View allAll Photos Tagged Accountable
This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:
www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-679
AVIATION SAFETY: FAA's Risk-Based Oversight for Repair Stations Could Benefit from Additional Airline Data and Performance Metrics
Note: The electronic version of this report was reissued September 2, 2016, to correct errors related to figure 1 on page 10.
Note: The United States and Canada have a bilateral aviation safety agreement under which FAA and the Transport Canada Civil Aviation Directorate (TCCA) each grant mutual recognition of the other's Part 145 repair station certificates. FAA does not require Canadian repair stations (referred to as Approved Maintenance Organizations) to obtain a FAA-issued repair station certificate to conduct work on U.S. commercial aircraft as long as a repair station maintains a Canadian repair station certificate and is inspected by TCCA. Because of this mutual recognition, there are no FAA-certificated repair stations in Canada.
20230217, MSC, Munich Security Conference, Bayerischer Hof: Main Stage I: Panel Discussion.Against Lawlessness: Ensuring Accountability.Conference Hall: Kaja Kallas Prime Minister, Republic of Estonia
Following a catastrophic fire in 24-floor Grenfell Tower residential building, in which 70+ people perished, survivors, relatives and supporters rally at the Department for Communities and Local Government to demand justice and accountability.
Residents of the building, which provides social housing in the UK's richest borough, had repeatedly warned of poor safety standards and fire risk, and on 14th June disaster struck with almost the entire building engulfed in flames within minutes. The final death toll is expected to rise as the fire service and police search the ruined building.
The rally was addressed by several speakers, including Matt Wrack, General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union whose members fought the blaze. He spoke of the huge cuts in funding to the emergency services by the Conservative party under their "austerity" policy. The anger and sorrow in the crowd was very evident and a spontaneous decision was made to march to Downing Street, where the UK Prime Minister Theresa May resides. May has received much criticism for her failure to meet with survivors when she visited the site, in contrast to opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn and the Queen who both talked to local people while there. The crowd then moved to Portland Place, where the BBC is headquartered. The state broadcaster has received criticism for its coverage of the disaster.
All rights reserved © 2017 Ron F
Please ask before commercial reuse.
Follow me on Twitter for the most recent shots.
Copyright Reserved to Noolelnool
Any member trying to use or copy or download photos in any non-official permission by the photographer presents to legal accountability
This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:
www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-779
HIGHWAY BRIDGES: Linking Funding to Conditions May Help Demonstrate Impact of Federal Investment
Objects like this were being sold in a flea market bin;
People of all races were seemingly indifferent to the contents within.
We can no longer accept this is okay;
We must remember the past and how we ended up this way.
The nightmare and horror dates back hundreds of years;
It’s after effects still linger as if no one really cares.
Human beings were captured and forced into servitude;
A reminder of our past and man’s moral turpitude.
Men’s and women’s own hopes and dreams;
Were replaced instead by blood curdling screams.
Packed by the hundreds into the bellies of ships;
Destined to be beaten by long leather whips.
Working the fields for hours on end;
The realities of which, we will never comprehend.
A sentence imposed with no end in sight,
As the world looked on, indifferent to their plight.
To think that some are capable of such brutality;
Fed by their hatred, violence and immorality.
It’s sad that some have long been oppressed;
While others have been simultaneously blessed.
A buddy of mine went to by a nice car;
But because he is black, he didn’t get far.
The police were called and made him put his hands on the hood;
It was a natural assumption that he was up to no good.
Aggressions like this happen every single day;
We need to open our eyes and fix this some way.
There are none so blind as those who will not see;
Nothing will change if we just let it be.
The point of these words is not to place blame;
But failure to acknowledge this atrocity would be a dammed shame.
We must find a way to make things right;
Which means taking action and being contrite.
Regardless of our race, we all share DNA;
Let’s commit to each other to do better each day.
I ask my brothers and sisters to give us a chance;
So that together we can share a better circumstance.
~ By John Dyer
The Netherlands, The Hague, July 14th 2022
The Government of the Netherlands is hosting, together with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and the European Commission, an Ukraine Accountability Conference at ministerial level at the World Forum in The Hague on 14 July.
Photo: Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2022
President Metsola updated MEPs on measures being taken to increase Parliament’s integrity, independence and accountability, at the opening of the session.
Here is President Metsola’s full statement on the new measures:
“I also wanted to speak about the decisions needed on measures in this House to increase integrity, independence and accountability.
The European Parliament prides itself on its openness, its accessibility and its defence of legislating in the public eye. We are not in some imaginary ivory tower. The principle of ‘openness builds trust’ is one we hold dear and defend. And any abuse or misuse of the tools that we created for this purpose must be addressed strongly, systematically and with any potential weaknesses addressed.
The events of the past month have led to a need to re-build trust with the European citizens we represent. We must acknowledge this. And citizens, rightly, demand accountability and integrity. We will respond.
I promised you last month, that we will come back with a series of reforms.
With group leaders, we have agreed on a first step approach on a number of points that can go a long way. This is the beginning, not the end. We will start with measures that we can implement quickly while starting the process for longer-term reform. And consultations will continue across the board.
As a starting point, we will look at how we can implement a revolving door policy, at how we can ensure more transparency. Of how we can improve accountability and checks of interest representatives, of how we can better control who has access to our premises. We will ask for more transparency also when it comes to those representing the interests of third countries and from former members.
We will shine a brighter light on what we do as Members with more and clearer information being made available to the public. We will enforce rules that disallow any activities that could create confusion with official European Parliament Activities - particularly when it comes to interaction with third countries.
We will do more to ensure that the public has clear information on our financial declarations and we will ensure more training on whistleblowing and compliance. We will boost measures to boost the fight against corruption and on how we can push back against foreign interference.
We will strengthen our systems, address any shortcomings and be honest and open throughout this process.
And we will do all of this while protecting the freedom of our mandate as elected representatives. We will not hinder that - we will do the opposite and do so while highlighting the important, crucial, role played by MEPs in European decision-making and our role in making the lives of Europeans a little bit safer, a little bit fairer, a little bit more equal.
Our House is the embodiment of European parliamentary democracy and I need your help to ensure that the pillars holding it up are strengthened. We owe this to our citizens, to all those who came before and to all those who will come after.”
The President also announced that the Belgian authorities have requested that the immunities of MEPs Andrea Cozzolino (S&D, IT) and Marc Tarabella (S&D, BE) be waived. This request will be referred to the Committee on Legal Affairs.
She also announced that on Wednesday 18 January, Parliament will hold an election for a new Vice-President to replace Eva Kailli.
Minute of silence for former President Sassoli
MEPs held a minute of silence in memory of President David Sassoli, who passed away one year ago, and for MEP Miroslav Číž (S&D, SL), who died on 29 December 2022.
Iran
On Iran, President Metsola repeated Parliament’s call for the international community to respond forcefully to the regime. Those responsible for killings and executions must be held accountable, she added.
Ukraine
Following a series of indiscriminate strikes by Russia against Ukraine in the last few days, the President said that Europe will continue to show political, humanitarian, financial and military support for Ukraine. The €18 billion financial package that the Parliament voted for will begin to be disbursed this week and the Generators of Hope campaign is in full swing with towns, villages, cities all doing their best to help power Ukraine, she concluded.
www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20230112IPR6631...
____
This photo is free to use under Creative Commons license CC-BY-4.0 and must be credited: "CC-BY-4.0: © European Union 2022– Source: EP". (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) No model release form if applicable. For bigger HR files please contact: webcom-flickr(AT)europarl.europa.eu
This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:
www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-49
MOTOR CARRIERS: Better Information Needed to Assess Effectiveness and Efficiency of Safety Interventions
Every one of us is a leader and is responsible as well as accountable for all interactions with others. Endorsements of my article “Future of Ethically Effective Leadership” link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-012-1283-9
Sarwar, C.I. J Bus Ethics (2013) 113: 81. doi:10.1007/s10551-012-1283-9
S#Endorsements
1My article has been published by Journal of Business Ethics published by 2nd largest global publisher Springer of Netherlands.
