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Posing with 47500 at Chester on 24 May 1991, the train being the 17.03 Euston-Holyhead. In spite of the obvious Western Region connection, 47500 was in the Crewe-based ICDA pool by this time and therefore a regular along the North Wales Coast. It is currently owned by West Coast at Carnforth but is out of traffic after it was damaged following a derailment at Salford in 2013. Network Rail was later found to be culpable,
Title: Down In The Black Gang
Author: Farmer, Philip Jose 1918-2009
Type: Hardbound; anthology of 8 stories
Publisher: Nelson Doubleday, Inc.
Copyright: book copyright 1971 by PJF
Pages count: 215
Edition: Science Fiction Book Club
Cover artist : Gary Viskupic
Publication date: not listed
Cover Price: not listed
Magazine appearance: The eight stories in this anthology are listed in order published followed by page count, magazine appearance and copyright as follows:
Down in the Black Gang - 22 pgs - March 1969 Worlds of If - copyright Universal Publishing and Distributing Corp ,
The Shadow of Space – 26 pgs – Nov 1967 Worlds of If - copyright Universal Publishing and Distributing Corp,
A Bowl Bigger than Earth – 18 pgs – Sept 1967 Worlds of If - copyright Universal Publishing and Distributing Corp,
Riverworld – 32 pgs – Jan 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow - copyright Galaxy Publishing Corp, A Few Miles – 42 pgs – Oct 1960 The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction – copyright by Mercury Press,
Prometheus –46 pgs – March 1961 The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction – copyright by Mercury Press,
The Blasphemers -28 pgs – April 1964 Galaxy - copyright Galaxy Publishing Corp and How Deep the Grooves – 10 pgs – Feb 1963 Amazing Stories – Ziff-Davis Publishing Corp
Comments: Highly recommended, showcase for some of Farmer’s best stories from the 1960’s. Wow, wrap around dust jacket art - rare for a book club issue.
Culpability: All images are from publications owned of Calwalader Ringgold /\ Weazel. Image scanning, editing and compiling of bibliographic data was performed by Calwalader Ringgold /\ Weazel.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
TITLE: The Best of H.P. Lovecraft Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre
AUTHOR: H.P. Lovecraft 1890-1937
TYPE: Collection
PUBLISHER: Ballantine/Del Rey
COVER PRICE: $13.95
ISBN: 0-345-35080-4
PAGES: 375
EDITION: 30 printing
COVER ARTIST: Michael Whelan
ISFDB:
RATING:
NOTATION: Introduction by Robert Bloch
INDEX: 0097 - Best of H.P. Lovecraft - 001 - HPL – IFB
QUOTE: “Yew want to know what the reel horror is, hey? Wal, it”s this- it ain’t what thern fish devils haz done, but it’s what they’re a-goin’ to do! They’re a-bringin’ things up aout o’ whar they come from into the taown….ever hear tell of a shoggoth?” ...….. from The Shadow Over Innsmouth by Howard P. Lovecraft
CONTENTS:
1 • Introduction: Heritage of Horror (The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre) • (1982) • essay by Robert Bloch
15 • The Rats in the Walls • (1924) • novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
30 • The Picture in the House • (1924) • shortstory by H. P. Lovecraft
37 • The Outsider • (1921) • shortstory by H. P. Lovecraft
42 • Pickman's Model • (1927) • shortstory by H. P. Lovecraft
52 • In the Vault • (1925) • shortstory by H. P. Lovecraft
59 • The Silver Key • [Randolph Carter] • (1929) • shortstory by H. P. Lovecraft
69 • The Music of Erich Zann • (1922) • shortstory by H. P. Lovecraft
76 • The Call of Cthulhu • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1928) • novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
100 • The Dunwich Horror • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1929) • novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
134 • The Whisperer in Darkness • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1931) • novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
185 • The Colour Out of Space • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1927) • novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
207 • The Haunter of the Dark • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1936) • novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
225 • The Thing on the Doorstep • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1937) • novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
246 • The Shadow Over Innsmouth • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1936) • novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
296 • The Dreams in the Witch-House • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1933) • novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
325 • The Shadow Out of Time • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1936) • novella by H. P. Lovecraft
CULPABILITY: All images posted are from publications owned by Cadlwalader Ringgold /\ Weazel. Cadwalader Ringgold /\ Weazel performed image scanning, editing and the compiling of bibliographic data.
ISFDB: Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base.
RATING: On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being great and 1 don’t read.
NO: entry indicates specific information not available from book.
TITLE: Swords and Sorcery: Stories of Heroic Fantasy
EDITOR: L. Sprague de Camp 1907-2000
TYPE: paperback Collection
PUBLISHER: Pyramid #R-950
COVER PRICE: $ .50
ISBN:
PAGES: 186
COPYRIGHT: by author
PUB DATE: December 1963
EDITION: 1st edition – 1st printing
COVER ARTIST: Virgil Finlay
ISFDB: Yes
RATING:
NOTATION:
INDEX: 0371b - Swords and Sorcery - LSdC - 01 - IFB
CONTENTS:
7 • Introduction: Heroic Fantasy • essay by L. Sprague de Camp
11 • The Valor of Cappen Varra • [Cappen Varra] • (1957) • shortstory by Poul Anderson
27 • Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller • (1912) • shortstory by Lord Dunsany (aka The Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller, and of the Doom That Befell Him 1911 )
33 • Shadows in the Moonlight • [Conan Universe] • (1934) • novelette by Robert E. Howard
67 • The Citadel of Darkness • (1939) • novelette by Henry Kuttner
97 • When the Sea-King's Away • [Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser] • (1960) • novelette by Fritz Leiber
123 • The Doom That Came to Sarnath • (1920) • shortstory by H. P. Lovecraft
133 • Hellsgarde • [Jirel of Joiry] • (1939) • novelette by C. L. Moore
169 • The Testament of Athammaus • (1932) • shortstory by Clark Ashton Smith
CULPABILITY: All images posted are from publications owned by Cadlwalader Ringgold /\ Weazel. Cadwalader Ringgold /\ Weazel performed image scanning, editing and the compiling of bibliographic data.
ISFDB: Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base.
RATING: On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being great and 1 don’t read.
NO: entry indicates specific information not available from book.
© All rights reserved.
My friend Celestina Aguirre. Tina, as friends call her, is a very gentle, thoughtful and gracious woman. She's Don Alfonso's next door neighbor. She often checks in on him to make sure he's well. Tina was born in Panama. She married a Puerto Rican man with mixed Asian ancestry. I met her shortly after 9/11, at which point she was extremely anxious about her postal worker son following the anthrax attacks.
Also see RETRATOS: Faces of "Los Pioneros" www.flickr.com/photos/artedelares/sets/72157594337021083/
ARTIST STATEMENT:
These are part of an ongoing series of documentary images that memorialize the faces and lives of Latino elders in various community settings.
It's also a meditative reflection of my own aging process and awareness of normal and abnormal declines in memory. The nature of identity and the daily miracle of waking up in the morning re-remembering who I am.......
Memory is the basic stuff that anchors us to our being in time and space...... It's the link to where we've been. Unique to all other living things, it is the vessel for our existential awareness of what we're all moving toward.......our mortality. Our spiritual journey, our humanity.
With any luck and longevity, impending mortality can become an advisor that sits on our shoulder nudging us towards the better part of wisdom....or sometimes simply stirring us awake to the moment.
In “Tuesdays with Morrie” ( www.randomhouse.com/features/morrie/ ) there's a cute story about this.
A little wave bobbing along in the great ocean....having a grand old time.....notices that the waves in front were crashing against the shore. 'My God, this is terrible', the wave says. Look what's going to happen to me! Another wave comes along and says: 'Why do you look so sad? The first wave says: 'you don't understand, we're all going to crash!.....All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn't this terrible?' The second wave says: 'No, you don't understand....... You're not a wave, you're part of the ocean.'.......
This project is about the experience of feeling like a tiny evanescent “wave” in the ocean of humanity. It is a celebration of life in the face of the inevitable losses encountered in our human journey. More to the point, it is a tribute to my Puerto Rican family and the memory of my parents, Genara Santiago Otaño and Juan Martinez Rodriguez
Beyond this, my friend Don Alfonso Rodriguez has been my muse and pivotal wake-up call to do this project. I thank and acknowledge him and all our elder friends and neighbors from the greater Latin American community and beyond. Most importantly, this work acknowledges the children, spouses, professional caretakers and service agencies (i.e., The Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center, NORC program) that make it possible for our elders to continue living in their own homes. To say the very least, our elders deserve to live and die with dignity.
The saddest part of all of this is the dearth of resources available to make this happen. The poverty rate in 2002 among US Hispanic elderly (65 and older) was 21.4 percent. Compared to other elderly in the US population), they are twice as likely to be living within the poverty levels. ( USDHHS www.aoa.gov/prof/Statistics/minority_aging/Facts-on-Hispa... )
Even sadder still, it's actually worse than reported when one thinks about it. This is because the operational definitions of poverty statistics are politically driven and often under-report actual poverty levels on the ground. Whatever the methodological or other reasons may be, they serve to lessen the culpability and shame of the established political and social order for this growing crisis. No surprise there, .....another “white elephant” hidden in plain sight, eh?
In so many ways, known and unknown, our elders are extraordinary, unsung heros, leaders, workers among workers, dreamers, mentors, nurturers....”Pioneros.... Yes, our collective cultural memory. I am living out many of their dreams. I am co-creating new ones into the future......right now.
All those who've been reading my comments and text, you will notice that the overall narrative is developing in response to your: “favoriting”, “views”, comments, conversations and interactions with me about this project. You are all an interctive parts of this creation.......thank you!!!
This long-term documentary project continues grow for yet another year..... Any ideas for project funding proposals.......promoting an exhibition, book or ";show-and-tell"..???... Let me know :~)
Kamera: Nikon F3 (1989)
Linse: Nikkor-N Auto 24mm f2.8 (1970)
Film: Rollei P&R 640 @ box speed
Kjemi: Rodinal (1:25 / 13:30 min. @ 20°C)
Al Jazeera: UN Special Rapporteur accuses Israel of acts of genocide (publ. 26 March 2024)
From the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner [Document publ. 25 March 2024]:
Anatomy of a Genocide
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese
Summary
After five months of military operations, Israel has destroyed Gaza. Over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 13,000 children. Over 12,000 are presumed dead and 71,000 injured, many with life-changing mutilations. Seventy percent of residential areas have been destroyed. Eighty percent of the whole population has been forcibly displaced. Thousands of families have lost loved ones or have been wiped out. Many could not bury and mourn their relatives, forced instead to leave their bodies decomposing in homes, in the street or under the rubble. Thousands have been detained and systematically subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. The incalculable collective trauma will be experienced for generations to come.
By analysing the patterns of violence and Israel’s policies in its onslaught on Gaza, this report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met. One of the key findings is that Israel's executive and military leadership and soldiers have intentionally distorted jus in bello principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.
I. Introduction
1. In this report, Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 (“oPt”), addresses the crime of genocide as perpetrated by the State of Israel (“Israel”) in the oPt, specifically in the Gaza Strip, since 7 October 2023. As Israel prohibits her visits, this report is based on data and analyses from organisations on the ground, international jurisprudence, investigative reports and consultations with affected individuals, authorities, civil society and experts.
2. The Special Rapporteur firmly condemns the crimes committed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Israel on 7 October and urges accountability and the release of hostages. This report does not examine those events, as they are beyond the geographic scope of her mandate. Nor does it examine the situation in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem.
3. Since it imposed the siege on Gaza in 2007, which tightened the closure imposed since 1993, Israel, the occupying power, has carried out five major assaults before the present one.
4. By Day 9, this assault had already caused more deaths (2,670) than Israel’s previous deadliest war against Gaza, in 2014 (2,251). Only a fraction of the mass killing, severe harm and ruthless, life-threatening conditions inflicted on Palestinians over the following five months of assault can be captured in this report.
5. UN independent experts, scholars, and states, including South Africa before the International Court of Justice (“ICJ”), have warned that acts committed in this latest onslaught may amount to genocide. The ICJ found a plausible risk of “irreparable prejudice” to the rights of Palestinians in Gaza, a protected group under the Genocide Convention, and ordered Israel, inter alia, to “take all measures within its power” to prevent genocidal acts, prevent and punish incitement to genocide, and ensure urgent humanitarian aid.
6. In its defense, Israel has argued that its conduct complies with international humanitarian law (“IHL”). A key finding of this report is that Israel has strategically invoked the IHL framework as “humanitarian camouflage” to legitimize its genocidal violence in Gaza.
