Brussels, Russia and the Venice Biennale: Art as Politics and Hypocrisy

Binoy Kampmark

May 6, 2026

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First edition official poster. Photograph Source: Cyril S – Public Domain

The jury at the Venice Biennale Art Exhibition have outdone themselves.  Few juries at any art or literary festival can be trusted at the best of times, their judgment likely to be swayed by factions, self-interest and the ethically sapping succour of the gravy train (the global art scene is an enormous racket after all), but to see such figures take a moral stand is a peculiar thing indeed.

The stand in question, which took the form of a mass resignation, was initiated in response to the decision to permit Russian participation for the first time since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, even if the country had self-absented itself.  (Russia, indeed, has its own permanent exhibition space in the Giardini.)  In a terse statement, the jury set out “our intention – to express our commitment to the defence of human rights.”  In doing so, it would “refrain from considering those countries whose leaders are currently charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.”  This meant excluding artists from both Israel and Russia, as their sitting leaders Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyanu and President Vladimir Putin both face ICC warrants for their arrest.

The organisers had taken a different view in considering Russia’s participation, deeming the re-admission of its artists as “consistent with the founding spirit of La Biennale, based on openness, dialogue, and the rejection of any form of closure or censorship.”  Given what the organisers of such events can quail before the loss of funding or a perceived dent in reputation, this was unusually principled.

The political philistines have been quick to weigh in, further showing that the art scene – or at least art as shown in public – is governed by the sentiments and prejudices of sponsors who give no fig to the quality of what is on show.  Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha offered a simple, and simplistic assessment about the pavilion exhibition entitled The Tree is Rooted in the Sky, centred on performances with a focus on sound and experimental music: “The aggressor’s culture is not neutral in the times of war and must never be utilized to serve the interests of the aggressor, to whitewash its crimes, and to spread propaganda.”  Forget the actual content of the exhibition: all Russians shared a form of cultural pox, incapable of expressing moral and intellectual sentience.

Brussels, taking a similar line, hectored and bullied the organisers last month, ignoring the self-evident point that their powers over the Russian-owned space were limited.  On April 21, the European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, proved firm and dogmatic: “While Russia bombs museums, destroys churches and seeks to erase Ukrainian culture, it should not be allowed to exhibit its own.  Russia’s return to the Venice Biennale is morally wrong, and also the EU intends to cut its funding.” The European Commission, very much in the mood for splitting hairs, excoriated participating Russian artists as members of a “‘governmental delegation’ (whose participation is entirely funded and promoted by the Russian government via a national pavilion”.  This implied “that the Biennale appears to have accepted indirect support from the Russian government in exchange for granting a cultural platform”.

The Italian government preferred the neutrality of impotence, claiming that the Biennale was acting “entirely independently” of Rome’s direction.  Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni did, however, state that permitting Russian participation was “a decision not shared by the government”, though the Biennale was an autonomous entity with a “very capable” president.

The reasoning fashioned against the Russian participants is a most troubling reading of the artistic temperament.  If artists are to be reduced to the same culpability as their political leaders, what does it say about their art?  It is true to say that the fickle, dominant patron is certainly indispensable in the history of art, from emperors and Popes to any number of modern, tarted-up demagogues.  The same also goes for artists happy to exchange independence of mind for the stability of thoughtless servility.  But to use the narrow field of reason adopted by the judges would be to prevent any showing of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica because the leader of his country was the bloodthirsty monomaniac Generalissimo Francisco Franco.  Guernica was a shattering admonishment of modern war, yet such a sensibility would be utterly occluded by petty juries worried about the moral character of political leaders.

The saddening and maddening nature of the jury resignation, accompanied by the crude response from Brussels, further ignores the point that artists can, on their own volition, take a stance.  In 2022, the curator and artists selected for the Russian pavilion withdrew in protest against the invasion of Ukraine.  In 2024, Russia lent the space to Bolivia.

The Biennale Foundation, following the jury’s resignation, has decided to revise the awards system.  Instead of having the usual jury-selected Golden and Silver Lions, two “Visitors’ Lions” will be introduced.  A public vote will be taken for best national participant and best individual artist.

By all means, ban the political hacks, flunkeys and toadies who turn up to exhibitions on a free ride.  Damn the pen pushers and grovellers who yearn for the approval of power.  But spare any artist with an inch of backbone and an ounce of courage.  Any exhibition will be the better for it, even if it might not necessarily guarantee fine works.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

Canada Is Quietly Putting War Into Your Portfolio

Umer Azad

 May 6, 2026

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Image by Hal Gatewood.

