the impoverished Central American nation, which has a per capita gross domestic product about half of that of the rest of Central America and the Caribbean.

The U.S. helped topple the democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and backed several hardline governments during a 36-year civil war that ended in 1996 and cost 200,000 lives.

Read the full article here

Our two cents:
I wonder how Hillary Clinton went about breaking the ice with the Guatemalan government during her  “oops, sorry about the medical experiments” phone call.

But seriously, since the United States has a long, repulsive history of unethical, amoral and down right twisted medical experimentation perpetrated upon African-Americans, the mentally challenged, the powerless and poor people in general, this comes as no surprise. For a better understanding of this issue we highly suggest reading a 2007 book by Harriet A. Washington entitled Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present and/or this handy time-line of American medical experiments from Natural News.

On a side note:
The 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état so flippantly mentioned in the last line of the article was a covert operation organized by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, the democratically-elected President of Guatemala.

Arbenz’s government put forth a number of new policies that were in direct opposition to U.S.-based multi-national corporation United Fruit Company who then owned most of Guatemala, such as seizing and expropriating unused, unfarmed land that private companies set aside long ago and giving the land to peasants. Through a presidential decree legally owned land would be purchased by the government at the value the owners had declared for property tax purposes. Arbenz attempted to do this because in 1945, it was estimated that 2.2% of the country’s population controlled 70% of all arable land, but only 12% of it was being utilized.

At the behest of lobbyists like Allan Dulles who was both The Director of the CIA at that time and one of United Fruit’s board members, the U.S. government eventually deemed expropriating to be an act of communism that needed to be stopped. So the CIA armed and trained a “Liberation Army” of about 400 fighters under the command of a then-exiled Guatemalan army officer, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, and used them in conjunction with a complex and largely experimental diplomatic, economic, and propaganda campaign that even included running a radio station out of Miami called La Voz de la Liberacion (The Voice of Liberation).

According to Kate Doyle, director of the Mexico Project of National Security Archives and a regular contributor to Americas Program of the Interhemispheric Resource Center, most historians now agree that the military coup in 1954 was the definitive blow to Guatemala’s young democracy. Over the next four decades, the succession of military rulers would wage counter-insurgency warfare, destabilizing Guatemalan society. The violence caused the deaths and disappearances of more than 140,000 Guatemalans, and some human rights activists put the death toll as high as 250,000.

Read more about the U.S.-backed coup, with supporting documents, here. For even further reading we highly suggest reading Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer.

According to Fox News (published September 25, 2010):

The Pentagon  has burned 9,500 copies of Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer’s memoir Operation Dark Heart, his book about going undercover in Afghanistan.

A Department of Defense official tells Fox News that the department purchased copies of the first printing because they contained information which could cause damage to national security.

The U.S. Army originally cleared the book for release.

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency attempted to block the book about the tipping point in Afghanistan and a controversial pre-9/11 data mining project called “Able Danger.”

In a letter obtained by Fox News, the DIA says national security could be breached if “Operation Dark Heart” is published in its current form. The agency also attempted to block key portions of the book that claim “Able Danger” successfully identified hijacker Mohammed Atta as a threat to the United States before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Specifically, the DIA wanted references to a meeting between Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, the book’s author, and the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, removed. In that meeting, which took place in Afghanistan, Shaffer alleges the commission was told about “Able Danger” and the identification of Atta before the attacks. No mention of this was made in the final 9/11 report.

“Dr. Philip Zelikow approached me in the corner of the room. ‘What you said today is very important. I need you to get in touch with me as soon as you return from your deployment here in Afghanistan’,” Shaffer said.

Once back in the U.S., Shaffer says he contacted the commission. Without explanation, the commission was no longer interested. An inspector general report by the Department of Defense concluded there was no evidence to support the claims of Shaffer and others. But Fox News has obtained an unredacted copy of the IG report containing the names of witnesses, who backed up Shaffer’s story when contacted for comment…

Read the full Fox News article here

Just in case you refuse to read anything from Fox News, read CNN’s version of the story here.

Update: The Department of Defense spent more than $47,000 to have 9,500 copies of Dark Heart burned.

Update: A kindle version of the book is available but it has already been redacted.

Our two cents: The Pentagon loves the smell of censorship in the morning.

According to the The Cleveland Plain Dealer (published July 12, 2010):

Harvey Pekar’s life was not an open book. It was an open comic book.

Pekar chronicled his life and times in the acclaimed autobiographical comic-book series, “American Splendor,” portraying himself as a rumpled, depressed, obsessive-compulsive “flunky file clerk” engaged in a constant battle with loneliness and anxiety.

Pekar, 70, was found dead shortly before 1 a.m. today by his wife, Joyce Brabner, in their Cleveland Heights home, said Powell Caesar, spokesman for Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller. An autopsy will be conducted to determine the cause of death. Pekar and his wife, Joyce Brabner, wrote “Our Cancer Year,” a book-length comic, after Pekar was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1990 and underwent a grueling treatment.