7. The context, facts and analysis presented in this report lead to the conclusion that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met. More broadly, they also indicate that Israel’s actions have been driven by a genocidal logic integral to its settler-colonial project in Palestine, signalling a tragedy foretold.
II. Contextualizing genocide
A. Genocide as inherent to settler-colonialism
8. Genocide, as the denial of the right of a people to exist and the subsequent attempt or success in annihilating them, entails various modes of elimination. Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide”, observed that genocide is “a composite of different acts of persecution or destruction”, ranging from physical elimination to the “forced disintegration” of a people’s political and social institutions, culture, language, national sentiments and religion. Genocide is a process, not an act.
9. Genocidal intent and practices are integral to the ideology and processes of settler- colonialism, as the experience of Native Americans in the U.S., First Nations in Australia or Herero in Namibia illustrates. As settler-colonialism aims to acquire Indigenous land and resources, the mere existence of Indigenous peoples poses an existential threat to the settler society. Destruction and replacement of Indigenous people become therefore ‘unavoidable’ and take place through different methods depending on the perceived threat to the settler group. These include removal (forcible transfer, ethnic cleansing), movement restrictions (segregation, largescale carceralization), mass killings (murder, disease, starvation), assimilation (cultural erasure, child removal) and birth prevention. Settler-colonialism is a dynamic, structural process and a confluence of acts aimed at displacing and eliminating Indigenous groups, of which genocidal extermination/annihilation represents the peak.
B. Palestine and the context of genocide
10. Historical patterns of genocide demonstrate that persecution, discrimination and other preliminary stages prepare the ground for the annihilation stage of genocide. In Palestine, displacing and erasing the Indigenous Arab presence has been an inevitable part of the forming of Israel as a ‘Jewish state’. In 1940, Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Colonization Department stated: “there is no room for both peoples, together in this country. The only solution is Palestine without Arabs. And there is no other way but to transfer all of them: not one village, not one tribe should be left.”
11. Practices leading to the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestine’s non-Jewish population occurred in 1947–1949, and again in 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip with mass displacement of hundreds of thousands, killings, destruction of villages and towns, looting and the denial of the right to return of expelled Palestinians.
12. Since 1967, Israel has advanced its settler-colonial project through military occupation, stripping the Palestinian people of their right to self-determination. This has resulted in the segregation and control of Palestinians, including through land confiscation, house demolitions, revoked residencies and deportation. Punishing their indigeneity and rejection of colonization, Israel construed Palestinians as a ‘security threat’ to justify their oppression and “de-civilianization”, namely the denial of their status as protected civilians.
13. Israel has progressively turned Gaza into a highly controlled enclave. Since the 2005 evacuation of Israeli settlers (which Israel’s current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly opposed), Israel’s settler movement and leaders have framed Gaza as a territory to be “re-colonized” and its population as invaders to be expelled. These unlawful claims are integral to the project of consolidating the “exclusive and unassailable right of the Jewish people” on the land of “Greater Israel”, as reaffirmed by Prime Minister Netanyahu in December 2022.
14. This is the historical background against which the atrocities in Gaza are unfolding.
III. Legal Framework
15. The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (“the Convention”) codifies genocide as an international crime the prohibition of which is a non-derogable peremptory norm (jus cogens). The erga omnes obligation to prevent and punish genocide binds all states under both the Convention and customary international law and requires them all to prevent and prosecute genocidal acts. Genocide cannot be justified under any circumstances, including purported self-defence. Complicity is expressly prohibited, giving rise to obligations for third states.
16. The ICJ and the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) have jurisdiction over the crime of genocide, and so do State domestic courts. Prior to the establishment of the ICC, ad hoc international criminal tribunals advanced their interpretation of what constitutes genocide, its intent and required evidence.
A. Constitutive elements of genocide
17. The Convention codifies genocide as “any of the [specified] acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Accordingly, the crime of genocide comprises two interconnected elements:
(a) The actus reus: the commission of any one or more specific acts against a protected group, namely:
* (i) killing members of the group;
* (ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
* (iii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring
about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
* (iv) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
* (v) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
(b) The mens rea: the intent behind the commission of one or more of the above- mentioned acts that must be established, which includes two intertwined elements:
* (i) a general intention to carry out the criminal acts (dolus generalis), and
* (ii) a specific intention to destroy the target group as such (dolus
specialis).
18. Both components must be satisfied for conduct to legally constitute genocide. The perpetrator’s intent to destroy the group in whole or in part distinguishes genocidal acts from other international crimes. Specific intent may be established by direct evidence, e.g. statements by high command or official documents, or inferred from patterns of conduct. In the latter case, the patterns of conduct or the manner in which the acts are perpetrated must be such that they “only point to the existence of such [genocidal] intent”, and the existence of intent results in “the only inference that could reasonably be drawn.”
19. Evidence of the result is required to establish the commission of three of the underlying acts (killing, inflicting harm and transferring children). For the remaining two acts (inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group and preventing births), the evidentiary threshold requires proof of an intent to achieve a given outcome, rather than its achievement. Accordingly, if displacement, ethnic cleansing or mass deportation are perpetrated with the requisite intent to destroy the protected group as such, this may amount to genocide. Similarly, these displacement actions can also be evidence of specific genocidal intent.
B. State Responsibility and Individual Criminal Liability
20. The crime of genocide gives rise to both individual and State responsibility. The Convention stresses the need for individual accountability before domestic or international courts, regardless of any official role held by the perpetrator. Individual criminal liability arises from direct involvement in committing, attempting, conspiring, directly and publicly inciting, planning, instigating, ordering and aiding and abetting (complicity in) genocidal acts, requiring a specific intent to contribute to the destruction of the target group. This implies knowledge of the possibility that an act will result in destruction of the group in whole or in part. Genocide gives rise to State responsibility when an individual has committed genocide exercising state authority; in this case the individual’s conduct is attributable to the State.
IV. Genocidal Acts in Gaza
21. Genocidal acts can include deliberate actions or omissions, including the failure to protect the group from harm. The evidence presented in the following sections suggests Israel has committed at least three of the acts proscribed in the Convention.
A. “Killing Members of the Group”
22. This act encompasses deaths resulting from direct actions or arising from neglect, including those caused by deliberate starvation, disease or other survival-threatening conditions imposed on the group.
23. Since 7 October, Israel has killed over 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, equivalent to approximately 1.4 percent of its population, through lethal weapons and deliberate imposition of life-threatening conditions. By the end of February, a further 12,000 Palestinians were reported missing, presumed dead under the rubble.
24. During the first months of the campaign, Israel’s army employed over 25,000 tons of explosives (equivalent to two nuclear bombs) on innumerable buildings, many of which were identified as targets by Artificial Intelligence. Israel used unguided munitions (“dumb bombs”) and 2000-pound “bunker buster” bombs on densely populated areas and “safe zones”. In the initial weeks, Israeli forces killed around 250 people daily, including 100 children, in attacks obliterating entire neighbourhoods and essential infrastructure. Thousands were killed by bombing, sniper fire or in summary executions; thousands more were killed while fleeing via routes and in areas declared “safe” by Israel. The victims included 125 journalists and 340 doctors, nurses and other health workers (four percent of Gaza’s healthcare personnel), students, academics, scientists and their family members.
25. Seventy percent of recorded deaths have consistently been women and children. Israel failed to prove that the remaining 30 percent, i.e. adult males, were active Hamas combatants – a necessary condition for them to be lawfully targeted. By early-December, Israel’s security advisors claimed the killing of “7,000 terrorists” in a stage of the campaign when less than 5,000 adult males in total had been identified among the casualties, thus implying that all adult males killed were “terrorists”. This is indicative of an intent to indiscriminately target members of the protected group, assimilating them to active fighter status by default.
26. Moreover, Israel’s heightened blockade of Gaza has caused death by starvation, including 10 children daily, by impeding access to vital supplies. Lack of hygiene and overcrowded shelters could cause more deaths than bombings, having created “the perfect storm for disease”. A quarter of Gaza’s population could die from preventable health conditions within a year.
B. “Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”
27. This act must involve “a grave and long-term disadvantage to a person’s ability to lead a normal and constructive life”. The harm does not need to be permanent or irremediable, and can be brought about by various causes as torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, sexual violence, persecution, deportation or other conditions “designed to cause victims’ degradation and deprivation of their rights, and to suppress them and cause inhumane suffering and torture”.
28. Since 7 October, Palestinians have suffered relentless physical and psychological harm. Many have endured violence and deprivation including severe hunger.
29. Israeli forces have detained thousands of Palestinians, mostly men and young boys, often refusing to disclose their whereabouts. Many of them have been severely mistreated, including through torture at times leading to death.
30. Israel’s lethal weapons and methods have injured seventy-thousand Palestinians, many with agonizing injuries, in some cases leading to long-term impairment or death.
31. By causing critical shortages of medical supplies, including antibiotics and disinfectants, Israel’s actions resulted in hazardous health procedures, such as amputations without anaesthetics, including on children. This has also prevented the administration of life-saving treatment to those with medical conditions, including chronic diseases.
32. The survivors will carry an indelible trauma, having witnessed so much death, and experienced destruction, homelessness, emotional and material loss, endless humiliation and fear. Such experiences include fleeing amidst the chaos of war without telecommunications and electricity; witnessing the systematic destruction of entire neighbourhoods, homes, universities, religious and cultural landmarks;85 digging through the rubble, often with bare hands, searching for loved ones; seeing bodies desecrated;87 being rounded up, stripped naked, blindfolded and subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment; and ultimately, being starved, adults and children alike.
33. The savagery of Israel's latest assault is best illustrated by the torment inflicted upon children of all ages, killed or rescued from under the rubble, maimed, orphaned, many without surviving family. Considering the significance of children to the future development of a society, inflicting serious bodily or mental harm to them can be reasonably “interpreted as a means to destroy the group in whole or in part”.
C. “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”
34. This act involves conduct that does not directly kill members of the group, but is capable of leading, through various means, to its physical destruction. These may include starving, dehydrating, forcibly displacing the protected group, destroying objects indispensable for their survival, reducing essential medical services to below the minimum requirement, depriving of housing, clothes, education, employment and hygiene.
35. By mid-December, Israel’s bombs and shells had destroyed or severely damaged most life-sustaining infrastructure, including 77 percent of healthcare facilities, 68 percent of telecommunication infrastructure, large numbers of municipal services (72), commercial and industrial sites (76), almost half of all roads, over 60 percent of Gaza’s 439,000 homes, 68 percent of residential buildings, all universities, 60 percent of other educational facilities, including 13 libraries. Israel has also destroyed at least 195 heritage sites, 208 mosques, 3 churches, and Gaza’s Central Archives (150 years of history). By the end of January, over one million civilians were forcibly displaced southward, their cities devastated.
36. Sixteen years of blockade had already transformed Gaza into an isolated, densely populated depleted and nearly “uninhabitable” enclave, when, on 9 October 2023, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, announced a “complete siege (...) no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel”. Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz (then Minister of Energy) went further: “Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened.” Deliberately denying essential supplies to an already besieged population was destined to cause deaths “more silent than those caused by bombs”.
37. The total siege and near-constant carpet-bombing, along with draconian evacuation orders and ever-shifting ‘safe zones’, have created an unparalleled humanitarian catastrophe. Over 1.7 million Palestinians were displaced and forced into overcrowded UNRWA shelters and cramped quarters in southern Gaza, systematically targeted by the Israeli army, and later into makeshift shelters.
38. Israel’s assault has decimated Gaza’s already fragile healthcare system. Hospitals, also sheltering displaced Palestinians, have been overwhelmed. By deliberately targeting
hospitals, air and ground attacks gradually turned them into death zones. Israeli soldiers have occupied hospitals, encircling them with tanks and (drone-)snipers. By 12 February, only 11 of 36 hospitals and 17 percent of primary healthcare centres were functioning, only partially. Israeli soldiers have arrested, mistreated and tortured medical staff, patients and displaced people, and forced them – even premature babies – out of hospitals, in some cases causing the death of babies. The doctors who remained have worked night and day, making “impossible decisions” on patients to treat based on chance of survival.
39. Ground invasion and aerial bombardment have destroyed agricultural land, farms, crops, animals and fishing assets, gravely undermining people’s livelihoods, the environment and agricultural system.
40. From 8–21 October, Israel impeded the entry of any aid into Gaza, subsequently allowing woefully inadequate amounts, largely confined to the south. No fuel supplies were delivered until 18 November. In January, Israel-led attacks against UNRWA, the main agency providing a lifeline of support in Gaza, resulted in several States suspending payments to UNRWA, further aggravating the humanitarian situation.
