Time for the International Community to Get Serious About Protecting Human Rights in Afghanistan


by Nasir A. Andisha and Hamid A. Formuli
April 22, 2022

Human rights abuses in Afghanistan have continued to accelerate since the Taliban takeover last August. While the international community professes outrage, it has failed to prevent escalating abuses or to take steps necessary to investigate and collect evidence for future accountability efforts. There is no question that the Taliban takeover of the country presents challenging circumstances for defense of human rights. But the international community must use the tools at its disposal to ensure that human rights in Afghanistan do not become a neglected priority.

The Taliban’s gross violations of human rights are particularly evident in its abuse of promises of “general amnesty,” which has flown around as the catchphrase of the Taliban’s leaders and their naïve sympathizers ever since the militant group took over Afghanistan seven months ago. However, evidence to the contrary is only mounting each passing day. Scores of arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture, forced confessions, and ultimately unlawful killings define Taliban rule. Recent reports including the New York Times’ detailed investigation, The Taliban Promised Them Amnesty, Then They Executed Them, reveal a dangerous pattern and indicate how the group intends to rule Afghanistan.

The Taliban’s targets include officials of the former government (in which we both served), members of the security forces, human rights defenders to peaceful protesters and journalists covering those events to ordinary citizens who dared to post on their social media. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and various notable human rights organizations expert on Afghanistan have reported a steady increase in the use of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances, in particular targeting women activists and other critics. According to Amnesty International, over 60 such cases occurred in January and February alone, with children among the victims. The real numbers are believed to be much higher due to underreporting caused by the climate of fear and the vacuum created by the dissolution of national monitoring structures and the absence of international monitoring structures.

It is also difficult to get a picture of the true numbers because, under the Taliban, denial often goes hand in hand with impunity. In one high profile case, the Taliban denied detaining two activists, Tamana Zaryab Paryani and Parwana Ibrahimkhel, and their relatives, including a 13-year-old girl, until their release a month later. The case of Fayaz Ghowri, an activist and former government official, followed a similar pattern.

Violations by the local Taliban commanders have been particularly notorious and contrary to the group’s promises of amnesty, often leading to the dead bodies of the individuals discovered days later, bearing signs of severe torture. On Mar. 12, a local news channel reported the arrest of Abdul Sadiq, a former police officer and father of four children in Kabul, whose fate is unknown to date. In a similar case, Rahmatullah Qaderi, a former Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) officer, was arrested at his doorstep with no news on his fate yet available to his family except footage of him subjected to inhumane treatment. Yar Mohammed, another ex-soldier, disappeared in Ghor province. His relatives claim that, two days after his disappearance, his dead body was found in the capital of the province.

Reports also suggest that the Taliban arrest and torture family members of former ANDSF members in an effort to locate those who went into hiding or escaped the country. In a victim interview spreading on social media, an elderly man claims that the Taliban have taken two of his sons into custody and beaten them severely. He adds that, when he went to ask for his sons’ release, the Taliban put him in custody and tortured him; the circulating video shows the wounds still visible on his body. On Mar. 1, the Taliban shot dead Imam al-Din Changiz, former employee of a local Bank in Taloqan-Takhar province. He was targeted because his older brother was a member of the ANDSF, according to local sources.

Arbitrary arrests and harassment were also reported during the recent sweeping house-to-house search operations in Kabul. Sources have confirmed that former Kabul traffic chief, General Nezamuddin Dadkhah, suffered a medical emergency during a search at his home. He was beaten by Taliban members, resulting in a heart attack and his death.

Evidence from a private collection of select social media posts shows a former army officer arrested by the Taliban subjected to humiliation and severe torture. The recent killing of Lieutenant Colonel Qasim Qaem shows that the Taliban is bound by no moral or legal grounds. Qaem was an educated military cadre fooled by the promise of amnesty who returned to his functions at the Ministry of Interior Affairs, only to die from torture at the hands of the group.

Sadly, these cases just represent the tip of the iceberg. Numerous similar accounts of arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances are reported through social media, local news channels, and interviews with victims or members of their families. Ironically, a number of such detentions are made under the guise of anti-terrorism, with the Taliban often labeling the victims ISIS affiliates.

The Taliban’s campaign of terror has focused not only on ANDSF members, but has also sought to silence all voices of criticism and dissent. The Taliban arrest, abduct, and intimidate civil society activists, political commentators, journalists, and even ordinary citizens posting on their social media channels, listening to music, or carrying the national flag. The group detained a university professor, Faizullah Jalal, following his critical comments on live TV and a mini quarrel with a fellow guest, one of the Taliban’s spokespersons. Detention of Sayed Baqer Mohseni Kazemi, another professor, political analyst, and critic, was another such case receiving public attention.

The detainees are tortured, threatened with constant surveillance, and made to sign papers of self-declaration to never protest or talk to media again. In some cases, even travel documents are confiscated. It is clear that a major goal of this campaign of terror is censoring and silencing critical journalism. Forced confession of girl protestors and permanent absence of Jalal and Baqer Mohseni, two prominent commentators, from the media are vivid examples of silencing and intimidation campaigns.

Estimates suggest hundreds of national and local media outlets are completely shut, and around 80 percent of female journalists have lost their jobs or fled the country, often fearing reprisals for their media work. Intimidation and arrests compels major media outlets, once champions of free speech, to resort to self-censorship and broadcast what the Taliban pleases. Noorulhaq Haider, Shamsudin Amani, Khpalwak Sapai, Nafay Khaleeq, and Bahram Aman are a few of the confirmed arbitrary arrests of national media personnel. The situation of local journalists, who receive little public attention, is much worse.