Please ask your librarian to download softcopy;
From Springer link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-012-1283-9
My article is at 70th percentile within Journal of Business Ethics that is it is viewed, downloaded and cited more than 70% articles within Journal of Business Ethics.
citations.springer.com/item?doi=10.1007/s10551-012-1283-9
2My article has been used as Recommended Reading Material at La Trobe University, Australia for the last three years and even for forthcoming 2017. Please see Subject Particulars at;
www.latrobe.edu.au/students/subjects/current/agr3iss-cont...
3Journal of Business Ethics is one of 50 journals (FT50) short listed by Financial Times for global university ranking for Business Schools.
www.ft.com/content/3405a512-5cbb-11e1-8f1f-00144feabdc0
4My article at American Psychological Association PsycNET
psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid...
5My article has achieved i10-index from Google Scholar that is my article has been cited by more than 10 authentic researchers globally.
scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?bav=on.2,or.r_cp.&bvm=b...
There are 13 versions of my article at Google Scholar
scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?cluster=6479397599754098188...
6Citation of my article at Public Integrity (journal published by Routledge - Taylor & Francis Group) www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10999922.2015.1034512
7Citation of my article at Journal of Human Resource and Sustainability Studies
file.scirp.org/Html/3-2830014_37272.htm
8Citation of my article at Global Journal of Management and Business Research
www.journalofbusiness.org/index.php/GJMBR/article/view/1314
9Citation of my article by Rya S. Handerson-Carter at Walden University, USA for thesis for Doctor of Business Administration scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/1168/
10Citation of my article by Bankole at Walden University, USA for thesis for Doctor of Business Administration scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/1187/
11Citation of my article by Jimly Hariss at Walden University, USA for Doctor of Business Administration thesis regarding healthcare scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/2545/
12My article cited by “Mouhamed El Bachire Thiam” in his PhD Thesis entitled “Ethics In The Banking Industry: Identifying The Industrial And External Factors Influencing Behaviours In The Industry” at Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK
repository.cardiffmet.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10369/8109/E...
13My article selected as Resources (1 from total of 6 video links 55 articles etc) by Sophia Palahicky (Manager-Learning Design Services sophia.palahicky@royalroads.ca, Centre for Teaching and Educational Technologies, Royal Roads University, Victoria, Canada ctet.royalroads.ca/staff/sophia-palahicky) for Educational Technology and Leadership (EDDE 804: Leadership in Distance Education)
leadershipindistanceed.homestead.com/Blank-3.html
14Citation of my article by Lori M Thanos at Academic Leadership Journal in Student Research hosted by Fort Hays State University, USA
www.aljinstudentresearch.org/thanossp15/
15My article at EconPapers hosted by Orebro University, School of Business, Sweden
econpapers.repec.org/article/kapjbuset/v_3a113_3ay_3a2013...
16My article shortlisted at scientific communication portal – Infona at Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modeling of the University of Warsaw (ICM UW), Republic of Poland
www.infona.pl/resource/bwmeta1.element.springer-53e315b0-...
www.infona.pl//resource/bwmeta1.element.ID-585e8372-64f6-...
17Citation of my article by Buntin at Middle Tennessee State University, USA
jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/handle/mtsu/4565
18My article shortlisted by library of University of La Rioja, Logrono, La Rioja, Spain
dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=4193281
19My article cited by student of Liberty University, USA in BMAL 501, ECON 214 at CourseHero
www.coursehero.com/file/p2b29o9/level-things-everything-i...
20My article cited by student of Sullivan University, USA for MBA 545 at CourseHero
www.coursehero.com/file/13691258/Week-07-Answersdocx/
21Citation of my article at Management Handbook for Students and Practitioners
www.researchgate.net/profile/Gyamfi_Gyamfi/publication/26...
22Citation of my article by Vevere at European Integration Studies (journal)
www.vpa.ktu.lt/index.php/EIS/article/view/6987
23My article has been cited by ZHU Yanhan and FAN Lijuan of School of Political Science and Public Administration, Southwest University, Chongqing, China in Advances in Psychological Science, 118.145.16.229:81/Jweb_xlkxjz/EN/abstract/abstract3093.shtml
d.wanfangdata.com.cn/periodical/xlxdt201403014 ; DOI 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2014.00512
24My article has been short listed by US Army War College Library since 2013 for “Human Dimensions of Strategic Leadership: A Selected Bibliography”.
www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA599320
www.researchgate.net/publication/235097652_Human_Dimensio...
25My article is available at JSTOR
www.jstor.org/stable/23433876?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
26My article shortlisted by National Health Services (NHS), Scotland, UK
knowledge.scot.nhs.uk/home/search-results.aspx?q=publicid...
27My article at Microsoft Academics
academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/2080789106
28My article at WorldCat
www.worldcat.org/title/future-of-ethically-effective-lead...
29My article at Altmetric
www.altmetric.com/details/9902833
springerlink.altmetric.com/details/9902833/facebook
30My article at Google Plus
plus.google.com/106193517977278709332/posts/PG8h6Ryy1jf
31My article at Mendeley
www.mendeley.com/catalog/future-ethically-effective-leade...
32My article at EBSCOHost
connection.ebscohost.com/c/reports/86212885/future-ethica...
33My article at ProQuest LLC
search.proquest.com/openview/7ec0928d880521574dcf0fa9a921...
34My article at PhilPapers Foundation Centre for Digital Philosophy, University of Western Ontario, Canada cdp.uwo.ca/ ; Philosophy Documentation Center, USA & Canada www.pdcnet.org/wp/ ; Sponsored by; Rotman Institute of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Western Ontario, Canada www.rotman.uwo.ca/ ; American Philosophical Association (APA), University of Delaware, USA; www.apaonline.org/? ; Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK philosophy.sas.ac.uk/ ; Australian National University
35My article at IDEAS that is RePEc service hosted by Research Division of Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, USA ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v113y2013i1p81-89.html
36My article shortlisted at Refdoc.fr of National Centre for Scientific Research CNRS, Institute for Scientific and Technical Information INIST, France
cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=27056294
37My article at DEEPDYVE
www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/future-of-ethically...
38My article is cited by Kayla Hoofman on weebly
kaylannhoffman.weebly.com/uploads/2/7/3/7/27375409/nca_ma...
39My article cited in “Leadership for A Major Consumer Technology Company” at 123helpme.com Essays
www.123helpme.com/leadership-selection-for-a-major-consum...
40My article cited in “Blog 5: My Vision of Leadership” Leading in A Changing World: CULCwangc17
culcwangc17.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/blog-5-my-vision-of-...
41My article cited in “Blog 4: Ethical Relationship Between Leaders and Their Teams” by culcgeorgesh
culcgeorgesh.wordpress.com/blog-4-ethical-relationships-b...
42My article at www.citeulike.org
www.citeulike.org/journal/springerlink-100281/page/9
43My article cited in “Ethical Leadership” HR Leading Blog
culczhengf.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/ethical-leadership/
44My article cited in “Effective Leadership and Change Management” at Essay Writers Hub
www.essaywritershub.com/effective-leadership-and-change-m...
www.essaywritershub.com/effective-leadership-and-change-m...
45My article cited in “Pastor” at Study Mode and New York Essays
www.studymode.com/essays/Pastor-1710429.html
newyorkessays.com/essay-pastor/
46My article cited in “Leadership and Ethics” by Lei333 at www.wordpress.com
lei333.wordpress.com/2015/04/01/leadership-and-ethics/
47My article cited in “Leaders means more than a combination of traits” at
www.liuxuelunwen.org/dxcoursework/1514.html
48My article cited in “Leadership Development” at USA Research Writers
www.usaresearchwriters.com/essay/leadership-development-4/
49My article at Author Mapper service of Springer
www.authormapper.com/search.aspx?phr=name%3ASarwar%2C+Cha...
www.authormapper.com/search.aspx?val=subject%3APhilosophy...
