2021 as the Tipping Point: So Much for the Pioneer Spirit

Photo: Barbara Davidson. Caption: The town of Greenville, California was burned to the ground in the Dixie Fire in August 2021. Residents have not been permitted into the town as of yet.

 

What’s Distinguishing and What’s Familiar in the Post-Coup Trauma Pictures from Myanmar

Photo: FB Messenger sent to JG Caption: Protest in Mawlamyine, February 17, 2021. 

Two blindfolded women with black tape crisscrossed on their mouths and red splatters on their shirts walk in front of two men holding rifles at their backs.

Unsettling as it appears at first, the English lettering on the young man’s tee-shirt, like his ripped jeans and his companion’s red baseball cap, hints that this is not what it seems. Instead, these young Burmese protesters are enacting a violent police arrest as part of nation-wide protests and labor strikes against the 3-week old military coup that led to the detention of Daw Aung San Sue Kyi and other leaders of the National League for Democracy (NLD), as well as artists, writers, reporters and scores of others.

Reenacting violent arrests broadcasts that which the junta hopes to keep hidden from global eyes and, wittingly or not, portends an ominous and all-too imminent future.

Haunting for the Beauty, or the Stalking?

Photo: Adrees Latif/Reuters

Haunting for the Beauty, or the Stalking

Caption: An asylum-seeking mother and her three children from Central America are followed by a Texas Highway Patrol officer as they look for cover during a heavy downfall, after crossing the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico, in La Joya, Texas, on May 19, 2021.