41. By 7 December, over 90 percent of Gaza residents were suffering from severe food insecurity. By February 2024, Palestinians trapped in northern Gaza resorted to animal feed and grass for sustenance, with deaths by starvation on the rise. Between mid-January and the end of February, the UN recorded numerous attacks against Palestinians seeking aid.
42. The supply of water was also severely affected. Fuel scarcity hampered water sanitation, driving people to use water contaminated by sewage, solid waste and seawater.
43. The impact of these conditions on children is well-known: in Gaza the risk of starvation, with thousands suffering from wasting, is already a tangible horrific reality.
44. These human-made conditions have put at risk an estimated 50,000 pregnant Palestinian women and 20,000 newborn babies, and increased miscarriages by up to 300 percent.
45. Gaza has been completely sacked. Israel’s relentless targeting of all means of basic survival has compromised the ability of Palestinians in Gaza to live on that land. This engineered collapse of life-sustaining infrastructure corresponds to the stated intentions to make Gaza “permanently impossible to live in” where “no human being can exist”.
V. Genocidal Intent
46. The definition of genocide requires the commission of any of the listed acts with a specific intent. It must be established that the perpetrator, by committing one or more of the prohibited acts, seeks to achieve the total or partial destruction of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such. This intent must be established either through direct or indirect evidence.
47. As genocide is an organized crime, the commission of which invariably implies a collective dimension, evidence of a state plan, including through statements and declarations by state officials, is usually decisive in establishing direct intent.
48. Proof of indirect intent can be inferred from facts or circumstances, including the overall context of the acts or omissions, scale of atrocities, systematic targeting of victims based on their affiliation with a particular group, perpetration of other “culpable acts” directed against the group, or repetition of destructive and discriminatory acts. The ICC requires that such facts or circumstances take “place in the context of a manifest pattern of similar conduct directed against the group or... conduct that could itself effect such destruction”. International tribunals have also established that indirect intent can consist of a manifest pattern of similar conduct over time. The systematicity with which genocidal acts are committed implies a degree of “preconceived plan or policy”.
49. The nature and scale of the atrocities, if demonstrably capable of achieving the genocidal outcome, are strong evidence of intent. The words of state authorities, including dehumanizing language, combined with acts, are considered a circumstantial basis from which intent can be inferred. Dehumanization can be understood as foundational to the process of genocide. Evidence of context may help determine the intent, and must be considered with the actual conduct: intent should be evident above all from words and deeds, and “patterns of purposeful action”, such that no other inference can be reasonably drawn.
50. In the latest Gaza assault, direct evidence of genocidal intent is uniquely present. Vitriolic genocidal rhetoric has painted the whole population as the enemy to be eliminated and forcibly displaced. High-ranking Israeli officials with command authority have issued harrowing public statements evincing genocidal intent, including as follows:
(a) President Isaac Herzog stated that “an entire nation out there...is responsible” for the 7 October attack, and that Israel would “break their backbone”;
(b) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to Palestinians as “Amalek” and “monsters”. The Amalek reference is to a biblical passage in which God commands Saul “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass”.
(c) Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant referred to Palestinians as “human animals”, and announced “full offense” on Gaza, having “released all the restraints”, and that “Gaza will never return to what it was”;
(d) IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari stated that focus should be on causing “maximum damage”, demonstrating a strategy of disproportionate and indiscriminate violence;
(e) Minister of Agriculture Avi Dichter referred to Israel’s action as “the Gaza Nakba”;
(f) Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu called for striking Gaza with “nuclear bombs”;
(g) Likud MK Revital Gottlieb wrote on her social media: “Bring down buildings!! Bomb without distinction!!...Flatten Gaza. Without mercy! This time, there is no room for mercy!”.
51. Such calls for annihilatory violence directed at troops on duty, constitute strong evidence of direct and public incitement to commit genocide. Decades of discourse dehumanizing Palestinians have prepared the groundwork for such incitements.
52. Since 7 October, the proliferation of statements inciting genocide have also involved several sectors of Israeli society, religious leaders, journalists, artists, and various professionals (including doctors and political commentators).
53. There is cogent evidence that these statements have been internalized and acted upon by troops on the ground. Israeli soldiers have, including on social media channels run by the Israeli military, referred to Palestinians as “terrorists”, “roaches”, “rats”, and have
repeated terms articulated by political leaders, chanting that “there are no ‘uninvolved civilians’”, while also calling for the building of settlements in Gaza, “occupy[ing] Gaza... wip[ing] off the seed of Amalek”, boasting about killing “families, mothers, and children”, humiliating detained Palestinians, detonating dozens of homes, destroying entire residential neighbourhoods, and desecrating cemeteries and places of worship.
54. Israel’s Prime Minister and President have stated that Israel was fighting on behalf of “all civilized states and... peoples”, “a barbarism that has no place in the modern world,” that they “will uproot evil and it will be good for the entire region and the world”. This racist rhetoric echoes that of other colonial powers, and tries to construe Israel’s genocidal violence as legitimate in light of Palestinians’ alleged “barbarian” and “premodern” character.
VI. Humanitarian camouflage: distorting the laws of war to conceal genocidal intent
55. A core feature of Israel’s conduct since 7 October has been the intensification of its de-civilianization of Palestinians, a protected group under the Convention. Israel has used IHL terminology to justify its systematic use of lethal violence against Palestinian civilians as a group and the extensive destruction of life-sustaining infrastructures. Israel has done this by deploying IHL concepts such as human shields, collateral damage, safe zones, evacuations and medical protection in such a permissive manner so as to gut these concepts of their normative content, subverting their protective purpose and ultimately eroding the distinction between civilians and combatants in Israeli actions in Gaza.
56. Official statements have translated into military conduct that repudiates the very notion of civilian protection. Israel has thus radically altered the balance struck by IHL between civilian protection and military necessity, as well as the customary rules of distinction, proportionality and precaution. This has obscured one cardinal tenet of IHL: indiscriminate attacks, which do not distinguish military targets from protected persons and objects, cannot be proportionate and are always unlawful.
57. On the ground, this distortion of IHL articulated by Israel as a state policy in its official documents, has transformed an entire national group and its inhabited space into a destroyable target, revealing an eliminationist conduct of hostilities. This has had devastating effects, costing the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, destroying the structural fabric of life in Gaza and causing irreparable harm. This illustrates a clear pattern of conduct from which the requisite genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference to be drawn.
A. Human Shields and the logic of genocide
58. IHL strictly prohibits the use of human shields. Their use constitutes a war crime, as it violates the duty to protect the civilian population from dangers arising from military operations. When human shields are used, the attacking party must take into account the risk to civilians. Indiscriminate or disproportionate harm to civilians remains unlawful and the civilian population can never be targeted.
59. Israel has accused Palestinian armed groups of deliberately using civilians as human shields in previous aggressions on Gaza (including in 2008-09, 2012, 2014, 2021 and 2022). It also used it to justify high civilian casualties and attacks against paramedics, journalists and others during the 2018–2019 ‘Great March of Return’. UN independent fact-finding missions and reputable human rights organizations have consistently challenged these allegations, sometimes concluding that evidence of human shields had been fabricated. Nevertheless, Israel has used these accusations – sometimes then retracted – to justify widespread and systematic killing of Palestinian civilians in its ongoing assault.
60. After 7 October, this macro-characterization of Gaza’s civilians as a population of human shields has reached unprecedented levels, with Israel’s top-ranking political and military leaders consistently framing civilians as either Hamas operatives, “accomplices”, or human shields among whom Hamas is “embedded”. In November, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs defined “the residents of the Gaza Strip as human shields” and accused Hamas of using “the civilian population as human shields”. The Ministry defines armed groups fighting from urban areas as deliberately “embedded” in the population to such an extent that it “cannot be concluded from the mere fact that seeming ‘civilians’ or ‘civilian objects’ have been targeted, that an attack was unlawful”. Two rhetorical elements of this key legal policy document indicate the intention to transform the entire Gaza population and its infrastructures of life into a ‘legitimate’ targetable shield: the use of the all-encompassing the combined with the quotation marks to qualify civilians and civilian objects. Israel has thus sought to camouflage genocidal intent with humanitarian law jargon.
61. International law does not permit the blanket claim that an opposing force is using the entire population as human shields en bloc. Any such usage must be assessed and established on a case-by-case basis before each individual attack. The crime of using human shields occurs when the use of civilians or civilian objects to impede attacks on lawful targets is the result of a deliberate tactical choice, not merely arising from the nature of the battlefield, such as hostilities in densely populated urban terrain.
62. Nevertheless, Israeli authorities have characterized churches, mosques, schools, UN facilities, universities, hospitals and ambulances as connected with Hamas to reinforce the perception of a population characterized as broadly ‘complicit’ and therefore killable. Significant numbers of Palestinian civilians are defined as human shields simply by being in “proximity to” potential Israeli targets. Israel has thus transformed Gaza into a “world without civilians” in which “everything from taking shelter in hospitals to fleeing for safety is declared a form of human shielding”. The accusation of using human shields has thus become a pretext, justifying the killing of civilians under a cloak of purported legality, whose all-enveloping pervasiveness admits only of genocidal intent.
B. Turning Gaza as a whole into a ‘military objective’
63. International law stipulates that attacks must be “strictly limited” to those objects which “by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action”, whose “total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization” in the circumstances ruling at the time “must offer a definite military advantage”.
64. Israel has misused this rule to “militarize” civilian objects and whatever surrounds them, justifying their indiscriminate destruction. According to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “many ostensibly civilian objects may become legitimate targets”, losing their protection under IHL or become “collateral” damage as a result of Hamas’s choice. Gaza’s civilian population and infrastructure are presented as obstructions positioned amongst, in front of and above targets. Instead of abiding by circumstantial status determinations in line with IHL for each attack undertaken, as is required, Israel has characterized the whole territory as a military objective.
65. Protected civilian objects can lose their immunity from attacks if and for as long as they are used by combatants in hostilities. However, Israel considers any object that has allegedly been or might be used militarily as a legitimate target, so that entire neighbourhoods can be razed or demolished under fictions of legality. In Israel’s logic, civilian objects, such as houses and apartments, become military objectives by proximity, as if the status of ‘lawful’ target spread through a vicinity by ‘viral contagion’. For example, residential tower blocks, each comprising dozens of floors and hundreds of (functionally separate and autonomously usable) flats, purportedly become military objectives in their entirety if a single flat or room had allegedly been used by armed groups.
66. Paradigmatic examples are referred to as “power targets”, encompassing any civilian object, including residential buildings, under the pretext that “Hamas is everywhere in Gaza”. Entire multi-storey buildings have been levelled while full of civilians, knowingly killing hundreds in single strikes. The attack on the Al-Taj tower in Gaza City, bombed on 25 October, killed 101 people, including 44 children and 37 women, and injured hundreds.
67. Israel has thus de facto abolished the distinction between civilian objects and military objectives. In the offensive’s first three weeks, entire residential areas across northern Gaza were erased. Meanwhile, neighbourhoods in ‘safe areas’ in the south were already being bombarded. By November, the devastation of cities in northern Gaza far exceeded that of Dresden in 1945.
68. Rationalizing patterns of attacks on civilian objects, knowingly killing civilians en masse, has become a military strategy premised upon probable war crimes presented as IHL- abiding. This strategy reasonably and solely infers a genocidal policy.
C. Indiscriminate killing as “collateral damage”
69. Israel has also sought to provide legal cover for indiscriminate attacks by misusing the notion of ‘collateral damage’, unlimitedly expanding what can be considered ‘incidental civilian harm’. Examples of indiscriminate attacks include attacks that by any methods or means strike multiple lawful targets at once in areas with high concentrations of civilians or civilian objects. To justify killing members of the protected group, Israel has defended such actions as causing only incidental harm to civilians, proportionate to concrete and direct military advantages anticipated.
70. Invoking the concept of ‘proportionate collateral damage’ to knowingly shell large numbers of members of the protected group, Israel asserts that when attacks result in more collateral damage than expected, this does not necessarily indicate a violation, since “compliance is conduct-oriented, not result-oriented”.
71. However, in all attacks launched against residential towers without warnings, extensive civilian harm has been anticipated as the main outcome. The Al-Taj building was full of families at the time of the 31 October strike, which must have been anticipated as certainly killing or injuring all the civilians living there. The fact that so many people were killed was entirely predictable – hence at least indirectly intended – as is evident from the images that the Israeli military itself published. The attack on the Jabalia refugee camp on 25 October killed at least 126 civilians, including 69 children, and injured a further 280.234 Israeli military personnel affirmed that the target was one Hamas commander in an underground base.
