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In observance of United Nations Day, a concert of Portuguese-language music is being performed in the General Assembly Hall this afternoon. The concert features Dulce Pontes of Portugal, Tito Paris of the Republic of Cape Verde, and Carlinhos Brown of Brazil. Lisbon television personality Isabel Angelino is acting as emcee.
Marcolino Moco, Executive Secretary of the Community of Portuguese-speaking countries, addressing guests at today's traditional celebration of United Nations Day.
Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
Photo Date: 24/10/1997
NICA ID: 301304
United Nations, New York
My good habit of photographing museum labels deserted me when I was in front of this marvelous piece.
I will return to the museum, retrieve the usual information and report back.
Portland Art Museum
Portland, Oregon
Jean-Yves Le Drian (at lectern), Minister for Foreign Affairs of France and President of the Security Council for October, speaks to journalists following a Security council meeting on the Joint Force of the Group of Five for the Sahel.
UN Photo/Cia Pak
30 October 2017
United Nations, New York
Photo # 740855
Alkalinity is commonly used to indicate a water body’s capacity to buffer against acidity; that is, the ability to resist, or dampen, changes in pH. Thus, alkaline compounds in water, such as bicarbonates, carbonates, and hydroxides, lower the acidity of the water and increase the pH. Alkalinity (as CaCO3) was analysed for all sampling stations available at the continental level. Concentrations remained reasonably steady between the two decades for Africa, Asia, South America and Australasia, but significant increases were noted for European and North American rivers, which may indicate a shift towards reduced acidic impacts at the continental scale. Overall, during the last 30 years , alkalinity has decreased in North America and Europe, but has significantly increased in Asia. Examination of the outflow stations in 82 monitored river basins indicate a decrease in bicarbonate concentrations between the two decades , in the northern latitudes, including North America, Europe and Asia. For the period 1976-1990, European rivers displayed the highest concentrations of calcium at a continental level, with concentrations varying between 2 mg and 50 mg per litre for major rivers. Comparing the two decades, observations of surface water showed an increase in calcium concentrations in the Laurentian shield region of North America, and in the rivers of the north central European region.
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This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: Philippe Rekacewicz, February 2006
Volkan Bozkir (left), President of the seventy-fifth session of the United Nations General Assembly, and Secretary-General António Guterres stands during a moment to collectively reaffirm the commitment to the United Nations Charter during the observance ceremony in commemoration of United Nations Day.
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
26 October 2020
New York, United States of America
Photo # 848954
Picture Of United Nations Building Taken During The 70th General Assembly Held In New York City To Begin During September 28 Thru October 3, 2015. I Just Missed Photographing Pope Francis Leaving The United Nations In His Fiat By A Few Minutes. Pope Francis Was On His Way To Ground Zero By Motorcade. I Would Have Only Gotten A Photo Of The Fiat He Was Riding In. Photo Taken Friday September 25, 2015.
DSC0237
This event saw senior wrestlers from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland compete against each other in a team competition.
It took take place on June 24th at The Academy in Manchester.
Wrestling Academy,
41 Great Clowes Street,
Salford,
Greater Manchester
M7 1RQ
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City
New York City (NYC), often called the City of New York or simply New York (NY), is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2018 population of 8,398,748 distributed over about 302.6 square miles (784 km2), New York is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the U.S. state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass. With almost 20 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and approximately 23 million in its combined statistical area, it is one of the world's most populous megacities. New York City has been described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world, significantly influencing commerce, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, art, fashion, and sports. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.
Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City is composed of five boroughs, each of which is a county of the State of New York. The five boroughs—Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island—were consolidated into a single city in 1898. The city and its metropolitan area constitute the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. New York is home to more than 3.2 million residents born outside the United States, the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world as of 2016. As of 2019, the New York metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of $2.0 trillion. If greater New York City were a sovereign state, it would have the 12th highest GDP in the world. New York is home to the highest number of billionaires of any city in the world.
New York City traces its origins to a trading post founded by colonists from the Dutch Republic in 1624 on Lower Manhattan; the post was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. New York was the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790, and has been the largest U.S. city since 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the U.S. by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the U.S. and its ideals of liberty and peace. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship and environmental sustainability, and as a symbol of freedom and cultural diversity. In 2019, New York was voted the greatest city in the world per a survey of over 30,000 people from 48 cities worldwide, citing its cultural diversity.