50My article cited in “Ethical Leadership” at Word Press
culcmittal3.wordpress.com/2013/09/14/ethical-leaderships/
51My article at Term Paper Warehouse
www.termpaperwarehouse.com/essay-on/Miss/205196
52My article at Ingenta Connect
www.ingentaconnect.com/search?form_name=quicksearch&i...
53My article at Springer Professional
www.springerprofessional.de/future-of-ethically-effective...
54My article at ORCID
55My article with CrossRef DOI
dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1283-9
56My article at ImpactStory
impactstory.org/u/0000-0001-5300-4601
impactstory.org/u/0000-0001-5300-4601/p/6K6TEqqAFS
57My article at GitHub
github.com/ChaudharyImranSarwar/leader.git HTTPS
git@github.com:ChaudharyImranSarwar/leader.git SSH
58My article at RESEARCHERID (Thomson and Reuters)
www.researcherid.com/rid/Q-4900-2016
59My article at EndNote (Thomson and Reuters)
Accession Number WOS:000316678200006
60 My article at Scopus
www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=55132530100
www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84875397416&...
61My article at LinkedIn
This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:
www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-29
PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT: CMS Should Act to Strengthen Enrollment Controls and Manage Fraud Risk
Notes: A single application may represent more than one person, and different people on an application may have different number or types of inconsistencies. Because subsidy information is at the application level, subsidy amounts are not mutually exclusive by category.
a) Other inconsistency types are American Indian status, and presence of qualifying employer-sponsored coverage or other minimum essential coverage.
b) Resolved status indicates inconsistencies resolved by consumer action, such as document submission, or removed due to events such as life change, application deletion, or consumer cancellation.
c) Open status indicates applications with inconsistencies that had no reported resolution as of April 2015. Figures by category of inconsistency do not sum to total because the categories are not mutually exclusive.
d) Terminated/adjusted status indicates the federal Health Insurance Marketplace has terminated policies or adjusted subsidies based on failure to submit documentation to resolve inconsistencies.
Openbaar Aanklager van het Internationaal Strafhof Karim A.A. Khan en vice-president van Eurojust Margarita Šniutytė-Daugėlienė.
===English===
Public Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim A.A. Khan and vice-president of Eurojust Margarita Šniutytė-Daugėlienė.
===
The Netherlands, The Hague, July 14th 2022
The Government of the Netherlands is hosting, together with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and the European Commission, an Ukraine Accountability Conference at ministerial level at the World Forum in The Hague on 14 July.
ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — There has been many reviews of kids sick in the St. Johns County location with diarrhea and vomiting. The Health Branch thinks that the norovirus is accountable, but they can not say definitively that it is.
In a letter written to Liberty Pines Academy parents, a...
pagedesignshop.com/kids-are-getting-unwell-in-st-johns-an...
This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:
www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-124
DIPLOMATIC SECURITY: State Should Enhance Its Management of Transportation-Related Risks to Overseas U.S. Personnel
President Metsola updated MEPs on measures being taken to increase Parliament’s integrity, independence and accountability, at the opening of the session.
Here is President Metsola’s full statement on the new measures:
“I also wanted to speak about the decisions needed on measures in this House to increase integrity, independence and accountability.
The European Parliament prides itself on its openness, its accessibility and its defence of legislating in the public eye. We are not in some imaginary ivory tower. The principle of ‘openness builds trust’ is one we hold dear and defend. And any abuse or misuse of the tools that we created for this purpose must be addressed strongly, systematically and with any potential weaknesses addressed.
The events of the past month have led to a need to re-build trust with the European citizens we represent. We must acknowledge this. And citizens, rightly, demand accountability and integrity. We will respond.
I promised you last month, that we will come back with a series of reforms.
With group leaders, we have agreed on a first step approach on a number of points that can go a long way. This is the beginning, not the end. We will start with measures that we can implement quickly while starting the process for longer-term reform. And consultations will continue across the board.
As a starting point, we will look at how we can implement a revolving door policy, at how we can ensure more transparency. Of how we can improve accountability and checks of interest representatives, of how we can better control who has access to our premises. We will ask for more transparency also when it comes to those representing the interests of third countries and from former members.
We will shine a brighter light on what we do as Members with more and clearer information being made available to the public. We will enforce rules that disallow any activities that could create confusion with official European Parliament Activities - particularly when it comes to interaction with third countries.
We will do more to ensure that the public has clear information on our financial declarations and we will ensure more training on whistleblowing and compliance. We will boost measures to boost the fight against corruption and on how we can push back against foreign interference.
We will strengthen our systems, address any shortcomings and be honest and open throughout this process.
And we will do all of this while protecting the freedom of our mandate as elected representatives. We will not hinder that - we will do the opposite and do so while highlighting the important, crucial, role played by MEPs in European decision-making and our role in making the lives of Europeans a little bit safer, a little bit fairer, a little bit more equal.
Our House is the embodiment of European parliamentary democracy and I need your help to ensure that the pillars holding it up are strengthened. We owe this to our citizens, to all those who came before and to all those who will come after.”
The President also announced that the Belgian authorities have requested that the immunities of MEPs Andrea Cozzolino (S&D, IT) and Marc Tarabella (S&D, BE) be waived. This request will be referred to the Committee on Legal Affairs.
She also announced that on Wednesday 18 January, Parliament will hold an election for a new Vice-President to replace Eva Kailli.
Minute of silence for former President Sassoli
MEPs held a minute of silence in memory of President David Sassoli, who passed away one year ago, and for MEP Miroslav Číž (S&D, SL), who died on 29 December 2022.
Iran
On Iran, President Metsola repeated Parliament’s call for the international community to respond forcefully to the regime. Those responsible for killings and executions must be held accountable, she added.
Ukraine
Following a series of indiscriminate strikes by Russia against Ukraine in the last few days, the President said that Europe will continue to show political, humanitarian, financial and military support for Ukraine. The €18 billion financial package that the Parliament voted for will begin to be disbursed this week and the Generators of Hope campaign is in full swing with towns, villages, cities all doing their best to help power Ukraine, she concluded.
www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20230112IPR6631...
____
This photo is free to use under Creative Commons license CC-BY-4.0 and must be credited: "CC-BY-4.0: © European Union 2022– Source: EP". (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) No model release form if applicable. For bigger HR files please contact: webcom-flickr(AT)europarl.europa.eu
An accountable athlete.
As a reminder, keep in mind that this picture is available only for non-commercial use and that visible attribution is required. If you'd like to use this photo outside these terms, please contact me ahead of time to arrange for a paid license.
When you give advice to someone, remember that you will be held accountable for whatever you have advised; so advice only what is halal.
Dr. Bilal Philips
This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:
www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-698
DATA ACT: Improvements Needed in Reviewing Agency Implementation Plans and Monitoring Progress
This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:
www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-663
FEDERAL STUDENT LOANS: Education Could Do More to Help Ensure Borrowers Are Aware of Repayment and Forgiveness Options
Note: To determine participation, we examined data for 11.2 million borrowers with Direct Loans (excluding those with only parent PLUS loans) in active repayment (not in deferment, forbearance, or default) with an outstanding balance as of September 2014. Borrowers participating in Extended repayment with fixed payments are included in Standard, and Extended repayment with graduated payments are included in Graduated. Other includes some borrowers who did not have a repayment plan.
a) Among Income-Based Repayment borrowers, 87 percent had a partial financial hardship and were paying less than they would on the 10-year Standard plan, and 13 percent had payments equal to the 10-year Standard plan.
b) Among Pay As You Earn borrowers, 95 percent had a partial financial hardship and were paying less than they would on the 10-year Standard plan, and 5 percent had payments equal to the 10-year Standard plan.