Apart from the sporadic verbal, written, and visual accounts of human rights violations that come out of Afghanistan every day, the Taliban’s actions have tightened the civic space and spread a cloud of fear to a degree which has astonishingly blocked systematic documentation and prevented Afghans from interacting with international human rights monitoring/redress mechanisms. Speaking at an online event on enforced disappearances organized at the margins of the UN Human Rights Council Session in Geneva, Luciano A. Hazan, Chair-rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, expressed concern that many of these cases could not be formally treated in the absence of complaint and communication from relatives, who appear to be reluctant to approach the working group and other human rights mechanisms for fear of reprisals. At the same event, Elina Steinerte, Chair-Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, expressed astonishment that, despite widespread allegations, they are still waiting for the instances of detentions in relations to Afghanistan to trickle through to them.

Documentation and evidence-based data collection is a prerequisite of assuring accountability in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s heavy-handed approach and the prevailing environment of fear have severely restricted the work of institutions and individuals defending human rights. The members of the Human Right Council failed to establish a much-needed Commission of Inquiry (COI ) during its Special Session on Afghanistan in August and the 48th regular session in September 2021. Civil society observers attributed this to the intricacies surrounding the sponsorship of the call for the Session and its outcome document lead by Pakistan on behalf of the the members states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation ( OIC), as well as the stakeholders’ general tendency to wait and see how human rights practices under the Taliban regime would unfold, rather than risk a face-off at a stage where evacuation operations were a major priority.

By documenting gross human rights violations and abuses committed in the run up to Taliban’s military takeover, including evidence of crimes under international law, a COI could have served multiple purposes. It could have acted as a remedial mechanism, assisting in holding those suspected of criminal responsibility to justice. It also could have contributed to prevention of further atrocities by signaling that the international community was committed to ending impunity.

For now, the onus is on the Human Rights Unit of UNAMA and the newly appointed UN Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan. The mandates of both entities — in Security Council Resolution 2626, and Human Rights Council Resolution 48/1 — are sufficiently robust and allow for thorough reporting, monitoring, and protecting human rights in Afghanistan.

The UNAMA should play a more robust role under its strengthened mandate to fill the void caused by the Taliban’s dissolution of Afghanistan’s national human rights institution, and lack of any functional state human rights protection apparatus. The augmented element in the Security Council Resolution enables UNAMA to “monitor, report and advocate with regard to the situation for civilians, the prevention of torture, monitoring of places of detention and the promotion of the rights of detainees, … support and advise on Afghanistan’s implementation of the provisions of core human rights treaties including the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) among others.”

The Special Rapporteur should make the most of the crucial responsibility that the mandate conferred upon him to “seek, receive, examine and act on information from all relevant stakeholders pertaining to the situation of human rights in Afghanistan.” These tasks could, for the time being, make up for the lack of a robust accountability mechanism. The Special Rapporteur should also draw on and integrate other elements of the international system, as the Resolution requests the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to assist the mandate holder with specific expertise on fact-finding, legal analysis, and forensics.

The people of Afghanistan, particularly the victims of human rights abuses and their relatives, and members of Afghanistan’s debilitated civil society at home and abroad, have high expectations for the work of the OHCHR-UNAMA and the Special Rapporteur and will be closely watching their reports to the 51th session of the Human Rights Council in September 2022. As the ongoing atrocities show, it is long past time for the international community to take serious action in defense of human rights in Afghanistan.

IMAGE: Women hold placards during a protest to demand an end to the extra-judicial killings of former officials of the previous regime, in Kabul on December 28, 2021. 

(Photo by Mohd RASFAN / AFP)

About the Author(s)

Nasir A. Andisha

Dr. Nasir Andisha (@AndishaNasir) is a career diplomat and academic. He was Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan 2015-2019, Permanent Representative of Afghanistan to the UN in Geneva and served as the Vice President of the Human Rights Council (2020).

Hamid A. Formuli

Hamid A. Formuli (@formulian) is currently a senior fellow on human rights at the Center for Dialogue and Progress - Geneva. He is a former career diplomat with years of experience in multilateral diplomacy. He headed the Human Rights section of the Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to UN in Geneva and worked as Special Aide to the Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Cooperation of Afghanistan.

 

The Collapse of Industrial Farming

BY ROBERT HUNZIKER   

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Photograph Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture – CC BY 2.0

The most upending event of the past 10,000 years is the advent of engineered food as fermentation farms displace factory farms. “We are on the Cusp of the Fastest, Deepest, Most Consequential Disruption of Agriculture in History.” (RethinkX.com)

“Modern foods will bankrupt the cattle industry within a decade.” (RethinkX)

More on that to follow, but first: Industrial farming, alongside global warming, ranks at the top of the list of existential risks this century. And, similar to the dangers attendant to excessive greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, industrial farming is dangerously out of control, but in contrast to global warming, it is not followed at all by corporate media, begging the Orwellian question whether media other than corporate media truly exist?

All of which serves to highlight George Orwell’s concerns as expressed in his famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (Secker & Warburg Publishers, 1949) wherein he explained the primary consequences of “media manipulation” described as: (a) “loss of a critical thinking faculty” and (b) “diminished capacity for self-expression.”