72. For a proportionality assessment to be lawful, the principle of distinction must first be respected, otherwise the civilian harm anticipated from an attack ceases to be an incidental, unintended consequence of the attack itself. While both indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks appear to have been committed systematically and repeatedly throughout the latest Israeli campaign, the fact that both types of unlawful attacks have been consistently deemed by Israel as lawful suggests that it operates under a policy of condoning mass killing.
73. Under IHL, the concrete and direct military advantage expected from a single attack must be weighed against the foreseeable incidental harm to civilians and civilian objects. However, in its strained proportionality assessments, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that “military advantage [...] may refer to the military advantage anticipated” not from a specific military action but “from an operation as a whole”, alluding to the overall purpose of the war.
74. Israel’s proportionality assessments have flouted legal requirements by defining military advantage, in each attack, in relation to the destruction of the whole Hamas organization both politically and militarily. It is manifestly illegal to declare as a war aim the destruction of the other side’s political capacity (particularly in the context of a 56-year military occupation which deprives the occupied population of its right to self- determination). But when such an overall ‘political’ war purpose is taken as the value against which proportionality is to be measures in relation to anticipated harm to civilians, there is virtually no magnitude of expected civilian harm that could ever be considered “excessive” so long as the unlawful political objective, as defined by the attacker, is not met. In this context, the indiscriminate killing of protected persons and destruction of protected objects will always be represented, by the attacker, as “proportionate” incidental harm despite its manifest illegality.
75. Presenting indiscriminate lethal violence against the protected group as a ‘proportionate means’ to pursue the war aims points to an intent to target the Palestinian population as a whole, consistent with the genocidal statements announcing the campaign. In other words, Israel appears to represent itself as conducting a ‘proportionate genocide’.
D. Evacuations and safe zones
76. Under IHL, parties to the conflict must evacuate the civilian population and remove civilian objects from the vicinity of military objectives. Evacuations are admissible, as long as they do not displace the protected persons outside the occupied territory; evacuated persons must be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased. The displaced, wounded and sick should be protected through the creation of “hospital and safety zones” – also called “safe areas” or “safe zones” – which shall “be far removed from military operations” and established through agreement between the parties.
77. The mass evacuation order of 13 October – when 1.1 million Palestinians were ordered to evacuate northern Gaza in 24 hours to Israeli-designated “safe zones” in the south– was communicated through at least 23 different airdropped leaflets, social media postings, text messages and recorded phone messages. Instead of increasing safety for civilians, the sheer scale of evacuations amidst an intense bombing campaign, and the haphazardly communicated safe zones system, along with extended communications blackouts, increased levels of panic, forced displacement and mass killing.
78. Immediately after the 13 October evacuation orders and the transformation of southern Gaza into an ostensible “safe zone”, Israel illegally categorized the inhabitants of northern Gaza who had remained (including the sick and wounded) as “human shields” and “accomplices” of terrorism. This policy points to the intention by Israel to ‘transform’ hundreds of thousands of civilians into ‘legitimate’ military targets or collateral casualties through impossible-to-follow evacuation orders. The mass evacuation order included a staggering 22 hospitals in the area, putting at risk more than 2,000 patients and displaced people sheltering in the hospitals, and depriving those remaining of life-sustaining services.
79. The erasure of civilian protections in the evacuated area was combined with indiscriminate targeting of evacuees and inhabitants of the areas designated as safe zones. Since the beginning of its assault, Israel has perfidiously bombarded the designated ‘safe’ areas causing significant casualties. Of the roughly 500 2,000-pound bombs dropped by Israel in the first six weeks of hostilities, 42 percent were deployed in the designated safe zones in southern areas. Israel targeted southern Gaza also with other munitions from air, sea and land, causing large-scale destruction of civilian areas in the “safe zones”.
80. By 28 October, two weeks after Israel’s mass evacuation order, about 38 percent of killings in Gaza occurred in the declared safe areas south of Wadi Gaza. By 20 November, 34 percent of all Palestinians killed in Gaza were in this area, and by 22 January, 42 percent were located in the area, which by then held the majority of the Gaza population. Simply put, “safe areas” were deliberately turned into areas of mass killing.
81. Similar patterns emerge from Israel’s militarization of the “humanitarian corridors” it instructed the population to use in order to evacuate and reach the safe areas. In contrast with the humanitarian rhetoric through which these “safe routes” were announced, these corridors were systematically and perfidiously targeted by bombardment, shelling and sniper fire, becoming ‘death corridors’. Israel set up checkpoints for facial scans and identity checks, where fleeing Palestinians were often detained and later mistreated and tortured.
82. By the end of November, the Palestinian death toll reached 15,000. Responding to mounting international criticism, the Israeli military reconfigured its evacuation mechanisms, introducing a new “humanitarian” tool: the “evacuation grid”. The army published on social media a grid map dividing Gaza into 600 blocks and indicating areas to be “evacuated” and “safe” areas. The system – introduced when the army had cut off Gaza from all forms of communication – threw residents into panic, increasing the level of chaos and, subsequently, the number of deaths. From early December, Israel routinely ordered Palestinian civilians in the areas south of Wadi Gaza to move to new zones designated as safe according to the grid. Immediately afterwards, the army targeted these “safe zones”.
83. From the end of December to February, Israel intensified its offensive in the ‘safe areas’ of Al Muwasi and Rafah, which were sheltering the majority of the displaced population. These assaults continued even after the ICJ ordered Israel to “take[s] all measures within its power” to prevent genocide. Instead, by February Israel had killed a further 3,135 Palestinians, many of whom while seeking refuge.
84. By the beginning of February, 1.4 million Palestinians had been displaced to Rafah, rendering that governorate the most overcrowded in Gaza with “an average density of over 22,200 per square kilometre, five times its pre-conflict levels”. Continuous bombardment of these “safe areas” targeted premises hosting displaced people and medical facilities.
85. Just as the evacuations and safe zones were being implemented, high-ranking Israeli officials advocated for settler colonial replacement. Israel’s Prime Minister advocated for ethnic transfer; Israel’s Finance Minister expressed support for expelling two million Palestinians from Gaza; Israel’s Minister of National Security declared the war to be an opportunity to “concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza”, while other cabinet ministers advocated to “resettle” Palestinians into the Sinai, Western countries, and elsewhere. Israel’s Minister of Communications revealed that the expulsion of the evacuated Palestinians outside Gaza was discussed “at government meetings”. On 12 January, a conference for the re-colonization of Gaza and the expulsion of Palestinians was attended by Israeli ministers.
86. The pattern of killings of civilians who evacuated to the south, in combination with statements of some senior Israelis declaring an intent to forcibly displace Palestinians outside Gaza and replace them with Israeli settlers, lead to reasonably infer that evacuation orders and safe zones have been used as genocidal tools to achieve ethnic cleansing.
E. Medical Shielding
87. A final layer of Israel’s “humanitarian camouflage” concerns its efforts to provide legal cover for systematic attacks against medical facilities and personnel, causing the progressive collapse of Gaza’s healthcare sector. Targeting medical facilities while accusing the enemy of shielding within them had already been employed by Israel as a strategy of “medical lawfare” in previous wars. In the current assault, Israel has invoked this legal strategy to justify genocide through the complete destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure.
88. Civilian healthcare is specially protected under international law: there is a high threshold for the protected status of civilian medical units to be lost. International law protects hospitals while prohibiting their use for military purposes or as shields for military activities, such as positioning military targets in their proximity. Since the beginning of the hostilities, Israel has framed Gaza’s hospitals as Hamas “headquarters” and spaces used for shielding military activities, aiming to blur the distinction between civilian and military objects, transforming hospitals into “hospital shields”, and legitimizing the destruction of Gaza’s entire healthcare sector.
89. In November 2023, Al Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza was hosting tens of thousands of displaced people – when it was besieged and invaded. On 27 October, the Israeli military published a 3D video representing the hospital’s underground as a complex network of tunnels functioning as a “Hamas command centre”. On 2 November, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a legal document designating the hospital as a military centre concealing military assets. The hospital was then placed under siege and invaded in mid-November, with Israel accusing Hamas of using medical personnel as “human shields”. After days of attacks, the hospital was turned into a “death zone”; five newborn babies and 14 patients were injured; at least 31 people were killed, and parts of the hospital turned into mass graves.
90. Media reports challenged Israel’s allegations that Hamas were using hospitals as shields, asserting that there was no evidence to suggest that the rooms connected to the hospital had been used by Hamas; the hospital buildings (contrary to Israeli military 3D images) were found not to be connected to the tunnel network; and there was no evidence that the tunnels were accessible from the hospital wards. In addition, Israeli army reportedly rearranged weaponry at the Al Shifa before news crews visits, raising further suspicions of fabrication after the Israeli army had claimed that a “list of terrorists” it had found in another Gaza hospital–the Al Rantisi–turned out to be a calendar of the days of the week in Arabic. Whether or not Israel’s accusations of hospital shielding at Al Shifa were true – but still remain to be proven –, the civilians in the hospitals should have been protected and not subjected to siege and military attack.
91. That the intent behind Israel’s “humanitarian camouflage” in this instance can only be characterized as genocidal is clear for two reasons. First, Israel was aware of the large-scale destruction of the healthcare system since the World Health Organization had reported in mid-November that a “public health catastrophe” was developing in Gaza, with 26 of 35 hospitals no longer operational due to Israel’s bombing and siege. Second, Israel knew that its military operation was resulting in a significant number of wounded. Physical trauma constitutes the most predominant cause of excess mortality in Gaza. It was predictable that forcibly suspending services at the largest hospital in Gaza would seriously harm the prospects for survival of the injured, the chronically ill and newborn babies in incubators. Therefore, by targeting Al Shifa Hospital, Israel knowingly condemned thousands of sick and displaced people to preventable suffering and death.
92. The reliance on the strategy of treating hospitals as medical shields, disregarding their function as indispensable hubs of societal survival for the thousands injured and many more seeking shelter, exposes yet another aspect of the genocidal logic underpinning Israel’s military strategy.
VII. Conclusions
93. The overwhelming nature and scale of Israel's assault on Gaza and the destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group. This report finds that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the following acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has been met: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to groups’ members; and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. Genocidal acts were approved and given effect following statements of genocidal intent issued by senior military and government officials.
94. Israel has sought to conceal its eliminationist conduct of hostilities sanctioning the commission of international crimes as IHL-abiding. Distorting IHL customary rules, including distinction, proportionality and precautions, Israel has de facto treated an entire protected group and its life-sustaining infrastructure as ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorist-supporting’, thus transforming everything and everyone into either a target or collateral damage, hence killable or destroyable. In this way, no Palestinian in Gaza is safe by definition. This has had devastating, intentional effects, costing the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians, destroying the fabric of life in Gaza and causing irreparable harm to its entire population.
95. Israel’s genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a long- standing settler colonial process of erasure. For over seven decades this process has suffocated the Palestinian people as a group – demographically, culturally, economically and politically –, seeking to displace it and expropriate and control its land and resources. The ongoing Nakba must be stopped and remedied once and for all. This is an imperative owed to the victims of this highly preventable tragedy, and to future generations in that land.
VIII. Recommendations
96. The Special Rapporteur urges member states to enforce the prohibition of genocide in accordance with their non-derogable obligations. Israel and those states that have been complicit in what can be reasonably concluded to constitute genocide must be held accountable and deliver reparations commensurate with the destruction, death and harm inflicted on the Palestinian people.
97. The Special Rapporteur recommends that member states:
(a) Immediately implement an arms embargo on Israel, as it appears to have failed to comply with the binding measures ordered by the ICJ on 26 January 2024, as well as other economic and political measures necessary to ensure an immediate and lasting ceasefire and to restore respect for international law, including sanctions;
(b) Support South Africa having resort to the UNSC under article 94(2) of the UN Charter following Israel’s non-compliance with the above-mentioned ICJ measures;
(c) Act to ensure a thorough, independent and transparent investigation of all violations of international law committed by all actors, including those amounting to war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide, including:
(i) cooperating with international independent fact-finding/ investigative and accountability mechanisms;
(ii) referring the situation in Palestine to the ICC immediately, in support of its ongoing investigation;
(iii) discharging their obligations under the principles of universal jurisdiction, ensuring genuine investigations and prosecutions of individuals who are suspected of having committed, or aided or abetted, in the commission of international crimes, including genocide, starting with their own nationals;
(d) Ensure that Israel, as well as States who have been complicit in the Gaza genocide, acknowledge the colossal harm done, commit to non-repetition, with measures for prevention, full reparations, including the full cost of the reconstruction of Gaza, for which the establishment of a register of damage with an accompanying verification and mass claims process is recommended;
(e) Within the General Assembly, develop a plan to end the unlawful and unsustainable status quo constituting the root cause of the latest escalation, which ultimately culminated in the Gaza genocide, including through the reconstitution of the UN Special Committee against Apartheid to comprehensively address the situation in Palestine, and stand ready to implement diplomatic, economic and political measures provided under the United Nations Charter in case of non-compliance by Israel;
(f) In the short term and as a temporary measure, in consultation with the State of Palestine, deploy an international protective presence to constrain the violence routinely used against Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory;
(g) Ensure that UNRWA is properly funded to enable it to meet the increased needs of Palestinians in Gaza.