European Week of Regions and Cities 2016
Kramina Inguna
12 October 2016 , 12A101 - Integrity Pacts - a tool to increase transparency , accountability and EU funds implementation
EU WRC 2016 #opendays #euwrc
Belgium - Brussels - October 2016
© EU/UE
Following a catastrophic fire in 24-floor Grenfell Tower residential building, in which 70+ people perished, survivors, relatives and supporters rally at the Department for Communities and Local Government to demand justice and accountability.
Residents of the building, which provides social housing in the UK's richest borough, had repeatedly warned of poor safety standards and fire risk, and on 14th June disaster struck with almost the entire building engulfed in flames within minutes. The final death toll is expected to rise as the fire service and police search the ruined building.
The rally was addressed by several speakers, including Matt Wrack, General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union whose members fought the blaze. He spoke of the huge cuts in funding to the emergency services by the Conservative party under their "austerity" policy. The anger and sorrow in the crowd was very evident and a spontaneous decision was made to march to Downing Street, where the UK Prime Minister Theresa May resides. May has received much criticism for her failure to meet with survivors when she visited the site, in contrast to opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn and the Queen who both talked to local people while there. The crowd then moved to Portland Place, where the BBC is headquartered. The state broadcaster has received criticism for its coverage of the disaster.
All rights reserved © 2017 Ron F
Please ask before commercial reuse.
Follow me on Twitter for the most recent shots.
Kamera: Olympus µ[mju:]-II Zoom 80
Linse: Olympus 38-80mm, f/4.5-8.9
Film: Kodak 5222 @ ISO 400
Kjemi: Fomadon Excel (stock / 9 min. @ 20°C)
Middle East Eye: Holding Israeli soldiers accountable worldwide for war crimes (Publ. 10 April 2025)
Bogotá / Brussels — April 23, 2025: The Hind Rajab Foundation has formally filed a criminal complaint with the Colombian Attorney General’s Office against Gabriel Ben Haim, an Israeli-French dual national and active-duty sniper in the Israeli military [Refaim sniper unit, 35th Paratroopers Brigade], for his alleged involvement in grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes, and crimes against humanity perpetrated during Israel’s 2024–2025 military campaign in Gaza. *Last seen in Cartagena / Cocora Valley*- Read More -
Washington, D.C. / Brussels, April 17, 2025: The Hind Rajab Foundation has filed a request for prosecution in the United States against Yuval Shatel, an Israeli soldier from the [exclusively jewish ultra-orthodox (Haredi)] 435th Rotem Battalion of the Givati Brigade accused of serious violations of international humanitarian law during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. *Last seen in Texas* - Read More -
London, April 16, 2025: - An arrest warrant is being urgently sought for a senior member of Israel’s security cabinet, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar (b. 1966) during his visit to the UK. The charges focus in particular on the siege of Kamal Adwan Hospital at the end of 2024, which culminated in the abduction and torture of the hospital director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiyeh (b. 1973). - Read More -
Bucharest, March 31, 2025 - Today, the Hind Rajab Foundation, through its legal representative, has filed a criminal complaint before the Romanian Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice against Orel Benyaish, an Israeli soldier from the 432nd Battalion of the Givati Brigade. He is accused of committing war crimes and acts of genocide during Israel’s ongoing military operations in the Gaza Strip. - Read More -
Brussels, March 29, 2025 – The Hind Rajab Foundation has filed a criminal complaint in Germany against Barel Kriel, a German-Israeli dual national and a tank commander in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), for his involvement in serious war crimes committed during Israel’s military assault on Gaza. Despite the visual and testimonial evidence submitted, the German Prosecution has so far refused to open an investigation—failing to apply both German national law and its obligations under international law. - Read More -
24/3/2025 - Kathmandu, Nepal – The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) has officially filed a formal request with the Nepalese authorities to immediately arrest Lieutenant Amit Nechmya and extradite him to Argentina, where a legal case remains open against him for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. - Read More -
5/3/2025 - The Hind Rajab Foundation has officially filed a criminal complaint against Shay Friedman, an Israeli soldier suspected of participating in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The complaint, submitted to the German authorities, outlines serious allegations, including aiding and abetting murder, genocide, and other grave offences under both German and international law. - Read More -
16/2/2025 – The Hague / Brussels - The Hind Rajab Foundation has officially filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC), seeking an arrest warrant for Gideon Sa’ar (b. 1966), the Foreign Minister of Israel, for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during Israel’s ongoing military assault on Gaza since October 7, 2023.
Sa’ar, a senior member of Netanyahu’s government and a key figure in Israel’s decision-making, has played a central role in shaping and implementing policies that have led to mass displacement, collective punishment, and systematic attacks on Palestinian civilians. His public statements and policy endorsements indicate direct and indirect participation in these crimes, as well as incitement to violence and obstruction of international justice mechanisms. - Read More -
11/2/2025 - Dossier: The Yuval Vagdani Case –– How Filming Home Demolitions in Gaza Forced Vagdani to Flee His Holiday Destination Brazil. This article recounts the key details of the international criminal case filed by the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) in Brazil against Yuval Vagdani, tracing the pivotal moments and their aftermath. After participating in civilian home demolitions in Gaza—posing and smiling for pictures while planting explosives and laughing amid the destruction—Vagdani decided to take a vacation in Brazil. Despite his actions, which amount to war crimes under international law, he believed himself untouchable, far from the reach of accountability. Little did he know, what was to come. - Read More -
8/2/2025 - The HRF filed a case with the ICC requesting the issuing of an arrest warrant for one of the IDF's most notorious war criminals. The name of Brigadier General Yehuda Vach, commander of the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) 252nd Division, has become synonymous with unrestrained brutality, sadism, and corruption. His deliberate and systematic targeting of Palestinian civilians, particularly in the Netzarim Corridor, amounts to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes under the Rome Statute. - Read More -
5/2/2025 - Bern, Switzerland – The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) confirms that it has formally filed a criminal complaint before Swiss authorities, leading to the opening of an investigation into a suspected Israeli war criminal currently present in Switzerland. The complaint provides extensive evidence implicating the individual in war crimes and crimes against humanity, including attacks on civilians, destruction of homes and hospitals, forced displacement, and other grave violations of international law committed in the Gaza Strip. - Read More -
28/1/2025 - The Hind Rajab Foundation has initiated a groundbreaking legal action in Belgium by filing a formal criminal complaint against Amichai Chikli (b. 1981), Israel's Minister for Diaspora Affairs and the Fight Against Antisemitism. The complaint, submitted by Dyab Abou Jahjah (b. 1971), president of the foundation, accuses Minister Chikli of making terrorist threats against him, a Belgian national, with the intent to intimidate and suppress the foundation’s advocacy for justice and accountability for war crimes. - Read More -
23/1/2025 - The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) has filed a complaint with the ICC and called for the immediate arrest of Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, an Israeli soldier in the Givati Brigade, based on his individual criminal responsibility under Article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute. Zarbiv stands accused of committing grave war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, which began in October 2023. - Read More -
22/1/2025 - The Hind Rajab Foundation has initiated legal proceedings against Dror Zvi Bauer, an Israeli soldier in the 614th Battalion, Engineering Corps, accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide during the ongoing onslaught on Gaza since October 2023.