Read the full article here

We highly suggest reading Pekar’s 1986 masterpiece American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar and/or watching the 2003 movie of the same name starring Paul Giamatti.

Watch some of Pekar’s infamous appearances on Letterman here, here and here

Statement:

At the beginning of the 20th Century, the city of Detroit developed rapidly thanks to the automobile industry. Until the 50′s, its population rose to almost 2 million people. Detroit was the fourth most important city in the United States. It was the dazzling symbol of the American Dream City with its monumental skyscrapers and fancy neighborhoods. Increasing segregation and de-industrialization caused violent riots in 1967. The white middle-class exodus from the city accelerated and the suburbs grew. Firms and factories began to close or move to lower-wage states. Slowly, but inexorably downtown high-rise buildings emptied.

Since the 50′s, “Motor City” lost more than half of its population.

Untied Artists Theater

William Livingstone House

Fisher Body 21 Plant

See more photos from this project here

Look for The Ruins of Detroit book out sometime this August via Steidl

posted by: Harold Johns III

From the publisher (Thames and Hudson):

Instant Light is a beautiful, elegiac collection of sixty polaroid photographs by the late, great Soviet film director, Andrey Tarkovsky, best known for densely metaphysical films like Solaris (original), The Mirror, Stalker and Nostalghia.

Composed of sixty luminous polaroids taken by Andrey Tarkovsky in Russia and Italy between 1979 and 1984, this beautifully produced series of cameos from the director’s life reveals him to be a master of the still as much as of the moving image.

“Tarkovsky often reflected on the way that time flies and this is precisely what he wanted: to stop it, even with these quick Polaroid shots … These images leave us with a mysterious and poetic sensation, the melancholy of seeing things for the last time. It is as though Andrey wanted a swift way to pass his own enjoyment to others. They are something to be shared, not only a method of making his own wish to stop time come true. And they feel like a fond farewell” – Tonino Guerra, from the Introduction to Instant Light.

The photos in the first section, taken in Russia, have the radiant melancholy of lengthening shadows and trees looming through misty dawns near Tarkovsky’s country dacha, together with portraits of his wife, son and dog, loaded with nostalgia by quotations from his later diaries. Those taken in Italy portray exquisite still lifes and glimmering ruins. The book concludes with photographs from Tarkovsky’s personal collection.

See more of Tarkovsky’s Polaroids on this Russian website (click on the photo to the right)

Learn even more about Tarkovsky’s life and work here

posted by: Brent Carter

The work is ongoing, and so far offers a couple dozen pages in several styles with a corresponding passage from McCarthy’s book below each image.

Page 82, “When all the chambers were loaded she capped them and looked about… A group of fowl in the corner of the courtyard that had been pecking in dry dust stood nervously, their heads at varied angles.” Illustration by Zak Smith

To see more of this ongoing project click here

posted by: Brent Carter

With Banksy recently making TIME‘s 2010 Most Influential People, everyone knows that street art is a big deal. But street artists and longtime fans must now face the ever-present and ironic cultural dilemma, where can an underground movement go once it’s no longer underground? Searching through the good, the bad, the originators and the impostors can become overwhelming with increased popularity, especially if you’re new to the scene. Steven P. Harrington and Jamie Rojo, authors of Brooklyn Street Art and founders of BrooklynStreetArt.com, provide newcomers and street art buffs with a vibrant look at the urban art revolution happening on the streets of New York today in their new book  Street Art New York.

New York is a street art Mecca, boasting a vast outdoor gallery which encompasses walls, fences, sidewalks, and just about any other available surface. Featured in this dynamic collection are approximately 200 images of works by exciting newcomers and “old masters,” including New Yorkers Swoon, Judith Supine, Dan Witz, Skewville, and WK Interact, LA’s Shepard Fairey, Brazil’s Os Gemeos, Denmark’s Armsrock, France’s Space Invader, C215, and Mr. Brainwash, Germany’s Herakut, and London’s Nick Walker and the infamous Banksy. Quotes from the artists provide fresh insights into the cultural history and impact of this art form. Their observations show how older artists are providing inspiration to a younger generation and reveal how the establishment is taking notice of street art’s appeal as the advertising world, and visual culture in general, cull ideas from these images. A foreword by Carolina A. Miranda, author of the blog C-Monster.net, rounds out this compelling portrait of the state of urban art in one of its most important and supportive communities.

With Street Art New York, Harrington and Rojo provide a comprehensive guide to street art for both longtime fans and those new to the art form. The pages are filled with large, color images collected off the beaten path since 2001. Which lets you know, these guys aren’t just jumping on the newly popular street art wagon, they’re the real deal.

176 pages with 200 color illustrations
Hardcover
7 ¾ in. x 9 ½ in
Prestel

Swoon

by: Brent Carter and Tricia Rock

“Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as A People’s History of the United States, inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. He was 87.

“His daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of Lexington, said he suffered a heart attack.

