BEIRUT -- In the long-delayed modern Arab revolt for dignity, rights and freedom, Tunisia was the trigger, but Egypt is the prize. The Arab popular struggle against autocratic security and police states that was finally initiated earlier this month with the revolt that overthrew former Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has reached a critical point in Egypt during the past four days. Events reached their tipping point Sunday and are likely to lead quickly to a political transition that replaces President Hosni Mubarak with a new leadership that more accurately reflects political sentiments in the country.

As happened in Tunisia, the revolt against Mubarak and his colleagues occurred very quickly, within a few weeks after young people demonstrated in the streets and called for the removal of the regime. Yet that daring challenge to a powerful police state reflected decades of mass humiliation among ordinary citizens who finally snapped in January 2011 and refused to continue living in a system that denied them their basic citizenship rights. Protesters also want to change the 30-year-old rule of the Mubarak regime because it has been marked by sustained mass mediocrity in the governance realm that in turn resulted in Egypt's pauperization and marginalization.

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If you want to understand what the U.S. faces today with no prospect of bringing unemployment down to 3 or 4 percent you need to read Since Yesterday, Frederick Lewis Allen's book written in 1939 about the Depression years in America. Allen was the editor of Harpers magazine. In 1930 he had written a classic book about the events and attitudes that marked the Roaring 20s. Since Yesterday, on the Depression decade is more relevant today.

What Allen shows is that the businessmen of the 1920s, who had inspired awe, those who Calvin Coolidge called the "Big Men" of the country, and who the country had admired and trusted, were completely discredited by 1933 when Roosevelt took office. Herbert Hoover had gamely taken the advice of the Big Men and it failed him. They had no idea how to end the Depression. Andrew Mellon, Treasury Secretary to Coolidge and Hoover and one of the richest men in America, and Samuel Insull, the Chicago-based "leverager" of utility stocks were facing de facto exile. Richard Whitney, once head of the NY Stock Exchange would eventually go to prison in handcuffs. By 1932, these erstwhile "masters of the universe" were the object of almost universal scorn.

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(From: Beautiful/Decay) I first met Wendell after we interviewed him for an issue of B/D a few years back. You never know what artists will be like when you actually meet them but Wendell's been one of the most sincere artists I've met in a while. We've been trading studio visits for around a year now and will be in a group show together later this month at Pedersen Projects in Pomona. Wendell is also getting ready for a solo show in October at Kravets|Wehby and a group show at Galerie Jean-Luc&Takako Richard in Paris so I stopped by his studio to check out the progress. Turns out Wendell had a studio jam packed full of massive paintings well on their way to being finished.

Before I get into images of the paintings let me break down Wendell's process. He usually starts each piece with a list of notes and descriptions of various stories, scenes and images. As these lists develop, he comes up with ways to connect them together to create complex narratives. Sometimes the story is evident, and sometimes they are private narratives that turn into coded abstractions.

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The Education Trust's recent report "Subprime Opportunity: The Unfulfilled Promise of For-Profit Colleges and Universities" documents the way that private for-profit colleges are cashing in on the current financial crisis by offering disadvantaged students an opportunity to earn degrees during a time when public universities and colleges are reducing their enrollments. The catch is that the vast majority of these students never graduate, and the only thing they accomplish is racking up huge student loans. According to this report, "only 22 percent of students who enroll in four-year-degree programs at for-profit colleges graduate within six years, compared with 55 percent and 65 percent at public and private nonprofit colleges, respectively."

One reason why the students at these schools often fail to complete their programs is that these institutions pour much of their money into marketing and compensation for senior administrators, while they short-change classroom instruction and student services. Furthermore, these schools now receive most of their income through federal student aid, and the result is that taxpayers are supporting a system where lower- and middle-class students go into debt in order to bring profits to wealthy corporations.

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