Canada is set to host the headquarters of the proposed Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), a new multinational institution designed to mobilize tens of billions in financing for military and security projects among allied nations. In short, what we are seeing is the quiet normalization of something far more consequential: the permanent financialization of war. The structure being envisioned for DSRB closely resembles other multilateral financial institutions. It would raise capital on global markets, issue bonds, and extend loans to governments and defense companies. That means funding for military supply chains, weapons systems, and defense infrastructure would increasingly flow through financial markets rather than direct public expenditure. In doing so, war itself risks being transformed from a political decision subject to public scrutiny into a financial product embedded in portfolios.

And so, with remarkable efficiency, we may be arriving at a point where, whether you like it or not, you are investing in war. Not because you consciously chose to, but because modern finance rarely asks for permission. It integrates. It diffuses. It embeds. Just as complex mortgage-backed securities seeped into pension funds and retirement portfolios before the 2008 Financial Crisis, instruments tied to defense financing could quietly become part of the same financial plumbing that underpins everyday savings. Deposits in major banks, such as Royal Bank of Canada or Toronto-Dominion Bank, feed into broader lending and investment pools. If those banks help underwrite DSRB bonds or finance defense projects, then ordinary savings are, at least indirectly, part of the system. You won’t need to opt in. The system will do it for you.

Once you are in that system, try opting out. Go ahead — divest. In theory, it sounds simple. In practice, it is anything but. Large pension funds, such as the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board or the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, operate within a web of financial relationships that makes complete divestment extraordinarily complex. If DSRB bonds are rated as safe, investment-grade assets, they could easily find their way into fixed-income portfolios. Even if funds choose to avoid them directly, indirect exposure remains: through banks that underwrite the bonds, through ETFs that bundle defense assets, and through lending syndicates that finance defense contractors. “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men” of global finance, institutions like JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank, are already lining up behind this model. When the entire financial stack aligns like this, divestment becomes less a matter of choice and more a question of how far you are willing, or even able, to disentangle yourself from the system.

What emerges is not just a new bank, but a new layer of abstraction between citizens and the consequences of war. Traditionally, military spending is debated, however imperfectly, through parliaments and public scrutiny. A financialized model shifts that process into capital markets, where decisions are driven less by voters and more by risk assessments, yield expectations, and institutional incentives. Over time, this risks normalizing war as an investable asset class, something to be priced, traded, and held in portfolios rather than questioned in public forums.

That transformation carries consequences. One of the most immediate concerns is that such a bank could normalize or even facilitate controversial military interventions. If borrowing costs for defense spending are lowered, the financial barriers to launching military operations also fall. History offers a sobering precedent. The Iraq War was widely condemned after the central justification, claims of weapons of mass destruction, collapsed under scrutiny. Yet the war had already been financed, executed, and justified through institutional momentum. A system like DSRB could make such momentum easier to sustain, not harder. When capital is readily available, restraint becomes less likely.

Over time, this could make war financing a permanent feature of the global system. What used to be occasional becomes routine, and what was once debated becomes taken for granted. In that sense, the DSRB starts to look like a ‘World Bank for Warfare.’

Equally concerning is the question of democratic oversight. Traditional military spending must pass through national parliaments, where budgets are debated by elected representatives. A multilateral financial institution operates differently. By raising funds on global capital markets and deploying them through loans and financial instruments, DSRB could create a layer of decision-making that sits at arm’s length from voters. The result is a subtle but significant shift from public accountability to financial abstraction. Decisions about long-term military financing could become less visible, less contested, and ultimately less democratic.

What makes this shift particularly jarring is where it is happening. Canada has long cultivated an image of a country that prioritizes diplomacy, multilateralism, and peacekeeping. Yet by stepping forward to host the DSRB, it is positioning itself not just as a participant in global security, but as a financial hub for its expansion. The very country that has emphasized de-escalation is now spearheading an ecosystem designed to sustain long-term militarization.

The implications extend beyond symbolism. By helping institutionalize a system capable of mobilizing upwards of $100–135 billion in defense financing, Canada is effectively tying part of its economic future to the expansion of military spending. That alignment carries risks. When financial systems are built around a particular sector, they begin to depend on its growth. We have seen this dynamic before, most notably in the housing market prior to the 2008 Financial Crisis, when an entire economic ecosystem became reliant on ever-expanding real estate values.

Apply that same logic to the realm of defense, and the parallels become difficult to ignore. A system that depends on continuous military spending creates subtle but powerful incentives: to maintain high levels of defense budgets, to expand procurement programs, and to sustain the geopolitical tensions that justify both. Over time, what begins as risk management can evolve into dependence. A system built to finance war risks becoming a system that depends on it.

Then comes the uncomfortable question: what happens if the wars actually stop?