“As he wrote in his autobiography, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train (1994), ‘From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than “objectivity”; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.’” (source: Boston Globe)

“Born in New York in 1922, Professor Zinn was the son of Jewish immigrants who as a child lived in a rundown area in Brooklyn and responded strongly to the novels of Charles Dickens. At age 17, urged on by some young Communists in his neighborhood, he attended a political rally in Times Square.

“‘Suddenly, I heard the sirens sound, and I looked around and saw the policemen on horses galloping into the crowd and beating people,’ he told The A.P. ‘I couldn’t believe that.’

“‘And then I was hit. I turned around and I was knocked unconscious. I woke up sometime later in a doorway, with Times Square quiet again, eerie, dreamlike, as if nothing had transpired. I was ferociously indignant.’

“War continued his education. Eager to help wipe out the Nazis, he joined the Army Air Corps in 1943 and even persuaded the local draft board to let him mail his own induction notice. He flew missions throughout Europe, receiving an Air Medal, but he found himself questioning what it all meant. Back home, he gathered his medals and papers, put them in a folder and wrote on top: ‘Never again.’

“He attended New York University and Columbia University, where he received a doctorate in history. In 1956, he was offered the chairmanship of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, an all-black women’s school in segregated Atlanta.

“During the civil rights movement, Professor Zinn encouraged his students to request books from the segregated public libraries and helped coordinate sit-ins at downtown cafeterias. He also published several articles, including a rare attack on the Kennedy administration, accusing it of being too slow to protect blacks.

“He was loved by students — among them a young Alice Walker, who later wrote The Color Purple — but not by administrators. In 1963, Spelman fired him for ‘insubordination.’ (Professor Zinn was a critic of the school’s non-participation in the civil rights movement.) His years at Boston University were marked by opposition to the Vietnam War and by feuds with the school’s president, John Silber.

“Professor Zinn retired in 1988, spending his last day of class on the picket line with students in support of an on-campus nurses’ strike. Over the years, he continued to lecture at schools and to appear at rallies and on picket lines.” (source: New York Times)

One of Professor Zinn’s last public writings was a brief essay, published last week in The Nation, about the first year of the Obama administration.

“I think people are dazzled by Obama’s rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president–which means, in our time, a dangerous president–unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction,” Zinn wrote.

Learn more about Howard Zinn here

posted by: Brent Carter

Books aren’t usually the first medium that comes to mind when art is concerned – but take a look at BibliOdyssey and be prepared to be blown away.  Every entry features a piece of book art and (usually) an explanation about the art, the book it was originally published in, and other deliciously nerdy facts. Warning – between the pictures and the accompanying blurbs, you’ll be in BibliOdyssey land for hours and hours. It’s a day-killer, and it’s massive with tons of archives.  Also included are links to source material where available, which when clicked can open up a whole other treasure trove of rare, beautiful, and incredible images.   A must for anybody who loves books for more than the words,  is looking for a new place to find some amazing book art created from thousands of years ago to yesterday.

From Galvanizing Albini: Among the inspirations for Mary Shelley’s gothic classic ‘Frankenstein’ from 1818 were the (in)famous experiments carried out in public by the physicist Giovanni Aldini (1762-1834) at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1803.

From Nuclear Reactor Wall Charts: Snupps (Standardized Nuclear Unit Power Plant System): Kansas City Power & Light Co., Burlington, Kansas. Wall chart insert, Nuclear Engineering International, November 1975

See more here

posted by: Meghan Bainum

In the late seventies, at the age of eighteen and with a seventh-grade education, Dolly Freed (a pseudonym) wrote Possum Living about the five years she and her father lived off the land on a half-acre lot outside of Philadelphia. At the time of its publication in 1978, Possum Living became an instant classic, known for its plucky narration and no-nonsense practical advice on how to quit the rat race and live frugally. And now decades later the good people at Tin House Books are reissuing Possum Living for the next generation of disillusioned people seeking an alternative to an economic system that uses everyone but only adequately provides for a few.

In her delightful, straightforward, and irreverent style, Freed guides readers on how to buy and maintain a home, dress well, garden, raise farm animals, dumpster dive, fish in public waters, avoid building permits, preserve herbs, make your own wine, cope with the law, stay healthy, save money, and be lazy, proud, miserly, and honest, all while enjoying leisure and keeping up a middle-class façade.

Thirty years later, Freed’s philosophy is world-renowned and Possum Living remains as fascinating, inspirational, and pertinent as it was upon its original publication. Especially her convincing argument that it’s hypocritical to buy meat in a store you wouldn’t or couldn’t kill yourself. This updated edition includes new reflections, insights, and life lessons from an older and wiser Dolly Freed, whose knowledge of how to live like a possum has given her financial security and the confidence to try new ventures.

Following her success as an author, Dolly Freed grew up to be a NASA aerospace engineer. She put herself through college after acing the SATs with an education she received from the public library. She has also been an environmental educator, business owner, and college professor. She now lives in Texas with her husband and two children.

Watch a documentary about Possum Living below.

Possum Living will be re-released in January 2010 but you can pre-order it now through Tin House Books. Read an excerpt here. 224 pages, $11

posted by: Brent Carter