More than 70 years post-Orwellian, his words ring true as corporate media skims over the tragic news of a world in such a dangerous state that only the collapse of industrial agriculture itself, along with cutting GHG emissions, can help to stop the pronounced ongoing collapse of ecosystems throughout the world, especially evident at the extreme latitudes, north and south.

According to Forest Trends, as of 2021, clear-cutting of forests for commercial agriculture purposes, principally for beef and soy production, within the past couple of years increased by a rip-snorting +50%, mostly illegal, to 27 million acres a year. (Source: Trees Fell Faster in the Years Since Companies and Governments Promised to Stop Cutting Them Down, Inside Climate News, May 19, 2021).

That huge acceleration of clear-cutting follows in the footsteps of the New York Declaration on Forests signed in 2014 by 200 endorsers to cut deforestation in half by 2020 (ahem!) and stop it altogether by 2030 (lol).

Industrial farming is destroying the planet’s resources with clear-cutting as well as spewing tons upon tons of toxic chemicals that subtly destroy major ecosystems throughout the world, including wetlands, floral meadowlands, and precious farmland as toxic chemicals turn rich black soils into useless dirt.

The Center for Biodiversity and the World Animal Protection-US orgs in February of 2022 released a major report “Collateral Damage” documenting the deadly harm of toxic chemicals used by factory farms. Clearly, humans are poisoning the planet, and in a mind-blowing “tip of the hat” to Orwell’s prognosis about human dullness, it is legal! Yes, poisoning the planet is legal! Which suggest that Orwell’s concern about “loss of a critical thinking faculty” is understated.

That amazing fact is underscored by the frightening knowledge that within only a few decades industrial farming, assuming it can be called “farming,” displaced thousands of years of family farming that husbanded nature, displaced by rapacious corporate models of stern-minded profit-oriented callous mass slaughter to satisfy the gluttonous fast-food craze that’s unique to the decadent 21^st century.

This sudden emergence of CAFOs or concentrated animal feed operations is so gruesome and so powerful and so outlandishly disparate from traditional family farming that only a fantasy comparison can approximate its oddity via the passing of a magical wand that morphs Tinker Bell into Hannibal Lecter.

On the other hand, a turning point may be at hand. Factory farming is about to be disrupted via better foods, tastier foods, cheaper foods, healthier foods, and a much healthier environment. That future, sans institutional slaughterhouses and sans widespread use of chemicals and the end of clear-cutting has been theorized in detail by the independent think tank RethinkX.

The not-so-secret formula to better, tastier, cheaper, healthier, more prevalent food is the production of microorganisms. Already over past centuries humanity has shown the value of controlling microorganisms through fermentation, producing bread, cheese, alcohol, as well as preserving fruit and vegetables.

“Moving food production to the molecular level promises a more efficient means of feeding ourselves and the delivery of superior, cleaner nutrients without the unhealthy chemical/antibiotic/insecticide additives required by current industrial means of production.” (RethinkX)

The capability to create foods with exact attributes of nutrition, structure, taste, and texture is advancing whereby ordering food will be similar to installing software on your phone but via databases of engineered molecules, as fermentation farms displace factory farms.

Impossible Foods is an example that utilizes fermented (heme) to create a higher-performing product. (Source: A Rainbow of Opportunity: How Fermentation Biotech is Creating “Agricultural 2.0”, Food Navigator, March 25, 2021)

According to RethinkX: “By 2035, 60% of the area currently allocated to livestock and food production will be freed for other uses. This is enough land that if it were dedicated to the planting of trees for carbon sequestration, it could completely offset U.S. greenhouse emissions.”

Moreover, it is anticipated that rapid uptake of engineered foods means water consumption for cattle will drop by 50% within a decade. And destruction of rainforests for cattle-raising and soy oil production will plummet.

And most importantly for human health concerns, toxic chemicals will be unnecessary. The current industrial food supply chain, from A to Z, is loaded with chemicals. For starters, pesticides used to grow food and livestock end up in human bodies one way or another, and in high enough concentrations proven to influence cancers, brain, nerve, genetic and hormonal disorders, kidney and liver damage, asthma and allergies. (Source: Julian Cribb: Earth Detox, Cambridge University Press, August 2021)

In addition to pesticides, some 3,000 chemical ingredients added to food are permitted by the FDA to enhance freshness, taste, and texture. Preservatives, for example, which extend shelf life, are chemicals that poison the bacteria and moulds that cause food to rot: “Common chemical preservatives such as sodium nitrate and nitrite, sulphites, sulphur dioxide, sodium benzoate, parabens, formaldehyde and antioxidant preservatives, if over-consumed in the modern processed food diet, may also lead to cancers, heart disease, allergies, digestive, lung, kidney and other diseases and constitute a further reason for avoiding or reducing one’s intake of industrial food.” (Earth Detox, pg 70)

Two hundred million (200,000,000) or more than 50% of Americans have at least one chronic disease. (Rand Corporation, 2017) Prompting the query, what causes chronic disease? Answer: Mainstream medical sites blames tobacco, secondhand smoke, poor nutrition, alcohol and lack of exercise, sinful-related stuff. Yet, there are several books and science papers published that point the finger at toxic chemicals in our environment as the cause of chronic diseases. Here’s one recent publication: Stephanie Seneff, PhD: Toxic Legacy: How the Weedkiller Glyphosate Is Destroying Our Health and the Environment, Chelsea Green Publishing, London, UK, 2021)

“Interestingly enough, Europe only permits the use of 400 out of the 3000 food additives permitted in the US (ed.- the EU has only one-half the US rate of chronic diseases). Essentially, Europe has banned 4/5ths of the chemicals allowed in the US food chain. Europe outlaws any chemicals that do not meet its criteria for ‘non-harm to humans or the environment.” (Earth Detox, pg. 73)

The Center for Biological Diversity in conjunction with World Animal Protection-US report Collateral Damage (February 4, 2022) studied the impact of an estimated 235 million pounds annually of herbicides and insecticides applied to feed crops for factory farms. The chemicals are applied to corn and soybeans for farmed animal feed in the US. Roughly 50% of toxic pesticide use on a global basis is for corn and soy for factory farms… hundreds of millions of pounds of chemicals are applied to corn and soy crops as pesticides in the US.

If only two out of the thousands of toxic chemicals could be eliminated, i.e., glyphosate (herbicide) and atrazine (pesticide); it would be a major health benefit to complex life and ecosystems.

Glyphosate, the king of toxic chemicals, is the most widely used herbicide worldwide. Already 13,000 lawsuits have been filed claiming it causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. WHO claims it is “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

Atrazine is one of the most widely used pesticides, especially in the US. To date, thirty-five (35) countries have banned its use, including the EU because of persistent groundwater contamination and dangerous levels of toxicity.

“Atrazine is a potent endocrine disruptor and is linked to a variety of human health issues, including different types of cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and harm to the reproductive system. After just six hours of exposure an increase in cell death and DNA damage were observed. The same level of damage from exposure to Gamma radiation would take a full 15 minutes. Atrazine also alters the levels of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain and decreases the electrical activity of certain cells in the cerebellum (the region of the brain that controls motor function). As an endocrine disruptor it can interfere with the balance of hormones in the body, significantly impacting overall physiology and development.” (Source: Collateral Damage: How Factory Farming Drives Up the Use of Toxic Agricultural Pesticides by World Animal Protection, New York, NY, February 2022).

It’s not at all surprising that 35 countries, including the EU, banned atrazine. But, it’s enormously popular in the US.

Time after time, the brilliance of Orwell’s mass media prognosis of “loss of a critical thinking faculty” shows up on the shores of the United States.

It’s probably a good idea to reread Nineteen Eighty-Four:

“IT WAS a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind… at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week… On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.” (1984, pg. 1)

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

The Unknown Masterpiece

BY STEPHEN F. EISENMANFacebook

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Follower of Otto Marseus van Schriek, Medusa’s Head, c. 1650, Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

Prologue

Many works of art are seen, but not written about. Only a few are written about but not seen. This essay is about the latter and ends with a discussion of a painting by the Italian artist, Luca del Baldo showing the murder of George Floyd. The picture should be approached with caution; like Medusa’s head illustrated above, it can turn to stone anybody who sees it.

The Shield of Achilles

The earliest Western example of an unseen but well described artwork is Homer’s account of the silver shield of Achilles in Book 18 of the Iliad. The buckler is the product of the Greek god Hephaestus (his Roman counterpart is Vulcan) and was decorated in concentric rings. One circle showed the starry constellations, another featured farming scenes, still another dancing, and so on. A particularly notable section represented two cities, one experiencing peace and prosperity, the other war and want. Here’s part of Homer’s ekphrasis (literary description) of the latter scene, as translated in 1720 by Alexander Pope:

They fight, they fall, beside the silver flood;
The waving silver seem’d to blush with blood.
There Tumult, there Contention stood confess’d;
One rear’d a dagger at a captive’s breast;
One held a living foe, that freshly bled
With new-made wounds; another dragg’d a dead;
Now here, now there, the carcases they tore:
Fate stalk’d amidst them, grim with human gore.
And the whole war came out, and met the eye;
And each bold figure seem’d to live or die.

(Pope translation, 1720)

Very vivid! Homer used his description of the shield to create a story within the story and offer listeners a moral lesson: You can honor the gods and have a good life or defy them and have a terrible one.

About two and a half millennia later, in 1817, the British, Neo-Classical sculptor John Flaxman took up what must have seemed the ultimate artistic challenge: Re-create Achilles shield in glit bronze. He had already depicted it in miniature in 1793, in an engraved illustration showing Thetis delivering arms to her son. Now a mature and celebrated artist, Flaxman returned to the subject, re-reading Homer’s text in Greek and in its English translation by Pope. He made lots of preparatory drawings and then set to work. After completing his design, he modeled the shield in clay and from that made a plaster cast. This he turned it over to the metalsmith, Philip Rundell, who refined it and made casts in bronze, silver, and silver-gilt. One cast was shown at King George IV’s coronation banquet. But the artistic result, it seems to me, is a disappointment – a repetitious parade of nearly identical nude men and women: fighting, cavorting, and playing music. The shield is more like a luxurious tchotchke than a token of antiquity. Maybe that’s because the very genius of Achilles’ shield was that it was unseen; it was designed for the mind, not the eye.

John Flaxman, The Shield of Achilles, c. 1823, The Royal Collection Trust.

In the mid 20^th century, the English poet W.H. Auden imagined another “Shield of Achilles,” this one forged by the violence of modernity. According to the poem, the nymph Thetis looks past Hephaestus to see an antique world of peace and prosperity. But when she gazes at the shield itself, she witnesses a dark vision of the future:

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

Auden wrote the poem in 1955 and might have been describing a concentration camp, a public execution, or the aftermath of a political uprising. He knew the horrors of World War II, the Holocaust, and Hiroshima, and in 1947 published a book-length poem called “The Age of Anxiety,” a title that soon became a shorthand for the paranoia, fear, and failure of the Atomic Age. The irony of Auden’s shield of Achilles is that it couldn’t protect anyone from those dangers!