98. The Special Rapporteur calls on the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to enhance its efforts to end the current atrocities in Gaza, including by promoting and accurately applying International Law, notably the Genocide Convention, in the context of the oPt as a whole.
Escapábamos todos los días de esa mano invisible que te persigue por todas partes, esa mano de no saber si eres de aquí o de allá, si eres cristiano o budista, si ya te han bautizado o no, si ya te confesaste o no, si ayer hiciste el amor y alguno te dibujó animalitos dulces en la mitad de tu cuerpo, si en la mañana te besaron con los ojos cerrados, esa mano de no acordarte del olor de tu mierda mientras cagas en el baño y fumas un cigarrillo y piensas que cuando se extinga el cigarrillo se acabarán los problemas
y claro, saldrás a un cine de Chapinero a ver una película de
Bronson o Bruce Lee y conocerás en el centro de la penumbra a una chica de nombre invisible, de olor invisible, de teticas invisibles y luego la llevarás a un bar y le dirás I wanna be
your man I wanna be your man y la besarás con los ojos cerrados y sentirás que todas las estrellas del cielo pueblan tus
manos y luego en la 57 entras con ella a un motel, enciendes el
canal porno y le dices que los condones Cosmos son los mejores I wanna be your man y puta vida le metes la lengua por
todas partes, le partes en pedacitos el corazón con tus dientes, recorres su cuerpo con tus dedos, lentamente, le susurras
palabritas al oído coñito delicioso como el chocolate chiclecito sabroso y después salen del motel caminan de nuevo por
Chapinero, comentan las patadas de Bruce Lee y se despiden
en la 60 con un besito amargo y cada uno coge por su lado,
tú hacia Lourdes, ella hacia la Caracas y tu corazón se llena de
humo, tu corazón se va invadido por todo ese ruido de los buses que se te mete por los pies y te hace estallar la cabeza en
mil pequeños infiernos y te das cuenta de que estás en el punto de partida, te das cuenta de que no eres más que el reflejo
difuso de ti mismo en las vidrieras de Chapinero mientras fumas y piensas en esos besos anónimos que te dan una tarde
cualquiera en una cama, en una esquina, esos besitos remotos
que te hacen sentir a la vez liviano y pesado, atroz y apretado,
esas babitas que se pegan al olor del día, esas babitas que por
un instante, solo por un instante, no te hacen sentir un cualquiera, esas babitas que te hacen caminar un centímetro más
arriba del pavimento y mierda, vuelves a sentir esa mano de
no saber si tu casa queda debajo de un puente o en la comisaría, esa mano de no saber si es viernes o es sábado, si los cigarrillos se acabaron, esa mano de no saber si todavía queda en
alguna parte de la ciudad una taza de café caliente para ti.
~Rafael Chaparro.
I thought I had visited every parish church in East Kent, and seen inside almost all of them too, so my focus is no points north and west.
And then travelling back home from an orchid hunt a few weeks back, I was driving through West Langdon and I saw a dead end lane on the right with the name Church lane.
Now, I may not be the brightest, but a road called Church Lane probably leads to a church, or did. So, the next week I went hunting.
The lane ends in the yard of a farm, and the small church sits on the left hand side, clinging to the side of a down.
It is a Victorian building, and was not open, nor it seems able to provide details of a keyholder.
I walked round the church, took a few shots of the well-knapped walls.
And left.
Another one for heritage weekend.
The church was built in 1869 to replace the ruinous medieval building.
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WEST LANGDON.
THE next parish northward is West Langdon, which takes its name from the long down or ridge of hills on which it is situated; and to distinguish it from the adjoining parish of East Langdon, in the hundred of Corniloe, and it is sometimes written in old records Monken Langdon, from the monastery formerly situated within it. The manors of Norborne and East Langdon claim over some parts of this parish.
THIS PARISH is situated among the high hills and wide capacious valleys of this part of Kent, and like the rest of the neighbouring parishes is mostly open and uninclosed, having no wood, and but little shelter within it; the soil is like that of the adjoining parish of Whitfield, chalky and poor. It is but small, containing about six hundred acres; the church which is in ruins, with about tweleve houses, forming the village, stands round a green of about an acre in compass, in the middle of the parish. About a quarter of a mile eastward from which are the ruins of the abbey, and the house called the Abbey farm, which latter was modernized and new fronted with brick by the Thornhills; but it appears now to be again falling to decay.
THE MANOR OF WEST LANGDON was antiently part of those lands which made up the barony of Averenches, alias Folkestone, of which it was antiently held by knight's service and ward to the castle of Dover, by the family of Auberville, or De Albrincis, as they were written in Latin deeds, whose capital seat was at Westenhanger; one of them, Sir William de Auberville, senior, resided there in king Richard I.'s reign, and held this manor as above-mentioned; and having in the fourth year of it, anno 1192, founded within this manor AN ABBEY of white canons of the Premonstratensian order, brought hither from Leyston, in Suffolk, in honour of the blessed Virgin Mary and St. Thomas the Martyr, of Canterbury, he gave this manor, among other lands, as an endowment to it in pure and perpetual alms, free from all secular service and payment, (fn. 1) which foundation and gift was afterwards confirmed by Simon de Auberville, or Albrincis; and in the 30th year of king Edward I. by Sir Nicholas de Criol, great grandson by a female heir of the founder before-mentioned, by which means this abbey from that time came under the patronage and protection of the family of Criol, after which, in the 19th year of king Edward II. Edward, earl of Chester, the king's eldest son, guardian of the kingdom of England, and the king's locum tenens in it, was here at Langedon, on the 3d of August.
But whether the endowment of this abbey was not sufficient for its maintenance as such, so that being unable to support the expence and dignity of an abbot, it seems at times to have discontinued the election of one, and to have remained contented under the government of a prior, as the head of it, and frequently to have been under the estimation of a priory, (as appears by many deeds and instruments at different times relating to it) in like manner as Combwell and many other religious houses elsewhere, in which estate it continued till the final dissolution of it in the 27th gear of king Henry VIII. when the abbot, (for so he is stiled in the instrument of surrender) and religious of this monastery, foreseeing the impending storm to crush them, and knowing themselves culpable of many irregularities, and being besides so artfully managed by the king's commissioners, that they desired to leave their prosession and habit, and to give up their house and possessions to the king, as their founder and patron, on No vember 13, that year, voluntarily surrendered both into his hands, which surrendry was confirmed by the act which passed afterwards that year, by which all religious houses, which were under the clear yearly value of 200l. were suppressed, and this act not only gave those to the king, but all such as within one year next before had been given up to him or otherwise dissolved, this house being at that time of the clear yearly value of 47l. 6s. 10d. and of the gross revenue of 56l. 6s. 9d.
WILLIAM SAYER was the last abbot, who with ten monks, surrendered this abbey into the king's hands. (fn. 2) The arms of the abbey were, Azure, two crosiers in saltier, argent, the dexter crook, or, the sinister, sable.
The manor of West Langdon, with the scite of the abbey, and other lands and possessions belonging to it, remained afterwards in the crown, till the king, in his 29th year, granted the whole of them, excepting the advowsons of churches, and subject to a payment, to the curate of West Langdon, and other payments, to archbishop Cranmer, who not long afterwards exchanged this manor, the scite of the monastery, and all the lands in this parish belonging to it, again with the crown, where they remained, till queen Elizabeth in her 33d year granted this estate to Samuel Thornhill, esq. of London, (fn. 3) in whose descendants it continued, till it was at length alienated to Master, of the adjoining parish of East Langdon, and from that name again about the beginning of queen Anne's reign to Henry Furnese, esq. of London, the son of George, brother of Sir H. Furnese, bart. of Waldershare, who passed it away by sale to Coke, descended from a younger branch of the family seated at Holkham, in Norfolk, and he devised it by will to his brother Edward Coke, esq. afafterwards of Canterbury. He married Catherine, daughter of Sir Thomas Hales, bart. of Bekesborne, by whom he had two daughters his coheirs, Mary married to Sir William Lynch, K. B. of Groves, in this county; and Annette married to Lewis Cage, esq. of Milgate, in Bersted. He died in 1773, and by will gave this estate to his grandson Lewis Cage, esq. jun. since of Combe, in Berstled, the eldest son of Lewis Cage, esq. by Annetta his youngest daughter; Mr. Cage married Fanny, the eldest daughter of the late Sir Brook Bridges, bart. of Goodnestone, by whom he has one daughter; (fn. 4) he is at this time the possessor of this estate. A court baron is held for this manor.
There are no parochial charities. The poor constantly maintained are about five, casually seldom any.
WEST LANGDON is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanry of Sandwich.
The church, which was dedicated to St. Mary, has been long in a ruinated state. In 1660, Sir Thomas Peyton, bart. of Knolton, had a design to repair it, for which purpose he provided a quantity of timber, but in the night the country people stole the whole of it away, and besides took away the pulpit, pews, &c. which had been left standing, out of the church; in which dilapidated situation it still continues. The ruins of it consist of a nave and chancel tolerably entire, excepting the roof. In the chancel is a gravestone, now covered with rubbish, for Sir Timothy Thornhill, once owner of this abbey.
The church of West Langdon was antiently appendant to the manor, and as a such was of the patronage of the abbot and convent of West Langdon, to which it was appropriated, and continued so till the dissolution of it in the 27th year of king Henry VIII. when this church, with the manor, among the rest of the possessions of the abbey, was granted to the archbishop, who, though he not long afterwards exchanged the manor again with the crown, retained this church, among others, in his possession, and it has continued ever since in the patronage of his successors, his grace the archbishop being the present patron of it.
It is valued in the king's books at 6l. 13s. 4d. but since the dissolution of the abbey it has been esteemed only as a curacy, to which the archbishop nominates, and is now of the clear yearly value of sixteen pounds.
The demesnes of the abbey are exempt from the payment of great tithes, but they are charged with the payment of six pounds yearly to the curate.
This curacy has been augmented by the governors of queen Anne's bounty, with the money from which, a small farm of about thirty pounds per annum, lying in this parish, Guston, and Little Mongeham, was purchased for the augmentation of the vicarages of the parishes of West Langdon and Guston. There are three acres of glebe, but no vicarage house.
¶The rectors of the adjoining parish of East Langdon have been for a long time past successively nominated to the several archbishops to this curacy, whose names may be seen under the description of that parish, ThoDelanoy, rector of East Langdon, being the present curate of West Langdon, nominated to it by the archbishop, in 1788.
Title: Doc Savage His Apocalyptic Life
Author: Farmer, Philip Jose 1918-2009
Type: paperback
Publisher: Bantam Q8834
Copyright: 1973, 1975 by author
Pages count: 269
Edition: 1st Bantam edition
Cover artist: not credited
Publication date: July 1975
Cover Price: $1.25
Magazine appearance: not listed
Comments: fictionalized biography of superhero Doctor Clark Savage, Jr.
Culpability: All images are from publications owned by Cadwalader Ringgold /\ Weazel. Image scanning, editing and compiling of bibliographic data was performed by Cadwalader Ringgold /\ Weazel.
TITLE: World That Jones Made
AUTHOR: Philip Kindred Dick 1928-82
TYPE: trade paperback novel
PUBLISHER: Ace F-429
COVER PRICE: $ .40
ISBN:
PAGES: 192
COPYRIGHT: 1956 by author
PUB DATE: 1967
EDITION: 1st Ace pb; prior Ace double
COVER ARTIST: Kelly Freas
ISFDB: Yes
RATING:
NOTATION:
No statement of publication/printing other than the original ©1956.
