China, Ai Weiwei, and Flash Graffiti

I hadn’t heard of Flash Graffiti before as a term, though I have seen other artists project onto walls and embassies. (I remember in particular there was an artist during the apartheid era who flashed images at night on the South African embassy in London.) It is quite subversive, and though it is harmless as a ghost, still, it makes its mark, as this article, shows: Chinese Army Unhappy Over Ai Weiwei ‘Flash Graffiti’ from ANIMAL:

As if Chinese authorities weren’t angered enough by the rash of pro-Ai Weiwei stencils popping up all over Hong Kong, someone is now projecting the same message on unauthorized locations around the city, including the barracks of the People’s Liberation Army.

(Discovered via Andrew Sullivan.)

Hitchens on Chomsky on Bin Laden: “stupid and ignorant”

…can be found here in Slate Magazine. He sums up Chomsky’s statements scathingly at the end of his article like this:

In short, we do not know who organized the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or any other related assaults, though it would be a credulous fool who swallowed the (unsupported) word of Osama Bin Laden that his group was the one responsible. An attempt to kidnap or murder an ex-president of the United States (and presumably, by extension, the sitting one) would be as legally justified as the hit on Abbottabad. And America is an incarnation of the Third Reich that doesn’t even conceal its genocidal methods and aspirations. This is the sum total of what has been learned, by the guru of the left, in the last decade.

If you were persuaded by Chomsky and his line of thinking, you should also read this by Hitchens. His argument against  Chomsky and others critical of the attack on the Osama bin Laden is robust and persuasive. A must read.