Medusa’s Head by Leonardo da Vinci

The Renaissance biographer, Giorgio Vasari, tells us that Leonardo da Vinci, when he was a young man, painted for his father a shield with the severed head of Medusa. Not content with the usual woman’s-head-with-snakes-for-hair, the artist gathered “lizards great and small, crickets, serpents, butterflies, grasshoppers, bats, and other strange kinds of suchlike animals” and assembled them into gruesome chimeras that he used as models for Medusa’s hair and bloody neck. (To avoid being turned to stone, Medusa’s killer, Perseus, used a mirror to guide his sword.) The result was so disturbing, that when his father saw it, he shrieked in alarm and “fell back a step.” Noticing that, young Leonardo expressed satisfaction with his handiwork, and his father sold the painting to a merchant for a hefty price.

I doubt there ever was such a painting. Vasari was a storyteller as much as a biographer, and he was probably using the tale of Medusa to attest to Leonardo’s remarkable powers of observation and invention. The young artist produced an image of Medusa so powerful, Vasari was saying, that it set his father back on his heels (“tornando col passo a dietro”). And while Vasari never says Leonardo’s father was turned to stone, he was clearly alluding to Medusa’s power. Just as in English there is the expression “stone dead”, in Italian there is “morto freddo come un sasso [“dead cold as a stone”], well-known from its use by the early 19th-century poet Filippo Pananti.*  Vasari was however, describing an unseen masterpiece.

Caravaggio, Head of Medusa, c. 1597, Uffizi, Florence.

The only physical traces we have of the painting are much later re-creations. Most are horrific. Two of them shown here are by Caravaggio (1597) and Rubens (c.1618), and the third, (at the top of this column), is by a follower of the Dutchman, Otto Marseus van Schriek (c. 1650). They are all quite different.

The Caravaggio most closely recalls Vasari’s text; it’s painted on canvas attached to a wooden shield and is startling in its verisimilitude. However, unlike the female Gorgon of myth, Caravaggio’s has the features of the young artist himself, shown the moment his head is cut from his neck. Rubens’ painting, like the slightly later Dutch painting by a follower of van Schriek, shows the exsanguinated head of Medusa on a rocky outcrop, with the hair and blood turned into various, naturalistically depicted reptiles and worms. There are also water snakes,

Peter Paul Rubens, The Head of Medusa, circa 1618. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

vipers, lizards, frogs, and salamanders, all painted with great verisimilitude. (Ruben’s frequent collaborator at this time, Frans Snyders, painted all his animals.) According to medieval legend, female vipers die giving birth because their offspring rip though her sides to escape. Vipers thus became emblems of ingratitude.

Rubens’ Medusa gazes down with horror to see the consequences of her own decapitation. And she will be responsible for more mayhem in the future: Even her image on a shield can turn an attacker to stone. Thus, paintings of Medusa, whether by van Schriek, Caravaggio, Rubens, or anybody else, are always about the danger of looking. They are in one sense, painted to remain unseen; but in another, they attest to the right and necessity of the artist to look, regardless of risk. In 1648, Gianlorenzo Bernini made a remarkable marble sculpture of Medusa. In that instance, he turned the tables on Medusa, changing her to stone!

Balzac’s “Chef d’Oeuvre Inconnu” (“The Unknown Masterpiece”)

Honore de Balzac’s short story “The Unknown Masterpiece,” published in 1831 is the paradigmatic, modern tale of the artist-genius whose work is fated to be unseen, unknown, misunderstood, or disparaged. The story concerns a 17^th C. artist named Frenhofer who’s unable to finish his masterpiece, a painting of the beautiful courtesan, Catherine Lescault, upon which he’d been laboring for decades. The problem is that he lacks a model as beautiful as his imagined subject and is therefore unable to bring “the secret of life” to the picture. He hopes to glimpse somewhere, if only for a single moment, a “beauty divine” to inspire the finishing touches.

Help arrives in the persons of Frans Porbus and Nicholas Poussin, the names of real artists renowned for their work at the court of Marie de Medici and later, Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu. (Poussin spent most of his career in Rome, working for the pope and other exalted patrons.) It’s young Poussin who offers the elder Frenhofer a solution to his problem: He’ll introduce him to his lover, Gillette, who is as perfect as any marble Venus, if Frenhofer agrees to show Porbus and Poussin his unseen masterpiece. At first, Frenhofer rejects the deal with fury and defiance. To share his near-perfect Catherine Lescault — his adored companion all these years — with these inferiors would be a defilement. It was out of the question. But then Gillette stepped forward, “artless and childlike”, and Frenhofer was overcome: “’Oh, leave her with me for one moment,’ said the old painter, ‘and you shall compare her with my Catherine…yes – I consent.’”

The old painter and young Gillette withdraw behind the screen that hid Frenhofer’s unknown masterpiece from view. A few moments later, he reappeared and invited the other two artists within, exulting: “My work is perfect; I can show her now with pride.” But when Porbus and Poussin looked at the large canvas, what they saw was “confused masses of color and a multitude of fantastical lines that go to make a dead wall of paint.” The only discernable form was a bare foot, of a “living, delicate beauty.” At first, they doubted their eyes, then they suspected a joke, and finally they surmised the artist had gone mad. After a little while, Frenhofer realized he had ruined his masterpiece, and hastily rushed his companions out of his studio. The following day, Porbus returned to find Frenhofer dead after burning all his canvases.