• The artist is not credited; no visible signature. The ACE Image Library credits Freas
INDEX: 0434 - World That Jones Made - 37 - PKD - IFB
QUOTE “Sometimes I think this planet is under a spell,” Elias said. “We are asleep or in a trance, and something causes us to see what it wants us to see and remember and think what it wants us to remember and think. …”Strange,” Herb Asher said. His business partner said, “Yes, very strange.” The Divine Invasion pg. 169
CULPABILITY: All images posted are from publications owned by RC/\Weazel. RC/\Weazel performed image scanning, editing and the compiling of bibliographic data.
ISFDB: Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base.
RATING: On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being great and 1 don’t read.
NO entry indicates specific information not available from book.
TITLE: Cinnabar
AUTHOR: Edward Bryant
TYPE: paperback Collection Anthology
PUBLISHER: Bantam 10599X
COVER PRICE: $1.50
ISBN: 0-553-10599-x
PAGES: 176
COPYRIGHT: 1976 by author
PUB DATE: August 1977
EDITION:
COVER ARTIST: Lou Feck
ISFDB: Yes
INDEX: 0183 - Cinnabar - 001 - EB - IFB
CONTENTS:
·v • Acknowledgments (Cinnabar) • essay by Edward Bryant
·xi • Introduction: Everyday Life in the City at the Center of Time • (1976) • essay by Edward Bryant
·1 • The Road to Cinnabar • (1971) • shortstory by Edward Bryant
·12 • Jade Blue • (1971) • shortstory by Edward Bryant
·27 • Gray Matters • (1976) • shortstory by Edward Bryant (aka Their Thousandth Season) [as by Edward Bryant ]
·42 • The Legend of Cougar Lou Landis • (1973) • shortstory by Edward Bryant
·58 • Hayes and the Heterogyne • (1974) • novelette by Edward Bryant
·99 • Years Later • (1976) • shortstory by Edward Bryant
·109 • Sharking Down • (1975) • novelette by Edward Bryant
·148 • Brain Terminal • (1975) • novelette by Edward Bryant
QUOTE….“ “On a dreary winter’s day, with the rain sweeping across Lyonesse, Queen Sollace went into labor”.” Jack Vance, The Green Pearl 1st sentence
CULPABILITY: All images posted are from publications owned by RC/\Weazel. RC/\Weazel performed image scanning, editing and the compiling of bibliographic data.
ISFDB: Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base.
RATING: On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being great and 1 don’t read.
NO entry indicates specific information not available from book.
TITLE: Next Stop the Stars
AUTHOR: Robert Silverberg 1935-
TYPE: anthology paperback
PUBLISHER: Ace F145
COVER PRICE: $.40
ISBN:
PAGES: 114
PUB DATE:
EDITION: 1st edition; 1st publication - Ace Double Edition
COPYRIGHT: 1962 Ace Books
COVER ARTIST:
ISFDB: Yes
RATING:
NOTATION:
Cover for Next Stop the Stars is stated "First Book Publication;
Next Stop the Stars 114 pages
Cover art for title is unaccredited and there is no signature visible.
Dedication on title page for Next Stop the Stars is H.L.Gold.
INDEX: 0262 - Next Stop the Stars - 26 - RS - IFB
CONTENTS:
·5 • Slaves of the Star Giants • (1957) • novella by Robert Silverberg
·48 • The Songs of Summer • (1956) • shortstory by Robert Silverberg
·66 • Hopper • (1956) • novelette by Robert Silverberg
·87 • Blaze of Glory • (1957) • shortstory by Robert Silverberg
·102 • Warm Man • (1957) • shortstory by Robert Silverberg
CULPABILITY: All images posted are from publications owned by RC/\Weazel. RC/\Weazel performed image scanning, editing and the compiling of bibliographic data.
ISFDB: Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base.
RATING: On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being great and 1 don’t read.
NO entry indicates specific information not available from book.
QUOTE….““Sometimes I think this planet is under a spell,” Elias said. “We are asleep or in a trance, and something causes us to see what it wants us to see and remember and think what it wants us to remember and think. …”Strange,” Herb Asher said. His business partner said, “Yes, very strange.” from The Divine Invasion by Philip K. Dick
Even at this relatively early stage after the disaster extensive protest graffiti is seen on the perimeter wall of the abandoned factory along Union Carbide Rd.
TITLE: The Integral Tree
AUTHOR: Larry Niven 1938-
TYPE: paperback novel
PUBLISHER: Ballantine 32065/Del Rey Book
COPYRIGHT: 1983 by author
ISBN: 0-345-32065-4
EDITION: 1st paperback
PUB DATE: February 1985
PAGES: 272
COVER PRICE: $3.50
COVER ARTIST: Michael Whelan 1950-
ISFDB: Yes
RATING: not read
Comments: Hard science fiction by master Larry Niven. Nice cover illustration by Whelan. For science buffs 5 pages of tech diagrams.
Culpability: All images are from publications owned by CW. Image scanning, editing and compiling of bibliographic data was performed by CW. No entry indicates information not available from book. ISFDB: Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base. RATING: On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being great and 1 don’t read.
Gravestone for a person who died in the railway disaster at Castlecary in 1937.
Details from Wikipedia
An accident occurred on the evening of 10 December 1937, at Castlecary in Scotland, in snowy weather conditions. Two trains were involved in a collision on the Edinburgh to Glasgow main line of the LNER, killing 35 people.
Details
In a whiteout at 6pm, the 5.30pm Edinburgh Waverley to Glasgow Queen Street commuter express collided with the late running 4.20pm local train from Dundee Tay Bridge to Glasgow Queen Street. The locomotive, LNER Class A3 no. 2744 Grand Parade, hit the rear of the standing local service in Castlecary station at an estimated 70 mph. This location is confined and the rear four coaches disintegrated completely. The engine of the local train, an LNER Class D29 no. 9896 "Dandie Dinmont", was pushed forward 100 yards with the brakes on.
Aftermath
The death toll was 35 (including 7 train crew) and 179 people were hurt, most of them seriously. An eight year old girl was counted as missing. Poignantly some locals swore to seeing the ghost of the girl for many years. The driver of the Edinburgh train was committed to court on a charge of culpable homicide (Scottish equivalent of manslaughter) for supposedly driving too fast in the weather conditions, but the charge was dropped. The Inspecting Officer concluded that it was the signalman who was principally at fault for the disaster. This was Britain's worst snow-related rail crash, others of note being Elliot Junction in 1906 and Abbots Ripton in 1876.
Causes
As mentioned above, whiteout conditions applied and visibility was no more than a few yards. The signalmen on this stretch of line were operating Regulation 5e. This means that a double section has to be clear ahead for a train to be signalled to pass the previous box, Greenhill Junction. A set of points ahead had been blocked by snow. The train from Dundee ran past the Castlecary home signal in poor visibility but managed to stop just beyond it. The Castlecary signalman failed to check its whereabouts and allowed the following Edinburgh express into the section. This also ran past the same signal and collided with the Dundee train. It is believed that the Castlecary distant signal had stuck in the 'off' ('clear') position, so the express took it that the line was now clear, it wasn't until he crossed the viaduct that he saw the home signal at 'danger'. Even a modern day car would not have stopped in the remaining 50 yards to the tail lamp, which was to be flattened.
TITLE: In The Enclosure
AUTHOR: Barry N. Malzberg 1939-
TYPE: paperback Novel
PUBLISHER: Avon 15073
COPYRIGHT: 1973 by author
EDITION: 1st edition
PUB DATE: May 1973
PAGES: 190
COVER PRICE: .95
COVER ARTIST: Lila M. Culhane credited with designed
ISFDB: Yes
RATING: 5
Comments: Strange cover art.
Culpability: All images are from publications owned by CW. Image scanning, editing and compiling of bibliographic data was performed by CW. No entry indicates information not available from book. ISFDB: Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base. RATING: On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being great and 1 don’t read.
Touch of Evil (1958) is an American film considered one of the last examples of film noir in the genre's classic era (from the early 1940s until the late 1950s). It was directed by Orson Welles, who appears as a corrupt U.S. police captain. The black-and-white film also features Charlton Heston as a Mexican police officer, Janet Leigh as his bride, and Marlene Dietrich as a cigar-smoking Gypsy brothel owner. The screenplay, loosely based on the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson (a pseudonym for Robert Wade and William Miller), was written by Welles. Additional scenes were written by Paul Monash, and Franklin Coen.
The movie opens with a famous, three minute continuous tracking shot that to this day is still hailed by critics as one of the best long shots in cinema. This shot shows a man placing a bomb in a car and then the journey of the car to the US/Mexican border crossing. The scene ends with Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston) and Susie Vargas (Janet Leigh), newlyweds, kissing. The scene then cuts to the car, containing a man and a woman, exploding.
Mike Vargas, a police official within the Mexican government, realizes the implications of a Mexican bomb exploding on US soil and begins to investigate. The police chief Pete Gould (Harry Shannon) and district attorney Adair (Ray Collins) arrive shortly on the scene, as well as police Captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) and Quinlan's friend and partner, Pete Menzies (Joseph Calleia).
Over the course of the movie, Vargas finds that Quinlan may have been planting evidence to help win convictions. Susie Vargas is kidnapped and framed for a murder to ruin her husband.
Vargas confronts Menzies about the suspicious fact that so many murders have been solved by Quinlan and Menzies where the defense claims the primary evidence was fabricated. In all those cases, Menzies discovered the evidence. Menzies dismisses Vargas's claim.
Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston) y Susan Vargas (Janet Leigh) son una pareja de recién casados formada por un policía mexicano y su mujer estadounidense, que interrumpen su viaje de luna de miel, después de presenciar en la frontera la explosión de un auto conducido por un mafioso de la droga. El caso lleva al policía Vargas a trabajar en la investigación junto a Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles); un corrupto y obeso jefe de la policía estadounidense, que no duda en fabricar pruebas falsas para acusar a un joven; que él cree culpable de colocar la bomba. Vargas sabe que las pruebas no son reales e inicia su propia investigación, donde descubre que Quinlan y unos mafiosos fronterizos están directamente relacionados con el asesinato.
Susan cae en las manos del grupo de mafiosos fronterizos. La mujer es drogada y usada para desprestigiar al correcto Vargas, con el fin de que este desista de su investigación. Vargas inicia una carrera contra el tiempo; en la que acumula las pruebas suficientes para desenmascarar al sucio jefe Quinlan y así salvar a su esposa. Al final Tanya (Marlene Dietrich) una misteriosa y enigmática gitana; que en el pasado tuvo una relación con Hank Quinlan, presagia el triste y fatídico final de este.
Película dirigida por el estadounidense Orson Welles, para muchos críticos éste es el último gran filme del período clásico del cine negro estadounidense.
Sed de mal significó el regreso de Welles a la producción en Estado Unidos, después de haber rodado tres filmes fuera de su país natal, Macbeth (1947), Otelo (1952) y Mister Arkadin (1955).
El proyecto llegó a manos de Welles en una época en que este no gozaba de buena fama entre los productores de Hollywood, muchos lo consideraban un director difícil; que no era capaz de cumplir con un plan de trabajo. Fue el protagonista Charlton Heston el que logró imponerlo con total libertad creativa. Welles reescribió el guión basado en una novela de Whit Masterson, he inició la grabación al poco tiempo en el pueblo de Venice, California.
La película fue rodada en un riguroso blanco y negro por el director de fotografía Russell Metty, donde el uso de la luz fuerte y los altos contrastes entre sombras y zonas iluminadas ayudan a crear la densa atmósfera del filme.
El largo plano secuencia con el que inicia la película tardó 15 días en llevarse a cabo y se transformó en un plano mítico dentro de la historia del cine.
Ediciones de la película [editar]Después de terminado el rodaje los productores vieron el material y se sorprendieron del camino tomado por el director. Consideraron que la película era demasiado confusa, por lo que reeditaron a espaldas de Orson Welles, que para ese momento se encontraba en España tratando de cumplir su sueño de rodar una adaptación de El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. Este primer corte de los productores fue estrenado en el año 1958 y significó un enorme fracaso comercial y de crítica.
El director lamentó la decisión de los productores e insistió en que, para que la obra pudiese considerarse suya se debían seguirse una serie de indicaciones para realizar un nuevo corte del filme. Las indicaciones para la nueva edición fueron plasmadas por Welles en un documento que dirigió a la Universal, compañía productora de la película. Ese documento sirvió para realizar una nueva versión de Sed de mal; que fue estrenada en DVD en el año 2000, 15 años después de la muerte Welles.