Legal complaints have been filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC) as well as with national authorities in Austria, Germany, and other European jurisdictions. These actions underscore the Foundation’s commitment to utilizing every available legal mechanism to ensure accountability for international crimes. - Read More -
18/1/2025 - Barcelona -- The Hind Rajab Foundation and the Palestinian Community in Catalonia have filed an urgent legal complaint against Sergeant Mori Keisar of the Israeli Defense Forces (Givati Brigade, 435 Battalion, Mitzvait Company, Retek Platoon). The complaint, filed under Spanish and international law, accuses Keisar of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes during the Israeli military operation in Gaza. The actions of Keisar and his platoon demonstrate systematic violations of international humanitarian law, targeting civilians and protected infrastructure. - Read More -
15/1/2025 - Thailand / The Hague - The Hind Rajab Foundation has filed a formal complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Guy Azran, a soldier from the 432nd Battalion of Israel’s Givati Brigade, for war crimes committed during military operations in Gaza City, July 2024. These crimes are substantiated by video and photographic evidence documenting his actions, which constitute serious violations of international law. Azran is currently vacationing in Thailand. A request for his arrest have been submitted to Thai authorities. - Read More -
13/1/2025 - Major General Ghassan Alian (b. 1972), Head of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), is currently in Rome, Italy. The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) has filed cases with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Italian authorities, urging his immediate arrest for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Alian, who publicly referred to Palestinians in Gaza as "human animals," has no immunity from prosecution. Time is of the essence to ensure accountability for his actions. - Read More -
9/1/2025 - Stockholm, Sweden - The Hind Rajab Foundation has taken another significant step in its quest for justice by filing a legal complaint against Boaz Ben David, an Israeli sniper from the 932 Battalion of the Nahal Brigade. The complaint, filed with Swedish authorities, accuses Ben David of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possible acts of genocide during the recent military operations in Gaza. This move follows growing international calls to hold perpetrators of grave crimes accountable, ensuring justice for victims of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. - Read More -
6/1/2025 - Buenos Aires, Argentina - On January 2, 2025, the Hind Rajab Foundation filed a legal case against Lieutenant Amit Nechmya, a platoon commander in the Latak Platoon of the Givati Brigade’s Rotem Battalion (435). Led by our lawyer Rodolfo Yanzón in Argentina, the case charges Nechmya with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. - Read More -
3/1/2025 - Brasilia, Brasil - In a historic legal development, Brazilian authorities have taken decisive action on a criminal complaint filed a week ago by the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) against an Israeli soldier currently in Brazil on tourism. The Federal Court of the Federal District, following the Federal Prosecutor’s agreement, has issued an urgent order for the police to investigate and take action against the suspect, marking a pivotal step toward accountability for crimes committed in Gaza. - Read More -
31/12/2024 - On December 31, 2023, Omri Nir, a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces' Combat Engineering Battalion 601, posted a photo on Instagram where he is seen posing inside a house in Gaza—a house that once belonged to a Palestinian family killed or displaced during Israel's genocide. The photo, a chilling display of impunity, was meant to be a personal trophy of sorts, showcasing his role in the Gaza genocide.
Fast forward to this year, as Omri Nir travels to Thailand to celebrate New Year’s Eve once again, the world looks very different for him. The Hind Rajab Foundation, committed to bringing perpetrators of war crimes to justice, has detected his presence in Thailand and acted decisively. - Read More -
26/12/2024 - The Hind Rajab Foundation has initiated legal actions in Argentina and Chile against Saar Hirshoren, a member of Israel's 749 Combat Engineering Battalion who is currently present there. Mr. Hirshoren is accountable for war crimes committed in Gaza, the HRF is demanding his immediate arrest. Simultaneously, a comprehensive complaint has been filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC) targeting the entire battalion and its leadership for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. - Read More -
20/12/2024 - The Hind Rajab Foundation has formally filed a detailed complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli war criminal Lidor Kandalker, demanding his immediate arrest and prosecution. Kandalker, currently in Thailand, is a member of the Rovait Gaesh (Volcano Company), a combat engineering unit notorious for the systematic and deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza.
Key evidence submitted to the ICC includes a video in which Kandalker is seen counting down before detonating explosives that destroy a civilian home in Gaza. The footage captures him celebrating with his comrades afterward, boasting about the destruction. This shocking display underscores his direct involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In addition to filing the ICC complaint, the Hind Rajab Foundation has notified Thai authorities, including the police, the Ministry of Justice, and the Thai Embassy in The Hague. The foundation has urged them to apprehend Kandalker, prevent his escape, and fulfill their international obligations to ensure accountability for his crimes. - Read More -
17/12/2024 - Colombo, Sri Lanka - The Hind Rajab Foundation has located Gal Ferenbook, an Israeli soldier responsible for the death of a Palestinian civilian and the degrading treatment of their body, in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The Foundation has formally demanded that Sri Lankan authorities arrest him immediately and cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC). A formal complaint has also been submitted to the ICC, and the case has been communicated to Interpol to issue an international Red Notice for his apprehension. - Read More -
6/12/2024 - The Hind Rajab Foundation is filing an urgent legal complaint in France against Roi Hakimi, an Israeli soldier implicated in acts of torture and enforced disappearances during the recent Israeli assault on Gaza. Mr. Hakimi is currently on a tourism visit in France. - Read More -
3/12/2024 - The Hind Rajab Foundation, in collaboration with the March 30 Movement, has taken a firm stance against the appointment of Colonel Moshe Tetro as Israel’s military attaché to Belgium. Citing his direct involvement in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide during his tenure as the head of the Coordination and Liaison Administration for the Gaza Strip (CLA), the foundation is calling on the Belgian government to deny his accreditation. The Hind Rajab Foundation has also filed a detailed complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC), demanding immediate action against Tetro. - Read More -
29/11/2024 - The Hind Rajab Foundation, in partnership with the March 30 Movement and through the office of attorney Haroon Raza, has filed a complaint demanding the immediate arrest and prosecution of three IDF soldiers who entered Amsterdam yesterday. The individuals involved are Yehuda Tsfa, Yotam Shmuelevich, and Liran Magal, members of the Latak Unit of the 932 “Granit” Battalion, accused of engaging in the destruction of civilian properties in Gaza without any military necessity. - Read More -
27/11/2024 - Rotterdam, 27 November 2024 – The Hind Rajab Foundation, in partnership with the March 30 Movement, has filed a formal complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli soldier Liam Shkedi. The complaint alleges Shkedi’s involvement in war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and crimes of aggression, calling for his immediate arrest and prosecution. - Read More -
18/11/2024 - Brussels, November 18, 2024 – The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) is actively investigating reports from journalistic sources of a possible detention in Cyprus related to Elisha Livman, an Israeli reserve officer accused of war crimes in Gaza. Despite this development, Livman managed to flee Cyprus with direct assistance from the Israeli state, according to the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom. This brazen intervention is a stark example of state-sponsored impunity, undermining international law and obstructing justice. - Read More -
14/11/2024 - Limassol, Cyprus, 14 November 2024 – The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) has lodged an urgent complaint with Cypriot authorities, calling for immediate action against Elisha Livman, a lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), currently visiting Cyprus on a tourist visa. Livman, an officer in the T80 Infantry Unit, Sayeret Givati, have committed serious war crimes and exhibited genocidal intent in recent military operations in Gaza. - Read More -
Amsterdam, November 10, 2024 — The Amsterdam Police have officially opened an investigation into recent violent incidents involving Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters following a complaint filed by the Hind Rajab Foundation and the March 30 Movement. These disturbing events, which unfolded in the city center, have sparked widespread concern across the Netherlands and internationally. - Read More -
Amsterdam, November 9, 2024 – The Hind Rajab Foundation, in partnership with the March 30 Movement, has taken an urgent legal step to combat rising instances of hate-fueled violence in Europe. Following disturbing incidents in Amsterdam, the two organizations have submitted a formal criminal complaint to the Amsterdam Public Prosecutor’s Office, seeking immediate action against supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv who have reportedly engaged in acts of incitement, violence, and vandalism. - Read More -