The reason the story was so famous – imitated by Poe, Henry James, Emile Zola and Oscar Wilde, among others — is that it summarized many of the most salient debates about modern art: the contest between realism and idealism; the conflict between tradition and change; and artists’ constant need – in a capitalist society that craves novelty and fosters competition – to achieve new and superior effects. For the painter Paul Cezanne – who is reported to have said, “Frenhofer, c’est moi!” – the story was powerful because it addressed his anxiety about maintaining artistic coherence even as he cultivated his own, unique sensation. For him, as for Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso and many others, painting was like walking a tightrope: You tried to be true to your vision and times, but were constantly at risk of falling into the chasm of incomprehensibility. And abstraction – which is what mad Frenhofer produced (apart from the beautiful foot) – was the feared eventuality. “At one time,” Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in 1889, “abstraction seemed to me a charmed path. But it is bewitched ground, old man, and one soon finds oneself up against a wall.” At the time, he was painting works like Irises (1889, Getty Museum) in which flowers occupy almost the entire picture surface, flattening the space almost to the point of abstraction. Had he lived, he might have gone much further in his experiments, despite his fears.

As late as the 1950s, the Dutch-born, American artist Willem De Kooning experienced similar doubts. In his painting, Woman I and works that followed, he appeared to endorse Frenhofer’s paradoxical solution to the problem of coherence in the work of art: He painted the female figure but then disfigured it with “confused masses of color and a multitude of fantastical lines” until almost nothing recognizable was left, except the rudiments of a face, breasts and a pair of prominent pink feet.

Jackson Pollock chased abstraction too, but without any of De Kooning’s doubts. He created archetypal images of the Age of Anxiety, and then dared everyone to look. “The modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio,” he wrote, “in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.” A good example of this is Number 1A, 1948 (1948), with an unrevealing title but an expressive surface animated by drips, pours, spills, and looping skeins of paint. At the upper right, handprints are visible, as if the artist was trapped within and desperate to escape. His painting is a nuclear blast.

Jackson Pollock, Nimber 1A, 1948, (1948). New York: Museum of Modern Art.

Luca del Baldo’s $20 Bill/George Floyd’s Murder

When the Italian artist, Luca del Baldo, learned of the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 following his arrest for passing a counterfeit $20 bill, the first thing he thought of was making a painting about it. That doesn’t mean he was insensitive to the horror of the crime, only that he thinks like an artist. Just as photo-journalists have an urge to capture the visually “decisive moment” in a narrative sequence, realist painters have the instinct to understand and depict remarkable people, places, and historical events. Unlike photographers, however, whose representational choices are mostly limited by what’s in front of their lenses, painters are free to re-arrange, distort, highlight, or obscure at will. They don’t even have to be witnesses to what they paint – they can use photographs, their imaginations, or previous artworks as their source material.

There are, of course, ethical limits to this freedom. Painters and sculptors can lie as much as writers can, and the consequences can be equally destructive – just think of all those stone or bronze monuments to perfidious Confederate soldiers and politicians. The challenge for realist artists then, is not just to create a plausible resemblance of something – a photograph or video can do that – but to reveal an underlying truth that has been overlooked or forgotten. That’s what Luca sought to do with his small triptych (three-part painting) of the Floyd murder, and why it’s so fraught an endeavor: The video of the killing has been seen so often, the outcry been so vociferous, and the consequent political change so minimal, that it’s hard to imagine a painting by an artist living thousands of miles from the crime, having much to contribute.

Luca del Baldo, $20 Bill/George Floyd’s Murder, 2020. Collection: The artist.

In fact, it’s worse than that: there’s a supposition by many that any representation of the subject by a white artist is at best gratuitous and at worst exploitative. That’s what several critics told del Baldo in letters or other communications – which is why the painting hasn’t been exhibited or published till now.

The most brilliant of these criticisms came from the cultural historian and philosopher, Ivan Gaskell, who wrote in late 2020, while protests raged:

It’s really not for me to suggest what you should decide regarding your painting of the murder of George Floyd, but since you ask, I’ll be candid.

I’m sure you have chosen this subject for good reasons, but I advise reflection–not that you are not always reflective. This is a moment that calls for extreme sensitivity.

You may want to revisit some of the things written at the time of the controversy about Dana Schutz’s painting, Open Casket, shown at the Whitney Biennial in 2017. White appropriation of extreme Black pain is the charge made then that resonates now. Hannah Black wrote then: ‘White free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others and are not natural rights.’ This is worth pondering, especially in the light of the realization, just dawning on many whites, that Black pain is inconceivable to those who [don’t] suffer it, despite all the empathy in the world. I never expected you to be anything other than thoughtful, and that’s the case. I certainly wouldn’t urge you not to make the painting, just to be circumspect about what you do with it….

The observations are sensitive and persuasive, though it seems to me they rely upon a mystification, “that Black pain is inconceivable to those who don’t suffer it.” The statement is unarguable, but for that reason fails to persuade. The pain of another is always inconceivable – that’s part of the meaning of pain — but we have all experienced sufficient physical hurt, grief, and loss to be able to fathom suffering and gain empathy. It is that very capacity that makes solidarity and collective action possible.

The triptych itself is easily described: It consists of a single, horizontal canvas, unequally divided into three, vertical sections. The largest in the middle, shows the knee of Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chavin pressed down upon Mr. George Floyd’s neck. A diagonal white stripe passes beneath Floyd’s nose and mouth. The fender and bumper of the police squad car intrudes at left, and Chauvin’s black boots are prominent at right. The scene at left shows the full figure of Chauvin crouched down beside the right rear of his car. As he holds his knee on Floyd’s neck, he gazes down at his victim with apparent nonchalance. His left hand is buried in his left trouser pocket as if to demonstrate how easy this is – “Look ma, no hands!” The streetscape here, with an open expanse of asphalt behind the assailant, appears different than in the larger, close-up view in the middle. In the right-hand section of the painting, Chauvin looks up at bystanders and us – he may be speaking. Once again, his left hand is in his pocket and sunglasses are perched on his forehead. So simple is this maneuver, Chauvin seems to say, and so well practiced, that I don’t even need to fold up my expensive sunglasses and cache them in my pocket.

These three perspectives on the murder of George Floyd were based upon frames from an eyewitness video by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier that went viral. Del Baldo works almost exclusively from photographs or stills, and in the past has depicted the dead bodies of Che Guevara, Muammar Gaddafi, and Pier Paolo Pasolini among others. But his style can’t really be described as “photo-realist” since his paint handling is quite free, and he allows himself distortions or exaggerations for expressive effect. The purpose of that combination of servility to the photograph and painterly freedom, broadly speaking, is to highlight the crisis of image-making in the age of late capital.

Mass-mediated images – photographs and video distributed through broadcast TV and personal computers – are chiefly the product of large, multinational corporations. That’s true whether the images are the creation of Disney or a grandmother on Facebook. In both cases, they are published for the purpose of generating revenue for the host companies, regardless of their beauty, ugliness, accuracy, falsity, tenderness, or promotion of violence.

At the same time, there exists another domain of images that provides the public real insight into the mechanisms of state power and capitalist control. These are produced by individuals, non-profit organizations, independent documentarians, and artists. Some of them, like the Floyd video by Daniella Frazier, expose crimes committed by public authorities, especially police. They are essential tools for dismantling oppression but are sometimes recontextualized by media organizations or the state in such a way as to lessen their power or persuasiveness. This act of appropriation and the resulting political and moral blindness it engenders, is what the art historian and critic Karl Werckmeister called the “Medusa effect.”

Rather than enabling activism, these mediated images freeze existing politics in place. That’s what happened to the George Floyd video. It was broadcast and rebroadcast so often, and in such varied contexts, that it lost its power to arouse or inflame. While it was essential evidence in the televised murder trial that convicted Chauvin, it lost its authority as a document of systemic, racial injustice. Police killings are just as high in the U.S as before the Floyd murder — about three per day – and far from being de-funded, police department budgets are increasing. That’s not due primarily to the vitiation of the Floyd murder video – it’s the result of multiple failures of vison and organization, and a sclerotic American political system. But corporate and state control of the media is a large part of the latter failure.

In $20 Dollar Bill/George Floyd’s Murder, Luca del Baldo challenges the “Medusa effect.” He does this by turning the murder scene into a triptych, akin to altarpieces by Flemish masters from the 15^th century, including Jan van Eyck and Roger van der Weyden. He also draws upon Andactsbilder: initially German and Flemish paintings and sculptures from the late middle-ages that featured highly emotive religious subjects, usually the tormented or crucified Christ. These were later produced by Italian artists as well, including Andrea Mantegna, whose Lamentation of Christ is startling for its intense focus on the stone-cold body of Jesus.

Like Mantegna’s Christ, or Hans Holbein’s Body of Christ in the Tomb (1522), George Floyd is shown supine, and there’s no question that del Baldo would have us see him as a secular martyr. But what’s most remarkable about the painting is its focus not on the victim whose features are barely seen, but the criminal perpetrator, Derek Chauvin. I can think of no precedent for this in the history of art; it would be like showing a diminutive Christ between two large figures of Judas.

Andrea Mantegna, Lamentation of Christ, c. 1490, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.

The reason for this artistic decision, I think, is to deny the viewer the opportunity to mourn Floyd and experience catharsis, like viewers of Mantegna’s work were encouraged to do. Instead, we focus upon the criminal perpetrator, Chauvin, and are asked to gauge our own complacency concerning the racial violence on view. In this respect, the painting functions like Leonardo’s Medusa – it causes the viewer to “fall back a step.” Our inclination is to look away from the picture out of fear we may not feel sufficient shame, or that we may become “dead cold as a stone,” and fail to take the actions necessary to stop the killing.

* Many thanks to Steven F. Ostrow for his kind answer to my question concerning the Italian equivalent of the English expression, “stone dead.” Also see his: “Bernini and the Poetics of Sculpture: The Capitoline Medusa,” Arion – Journal of Humanities and the Classics, September 2021, pp. 15-32. Thanks also to Ivan Gaskell for permission to publish his personal communication and to Luca del Baldo for his answers to my questions.

Stephen F. Eisenman is Professor Emeritus of Art History at Northwestern University and the author of Gauguin’s Skirt (Thames and Hudson, 1997), The Abu Ghraib Effect (Reaktion, 2007), The Cry of Nature: Art and the Making of Animal Rights (Reaktion, 2015) and many other books. He is also co-founder of the environmental justice non-profit,  Anthropocene Alliance. He and the artist Sue Coe and now preparing for publication part two of their series for Rotland Press, American Fascism Now.

