Category: Social change

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It is the rare propaganda poster which stimulates thought. Instead, their function is to abort reflection. When an antiwar poster says "Think" in a context of brand names and carnage, its real message is "Conclude." Indeed, a good case can be made for the assertion that propaganda is inherently debased since it means to persuade by any means necessary. Aside from its intellectually stultifying characteristics, it usually appeals to very questionable human biases and weaknesses. Nazi propagandists relied upon the band-wagon technique to get their message across, while the British (like American antiwar activists) largely relied upon dubious guilts which they themselves created. Moreover, almost all sides are guilty of racism at one time or another, and chauvinism is always de rigeur. Nor is consistency required: often the same side will employ contradictory tactics on different target audiences — thus, a government will call upon its own people for noble self-sacrifice while simultaneously appealing to the enemy cadres to lay down their arms for money. The enemy is always characterized at his worst (My Lai, for instance, or Lidice), and truth is made subaltern to expedience.

What Did You do in the Great War, Daddy?

August 8, 1972 London   The Imperial War Museum, a hulking presence on the seedier side of the River Thames, gathers dust behind a brace of World War II cannons carefully centered on a shaven lawn that leads to the Museum’s impressive front doors. Inside,

Jim Hougan August 21, 1972
VŠllingby Center: The aerial view (top) makes the center appear much more monolithic than it actually is, does not do justice to the preservation of nature around the center and the well-done walks and underpasses that take pedestrians from residences to the center without contact with the large parking lot, the service roads or the subway track (which runs from top to bottom of the picture) under the middle of the center.

The Urban Order of the North

Stockholm, Sweden   June, 1972 United States city planners, disheartened by the physical and functional disorder of the uncontrolled spread of urban America, have always been very enthusiastic about what they find when they visit Sweden. Very little of the growth of the vast metropolitan

Leonard Downie August 16, 1972
The Product

Havamarawanna: A Floating Alternative Nursery

July 21, 1972 Magic Center Western Asphalt Jungle (Amsterdam) At 41, Kees Hoekert claims to be the greatest and most skillful dealer of marijuana in the Western Hemisphere. Kees Hoekert, 41-yearsold, and the best marijuana dealer in the Western Hemisphere. He may be right. As

Jim Hougan July 28, 1972
Apartments and townhouses being constructed next to each other.

The New Towns of Paris: Reorganizing Suburbs

Paris, France   May, 1972 To get to Parly 2, one drives west of Paris and through a short stretch of typical French countryside almost to the edge of the thick forest of Versailles before turning down a road that opens abruptly onto U.S. suburbia.

Leonard Downie July 7, 1972
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Blues on Calle Escorza

Guadalajara, Mexico   The travel posters call it a “Land of Contrast,” but it might be more accurately described as a nation of violent extremes. There is hunger and gluttony, ruthless poverty and spectacular wealth; superstition, ignorance, and racism co-exist antagonistically with a highly-sophisticated intellectual,

Jim Hougan May 26, 1972