7/11/2024 - London, United Kingdom – November 6, 2024 - The Hind Rajab Foundation has taken a significant step in the pursuit of international justice by submitting a formal request to the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) in the United Kingdom. The letter calls for a comprehensive investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Alon Elgali, Chief Executive Officer of Meshek Afar Limited, a company contracted by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Mr. Elgali is currently present in the United Kingdom, where he is alleged to be involved in actions that may constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law. - Read More -
24/10/2024 - Guayas, Ecuador – The Hind Rajab Foundation, in partnership with the March 30 Movement, has filed a ground-breaking legal complaint with the Ecuadorian authorities. The complaint targets Ecuadorian citizen Sahar Enrique Cohen for his involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Israeli military’s assaults on Gaza. The complaint, submitted to the Criminal Court of Guayas, seeks prosecution under Ecuadorian and international law for Cohen’s participation in systematic attacks on Palestinian civilians and medical facilities. - Read More -
8/10/2024 - The Hague – October 8, 2024 - The Hind Rajab Foundation, a branch of the March 30 Movement, has filed an unprecedented and historic complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against 1,000 Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Gaza, Palestine. These individuals, all of whom have been identified by name, are accused of participating in systematic attacks against civilians during the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
This complaint, supported by over 8,000 pieces of verifiable evidence—including videos, audio recordings, forensic reports, and social media documentation—demonstrates the soldiers' direct involvement in these atrocities. All of the named soldiers were located in Gaza during the genocidal assault, and the evidence reveals their participation in violations of international law. - Read More -
6/8/2024 - The March 30 Movement, represented by lawyer Haroon Raza, has officially filed a complaint with the Dutch judicial authorities against Dutch citizen and IDF soldier Liam V. A. The complaint accuses Liam V. A. of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Gaza. - Read More -
3/7/2024 - The Hague, July 3, 2024 - This morning, the March 30 Movement, represented by attorney Haroon Raza, officially submitted a comprehensive complaint to the ICC against Benny Gantz (b. 1959), Ron Dermer (b. 1971), Gabi Eisenkot (b. 1960), and Aryeh Deri (b. 1959), all members of Israel's now dissolved War Cabinet. In addition to Netanyahu and Gallant, these individuals cannot be allowed to escape responsibility through resignation. - Read More -
16/6/2024 - The March 30 Movement, represented by Mr. Haroon Raza, has filed a formal complaint and is calling for the immediate arrest and prosecution of representatives of COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories), a unit of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. This urgent action follows multiple documented instances where COGAT has been implicated in severe violations of international law, including the use of starvation as a weapon of war against the civilians of Gaza. Under the directive of Israeli officials such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (b. 1949) and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (b. 1958), COGAT's actions have resulted in widespread suffering and death among the Palestinian population. - Read More -
4/5/2024 - The Hague - Advocaten voor de Vrede and the March 30 Movement, have lodged a comprehensive complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) targeting Israel's actions in Gaza. This submission, deemed the most robust and detailed to date, aims to hold Israeli authorities accountable for alleged crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. - Read More -
19/4/2024 - A team of lawyers led by Gilles Devers has filed a complaint with the national anti-terrorist prosecutor's office for torture and war crimes in connection with the military attack on Gaza. This complaint "against X" is intended to determine the role played by Yoel Ohnona, the Franco-Israeli soldier whose testimony has been requested.
In a video that has gone viral, this soldier praised the violence and abuse inflicted on a Palestinian detainee, who can be seen, along with other detainees, in a distressed situation, shackled and blindfolded.
The outcry provoked by the broadcast of this video led the Quai d'Orsay to reaffirm the "competence of French justice to deal with crimes committed by French nationals abroad, including in the ongoing conflict in Gaza".
This video, and the many reports of torture of Palestinian detainees, have prompted widespread condemnation and demands from civil society that the perpetrators of flagrant human rights violations be held to account.
It is to satisfy this demand for justice and prevent further atrocities that this first complaint in France has been filed. - Read More -
30/3/2024 - THE HAGUE, MARCH 30 2024 – The March 30 Movement, represented by attorney Haroon Raza, filed a detailed complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Dutch-Israeli illegal settler Akiva van Koningsveld, and other Israeli settlers. This action accuses them squarely of participating in or being complicit in land theft, colonization, acts of genocide, alongside their ongoing involvement in a broad spectrum of war crimes and crimes against humanity within the Occupied Palestinian Territories. - Read More -
22/3/2024 - Lawyers of the #March30Movement filed a complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC) demanding to initiate an urgent investigation and issue an arrest warrant for Yoel Ohnona (The French-Israeli soldier speaking in the torture video). - Read More -
7/3/2024 - Next week, President Isaac Herzog (b. 1960) of Israel is expected to visit The Netherlands, a visit that comes under the heavy shadow of the ongoing Gaza genocide. Mr. Haroon Raza, representing the #March30Movement, has lodged a detailed complaint highlighting President Herzog’s pivotal role in fostering a climate conducive to genocide in Gaza. The accusations stem from President Herzog's direct and indirect contributions to systematic atrocities against the Palestinian population, effectively breaching international humanitarian and criminal laws. - Read More -
16/2/2024 - The Hague - The March 30 Movement via attorney Mr. Haroon Raza has lodged a new formal complaint against Dutch citizen and IDF soldier Leah Rachmani, accusing her of involvement in grave violations during military operations in Gaza.
This complaint, presented to Dutch authorities, meticulously outlines allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and potential genocide, underscoring the critical need for accountability and adherence to international law.
Drawing upon detailed documentation and legal standards, the complaint seeks an investigation and subsequent prosecution, highlighting the alleged actions resulting in civilian casualties, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and violations of the Geneva Conventions. This legal action is a call to the international community and Dutch authorities to uphold the principles of human rights and equality under the law, including the consideration of passport revocation measures. - Read More -
13/2/2024 - Amsterdam - Our research team have detected the presence of IDF soldier Meir Ben Hamou within Amsterdam today. Ben Hamou is actively taking part in the onslaught on Gaza.
Our legal division, through attorney Haroon Raza, has formally requested his immediate detention. This request is based on allegations of Mr. Ben Hamou's involvement in actions constituting violations of international and Dutch law, specifically pertaining to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
We call upon Dutch authorities to act with urgency in response to this matter, reinforcing the principles of justice and accountability. - Read More -
27/1/2024 - The March 30 Movement, represented by attorney Haroon Raza, has initiated a legal action against IDF members involved in the genocide in Gaza. These members, identified as Major Noy Leon, General-Major David Negesh, Major Amit Deri, and Reserve Captain Meir Rapoport, are currently in the Netherlands for an ICJ protest. They are scheduled to depart for Tel Aviv tomorrow, intending to return to Gaza. In the picture above, one of them, Captain Meir Rapoport is seen boasting on a Gazan destroyed house while writing the genocidal call " We will erase the memory of Amalek from under the heavens...". The March 30 Movement is urgently requesting the Dutch authorities to intervene, preventing their departure, and by doing that preventing the committing of more crimes and ensuring they are held responsible for their actions. - Read More -
30/12/2023 - The legal team of the #March30Movements has intensified its efforts to address serious allegations of international law and human rights violations. Following our initial complaint against Jonathan Ben Hamou, we have now extended our legal actions to include four other IDF soldiers of Dutch nationality. - Read More -
26/12/2023 - The March 30 Movement, represented by attorney Mr. Haroon Raza, has officially filed a complaint in the Netherlands, actively seeking accountability for the atrocities committed by the Israeli army in Gaza. This complaint targets Jonathan Ben Hamou, a Dutch-Israeli citizen who participated in the ongoing genocidal actions of the IDF in Gaza. - Read More -
20230217, MSC, Munich Security Conference, Bayerischer Hof: Main Stage I: Panel Discussion.Against Lawlessness: Ensuring Accountability.Conference Hall: Kaja Kallas Prime Minister, Republic of Estonia
ANSA-AW (Affiliated Network for Social Accountability- Arab World) was officially launched on March 14-15, 2012, in Rabat, Morocco. The event was organized by the World Bank in collaboration with CARE International (Egypt). ANSA-AW is a multi-stakeholder regional network comprised of CSOs, media, private sector and government representatives. Photo: Arne Hoel / World Bank
Photo ID: Hoel_120313_DSC_7346
Zag - bit.ly/1Ohf1bl
Who's accountable?