Obtenido de "http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_of_Evil"
Sketches from the courtroom of the first trial of the Baltimore police officers accused of being culpable in the death of Freddie Gray. www.washingtonpost.com/news/drawing-dc-together/
Title: The Big Black Mark
Editor: Chandler, Bertram A. 1912-84
Type: Paperback - novel
Publisher: DAW Books
Publisher No. 139
Copyright:1975 by author
Pages count: 224
Edition: 1st Printing
Cover artist: credited Kelly Freas
Publication date: Feb 1975
Cover Price: 1.25
Comments: DAW Books No.139 is the true first edition. This novel is part of a series detailing the career of John Grimes from ensign in the Galactic federation to admiral. Sound familiar Mr. Hornblower.
Culpability: All images are from publications owned by CW. Image scanning, editing and compiling of bibliographic data was performed by CW.
March for the National Health Service. Shaftesbury Avenue, central London, crossing Cambridge Circus; and heading for Parliament Square..
On the right of the photo a glimpse of Tottenham Labour Party's red and yellow banner.
For the record, and for non-Brits who view my photos, the black and white banner (centre) does not mean that Jeremy Hunt is accused of actually murdering anyone.
Mr Hunt is currently (March 2017) an elected member of the UK Parliament. He is the Government minister (Secretary of State for Health) with responsibility for our National Health Service. So his actions and omissions are matters of politics and policy.
In the opinion of many people, including me, Jeremy Hunt remains culpable for the outcome.
‘The Impundulu is a mythological creature in the folklore of the tribes of the Southern Africa including the Pondo, the Zulu and the Xhosa. The impundulu, which translates as “lightning bird” takes the form of a black and white bird, the size of a human which is said to summon thunder and lightning with its wings and talons.’ [Wikipedia]
The lightning bird is known to have super special powers, and for being generally creepy all round. Among certain African tribes the Hammerkop is believed to be the lightning bird. The creature only manifests itself as a bird to women and, ‘In one instance a village girl described a black bird that ran up her hoe and left claw marks on her body before it flew back to the clouds.’[Wikipedia]
Both the bird and it’s eggs can be found where lightning strikes, and parts are often used in traditional medicine, sometimes to catch thieves. Apparently the lightning bird also enjoys a good blood fest, and can be found sucking on human blood, most notably enemies of the witchdoctor. Yum yum! Of course it is also known to seduce naughty girls :) MissYucki read that “In 2005, a South African man was convicted of culpable homicide after killing a two year old child he believed to be an impundulu.” [Wikipedia]
Más info sobre la convocatoria, aqui >> www.facebook.com/events/1401970900045612
Tu fanzine culpable es el primer paso de una etapa colectiva, el cual mantiene como tema central “ese placer culpable musical que nos da miedo admitir que nos encanta o que simplemente no podemos quitar de nuestras cabezas”.
Esta segunda edición pretende seguir contando con colaboradores logrando que nos muestren sus placeres culpables musicales de la manera mas entretenida posible.
Tu Fanzine Culpable #1 >>
TITLE: Second Book of Fritz Leiber
AUTHOR: Fritz Leiber 1910-92
TYPE: paperback Collection
PUBLISHER: DAW UY1195 No 164
COVER PRICE: $1.25
ISBN:
PAGES: 204
COPYRIGHT: 1975 by author
PUB DATE: Sept 1975
EDITION: 1st printing
COVER ARTIST: Jack Gaughan 1930-85
ISFDB: No
RATING:
NOTATION: DAW Book #164. First printing as per the number line. Stated "DAW Books original".
INDEX: 0315 - Second Book of Fritz Leiber - 08 - FL - DAW - IFB
CONTENTS:
2 • The Second Book of Fritz Leiber (frontispiece) • interior artwork by Jack Gaughan
7 • Foreword (The Second Book of Fritz Leiber) • essay by Fritz Leiber
13 • The Lion and the Lamb • (1950) • novelette by Fritz Leiber
67 • The Mighty Tides • (1961) • essay by Fritz Leiber
74 • Trapped in the Sea of Stars • [Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser] • shortstory by Fritz Leiber
92 • Fafhrd and Me • (1963) • essay by Fritz Leiber
115 • Belsen Express • shortstory by Fritz Leiber
130 • Ingmar Bergman: Fantasy Novelist • (1974) • essay by Fritz Leiber
134 • Scream Wolf • (1961) • shortstory by Fritz Leiber
153 • Those Wild Alien Words: II • essay by Fritz Leiber
162 • The Mechanical Bride • (1954) • shortfiction by Fritz Leiber
182 • Through Hyperspace with Brown Jenkin • (1963) • essay by Fritz Leiber
198 • A Defense of Werewolves • (1948) • essay by Fritz Leiber
QUOTE: The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all. The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces. Even though twenty-four parts in twenty-five of him are dead, he is alive. "Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a fierce host which out-numbers Lankhmar's inhabitants by fifty to one and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city." "How?" demanded Fafhrd. Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know." Fritz Leiber, from "The Swords of Lankhmar"
CULPABILITY: All images posted are from publications owned by RC/\Weazel. RC/\Weazel performed image scanning, editing and the compiling of bibliographic data.
ISFDB: Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base.
RATING: On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being great and 1 don’t read.
NO entry indicates specific information not available from book.
TITLE: Continuum2
SERIES: Continuum
EDITOR: Roger Elwood 1943-2007
TYPE: paperback Anthology
PUBLISHER: Berkley
COVER PRICE: $.95
ISBN: 425-03127-6
PAGES: 186
COPYRIGHT: 1974 by author
PUB DATE: May 1975
EDITION: 2nd printing
COVER ARTIST: Vincent DiFate
ISFDB: Yes INDEX: 0157 - Continuum2 - 002 -RE - IFB
CONTENTS:
·The Legend of Hombas • novelette by Edgar Pangborn
·The Death of Hyle • shortstory by Gene Wolfe
·Passing the Love of Women • [History of Rustum] • novelette by Poul Anderson
·The Fire Fountain • novelette by Gail Kimberly
·Killashandra - Crystal Singer • [Crystal Singer] • novelette by Anne McCaffrey
·The Armageddon Tapes - Tape II • [The Armageddon Tapes] • novelette by Thomas N. Scortia
·Caravans Unlimited: Stability • novelette by Chad Oliver
·Stations of the Nightmare - Part 2: The Startouched • novelette by Philip José Farmer
·Introduction (Continuum 2) • essay by Roger Elwood
QUOTE “Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.” Philip K. Dick
CULPABILITY: All images posted are from publications owned by RC/\Weazel. RC/\Weazel performed image scanning, editing and the compiling of bibliographic data.
ISFDB: Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base.
RATING: On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being great and 1 don’t read.
NO entry indicates specific information not available from book.
Our professional bail bonds agents have worked in the bail bonds industry for over ten years. We understand your predicament. If this is your first arrest, don’t hesitate to call us. We can have you released from jail custody within a matter of hours, depending on circumstances.For more information please visit our site www.mybailbondsdallas.com/
TITLE: The Alien Way
AUTHOR: Gordon R. Dickson 1922-2003
TYPE: paperback Novel
PUBLISHER: Bantam N6658
COPYRIGHT: 1965 by author
EDITION: 2nd Bantam
PUB DATE: July 1973
PAGES: 214
COVER PRICE: .95
COVER ARTIST: not credited
ISFDB: Yes
Comments: Sadly Gordon Dickson’s books are all out of print. He produced numerous high quality novels worth searching for on the secondary markets.
Culpability: All images are from publications owned by CW. Image scanning, editing and compiling of bibliographic data was performed by CW. No entry indicates information not available from book. ISFDB: Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base.
A week or two back a British tourist was observed throwing a cigarette butt out of his car window while parked on Table Mountain. The butt started a fire and the tourist tried to drive off but was stopped by the two rangers that witnessed the cause of the fire. This fire raged, out of control, for several days before firefighters could extinguish it. Houses in some suburbs were threatened but fortunately no houses were burnt. Sadly another British tourist, a 65 year old woman, died from smoke inhalation. The person that started the fire is now on bail, awaiting trial on charges of arson and culpable homicide.
This photograph shows some of the devastation wrought on the fynbos that normally covers the mountainsides.
1. Cataratas Argentina, 2. barcos-ships, 3. Jineteada, 4. Y un día .... NEVO ... en La Plata, 5. Mate-traditional Argentine drink, 6. PUESTA DE SOL - SUNSET, 7. SOL - SUN, 8. BRILLA EL SOL -SUNSHINE,
9. SOL Y SIERRAS- SUN and MOUNTAIN, 10. serie Atardecer, 11. Una flor, 12. Cataratas del Iguazú- Iguazú Falls, 13. reflejos en el mar-reflections in the sea, 14. ATARDECER, 15. ¿ PORQUÉ?....NIÑOS EN LA CALLE -¿WHY? ... KIDS ON THE ROAD, 16. ATARDECER,
17. MAR CHIQUITA- ARGENTINA - enero, 18. bandera y cielo -MUSEO DE LA PLATA - LA PLATA MUSEUM, 19. ATARDECER, 20. MAR CHIQUITA- ARGENTINA - enero, 21. SIERRAS Y GIRASOL- MOUNTAIN AND SUNFLOWER, 22. Arco iris-Raimbow-Cataratas Argentina, 23. MAR CHIQUITA- ARGENTINA - enero, 24. Botnia 1,
25. Un barquito- boat, 26. Ahi está,, 27. SOLO PARA ARGENTINOS-Only for argentineans, 28. SE BUSCA !!! desaparecida-disappeared., 29. atardecer, 30. serie La Doma, 31. atardecer, 32. ATARDECER,
33. Cataratas Iguazú-Iguazú falls, 34. SUERTE *- 2 0 0 8 -* LUCK, 35. ATARDECER, 36. Río de La Plata, 37. Mate-traditional Argentine drink, 38. DOMA, 39. Mi cumpleaños-My birthday, 40. MAR CHIQUITA- ARGENTINA - enero 2007,
41. CATARATAS DEL IGUAZU-IGUAZU FALLS, 42. MAR CHIQUITA- ARGENTINA - enero, 43. Gaviotas en el horizonte- gulls in the horizon, 44. chau vacaciones - bye vacations, 45. VOLVI...., 46. CHAPADMALAL- Mar del Plata, 47. ATARDECER, 48. asi fue el ECLIPSE,
49. ELECCIONES - ELECTIONS, 50. Ruinas de San Ignacio, 51. GARDEL ...TANGO..., 52. Fuera Botnia, 53. Y un día ....Nevó .... en La Plata, 54. día de la MADRE - MOTHER day, 55. Tormenta sobre el mar-Storm on the sea Mar del Plata 20.05.06, 56. FELIZ NAVIDAD-MERY CHRISTMAS,
57. En el día de la Madre ...estamos con Uds., 58. CAMILA, mi nieta -my granddaughter, 59. rugby P U M A S rugby, 60. Flores de Jacaranda- Jacaranda flowers, 61. CARTA A PAPA NOEL - letter to Santa Claus, 62. mirando el río- watching the river, 63. La Catedral - La Plata -Argentina, 64. A media luz.......,
65. atardecer, 66. SOLITARIO MUSICO, 67. La Familia, 68. dia de MADRE - MOTHER day, 69. CULPABLE GENOCIDIO - GUILTY GENOCIDE, 70. Y un día ....nevó.... en La Plata, 71. piedra-granizo, 72. RAYOS DE SOL
Created with fd's Flickr Toys.
hmlaplata@yahoo.com
Don McCullin he is one of my few real heroes in photography. He is one of Britain's most renowned photographers. Here is a link of him speaking about his life in photography at the age of 75. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8492000/8492777.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8492000/8492777.stm)
He is an interesting man (and to quote Lynda) he is so obviously damaged by his experiences. He does not even like to call himself a war photographer when he was certainly one of the worlds leading conflict photographers back in the day.
He is so different from so many photographers and people in photography and journalism in that he does not regard himself as in a special place or as a high and mighty chronicler of events. It seems he almost sees himself as any other human being attending these often appalling man made tragedies . He feels himself sullied by these events almost as if he was no different to a combatant. It appears He feels almost guilty looking at his roll and his pictures. He certainly does not appear to regard himself as the separate chronicler lifted above these events by the moral high ground of his motivation and purpose.
Sometimes that moral certainty that some have can propel those individuals to take risks and really excel in revealing the truth, but it is a peculiar state of mind.
