The journey of Chinese art - from mass-produced propaganda in the Mao era to modern-day market darling - mirrors China’s own momentous changes like few other disciplines. Today, in both contemporary art and contemporary Chinese society, commerce and politics coexist in a delicate balance, which some call sensible and others, selling out.

By traveling to the studios of renowned Chinese artists, hearing their rags-to-riches tales and interviewing the critics, curators, and collectors that have been around since its idealistic beginnings, author Claire van den Heever paints a picture of Chinese art’s bumpy path to commercial and critical success, and uncovers the secrets it tried to keep along the way

This classic text provides a scathing critiques of U.S. political culture through billion analysis of the Iran-Contra scandal. Chomsky irrefutably shows how the unites States has opposed human rights and democratization to advance it economic interests.

At the airport we line up, remove our shoes, empty our pockets, and hold still for three seconds in the body scanner. Deemed safe, we put ourselves back together and are free to buy the beverage we were prohibited from taking through security. In The Transparent Traveler Rachel Hall explains how the familiar routines of airport security choreograph passenger behavior to create submissive and docile travelers. The cultural performance of contemporary security practices mobilizes what Hall calls the "aesthetics of transparency." To appear transparent, a passenger must perform innocence and display a willingness to open their body to routine inspection and analysis. Those who cannot-whether because of race, immigration and citizenship status, disability, age, or religion-are deemed opaque, presumed to be a threat, and subject to search and detention. Analyzing everything from airport architecture, photography, and computer-generated imagery to full-body scanners and TSA behavior detection techniques, Hall theorizes the transparent traveler as the embodiment of a cultural ideal of submission to surveillance.

Questions of gender, race, class, and sexuality have largely been left unexamined in surveillance studies. The contributors to this field-defining collection take up these questions, and in so doing provide new directions for analyzing surveillance. They use feminist theory to expose the ways in which surveillance practices and technologies are tied to systemic forms of discrimination that serve to normalize whiteness, able-bodiedness, capitalism, and heterosexuality. The essays discuss the implications of, among others, patriarchal surveillance in colonial North America, surveillance aimed at curbing the trafficking of women and sex work, women presented as having agency in the creation of the images that display their bodies via social media, full-body airport scanners, and mainstream news media discussion of honor killings in Canada and the concomitant surveillance of Muslim bodies. Rather than rehashing arguments as to whether or not surveillance keeps the state safe, the contributors investigate what constitutes surveillance, who is scrutinized, why, and at what cost. The work fills a gap in feminist scholarship and shows that gender, race, class, and sexuality should be central to any study of surveillance. Contributors. Seantel Anais, Mark Andrejevic, Paisley Currah, Sayantani DasGupta, Shamita Das Dasgupta, Rachel E. Dubrofsky, Rachel Hall, Lisa Jean Moore, Yasmin Jiwani, Ummni Khan, Shoshana Amielle Magnet, Kelli Moore, Lisa Nakamura, Dorothy Roberts, Andrea Smith, Kevin Walby, Megan M. Wood, Laura Hyun Yi Kang

Questions of gender, race, class, and sexuality have largely been left unexamined in surveillance studies. The contributors to this field-defining collection take up these questions, and in so doing provide new directions for analyzing surveillance. They use feminist theory to expose the ways in which surveillance practices and technologies are tied to systemic forms of discrimination that serve to normalize whiteness, able-bodiedness, capitalism, and heterosexuality. The essays discuss the implications of, among others, patriarchal surveillance in colonial North America, surveillance aimed at curbing the trafficking of women and sex work, women presented as having agency in the creation of the images that display their bodies via social media, full-body airport scanners, and mainstream news media discussion of honor killings in Canada and the concomitant surveillance of Muslim bodies. Rather than rehashing arguments as to whether or not surveillance keeps the state safe, the contributors investigate what constitutes surveillance, who is scrutinized, why, and at what cost. The work fills a gap in feminist scholarship and shows that gender, race, class, and sexuality should be central to any study of surveillance. Contributors. Seantel Anais, Mark Andrejevic, Paisley Currah, Sayantani DasGupta, Shamita Das Dasgupta, Rachel E. Dubrofsky, Rachel Hall, Lisa Jean Moore, Yasmin Jiwani, Ummni Khan, Shoshana Amielle Magnet, Kelli Moore, Lisa Nakamura, Dorothy Roberts, Andrea Smith, Kevin Walby, Megan M. Wood, Laura Hyun Yi Kang

A rabbi, a priest, a politician, public servants, a military officer, a student activist and a social media consultant are gathered in this book to discuss the incomprehensible situation of Israel's faltering public image. Rabbi Berl Wine addresses the Jewish diaspora tradition and the lack of religious understanding of the realities of running a sovereign modern state. Pastor Jorgen Buhler discusses the Christian Protestant pro-Israel perspective. Dr Meron Medzini, the biographer of Golda Meir, sets out the state's early policy toward propaganda. Dr. Moshe Yegar, a former deputy director in the Israeli foreign ministry discusses the time when Public Relations was abolished in the ministry by today's president, Shimon Peres. Danny Seman, formerly a head of department in the newly founded Ministry of Information and Government Press Office, tells of his experiences of working for the government without government backup. Barak Raz of the IDF Spokesman Unit gives the military angle. Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, sets out Israeli foreign policy objectives. Yossi Sarid, former senior minister and media personality, provides analysis of hasbara (public diplomacy) in an international perspective. David Olesker, a leading authority on global campus activism, gives a historical survey of anti-Israel campus activities. Eva Rosenstein and David Abitbol discuss professional media and social media perspectives of propaganda advocacy. Ron Schleifer sets out to rectify Israel's international image, through better understanding of historical and contemporary policy, and the political/religious/military philosophy behind the different approaches over the years, presenting media and psychological mechanisms of motivating a more resourceful approach to this increasingly necessary aspect of Israeli statehood.

Facts are and must be the coin of the realm in a democracy, for government "of the people, by the people and for the people," requires and assumes to some extent an informed citizenry. Unfortunately, for citizens in the United States and throughout the world, distinguishing between fact and fiction has always been a formidable challenge, often with real life and death consequences. But now it is more difficult and confusing than ever. The Internet Age makes comment indistinguishable from fact, and erodes authority. It is liberating but annihilating at the same time.
For those wielding power, whether in the private or the public sector, the increasingly sophisticated control of information is regarded as utterly essential to achieving success. Internal information is severely limited, including calendars, memoranda, phone logs and emails. History is sculpted by its absence.
Often those in power strictly control the flow of information, corroding and corrupting its content, of course, using newspapers, radio, television and other mass means of communication to carefully consolidate their authority and cover their crimes in a thick veneer of fervent racialism or nationalism. And always with the specter of some kind of imminent public threat, what Hannah Arendt called 'objective enemies.'"
An epiphanic, public comment about the Bush "war on terror" years was made by an unidentified White House official revealing how information is managed and how the news media and the public itself are regarded by those in power: " You journalists live] "in what we call the reality-based community. But] that's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality . . . we're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." And yet, as aggressive as the Republican Bush administration was in attempting to define reality, the subsequent, Democratic Obama administration may be more so.
Into the battle for truth steps Charles Lewis, a pioneer of journalistic objectivity. His book looks at the various ways in which truth can be manipulated and distorted by governments, corporations, even loan individuals. He shows how truth is often distorted or diminished by delay: truth "in time" can save terrible erroneous choices. In part a history of communication in America, a cri de coeur for the principles and practice of objective reporting, and a journey into several notably labyrinths of deception, "935 Lies" is a valorous search for honesty in an age of casual, sometimes malevolent distortion of the facts.