Sen. Bernie Sanders hasn't ruled out third run for president in 2024

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, speaks at a hearing on Thursday, February 25, 2021. A memo said he could step into the 2024 presidential race. 

File Photo by Stefani Reynolds/UPI | License Photo

April 21 (UPI) -- Two-time progressive presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has not ruled out a third run if President Joe Biden declines to run for re-election, his 2020 campaign manager said in a memo to supporters, according to the Washington Post.

The memo, which was not released publicly, stressed that Sanders would only consider stepping into the ring in 2024 if Biden decided to step away.

"In the event of an open 2024 Democratic presidential primary, Sen. Sanders has not ruled out another run for president, so we advise that you answer any questions about 2024 with that in mind," said Shakir, who remains a close adviser to Sanders, according to the Post.

The memo centered around Sanders' support of Democratic candidates in the upcoming midterms while encouraging supporters to "embrace the attacks" that will come from the Republican Party and conservatives.

"While it's frustrating this private memo leaked to the media, the central fact remains true, which is that Senator Sanders is the most popular officeholder in the country," Sanders spokesman Mike Casca said, according to The Washington Post.

Sanders, though, has also been a lightning rod for conservatives who criticize his alignment with democratic socialism.

Hey, Bernie, Make It a Real Single Payer Bill…

No Profits

BY KAY TILLOWFacebookTwitter

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Senator Bernie Sanders has announced that he is going to introduce his Medicare for All bill in the Senate—and hold a hearing.  This is most welcome news.

As Bernie campaigned for the presidency, he elevated national single payer health care, an improved Medicare for All, into the public spotlight and onto the nation’s agenda.

His advocacy for Medicare for All informed millions and lifted spirits building hope that a universal single payer plan is possible in the US.

He has not done that well at writing legislation.  His most recent bill, the Medicare for All Act of 2019 (S. 1129), falls short of essential single payer principles and lets stand billions in profits that will undermine care and steal public funds.

With a majority of people in the U. S. now delaying care because of cost and life expectancy sinking to 5 years below other wealthy countries, the crisis is too great and the life or death urgency too immediate for half measures.

Here are the issues in Sanders’ 2019 Medicare for All Act (S. 1129) that need to be resolved prior to introduction of Medicare for All in 2022.

1. S. 1129 leaves institutional long term care to the states under Medicaid instead of including it in the national Medicare for All program. Leaving long term care to the states means that it will continue to be means-tested, and people will have to become impoverished to be eligible. The rules and care will vary from state to state leaving the fragile elderly and disabled persons dependent on state budgets that are continually being cut.

2. S. 1129 allows the investor-owned hospitals, nursing homes, dialysis centers—all the for-profit facilities–to continue to exploit patients and drain the public treasury. Objective research consistently shows that investor-owned entities have both lower quality care and higher costs.  That’s why a sound single payer bill must convert those facilities and ban for-profit health care institutions, ending the waste of public funds on facilities that subject patients to inferior care.

3. S. 1129 does not provide for global budgeting, lump sum payment to hospitals and similar institutions to cover operating expenses, that would eliminate wasteful per-patient billing. Global budgeting, separating operating budgets from construction, expansion, and modernization, is essential to assure that funds are not wasted.  Separate capital budgets will guarantee that facilities are built where they are needed.

4. S. 1129, in section 611(b), adopts the payment systems of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), basing payments on an unworkable, unfair, and wasteful system supposedly rated according to value. Such payment schemes have proven to discriminate against those physicians who serve the poorest patients and minority communities while adding massively to the administrative tasks and burn out of physicians.  These alternative payment models (APM) or value-based payments (VBP) in S. 1129 embed risk and profit into the payment system and should be banned.  They impose schemes that incentivize denial of care to enhance profit.  These payment systems are the basis of the current privatization of Medicare through the direct contracting entities (DCE) program, recently renamed ACO REACH.

5. While S. 1129 removed most copays and deductibles, it keeps a copayment on certain drugs.Copayments have been proven to deprive patients of necessary care and are detrimental to health.

6. S. 1129 inserts supposedly incremental steps of public options and Medicare buy-ins for four years prior to arriving at a real single payer plan. Because the plan expands care while maintaining the private insurance companies, costs will skyrocket before the savings of single payer kick in. The incremental steps will become a roadblock rather than a path to single payer.  Perhaps the worst part of this inclusion of the public option and the Medicare buy-in is the reinforcement of the false notion that there should or must be incremental steps to single payer.  Neither the public option nor the Medicare buy-in are based on sound policy.  To place them in the bill endangers the single payer goal.

7. S. 1129 is silent on the establishment of a progressive taxing mechanism that would shift the tax burden from working class Americans onto the corporate elite and the billionaires.

8. While S. 1129 provides for up to 1% of the budget to be used for temporary worker assistance programs for those who experience economic dislocation as a result of implementation of Medicare for All, there is no specific annual compensation for a specific period that could win the support of workers in the insurance industry.

Ricky Goldwasser, managing director at Morgan Stanley just announced that there will be even more consolidation in the healthcare industry in the coming year with more Wall Street mergers and acquisitions and more takeovers of physician practices by private equity.  Some highly-respected health policy experts are now asserting that Medicare for All is not enough and that the nation must move to a national health service to escape control by the profit-takers.  The introduction of health care legislation reflecting that opinion would also be welcome.

The very least that Congress can do is propose a real single payer bill, stripped of the profits, and covering us all.