Photo by Eric Ziegler (@ericzigus)
When I first joined my latest team, I specifically went and met with each team that reported up to me. As I did my introductions, I let my teams all know that I am a big fan of soccer, so much so that I even play.
Because I am who I am, I read many different blogs and listen to many different podcasts that cover topics that span topics such as leadership, soccer, and technology. I read and listen to podcasts to stay up on the latest trends and to keep abreast of the latest things happening on things I am passionate about.
Recently, I was listening to the soccer podcast, Men in Blazers (@meninblazers +Men In Blazers) .(btw, I highly recommend listening to these gentlemen if you like soccer. Not only are they informative, they are rather funny). During a recent podcast, they were interviewing Jose Mourinho, the current manager of Chelsea. As I listened to the interview, he provided insights that I believe apply to any team anywhere, especially teams that in companies.
These insights were about how the team is the most important thing, and that individuals are important as part of the team. This sentiment is absolutely important for any long running successful teams.
"It's about the team, not the individual"
"The manager is no more or less important than the individuals on the team"
Why would he say these statements? He hints at holding the individuals accountable for their actions, even the manager.
He uses an example in the podcast to get his point across, There is a section in the podcast where he talks about the bus leaving on time. You could take it as a control from the top, but listen carefully on how he talks about the situation. He says that the team has agreed that at 9 am the bus will leave. And if you are not on the bus at 9 am, the bus leaves without you, because the team agreed it would leave at 9am. And if the manager is not on the bus at 9am? the bus leaves without the manager.
While you might think this is a power game for Jose, I look at it differently. What he is saying is that the team is important, and to hold the team back because someone was not holding themselves accountable to being on time is not acceptable. Hence, each person is accountable for their actions and accountable for making sure the team meets the team goals.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
May 21, 2013
Around 20 protesters rallied outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis. They called for more accountability in the banking industry, demanded the Obama administration prosecute bankers for their role in the financial crisis of 2008 and called for relief for families and communities devastated by foreclosures. This event was in solidarity with Wall Street Accountability Week of Action in Washington, D.C., May 18-23.
2013-05-21 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Give attribution for: Fibonacci Blue
This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:
www.gao.gov/products/GAO-20-479SP
FORENSIC TECHNOLOGY: Algorithms Used in Federal Law Enforcement
Left to right: Susana SáCouto, War Crimes Research Office, Washington College of Law, American University; Andrew Wells-Dang, USIP; Elizabeth Becker, Author and Journalist
On July 6, USIP held a conversation with journalist and author Elizabeth Becker, atrocity investigator and educator Ly Sok-Kheang and former advisor to the Extraordinary Chambers Courts of Cambodia Susana SáCouto to reflect on role of documentation in achieving justice and accountability.
For more information about this event, please visit: www.usip.org/events/justice-and-accountability-khmer-roug...
Witness Against Torture and Amnesty International USA marched from the US Capitol to the White House on April 30, 2009 to mark the end of the first 100 days of President Obama's term and demand accountability for torture and abuse. Photo by Shawn Duffy
Several generations after Adam and Eve, God saw great evil on the Earth and it made him sad. His mercy came to an end and people of Earth had to be held accountable for the wrong things they were doing. God planned to wipe every man and animal off the face of the Earth and to rebuild the Earth from the family of Noah. Noah was the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson of Seth (Adam and Eve’s third son) and was a good man who followed God.
bibleblender.com/2011/bible-stories/old-testament/genesis...
Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).
Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions
"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".
The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.
The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.
Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.
Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:
Wet with cool dew drops
fragrant with perfume from the flowers
came the gentle breeze
jasmine and water lily
dance in the spring sunshine
side-long glances
of the golden-hued ladies
stab into my thoughts
heaven itself cannot take my mind
as it has been captivated by one lass
among the five hundred I have seen here.
Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.
Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.
There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.
Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.
The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.
In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:
During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".
Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.
While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’
Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.
An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.
Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983
Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture
Main article: Commercial graffiti
With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.
In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".
Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.
Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.
Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.
Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.
There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.
The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.
Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.
Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis
Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.
Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.
Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"
Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal
In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.
Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.
Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.
Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.
With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.
Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.
Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.
Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.
Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.
Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.
Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.
Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.
The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.
I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.
The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.
Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.
Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.
In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".
There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.
Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.
A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.
By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.
Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.
In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.
A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.
From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.
Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.
Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.
In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.
Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.
In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.
In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."
In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.
In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.
In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.
In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.
In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.
The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.
To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."
In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.
In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.
Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".
Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)
In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.
Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.
Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.
In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.
Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.
Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.
To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.
When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.
Oh boy. Part of me wants to delete this photo and go eat candies, but apparently a bigger part of me is so disgusted with that other part that here we go.
My weight today: 61.5 kg
(that's 135.6 for you pound-y people)
(oh, and I'm short: 164 cm / 5'4"
This is the most I've weighed in my entire life (not including the pregnancy of course), and it's getting worse, slowly but surely. Before getting pregnant I weighed 54 kilos (119 lbs), and although I'm not even going to try to achieve that anymore, I would very much like to lose about 5 kgs (11 lbs) that's very firmly sitting on my waist.
My problem is eating a shitload of candies, every day and all the time. My plan is simple: stop eating candies. And maybe drink more water. Let's see how that goes.
I started dieting April 15, 2012. Yes, I remember the day bc I glorified it for so many years. I started bc I didn’t physically feel well a lot of the time & I struggled with body image. We all know the cure for that: DIET & EXERCISE! Right?? I posted about my journey for “accountability” and got so much positive feedback. “You look amazing! You’re such an inspiration! Can you help me too?” I was so excited bc I hadn’t ever moved my body or honored it in anyway prior to that. Fueled by the results & positive reinforcement, I kept looking for better ways to diet and exercise for a few years. Then I found CrossFit, an entire global community of dieters & exercisers looking to do as much of both as possible. Perfect! For over 5 years I learned to micro-manage every seed I put into my mouth and sweat more than I ever had in my life. I was so proud to be a woman that was strong. And I still am. But things started to change eventually.
Every morning I’d wait until I pooped to weigh myself naked so that I would know the REAL number. What’s this?? How did my weight go up when I paid someone to tell me exactly how much to eat?! Must have been too much broccoli. I’ll pack food to bring to the pizza party. I’ll go “super clean” before the trip, party, event, etc. Everything I learned about, I tried. When information conflicted, I hedged my bets and restricted more of it. I wanted to be the gold standard and I wasn’t going to let anything mess that up. I even became Precision Nutrition “certified” because paying people to tell me what they learned in that one book - that apparently gave them the legal right to charge people to help them restrict food without any other credentials in nutrition or psychology - wasn’t working, so I opted to just become certified myself. And then the inevitable happened... it all stopped working. No matter what I did, who I paid, the results just stopped. My body began to bloat in ways I couldn’t anticipate, no matter what I added or eliminated. Physical discomfort I didn’t know how to stop. The stress of this sent me spiraling emotionally. The only logical explanation was that I was doing something wrong, that there was something I wasn’t doing, and that I wasn’t doing enough. My mind and time were consumed with how to control my body through food & exercise. Devastated when those around me succeeded with less perceived effort than me. I gave myself no leeway.
In May 2017 I was in the thick of this. I had been single for about a year and was ready to start dating again. I had been strict intermittent fasting, 8-10 hours of eating & 14-16 off, no matter what. I was asked on a date by someone I was actually really excited about. We had met a few years back working a wedding together and he was really cool. We made the date for a Wednesday night. I was coaching early on Wednesdays then, which meant I needed to start eating earlier in the day. 7-5 to be exact. I decided to do this even though I knew I was going out that night. NO EXCUSES!! Unfortunately the 2 drinks I had over the 4 hour date left me absolutely drunk and spinning.
We were having a fun evening up until that point.
I didn’t feel unsafe going back to his place to sober up.
I thought I could trust him.
I was tragically mistaken.
When I came to and stopped him I remember him trying to explain why it was ok that he was doing what he was doing. He really liked me and would be my boyfriend, he said. Date rape is a terrible and confusing thing to have happen to you. It took me over a week, walking around like a zombie, and a very concerned response from a friend when I told her the story, to really understand what happened to me. I broke ties with him immediately and tried to move on. I acknowledged the truth, felt what I needed to, and opted to learn from it. That year I only shot one wedding and it was out of state. I pulled up to the venue and I see him walking towards me. Out of all the videographers they could have possibly hired, they chose him. And I worked with him. I knew I had to. I could not go up to a bride on her wedding day, as she’s getting ready, and tell her I can’t do it. I learned a lot about my strength as a woman that day.
I think it’s important to understand that this happened to me at a time when I least expected it to. I was, and still am, at a point in my life where I consider myself to be a very happy person. I had become self-employed and was enjoying the successes of that. I didn’t view my dieting and exercising as anything bad at the time, and took a lot of pride in my discipline and knowledge. I was happy being single and very selective about who I went out with. I was confident I’d never put myself into a dangerous position again. I felt strong and empowered. It took me a long time to realize how my dieting/exercise routine had contributed to the events of that night. That guy is 100% responsible for his actions that night. It also breaks my heart to think about that version of myself that was so afraid to eat food. A version that weighed her options and chose to drink on an empty stomach and put her trust into her date’s hands.
My best friend got married in August 2019, and I was thrilled to be her Maid of Honor. A very special role with a lot of responsibilities and investments. I cleaned up my eating for months beforehand, and was exclusively strict for the month leading up to the big day. By the time the wedding day came, I was happy enough with my results. I was still struggling with my body image and not looking how I felt I should have with the amount of effort I put in. All that effort paired with the time and money invested into the wedding, I became terrified that if I ate any of the food at the wedding I would either A.) get sick because I knew how my body would react to foods I hadn’t been allowing myself to eat, and/or B.) bloat up and undo all the hard work I’d put in for months to look a certain way. So when everyone else was grabbing slices from the pizza food truck, or sampling the dessert options, I was eating cucumbers and hummus at my table. I wasn’t happy about it either. I felt sorry for myself and made up for it at the open bar. I had a great time at her wedding, but know now just how much more fun and enjoyment I could have shared on this most memorable of occasions.
The dangers of diet culture were completely unknown and unheard of in my life until I met my friend Iona. She and her partner run a movement based community in Boston, and I fell in love with them immediately. They used to be Crossfitters so I knew I would be understood there. She would talk a little bit about Crossfit and why she wasn’t doing it anymore and why she had stopped restricting food. Sounded good for her, but I couldn’t imagine not watching what I ate. But we’d keep chatting, and followed each other on social media so I was seeing the things she was sharing on the topic. Some things she shared didn’t sound like me at all. I had never been as great as she was and didn’t feel like our stories were the same. I had started a deep mediation practice at the beginning of 2019 that started to shake the foundation of my food & body beliefs. As I listened more to her story, and as I deepened my own personal awareness, I found myself deeply resonating with her. I was having a hard time putting uncomfortable feelings into words. She recommended two books to me: The Fuck It Diet by Caroline Dooner, and Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole.
It has been a year since I read The Fuck It Diet, and it shook me down to my core. So much of what she was describing sounded just like everything I was feeling. I felt angry at an industry I was a loyal disciple of for years. I felt ashamed of all the preaching in it’s favor I had done over the years. I felt overwhelmed in realizing that all the work I had put into optimizing my body was actually doing the opposite. I knew without a doubt that this was what my body and soul needed. A release from the confinement of diet culture. So I purchased Intuitive Eating and the accompanying workbook, and spent the last year slowly chipping away at the 10 principles of IE. In TFID she mentions that it can take 3-6 months for people to heal from disordered eating, some more and some less. I figured I’d be done nice and quick. Nope. This shit is HARD. So hard. Especially when the world shuts down 1 month into your practice and turns your world upside-down. I suffered a lot during the quarantine, and I did it silently. I couldn’t share my pain, and didn’t know how to. But I kept at it. I knew I couldn’t give up on this, too much was on the line. I moved in with my boyfriend during the pandemic which threw in a whole new twist and added challenges. I started unfollowing influencers & nutrition pages by the dozen. I utilized a food delivery service to help me take the pressure off of thinking about food so much. I was sick of it. I reached out to Iona for support. And I kept at it, even when it felt like I wasn’t making any progress. I kept at it. I knew my life depended on it.
Then some amazing things started to happen. I would put the pint of Ben & Jerry’s back in the fridge instead of eating it all at once. I could eat half my food at a restaurant and easily ask to bring the rest home. A package of cookies went stale in the cabinet because I just didn’t feel like eating them. I started buying new clothes that fit my body now, and even went as far as to go shopping when I felt most uncomfortable and bloated so I knew I could trust my clothes to truly bring me comfort. I can say no when I’m not hungry. I’m starting to be able to truly identify my hunger and fullness cues, and honor them. I’m starting to trust that my body knows what it’s doing and that it knows what size it wants to be. I can trust myself around food now because I know, without a doubt, that I can have it if I want to. Restriction is what leads to overeating, not the other way around. This, by far, has been the hardest but truest lesson I’ve learned in the decade I’ve spent educating myself on fitness and nutrition. I still have a lot of work to do, practice makes progress, and progress is never linear.
I have chosen to share this experience for a few reasons. First, the bravery of my friend sharing her vulnerable yet powerful healing experience inspired me to do the same for myself. This is the biggest hope for this project. We don’t get to choose who we influence, or how our influence is received. But we all have a story, and someone out there needs to hear YOUR story. Second, this has been one of the biggest personal items I have been working on recently and has caused a big upheaval in how I approach my life and my work. I pride myself on being openminded and allowing myself the grace to change my mind. Changing my mind on fitness and nutrition was not something I was expecting, and it is not what big diet culture wants us to believe. It is woven into our healthcare, media, and schools. Third, this is a topic I know millions of people, especially women, struggle with every single day. Fourth and final reason is the intersection of so many things in this experience. Self-worth, body image, sexism, science as a religion. Too much of what we think has been put there by someone else. My hope is that sharing my experience with diet culture, date rape, and orthorexia (eating disorder with the preoccupation with eating healthy food) that someone else will be inspired to free themselves from these cages and live life a little happier. Food CAN be neutral and our bodies do know what they’re doing.
Accountability without authority. Work has driven me to Linkin Park on the way home and emergency donning of the soothing bedsocks upon my arrival.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
May 21, 2013
Around 20 protesters rallied outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis. They called for more accountability in the banking industry, demanded the Obama administration prosecute bankers for their role in the financial crisis of 2008 and called for relief for families and communities devastated by foreclosures. This event was in solidarity with Wall Street Accountability Week of Action in Washington, D.C., May 18-23.
Signs read:
STAND TOGETHER
STOP
FORECLOSURES
STOP EVICTIONS
occupyhomesmn.org
2013-05-21 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Give attribution for: Fibonacci Blue
Governor Hogan Signs an Executive Order Regarding School Accountability Initiatives. by Joe Andrucyk at Governors Reception Room, 100 State Circle, Annapolis MD 21401
President Joe Biden delivers remarks before signing an executive order on policing reforms to advance effective, accountable policing and criminal justice practices to build public trust and strengthen public safety, Wednesday, May 25, 2022, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
De Oekraïense president Volodymyr Zelensky spreekt via een videoverbinding met de deelnemers van de conferentie.
===English===
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks to conference participants via video link.
===
The Netherlands, The Hague, July 14th 2022
The Government of the Netherlands is hosting, together with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and the European Commission, an Ukraine Accountability Conference at ministerial level at the World Forum in The Hague on 14 July.