RIP YCC, grain corridors for Egypt, Donbas blood mill & doing special things to special people in special palces.
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Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Self-Portrait 5, 2003. Sourced from Artforum:
A man strides across an airfield toward a plane. A Palestinian scarf is wrapped around his head; his face is obscured. This is Tarek Al-Ghoussein’s best-known photograph from his series of “Self-Portraits,” 2002–2003. We immediately presume the subject is a terrorist—the very association which Al-Ghoussein himself provokes in some. The artist was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents, and went to school in the US. With his “Self-Portraits,” he is not only answering the prejudices that continue to misrepresent Palestinians as terrorists, but also plying a sense of solitude and wanderlust. These aspects of the work become especially intense in another photograph, in which Al-Ghoussein depicts himself walking past a painted ship, followed by his shadow. The work tells of simultaneous desire and resistance; its shadow gives the Palestinian diaspora a symbolic, lingering image.
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Grain not people
In its desire to staunch the migrant flow from North Africa, the EU is getting increasingly imaginative!
The EU is looking into the possibility of using shipments of grain or fertiliser from Ukraine as part of a wider deal on migration and economic support for Egypt, writes Laura Dubois. Context: Brussels is negotiating an economic support deal with Egypt, as capitals worry the Israel-Hamas conflict could lead to a further increase in migration. EU countries have been keen to work with northern African countries to keep people from crossing the Mediterranean, as irregular arrivals have risen. “Egypt is very open to a comprehensive partnership,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said following the EU summit on Friday where migration was discussed. She said the agreement would follow “a similar blueprint” as the one sealed earlier this year with Tunisia, which included money for border management and economic support. Details of the proposed agreement are secret, but two EU officials told the Financial Times that it could include provisions for food imports, a major economic risk factor for Cairo and its 110mn people even before the outbreak of conflict on its north-eastern border. One particular avenue the EU is exploring concerns using the corridors established for exports from Ukraine to funnel agricultural products to Egypt, EU council president Charles Michel told journalists, specifically mentioning fertiliser.
Source: FT
RIP YCC?
Expectations are rising that Japan’s central bank will relax its grip on the bond market this week as the yen tests a 33-year low and government bond yields touch the highest levels in a decade. That means Japan’s central bank policy of buying up government bonds to keep yields down — Yield Curve Control, or YCC — is in trouble as a tumbling currency provokes inflationary worries about goods imported from overseas:
Source: FT
Time to start worrying about America’s deficit?
Is the U.S. deficit too high?
Should the U.S. government try to get the U.S. Federal Reserve to lower interest rates?
And should former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s deficit-reducing budgets from the 1990s be a model for today?
Those are a few of the questions that came up in my conversation with Cameron Abadi on our FP podcast Ones and Tooze. You can listen and read more here.
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From 2015 to 2016, Tarek Al-Ghoussein documented as many of the abandoned Al Sawaber apartments as he could, like this one with its torn wallpaper. Photo courtesy of the Third Line.
Carbon bombs
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Great growth rates in Africa
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Density visualized
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Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Al Sawaber 3672, 2015–17. Source: Artforum
Donbas Bloodmill: Ukraine is making another attritional stand around Adiivka
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Doing Special Things to Special People in Special Places: Psychologists in the CIA Torture Program
A fascinating research article by Michael Welch:
Since 2014, detailed correspondence between the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reveal the extent to which operational psychologists coordinated with the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation program. Key revelations expose the ethical maneuvering intended to defend the participation of certain psychologists in interrogation, abuse, and torture, including waterboarding. This critique takes aim at the controversy over the psychological planning and subsequent practice of torture during the Bush administration.
The undersea front in the Baltic
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Tarek Al-Ghoussein's Abu Dhabi Archipelago – Island Making (2015), shown at the MEI Art Gallery in Washington. Photo: MEI Gallery.