I heard a photographer I actually really admire laying into other press representatives in Haiti because some of them wanted their clothes washed at their hotel. My much admired and distinguished friend was disgusted because there is a water shortage for washing clothes. Its true of course. But there is also a food and drinking water shortage. But not even the most idealistic would expect press people to operate without food and water because many ordinary people are having to do so . So what's the difference with clothes washing or eating and drinking water ? ....... Or even using the sat phone or getting fuel or shelter ? These are all activities and commodities not freely available to the general population of Haiti..... Most press people by necessity and through their relative access to funds and influence have all this and more. So to choose some of these things as OK because you are using them.... and some as morally repugnant...... because you are not using them, is just arbitrary. It is just a judgement call. It's not an absolute of morality. I know it feels uncomfortable but anyone operating in their capacity as a press representative will be traveling and living at a vastly higher standard of life than the locals in any disaster situation, it is inherent to their roll in that situation.
In a way its disingenuous to pretend that you are operating in a morally superior way because you are not doing this or that. The fact is you have arrived from the first world and your task is to convey the reality of a given news story to the people of the first world and while you are there you operate with the advantages of a person from the first world whether or not you deem clothes washing to be essential.
I don't really see a discernible moral difference between any of the first world press people in a disaster situation like Haiti. Some have what they perceive to be a higher moral purpose and motivation....... Some are just doing their jobs........ But it makes no difference to the people of Haiti...... and anyway the guy working the sat dish for the huge TV network is probably having his food and water flown in especially by the network..... The radical photojournalist is more likely to be competing for scarce resources with the locals.
Im not pointing this out to support the network types against the independents......... I am an independent type myself........ but I certainly think we have to be a little careful when we take for granted the moral superiority of our own actions as against the slightly different actions of our colleagues that we view as reprehensible........ after all we ultimately have so much in common with them....... and some of the things that we feel distinguish us from them.......... for the people of Haiti and other disasters .... would be totally indiscernible.......... a distinction without a difference.
Talking of which....... I heard Eamonn McCabe the old picture Editor of the Guardian making a distinction between the way the Guardian carefully and morally chooses its pictures as opposed to how other newspapers choose their pictures from disasters. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8478000/8478314.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8478000/8478314.stm) He also made a distinction between photojournalists and just News Photographers (implying news was more exploitative). In his view news guys turn up for two days only. Whereas true photojournalists are there for weeks. Again this is just an artificial construct. The length of the stay does not determine whether its exploitative/ or news / or photojournalism to make pictures nor does the fact that you did or did not have your clothes washed while you were there.
I think there is something very important about the roll of the photojournalist. Journalism is in my view very important in free societies. I do view it as a moral activity. Still, I don't quite have the moral certainty of some. A certainty that allows me to see my approach as always correct and beyond question or to be judgmental of colleagues in the way they act. But equally I am not quite at the Don McCullin stage where he almost appears not to distinguish himself morally from the combatants in his culpability for the human behavior and war and conflict he has witnessed. In my view his work and his personality, as he appears now, are a lasting testament to his integrity and morality.
Cheers Jez XXXXX
PS............ Here above is a picture I shot in Osijeck in the war between the Serbs and the Craoats in the 1990's. It shows a Croat solidier weeping at the death of a fellow solidier.
A client of ours was requesting it today so Matt had it on the desk top ready to be sent.
PPS......... When Yugoslavia first began to implode I flew to Belgrade to witness tanks on the streets as Milosevich appeared to be about to order his armed forces to battle with students and dissidents who were massed in protest. I was on an almost empty plane beading to Belgrade. Andrew Wiard a fellow photojournalist was on the plane. I went to chat to him. He told me Don McCullin was also on the flight. I was amazed. I knew he was rumored to be coming out of retirement. But I never really thought I would be on a story with my hero Don McCullin. So I went to the back of the plane to find him. I introduced myself. I joking said hey you know you are on the right plane, heading for the right story, if you are on a plane with Don McCullin.......... He said: So you are you going to Kurdistan too?......... hehehe....... of course I was not....... I assumed he was getting off in Belgrade like the rest of us......... but he was flying on to look at Northern Iraq in the aftermath of the Gulf War........ I felt like a bit of an idiot........ :-))
Title: The Lovers
Author: Farmer, Philip Jose 1918-2009
Type: paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books, Inc. 02762-0-125
Copyright: 1961 by author
Pages count: 269
Edition: 2nd printing
Cover artist: not credited
Publication date: June 1972
Cover Price: $1.25
Magazine appearance: brief magazine version appeared in “Startling Stories” 1952. copyright 1952 Better Publications, Inc.
Comments: 1st printing of this title was June 1961
Culpability: All images are from publications owned by Cadwalader Ringgold /\ Weazel. Image scanning, editing and compiling of bibliographic data was performed by Cadwalader Ringgold /\ Weazel.
TITLE: Clans of the Alpha Moon
AUTHOR: Philip Kindred Dick 1928-82
TYPE: paperback novel
PUBLISHER: Ace F-309
COVER PRICE: $ .40
ISBN:
PAGES: 192
COPYRIGHT: 1964 by author
PUB DATE: 1946
EDITION: true 1st edition, 1st printing
COVER ARTIST:
NOTATION:
INDEX: 0129 - Clans of the Alpha Moon 018a - Ace F-309 1st edition - PKD - IFB
QUOTE “This is Managing Director Dill,” the teacher said, “The Coordinating Director of the Unity System.” Managing Director Dill is responsible only to Vulcan 3. No human being except Director Dill is permitted to approach the computer banks. “Mr. Dill,” a girl’s voice came. “Can I ask you something?” “Certainly,” Dill said halting briefly at the classroom door. “Director Dill, don’t you feel ashamed of yourself when you let a machine tell you what to do?”…from Vulcan’s Hammer by Philip K. Dick
CULPABILITY: All images posted are from publications owned by RC/\Weazel. RC/\Weazel performed image scanning, editing and the compiling of bibliographic data.
ISFDB: Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base.
RATING: On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being great and 1 don’t read.
NO entry indicates specific information not available from book.
In 1992 artist Nick Cave sat in a Chicago park, still reeling from news of the Rodney King beating and ensuing Los Angeles riots. Feeling Vulnerable and that he -- like any African American man -- could be targeted, he gathered Sticks from the ground. At the studio, he turned these sticks into his first Soundsuit, a wearable Sculpture and defensive shell. Often seen as a celebration of movement and material, Cave's Soundsuits mask the body, erasing identity. Now, more than twenty years later, Cave takes us inside the belly of one of his iconic sculptures with this immersive installation Until -- a play on the phrase "innocent until proven guilty" or, in this case, "guilty until proven innocent." Cave's work began as a protective response to violence, and, with Until, he tackles the recent deaths of African Americans in the United States -- Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Oscar Grant... the list goes on -- eulogizing these victims while providing a platform for civil discourse, debate, and, ultimately, hope.
Until began with a question Cave asked himself: Is there racism in heaven? Instead of providing a direct answer, Cave offers us an experience. Across this space, visitors traverse a sculptural forest of metallic lawn ornaments --punctuated by images of guns, bullets, and targets, positioning us all as culpable, vulnerable, and potentially under attack --before arriving at a crystal cloud topped by a garden of found ceramic birds, metal flowers, and black-face lawn jockeys. By removing the lawn jockeys (cast-iron figurines and racist remnants) from circulation, Cave transforms them into agents for change, placing beaded nets in their hands as dream catchers. Our journey through Until continues to a cliff wall constructed of millions of woven plastic beads, an immersive video, and a metaphoric cleansing in a Mylar waterfall.
Until is also a site for performances and community engagement, with the immersive installation becoming a stage for testimonials, music, dance, poetry, and discussion. In the end, Cave takes off the protective mask his Soundsuits. Once provided, offering an environment to discuss important issues in a space that is at Once Seductive, provocative, and -- ultimately -- optimistic.
Don McCullin he is one of my few real heroes in photography. He is one of Britain's most renowned photographers. Here is a link of him speaking about his life in photography at the age of 75. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8492000/8492777.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8492000/8492777.stm)
He is an interesting man (and to quote Lynda) he is so obviously damaged by his experiences. He does not even like to call himself a war photographer when he was certainly one of the worlds leading conflict photographers back in the day.
He is so different from so many photographers and people in photography and journalism in that he does not regard himself as in a special place or as a high and mighty chronicler of events. It seems he almost sees himself as any other human being attending these often appalling man made tragedies . He feels himself sullied by these events almost as if he was no different to a combatant. It appears He feels almost guilty looking at his roll and his pictures. He certainly does not appear to regard himself as the separate chronicler lifted above these events by the moral high ground of his motivation and purpose.
Sometimes that moral certainty that some have can propel those individuals to take risks and really excel in revealing the truth, but it is a peculiar state of mind.
I heard a photographer I actually really admire laying into other press representatives in Haiti because some of them wanted their clothes washed at their hotel. My much admired and distinguished friend was disgusted because there is a water shortage for washing clothes. Its true of course. But there is also a food and drinking water shortage. But not even the most idealistic would expect press people to operate without food and water because many ordinary people are having to do so . So what's the difference with clothes washing or eating and drinking water ? ....... Or even using the sat phone or getting fuel or shelter ? These are all activities and commodities not freely available to the general population of Haiti..... Most press people by necessity and through their relative access to funds and influence have all this and more. So to choose some of these things as OK because you are using them.... and some as morally repugnant...... because you are not using them, is just arbitrary. It is just a judgement call. It's not an absolute of morality. I know it feels uncomfortable but anyone operating in their capacity as a press representative will be traveling and living at a vastly higher standard of life than the locals in any disaster situation, it is inherent to their roll in that situation.
In a way its disingenuous to pretend that you are operating in a morally superior way because you are not doing this or that. The fact is you have arrived from the first world and your task is to convey the reality of a given news story to the people of the first world and while you are there you operate with the advantages of a person from the first world whether or not you deem clothes washing to be essential.
I don't really see a discernible moral difference between any of the first world press people in a disaster situation like Haiti. Some have what they perceive to be a higher moral purpose and motivation....... Some are just doing their jobs........ But it makes no difference to the people of Haiti...... and anyway the guy working the sat dish for the huge TV network is probably having his food and water flown in especially by the network..... The radical photojournalist is more likely to be competing for scarce resources with the locals.
Im not pointing this out to support the network types against the independents......... I am an independent type myself........ but I certainly think we have to be a little careful when we take for granted the moral superiority of our own actions as against the slightly different actions of our colleagues that we view as reprehensible........ after all we ultimately have so much in common with them....... and some of the things that we feel distinguish us from them.......... for the people of Haiti and other disasters .... would be totally indiscernible.......... a distinction without a difference.
Talking of which....... I heard Eamonn McCabe the old picture Editor of the Guardian making a distinction between the way the Guardian carefully and morally chooses its pictures as opposed to how other newspapers choose their pictures from disasters. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8478000/8478314.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8478000/8478314.stm) He also made a distinction between photojournalists and just News Photographers (implying news was more exploitative). In his view news guys turn up for two days only. Whereas true photojournalists are there for weeks. Again this is just an artificial construct. The length of the stay does not determine whether its exploitative/ or news / or photojournalism to make pictures nor does the fact that you did or did not have your clothes washed while you were there.
I think there is something very important about the roll of the photojournalist. Journalism is in my view very important in free societies. I do view it as a moral activity. Still, I don't quite have the moral certainty of some. A certainty that allows me to see my approach as always correct and beyond question or to be judgmental of colleagues in the way they act. But equally I am not quite at the Don McCullin stage where he almost appears not to distinguish himself morally from the combatants in his culpability for the human behavior and war and conflict he has witnessed. In my view his work and his personality, as he appears now, are a lasting testament to his integrity and morality.
Cheers Jez XXXXX
PS............ Here above is a picture I shot in Osijeck in the war between the Serbs and the Craoats in the 1990's. It shows a Croat solidier weeping at the death of a fellow solidier.
A client of ours was requesting it today so Matt had it on the desk top ready to be sent.
PPS......... When Yugoslavia first began to implode I flew to Belgrade to witness tanks on the streets as Milosevich appeared to be about to order his armed forces to battle with students and dissidents who were massed in protest. I was on an almost empty plane beading to Belgrade. Andrew Wiard a fellow photojournalist was on the plane. I went to chat to him. He told me Don McCullin was also on the flight. I was amazed. I knew he was rumored to be coming out of retirement. But I never really thought I would be on a story with my hero Don McCullin. So I went to the back of the plane to find him. I introduced myself. I joking said hey you know you are on the right plane, heading for the right story, if you are on a plane with Don McCullin.......... He said: So you are you going to Kurdistan too?......... hehehe....... of course I was not....... I assumed he was getting off in Belgrade like the rest of us......... but he was flying on to look at Northern Iraq in the aftermath of the Gulf War........ I felt like a bit of an idiot........ :-))