In a world where defense financing is deeply embedded in financial markets, peace does not simply reduce risk; it disrupts revenue. If the assumptions underpinning defense-linked investments are built on sustained spending and ongoing tension, then de-escalation could trigger a recalibration across portfolios, institutions, and markets. The consequences would not remain confined to defense companies or financiers. They would ripple outward to pension funds, public investment vehicles, and the everyday savings of millions who never consciously chose to participate in this system.

This is where the analogy to the 2008 Financial Crisis becomes more than rhetorical. Before that collapse, housing was treated as a permanently expanding asset class. Financial innovation spread exposure across the system, embedding risk in places few fully understood. When the underlying assumptions failed, the fallout was systemic. Homes were lost. Savings evaporated. Institutions faltered.

Now imagine a similar architecture built around militarization. A world in which conflict is not just a geopolitical reality, but a financial dependency. Where instability is quietly priced into the system as a driver of returns. And where, if that instability recedes, the economic consequences are felt far beyond the battlefield.

At that point, the challenge will not just be moral or political, it will be structural. Governments may find themselves trying to stabilize a system that has grown dependent on the very thing it claims to minimize: war. And there may come a moment when the system simply breaks, and it becomes impossible to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Umer Azad is a software engineer by profession and a volunteer with CODEPINK and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM). He previously served as the Regional Social Media Expert for Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), where he worked on digital outreach, exposing voter fraud, and documenting human rights violations.

Purdue Pharma Bites the Dust: Can We Learn Anything?

Dean Baker

 May 6, 2026

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Purdue Pharma building in Stamford CT. Photograph Source: WikileaksIntern – CC0

Suppose there was an explosion at an oil refinery that killed hundreds of people. Presumably, there would be a major investigation to determine what went wrong and how to prevent a similar accident in the future.

But it’s different with the pharmaceutical industry. Purdue Pharma, one of the drug companies at the center of the opioid crisis, was finally put to death as the result of lawsuits over its pushing of OxyContin. The allegation is that the company misrepresented the addictiveness of the drug in order to have it promoted more widely.

The money paid to the families of victims cannot compensate for the deaths of loved ones, but the other part of the story is that no one is asking how to make sure this sort of disaster does not happen again. And unlike the example I gave of an exploding oil refinery, we are talking about the death of hundreds of thousands, not hundreds.

The key issue is the incentives the government gave to Purdue Pharma and the other opioid manufacturers. It gave them patent monopolies that allowed them to markup the price of their drugs by several thousand percent, selling them at prices that were twenty or thirty times what they would sell for in a free market.

This sort of extraordinary profit gives drug companies an incentive to lie about the safety and effectiveness of their drugs, which they do routinely. The consequences generally are not as disastrous as with the opioid crisis, but patients often end up taking drugs that are not best for them because drug companies misrepresented their products to researchers, doctors, and the public at large.

To be clear, companies always have incentive to sell their products widely. That’s the point of advertising. But they won’t go to the same length to sell a plastic cup or shovel, where they expect a profit of a dollar or two, as they will in selling a prescription on a patent-protected drug, where the profits can be hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Patent monopolies are also the reason for high drug prices. Drugs are almost always cheap to manufacture and distribute; the reason they are expensive is the monopolies the government gives the drug companies.

This is the whole story of people struggling to raise the thousands or tens of thousands needed to pay for drugs to treat cancer or other serious illnesses. If these drugs were sold in a free market, paying twenty or thirty dollars for a prescription would not be a big deal, except for low-income people. And the government could afford to pick up the tab for them.

And patent monopolies are a big part of the story in redistributing income upward. While this is true in many areas, it is very striking in the case of pharmaceuticals. We will pay around $750 billion this year for drugs that would cost in the range of $150 billion in a free market. The savings of $600 billion comes to almost $5,000 per household.

That $600 billion is money that goes to drug companies and their shareholders. It has created many billionaires. In the case of the Covid vaccine alone, we created 5 Moderna billionaires.

Patent monopolies do provide an incentive for developing new drugs, but there are other ways to provide this incentive, most obviously paying people. If that sounds bizarre, the government already spends around $50 billion a year supporting biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies. We would have to triple or quadruple this sum to replace the patent-supported research, but we would still come out way ahead and wouldn’t have to worry about drug companies lying to us to push their drugs.

It is more than a bit bizarre that we have a large contingent of progressives focused on ways to tax back the wealth of the very rich, but who have no interest in restructuring the system in ways that don’t make them so rich in the first place. Just as a refinery explosion would be expected to lead to a renewed focus on industry safety, we might have expected the opioid crisis to lead to new thinking on the way we finance the development of drugs. But that has not been the case.

There is a bill put forward by Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib that would be a big step in this direction, but unfortunately, it has gotten little attention to date. It would be great if something positive could come out of the opioid crisis, but that can’t happen until people at least can see the issue clearly. For whatever reason, that has not yet happened.

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

Dean Baker is the senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC.