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I read an article the other day, called "The Age of Disorder" on RT.com, which in accordance to analysts from Deutsche Bank, we are heading toward a decade of uncertainty and instability, the elite's plandemic/scamdemic, the worsening relationship between US & China. The one thing the article didn't mention was that of the ground level stuff, the sociological collapse of unity (as if we ever had in the first place) the likes of Antifa and the EDL, BLM (Black va Blue), Feminism vs the MRAs and so on and so on, etc, etc.
One thing I have found in photography is the escapism from all this, photography granting the ability (for those who have it) to live in a world of utter chaos but be transfixed by the hues & tones of a flower, or how the grass moves in the wind, the changing colours of leaves on trees, for a moment to be completely, absolutely absorbed and delightfully distracted by the acquisition of artistic endeavours via a camera and a bit of knowledge.
Photography, like all real art (real art, none of this new age crap) is the salvation of the soul(s) of mankind, and I would recommend it to anyone whose willing to learn.
So, with that said, have a great weekend everyone, and as always, thank you! :)
A month ago, I quoted some analysts saying that it won't last more than 3 months and now here we are right at the endgame. As Graham E Fuller -- formerly vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council, having served as Station Chief in Kabul for the CIA -- put it succinctly in his blog on 16th this month :
" The final end of the government in Kxxx is at hand as the inexorable logic of regime collapse gains momentum. It seems more of a surprise to current policymakers than to those many observers with a long-time familiarity with the country’s dynamics. It will not be pleasant to watch, but it has long been inevitable given the utterly unrealistic ambitions and poor policy execution that Washxxx has maintained in Afgxxx. Unfortunately, those darker, but more insightful views on the entire enterprise have long been largely stifled by our media...
... it is the overall decline of Amxxx domestically and geopolitically that is the telltale sign of its deeper weakness; there is an increasing international belief that the UX is living inside a fantasy bubble of denial about maintaining its global hegemony. If the 20-year UX military presence in Afgxxx had actually ever shown any serious concrete advancement towards concrete goals, that would be one thing. But the neocons are ever content to throw good money after bad in the blind pursuit of hegemony — even in the very heart of “the graveyard of empires...
But Washxxx’s focus on Afgxxx in reality has had very little to do with establishing a better and more equitable society for the Afgxxx... "
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On another occasion, I opined that ( amongst the Russian cellists ) " the audience have probably heard too much of Rostropovich, too little of Daniil Shafran, rarely of Knushevitsky, hardly of Yakov Slobodkin, mostly due to the monopoly of the media! Has it occured to them that the order should be the other way round ? " That is to say, if one is really looking for genuine artists and musicians instead of virtuoso, showmanship, playing to the tune of propaganda narratives :
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rachmaninoff+cello+
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovuH2eWyykY
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Clara Schumann's pupil Carl Friedberg, who was 3 years older than Rachmaninoff and was rather closely associated with Kreisler, Carl Flesch, Schnabel and having collaborated directly with Mahler :
www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6mWDbui258
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DOWN IN THE VALLEY (RUSSIAN FOLK SONG) - IVAN SKOBTSOV
Freightliner Shed 66519 pauses at Nuneaton for a crew change as a couple of folk, each with rather different intentions, assess the contents of their electronic screens.
The train is the 9.25am Southampton Maritime CT - Garston FLT containers (4M58).
A number of enthusiasts had been lined up at the end of the platform waiting on a steam locomotive movement from Southall to Crewe, 'Black 5' 45212, and expecting it to use the slow lines.
It came through all right but, to almost everyone's surprise, used the fast lines - and wasn't hanging around either! Needless to say there was much disappointment amongst the thwarted photographers, some commiserations, and just a hint of disgust.
Ces't la vie ......... as Larry Grayson might have said.
3.46pm, 24th April 2018
I don't usually take photos of people without either asking beforehand or telling them I've done so after the fact. Neither happened in this particular case, so the face of the young lady pictured here is somewhat obscured by the post-processing I chose to perform.
She was seated with her male companion at the table in front of mine at a restaurant in Bel Air, Maryland; the town in which I currently reside.
I went there last evening to eat dinner and watch part of the Celtics-Magic basketball game. This photo was taken at half-time of that game as one of the ESPN analysts was babblin' on about the first half highlights.
She was obviously between me and the TV, as that's the analyst you see in the background.
What I really wanted was a photo of her peace sign earrings.
The camera was sitting on the table having dinner with me, though it didn't actually eat. I didn't pick the camera up off the table so as to not draw attention to the fact I was about to photograph someone who's permission I had not been granted.
I merely tilted the camera up towards the earring and took this single photograph.
I liked it. Maybe you will, too.
You can get a better view of that earring by clicking here.
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Prepare yourself to meet
The girl who cannot sleep
Dividing every question
Till the questions are complete
Every twisted tongue,
She studies everyone.
She won't leave any stone unturned
The night is oh so young
She's traveling back in time,
Questioning every line
That someone said
She's trying to understand
Can you be sure we haven't met
See the eyes they don't forget
They wander through the passage-ways
That tease a restless mind
Can't afford to slip
The picture has to fit
Her world's a photograph
That gets dissected bit by bit
Free her mind, She's always the analyst
The analyst - Delta Goodrem.
In the early 1980s, Zuritanian analysts realized that their country faced a bomber gap: foreign powers in Yafran and Emmeria had developed Mach 3 bombers capable of penetrating Zuritanian airspace and dropping nuclear weapons. Too fast for SAMs to catch, only an interceptor could stop them. President Fischer ordered a development program for a new Mach 3 jet to counter them, but anything going that fast is expensive. Budgetary pressures put the project on hold for 10 years. In 1989, with tensions on the rise, the Security Department restarted the program and adopted neighboring Kimmeria's Meme-25, already 20 years old, as a stopgap. It could intercept enemy bombers, but lacked the payload to serve as a bomber itself. Luckily, it never had to prove itself as an interceptor. Finally, in 1989, the engineers at West Rodinian Aviation made a breakthrough: we don't need better engines to reach Mach 3, only bigger engines. That did the trick.
In the photo above, the first B-5 is pulled out from a factory hanger onto the taxiway by a pushback tractor for test flights. It has not yet received its coat of expensive RAM paint, but is otherwise ready for service.
Analyst.
Διδασκαλία μυαλού καινοτομίες διαφωνίες που επιβεβαιώνουν αξιώσεις απόλυτα μηνύματα που αναφέρουν αρχές που εξαρτώνται από παράγοντες που ξεφεύγουν από διαφορές που ανακαλύπτουν διαδρομές,
žlugdanti realybė kliudė sprendimams koreguoti diskursyvius komponentus, apimančius puslapius su neprilygstamomis darbų sąvokomis, žinant, kodėl reikia kurti pastangas,
أخطاء ديدان دلالات مجالات عوائق متصاعدة أسئلة مضيئة أخبار مطلقة تزهر نباتات تعاليم تقليدية تفسيرات تنبيهات,
sonidos que distraen al maestro atento actividades mentales energías conscientes reconocer egos terrores abrumadores facultades de ensueño olores distantes,
percevoir des objets contempler des confusions des voix tumultueuses tourner des contenus montrer des idées des miroirs réfléchissants dissimuler des formes maléfiques,
裂け目 深い習慣 行為を制御する 呼び出し 嫌がらせ 幽霊 心理レベル フォローする 大きな視野 思考 マスター 無意味な状態 答えを交換.
Steve.D.Hammond.
Natural light portrait - light from the window
***
I took this picture today morning, while my daughter was getting ready for work in the office
After graduating from university, she found a job as an analyst in a software company
All last week they have been working remotely from home and this Monday, going to go out, the child was sad that she would have to trudge to the office, instead of lying on the bed with her laptop all day
30 minutes later, my wife received a call and in the course of the conversation, I realized that the child was returning home
Wondering what happened, I thought about different things that could happend, but my wife dispelled my doubts, it’s just that my daughter’s work continues to be remote
Would you hire such an analyst?
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Md & MUA: Daughter
Ph & retouch: mine
***
Date: October 26, 2020
Camera: Sony a7 iii (ILCE7M3)
Lens: Carl Zeiss Batis 85mm f/1.8
Exposure: 1/200sec at f/1.8, 85mm, ISO 1600
Analysts are moving beyond who-what-when-where to "really focusing on the why,” a senior defense intelligence official said.
LAUREN C. WILLIAMS | JULY 28, 2023
INTELLIGENCE RUSSIA UKRAINE
The Pentagon’s lead military intelligence agency has been relying on public and commercially available information to keep tabs on Russia’s movements in Ukraine.
The Defense Intelligence Agency recently invited a small cadre of reporters to view recovered remnants of unmanned aerial vehicles made in Iran and used by Russia in its war on Ukraine, noting that open-source intelligence has played “an outsized” and “critical” role.
“When we get a requirement, in this case, monitoring the Russian military and their aggression, the general public around the world is our source,” a senior defense intelligence official told reporters. “There's a lot more data outside in the world than there is that the IC’s collected, and so we're getting better organized to use it, and it's paying great dividends to understand what's happening.”
The White House has flagged increased defense ties between Iran and Russia, and DIA confirmed Russia was using Iran-made drones earlier this year. Iran admitted last year that it sent Russia drones before the war started, but denied continued involvement, despite reports and public accusations that it was sending materials and working with Russia to build a factory. The declassification is part of a broader push to reduce disinformation, officials said.
Analysts walked reporters through recovered drone parts from the Middle East and Ukraine that were known to be Iran-made, identified by things like device design, markers, materials, such as a distinct “honeycomb” lining found between the devices’ layers, and corroborated classified intel with information that had already been made public.
News reports in April 2022 were the first indication, defense intelligence officials said. But one of the key uses of open-source intelligence is inspiration.
Making such attributions is routine intelligence work, but for the DIA, stitching together data from open source intelligence is more novel.
“Almost everything…from Ukraine is open source, like we were picking that up off of social media...those pieces had come out in such a way the public had already seen them be attributed to them to Ukraine, and they knew where that they were. So it was hard to have disinformation against that,” the analyst said, referring to an unclassified visual report on Iran-made UAVs in Ukraine.
“We were able to then match up our classified photographs in the way that like, no one's going to look at that Shahed-136 in Kyiv and say, 'oh, that was somewhere else, that was Yemen'.”
The DIA stood up the Open Source Intelligence Center almost four years ago, and has since worked to craft open source intelligence, or OSINT, collection and analysis as a formal discipline. The data often comes from social media, news reports, and commercially available databases, among other sources with a focus on foreign military targets.
“This isn't a typical product for us. We don't normally come out and release this type of information,” the analyst said of the open-source report. “It was what social media, the press, that you guys were able to provide us, we were able to quickly match it with what we had in the classified side and come out with a product like this…There was a lot of unique value that just was not possible in an earlier era.”
In a way, social media platforms and news organizations provided credibility to the intelligence DIA and other government agencies were collecting—something that wasn’t possible more than a decade ago. But combining other types of intelligence, like human and signals, with open-source and AI algorithms, has also been crucial.
“It's been a game-changer for my analysts to go from…focusing on the who, what, when, and where, and really focusing on the why,” a senior defense intelligence official said. “All of this data that we try to pull together, the open source that brings in so much richness into the environment, but also all that exquisite intelligence that we pull together, combining that and really having the effect of AI to be actually able to aggregate and winnow the information that we need to focus on.”
An analyst from the task force began to identify patterns that led her to believe that Al-Asad fighters were massing in the Naran Darre mountains. Intelligence Officer codename Grayhawk was brought in to assist due to his intimate knowledge of the mountains.
The task force's first objective is to perform close target reconnaissance on the suspected cave complex. Grayhawk hand-picked three recon operators for this task. To prevent alerting the fighters in the mountains, the team prepared UTVs for insertion into the AO.
To be continued...
Note: The story, all names, characters, and incidents are fictitious.
Western defense analysts are uncertain of this new version’s full capabilities, but it is believed that the new SMT-version has advanced avionics and weaponry very close to-, or on par with state-of-the-art western hardware. Backing these claims is the alleged export ban on the new MiG-35 version issued by the West-Russian government.
Complete rebuild of my old Mig-29 SMT model, now converted to a fictitious future upgraded version of the MiG-35. Several of the upgrades takes a great deal of inspiration from Julius D's brilliant 1:33 scale MiG-29.
Some literary analysts have described Pinocchio as an epic hero. Like many Western literary heroes, such as Odysseus, Pinocchio descends into hell; he also experiences rebirth through metamorphosis, a common motif in fantasy literature.
Throughout the work, Collodi chastises Pinocchio for his lack of moral fiber and his persistent rejection of responsibility and desire for fun. Since Collodi frequently wrote in support of Italian Unification and the new state that was to arise from it, the book may be seen as having been influential in nation-building.[9] Before writing Pinocchio, Collodi had written a series of pedagogic story books for use in the new nation's elementary schools. The series was called Il viaggio per l'Italia di Giannettino ("Little Johnny's voyage through Italy").
The structure of the story of Pinocchio follows that of the folk-tales of peasants who venture out into the world but are naively unprepared for what they find, and get into ridiculous situations. At the time of the writing of the book, this was a serious problem, arising partly from the industrialization of Italy, which led to a growing need for reliable labour in the cities; the problem was exacerbated by similar, more or less simultaneous, demands for labour in the industrialization of other countries. One major effect was the emigration of much of the Italian peasantry to cities and to foreign countries such as the United States.
The main imperatives demanded of Pinocchio are to work, be good, and study. And in the end Pinocchio's willingness to provide for his father and devote himself to these things transforms him into a real boy with modern comforts
An analyst from the task force began to identify patterns that led her to believe that Al-Asad fighters were massing in the Naran Darre mountains. Intelligence Officer codename Grayhawk was brought in to assist due to his intimate knowledge of the mountains.
The task force's first objective is to perform close target reconnaissance on the suspected cave complex. Grayhawk hand-picked three recon operators for this task. To prevent alerting the fighters in the mountains, the team prepared UTVs for insertion into the AO.
To be continued...
Note: The story, all names, characters, and incidents are fictitious.
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.
20 May 2019 - TALK TOGETHER
Session : The Male Disadvantage in Education
Speakers : Camilla Stoltenberg, Director-General, Norwegian Institute of Public Health; Head, Norwegian National Commission on Gender Equality in Education
With ** Francesca Borgonovi, Senior Analyst, Policy Advice and Implementation, Directorate for Education and Skills, OECD
OECD Headquarters, Paris.
Photo : © Hervé Cortinat / OECD
Voting for fringe candidates
"Protest vote" also refers, in a more derogatory manner, to specific demographic categories, classifying populations according to the frequency and nature of their vote. Thus, in the US, middle-income families vote more often than the working class or marginalised populations.
After the 2002 French presidential election, in which far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen arrived second behind conservative candidate Jacques Chirac, many analysts put the blame of the surprising result on working class, accused of engaging themselves in "protest vote", that is in support of fringe candidates belonging to the far-left or the far-right, or even to people who present themselves as alien to the political world (in France, environmentalist René Dumont in 1974, comedian Coluche in 1981 but he withdrew his candidacy before the elections, environmentalist Pierre Rabhi who unsuccessfully tried to present himself in 2002, as well as TV showman Nicolas Hulot who almost stood for the election for 2007, before putting aside his idea, thus leaving electoral space for José Bové, a figure of the alterglobalization movement who recently decided to present himself as an independent candidate).
This kind of protest vote, where the vote is taken into account but accused of being "useless", is often considered by political analysts to be either a form of populism or, worst, of poujadism. For example, French voters were encouraged by the establishment to make a "useful" vote in the 2007 presidential election: by voting either for Nicolas Sarkozy, candidate of the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement, or for Ségolène Royal, candidate of the centre-left Socialist Party, and not for other candidates, who were considered unlikely to make the second turn of the elections.
Protest vote : In an election,it is a vote against the party you usually support in order to show disapproval of something they are doing or planning to do.
A protest vote (also known as a blank vote or white vote) is a vote cast in an election to demonstrate the caster's dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates or refusal of the current political system. In this latter case, protest vote may take the form of a valid vote, but instead of voting for the mainstream candidates, it is a vote in favor of a minority or fringe candidate, either from the far-left, far-right or self-presenting as a candidate foreign to the political system.
Along with abstention, which is simply the act of not voting, it is often considered to be a clear sign of the lack of popular legitimacy and roots of representative democracy, as depressed voter turnout endangers the credibility of the whole voting system. If protest vote takes the form of a blank vote, it may or may not be tallied into final results depending on the rules. Thus, it may either result in a spoilt vote (which is the case most of the times) or, if the electoral system accepts to take it into account, as a "None of the Above" vote.
Abstention may be considered as a form of protest vote, when it is not assimilable to simple apathy or indifference towards politics in general. Henceforth, the anarchist movement which has since its origins rejected representative democracy in favor of a more direct form of government, traditionally calls for abstention in an active and protest gesture. In states where voting is compulsory, abstention may be seen as an act of civil disobedience.
Abstention in compulsory voting systems tends to be somewhat ineffective, as the protest 'message' is likely to be confused with apathy. Voters who do not care who is elected, but are simply voting because they must, may choose to abstain, and the abstention protest votes will be confused with the apathetic abstention votes.
A second problem with abstention is it tends to help maintain the status quo, which may be seen as antithetical to the purpose of protesting in the first place. In a system where one candidate has a majority of support, protesting by abstention will increase that majority in the election results. To illustrate this, consider a group of 10 people voting for two candidates, A and B. Six support candidate A and three support candidate B, and one is wishing to protest, using their vote, against either the system or both candidates. If the protestor votes for candidate A, the results would be 70% to 30% (for A and B respectively); if the protestor abstains, the results would be 67% and 33% (A and B respectively); if the protestor votes for B, the results would be 60% and 40% (A and B respectively). In a larger election, the differences are numerically smaller but act to increase/decrease the proportional vote in the same ways.
The abstain vote actually increases the proportion of votes for the most popular candidate, while voting against the popular candidate(s) (by voting for any other option(s)) would close the electoral margin. In a wider context, closing the margin may result in a hung parliament, or a smaller difference between the parties in government, reducing the chance of a single party having control over the system, which may be seen as beneficial for the sake of protesting against the system or candidates.
An analyst from the task force began to identify patterns that led her to believe that Al-Asad fighters were massing in the Naran Darre mountains. Intelligence Officer codename Grayhawk was brought in to assist due to his intimate knowledge of the mountains.
The task force's first objective is to perform close target reconnaissance on the suspected cave complex. Grayhawk hand-picked three recon operators for this task. To prevent alerting the fighters in the mountains, the team prepared UTVs for insertion into the AO.
To be continued...
Note: The story, all names, characters, and incidents are fictitious.
www.heavybit.com/library/video/2015-09-01-donnie-berkholz
In this Heavybit Speaker Series, Donnie Berkholz of 451 Research will offer insights into analyst coverage areas and how to present to them, context-setting for analyst briefings, and finally, how to engage with analysts on their upcoming research calendars.
Heavybit / Dailon Weiss
Maya D. Wiley (born January 2, 1964) is an American lawyer, professor, and civil rights activist. She has served as president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights since May 2022. Wiley served as counsel to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. She chaired the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) from 2016 to 2017.[1][2] She was an MSNBC legal analyst from August 2018 to January 2021.[3] Wiley ran in the 2021 New York City Democratic mayoral primary, placing third.
Maya Wiley
Maya Wiley 2.jpg
President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Incumbent
Assumed office
May 2, 2022
Preceded by
Wade Henderson
Chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board
In office
July, 2016–August, 2017
Preceded by
Jonathan Darche
Succeeded by
Frederick Davie
Personal details
Born
January 2, 1964 (age 59)
Syracuse, New York, U.S.
Political party
Democratic
Spouse
Harlan Mandel
Children
2
Relatives
George Wiley (father)
Education
Dartmouth College (BA)
Columbia University (JD)
Wiley is the senior vice president for social justice at The New School and a professor at the Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment. In March 2022, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights announced Wiley's appointment as its president and CEO, and of its sister group, The Leadership Conference Education Fund, effective May 2.[4][5]
Early life and education
Edit
Wiley was born on January 2, 1964, in Syracuse, New York, and raised in Washington, D.C.[6] Her father was civil rights leader and academic George Wiley. Her mother, Wretha Frances (Whittle) Wiley, was white, and inspired her to focus on progressive issues.[7][8] On August 8, 1973, Wiley's 42-year-old father fell overboard while sailing with Wiley and her older brother on his 23‐foot boat on Chesapeake Bay, Maryland.[9][10] On August 12, 1973, his body was found floating in the bay off the shore of Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, after a three-day search.[11][12]
Wiley earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Dartmouth College in 1986[13] and a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School.[14]
Career
Edit
Wiley in 2015
Wiley served in the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney Office for the Southern District of New York.[15]
In 2013, Wiley was mentioned as a potential president of the NAACP, but the post went instead to Cornell William Brooks.[16] Before being appointed counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2014, she worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Open Society Institute.[17]
Wiley spent two and a half years as counsel to de Blasio, during which time she became known for coining the term "agents of the city" in an attempt to prevent public disclosure of de Blasio's communications with lobbyists.[18] She also founded and served as president of the Center for Social Inclusion, a national policy strategy organization dedicated to dismantling structural racism.[19][17][20][21]
Wiley has taught at The New School and appeared on MSNBC as a political and legal analyst.[22]
2021 New York City mayoral campaign
Edit
Main article: 2021 New York City Democratic mayoral primary
Wiley ran in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City in 2021.[22] In June 2021, Wiley was endorsed by U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,[23][24] and former presidential candidates Julian Castro[25] and Elizabeth Warren.[26] She was also endorsed by The Strokes, whose song "Starting Again" was included in a campaign advertisement.[27] The band also played a fundraising concert at Irving Plaza on June 12, 2021.[28] Wiley placed third in the Democratic primary, behind Eric Adams and Kathryn Garcia.[29]
Personal life
Edit
Wiley is married to Harlan Mandel, CEO of the Media Development Investment Fund.[18] They live in Brooklyn with their two daughters.[7]
According to a senior Moody’s analyst, Nigeria’s oil output is expected to fall by 15% if urgent step is not taken to address the crowd-out investment effect the industry is currently facing as a result of cash flow shortage for investment.
Nigeria earn the status of Africa’s...
www.elist.ng/2015/11/analyst-forecast-fall-in-nigerias-oi...
Day 5 of 2017 Mid-Season Invitational Group Stage at Jeunesse Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 14 May 2017.
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The Foot Clan has been in a state of heavy 'restructuring' ..a term used by top Foot Analysts. Advertising,recruitment,munitions,payoffs & bribes,top secret labs,weapon development,underground facilities, and hi-security projects. The Foot ,while well established for centuries and by far one of the wealthiest organizations in the solar system..it's budget has been ever increasing especially with close encounters of the Turt- kind :four particular enemy mutant terrapins. In the late 1980s and early '90s.. strange and intergalactic allegiances had been made. Some as far as Dimension X. Technodromes,robots,odd and massive weapons,looney vehicles,alien terrorism,wasted resources on petty vendettas became the foil to the Foot's reputation. Within the humiliation..desperate moves called for desprate displeasures and mutants became all the rage. Name a battle and place.. and name a mutant (and money)the Foot hasn't thrown at the enemy Turtles. Bebop and Rocksteady had a monster army all their own and the boss couldn't help but use every single flesh and blood genetically engineered goon as his pawn. At the dawn of the new millennium
things were getting out of hand and at the ultimate disappearance
of the beloved buisiness leader : Oroku Saki, the schizms felt thru'out the entire organization were beyond tremendous. Mutants just weren't a priority and several major Foot genetic labs were broken up and eliminated entirly or spit into several small more manageable labs.
However ..freek incidents such as one involving the Turtle's friends: Quarry.Stonebiter, and Razorfist..much like the Shredder's great defeat are quickly covered-up and are considered 'accidents'. These labs also serve as baby-sitting vicinities
..if you will , for a few more well known but somewhat forgotten Foot lackies..such as tOkKa. tOkK tho' was more of a floater..and hot potato. Bouncing around different labs within the Clan until one two many red lights went off and Karai ordered tOkKa caged far far away.. west..some obscure,long lost and forgotten 'Foot' dive and storgae facility. For discipline and re-evaluation of tOkKa's potential. Reeducation ..and general guinea pig status. tOkKa was left in the subterranean prison to rot and be lab moused by wayward and demented Foot Techs. He'd be lucky if Baxter Stockman gave a suprise 2 minute spot check for fire violations on electro-pizza munster capacitors. O' to be human.. peoples never have to face such disaters.
And well cr4p..this was was'll pretty heavy for the toddler terror. Knockin' tOkKa down a few pegs seems what this monster-mash of snapper-lifestyle could afford him. But he was startin' to 'un'-sbap..that's not a good thing when yir an unwanted alligator snapper and only 'wanted' by posters in 9 of 50 states. All this former child star's exposure was limited to a couple of posters in a posta office in some mosquiter-ridden down far south of Omaha.Things get pretty lame when your best friend leaves. Rahzar had made a point of not stickin' around.. after a short burst of inspiration by watching a 48 hour marathon of what consisted no less than a bunch of old 'Barney' tapes & 1 rerun of 'Newsradio'. Next thing ya know..Rahz was inspired & joined the Peace Corps on humanitarian efforts to fill pot holes in Uganda. tOkK just had to realize these werne't the good ol' monster-mutant pizza stompin' n' Turtle smashin' times him n' his pal had back in the junkyard. Things were looser. Playing catch with rusty radiators and hide n' seek in the partn'parked junk cars was all so fun. Rahzar always won at hide n' seek. tOkK never tried hard enuff'.. and a 9 foot snapper is gonna have to hide a little bit better than under a pile of one tire. Yep..the 'Secret of the Ooze' was out. And strategy to defeat the enemy was in. Simply throwing a couple of monsters at the Turtles doesn't cut' it anymore. Evil schemes used to be much more simpler back in the day.
Late one night in his dusty,dirty, and cat-pee smellin' cage ..tOkKa was rather rotten feeling. After a distrubing night from sleepin' in his own vomit and a relaitve ill left in his tummy from too much of the daily gruel his cage masters left..(usually a bowl of stale-surplus Pizza Crunchabungas from the abandoned warehouse and rusty water)summin was going down. tOkK into into a deep disturbing sleep. Drooling a bit more excessively than normal. The taste of donust but a distant memory. ..ever so slightly the scent of evaporated rain began to fill his lowly dungeon..and eerie most warmth slowly re-woke the snapper to the vision of prehensile,near translucent fingers coming tword him. An increasingly bright white light and the temptation to "Bright White Light" three times fast filled tOkKie's sad-sorry bubbly baby brain. Three gaunt and noiseless figures of pale complexion and large black n' hallow eyes seemed to be floating into the old giant cage.
The light became brighter. And suddenly tOkKa was gone to a 'nowhere' land. Strangely the desire to sing about a'Nowhere Man' was in his beaky beetle vocabulary at the time. What tOkKa could see.. was nothing but bright light.. but as if fading into existence from a fine mist.. his three visitors returned. These were the Sons of Silence ,enigmatic creatures from well beyond Dimension X and the bane Utrom scientists everywhere. Such prejudices even lead to fractured and biased science. The same kind of bias that lead many to believe that the evil Krang WASN'T an utrom. O'please. Back from the ramble.. the 3 visitors presented tOkKa a magical orb. Small little voices inside tOkKa's head gently invited tOkKa to touch this 'Turn Stone' ..and these werne't his regular voices in his head neither. They was like real creepy ones too !! tOkK of coarse usually listens to his stomach first and the voices second. And what sure had set shockwaves thru'out this vast limbo.
tOkK wrapped his beaky baby lips around the magical ball..and in one full sshlloopp**~~of his snake like tounge..::the snapper devoured the Turn Stone whole !!
The limbo at once became pitch black..then ..
chaos..!!
tOkK .. laying ing in a near fetal position lifted himself up on very wobbly ground. Something didn't feel right. Lotsa things didn't. He peered straight
down. His tyrannosaur toes were now socked-soaked footsies. Not unlike that of the feets he saw on the naked humans in the movies ..but still somehow still his ol' familiar stompers. It got weirder. Aside from the backof his neck and teenie-weeny hairs his eyes were to beady to see and his noodle was too stoopit to care about..he saw through his new yet familiar eyes that teenie-tiny hairs were all over. Mostly on his new egg-shaped noggin'. Greesy blackish n' dirty blonde hairs were all over in his face. His beak seemed like it feel off..instead he had what the human peoples called a 'noid'. Er summin'. This new beak felt freeky.. and the front of it felt bumpy but smooth. The scales all over were smoother.
The two little slits on his face could smell things. And not his frsh icky,mud-moist he was so used to. This was a sticky peoples smell. He smelled like the Foot Clan's footlocker.. and icky human under arm shirt thingies.Things were danglin' in places he really hadn't thought about before..and he seemed to have adopted a helmet with the frontal lobe of one of the enemy..::Donatello. He stood erecter-er than he used to..and this new body's shell was light as it's frame. Spikies were there..and his claws were too..but these new claws reminded him of the gorrillas and he somehow grew a couple of what the humanies called 'thumbs' and 'fingerners'. These new claws were big and bulky but he could prolly hold a big crayon if he wanted. They grasped odd versions of the weapons of his enemies. The big stick was the easiest for him to play with. He fwacked and whacked and batted it about like a slugger at the Yankees. He tried to do a fancy maneuver like in the ninja movies and the fighting the Feets Soldiers did. But the warrior 'never-to-be' ..he fell flat on his new beak and flatter on the place where his plastron once was. He slowly lifted himself back up with his monkey paws and noticed his surroundings. The white of the limbo was gone scattered moving images surrounded like his faintest memories and things he'd never knew he's ever notice. As if the inside of his cranium had cracked open and spilt out into enire air. It was all to much for him to consume. At the bottom of his new ol' heart.. he felt summin' real bad.
Fear ..
But pea-brains think pea-sized thoughts. tOkKa wasn't sure what he was thinkin'..but if he could he would have asked questions.
"I am i a pal to my enemies ?? Am i a heretic or hero ?? Fan or Fiend ?? Freind or foe ?? Was this the spurt of one or a collective of many ideas from many creators ?? Was this a different dimension..was this body a guise he'd adopted on some other plain ?? Or had someone simply adopted him ?? His best pal Rahzar ?? What of him..would he ever get to play telephone pole tag with him and get throw eggs at mayor's office again ?? What about his enemy and four-coarse meal ticket ?? Would he ever get to bite the bandana off the one called Mickerangerlo..the one that teased and tickled him when tOkKa had fallen in battle ?? And the other three: Donteteller,Leonerdo, and Nerfael ?? Would he ever get to rip them to shreds like a puppy with a cheap chew-toy ?? And the Rat ??
Will i ever see my mum again ??
..the questions were to big.. his mind was too small..the questions never came. They would have..but just didn't. The chaos over came him. The snapper was reduced to a quivering inferno of pain. The images increased and the noise became to loud. He smacked the stick in half with his now sharpless teeth !! He wanted to run !! His new set of spikes meant nuthin'..he wished himself tucked back into his shell never to come out again.
tOkKa started to miss NYC..and the junkyard. He became to weak to think anymore & curled back into a fetal position and started to cry. The chaos around him started to evolve into shadows. The fear had crippled tOkKa ..and his new body seemed more of a scam. The soft voices returned..the chaos beacme more grey..and the scent of evaporated rain returned. The Sons seemed to be stating that they sought out intresting minds in all worlds,all dimensions, and in all galaxies. This is to learn and gain for whatever purposes they deem would serve their goals. Their intention was not to harm but extract and seek information. The after effects with tOkKa's mergance with the 'Turn Stone' was unintended. They seemed to be sorry for the erratic disruption. The Turn Stone seemed to have digested itself or something. The ball floated out of the shadows tword tOkKa feet. It spoke !!
"Don't cry tOkKa.. you fear things you need not !! Your family and friends are still here." ..
The turtle's insides warmerd.
"Soon you will be back to where you once were. Somehow you will not ever forget the dualies and multi-alities of what you have just seen. You will always be part of a chaos you can not ever understand. And perhaps you don't need to. Somehow you shall remember that you are part of a chaos that is so much larger and more beautiful than you could possibly imagine !! I'm so sorry for your pain and how we may have fractured your heart even more. But now you must go from this everything-nothing. Goodbye, my friend. "
tOkKa became very sleepy in his fetus state. He didn' understand anything. The heavier he felt the more like the grey was dissipating . He could feel his hunch returning..even the bad after taste of steel and rancid lettuce in his mouth. He could feel his spikies and his claws were becoming more inverted as they were. His dinosaur foots and stubbly;clubby toes turned back into a raptors. For a split second he could feel the millions of years of evolution and the struggles of his reptilian snapper ancestors. He could feel the evolution. But it became to heavy..and the warm rain scent became colder and colder. The wetness became colder..almost like snow. The snapper had returned..and things became pitch black one more time. Too much for baby..too too much.
RADICALACTIVE !!
The quiet of the lab and the darkness was alit once again ..the old light fixture overhead flickered and buzzed. The low 'Foot Tech' came in ready to feed the beast with morsels and and watered slime. The Tech was armed and fearless incase the beast was ready to strike at the less than generous portions provided. The Tech was ready to prod the snapper with painful electricals if need be.
..but the big cage at the far end of the room was empty. The cheap lock system was broken..as if bitten off. A large string of near gigantic foot prints shown as if something retile like had merely stumbled out of the cage upon closer inspection. The Tech dropped the tray.Then the tracks merely disappeared at the foot of the entry way. Suddenly frantic and angry at such substandard security. Now fearful for the consequences..for loosing one of the Shredder's beasts. The Tech filed a report that the mutant had merely died due to poor nutrition. A fairly simple and common trait of the decades of continual abuse in the Foot Genetics divisions.
"The body of the creature has been properly disposed of."
..
epilogue .. :
Far away someplace deep & beyond the city..in a junk yard :2 beastly things ..one like a very large wolf-man and his companion ..a creepy and Gamera like beast are playing Radiator catch. Those who witnesses claim of the pure terror that surrounds just a glimpse of the bumbling characters. The evolution of the junkyard defeats and hides the evidence of proof in such sightings. Most huamnies and workers at the junk yard attribute these sightings to hallucinations. Some homeless persons claim to here the shreiks of a dragon-baby crying for his 'Mama'.The schiz0-snapper is still out there.. not understanding the chaos.. but somehow frenetic & uneasily content that something amazing is always around the corner. and donuts, and turtles, and Rahzar, and spikies !! To paraphrase an argument between a prickly-puppy and a dead pickle-puss that did not happen ..::
Shakespeare: What are these
So wither'd and so wild in their attire,That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,
And yet are on 't?
tOkKa: "GRAHH!!"
Shakespeare: Say, from whence You owe this strange intelligence? Or why
Upon this blasted heath you stop our way With such prophetic greeting?
tOkKa: "Master say .. 'Have Fun' ..
..me am tOkKa !! ..me think, ther'for ..my Yam !!"
..inks,magic marker,design markers,crayons,colour pencils and Ph.shop,Fireworks,alien technology- 18, May 2006
©2006 - 2007 Dave b.2 a.k.a. tOkKa,terrible2z.com ..all other elements © their much respected owners..please respect the copyrights..
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When analysts will try and find an answer to the left rout in West Bengal, they will surely put the Nano agitation on the top of their list. Mamata Banerjee may have driven the TATA Nano Car Project out of West Bengal – but in the process she managed to expose the bloodthirsty nature of the CMP – that ‘the party’ that would do anything and everything to stay in power. Today Mamata has won the elections – but the only Nano these kids will ride anytime soon - would be replica of the real thing!
www.heavybit.com/library/video/2015-09-01-donnie-berkholz
In this Heavybit Speaker Series, Donnie Berkholz of 451 Research will offer insights into analyst coverage areas and how to present to them, context-setting for analyst briefings, and finally, how to engage with analysts on their upcoming research calendars.
Heavybit / Dailon Weiss