Many districts and landmarks in New York City are well known, including three of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions in 2013. A record 62.8 million tourists visited New York City in 2017. Times Square is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District, one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, and a major center of the world's entertainment industry. Many of the city's landmarks, skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattan's real estate market is among the most expensive in the world. New York is home to the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia, with multiple distinct Chinatowns across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service and contributing to the nickname The City that Never Sleeps, the New York City Subway is the largest single-operator rapid transit system worldwide, with 472 rail stations. The city has over 120 colleges and universities, including Columbia University, New York University, Rockefeller University, and the City University of New York system, which is the largest urban public university system in the United States. Manhattan is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, namely the New York Stock Exchange, located on Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, and NASDAQ, headquartered in Midtown Manhattan.
The United Nations joins landmarks around the world as it turns off lights at its New York Headquarters and other locations, in observance of "Earth Hour". The event takes place one week after the vernal equinox, and is organized by the global conservation group the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which asks everyone to turn off their lights for one hour starting at 8:30 p.m. local time, to support action on climate change.
UN Photo/Evan Schneider 2.0
25 March 2017
United Nations, New York
Photo # 718274
Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).
Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions
"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".
The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.
The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.
Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.
Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:
Wet with cool dew drops
fragrant with perfume from the flowers
came the gentle breeze
jasmine and water lily
dance in the spring sunshine
side-long glances
of the golden-hued ladies
stab into my thoughts
heaven itself cannot take my mind
as it has been captivated by one lass
among the five hundred I have seen here.
Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.
Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.
There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.
Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.
The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.
In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:
During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".
Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.
While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’
Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.
An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.
Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983
Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture
Main article: Commercial graffiti
With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.
In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".
Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.
Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.
Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.
Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.
There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.
The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.
Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.
Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis
Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.
Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.
Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"
Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal
In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.
Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.
Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.
Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.
With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.
Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.
Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.
Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.
Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.
Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.
Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.
Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.
The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.
I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.
The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.
Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.
Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.
In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".
There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.
Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.
A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.
By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.
Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.
In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.
A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.
From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.
Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.
Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.
In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.
Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.
In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.
In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."
In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.
In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.
In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.
In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.
In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.
The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.
To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."
In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.
In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.
Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".
Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)
In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.
Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.
Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.
In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.
Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.
Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.
To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.
When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.
C-FJHQ/UN234 de Havilland Canada DHC-7-102 Trans Capital Air. Transit stop at Shannon while being ferried from Aqaba, Jordan to Canada after United Nations service. Shannon Airport 23 March 2014
Secretary-General António Guterres walks to the briefing room to hold a virtual press conference.
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
30 April 2020
United Nations, New York
Photo # 841268
The Nation Centre is a commercial building in the center of Nairobi. It was designed by Henning Larsen Architects and constructed 1992-1997. It stands at 82.9 meters (272 ft). It is the home of one of Kenya's main newspapers, The Nation.
Secretary-General António Guterres looks out the window over New York City at traffic as heads of state come arrive for the General Assembly debate.
UN Photo/Kim Haughton
17 September 2017
United Nations, New York
Photo # 732634
Fantastic Shoot with Alter-Nation Hair!
For the full shoot visit www.ravenphotography.co.uk/Alter-Nation-Hair
The United Nations joins landmarks around the world as it turns off lights at its New York Headquarters and other locations, in observance of "Earth Hour". The event takes place one week after the vernal equinox, and is organized by the global conservation group WWF, which asks everyone to turn off their lights for one hour starting at 8:30 p.m. local time, to support action on climate change.
27/03/2010. United Nations, New York. UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras. www.unmultimedia.org/photo
Notting Hill Carnival 2012.
This girl was part of the UK Chocolate Nation, the chocolate Mas. They were covered in Cadbury's chocolate sauce!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehxbhdvZrwU&feature=plcp
Today, 24 October 1966, a service to mark the 21st Anniversary of the United Nations was held in Westminster Abbey, London, attended by the Duke of Edinburgh; Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands; and Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, among others. The Preface was read by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and the Preamble to the United Nations Charter by Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan.
The Collegiate Body with the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of the Netherlands and Sadruddin Aga Khan in procession to the Sacrarium in the Abbey.
António Guterres, Secretary-General-designate, on his way to the plenary of seventy-first session of General Assembly to adopt his appointment as the ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations.
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
United Nations, New York
Photo # 698464
AFTER bathing in the warm, fuzzy glow of the Mandela years, South Africans
today are deeply demoralised people. The lights are going out in homes,
mines, factories and shopping malls as the national power authority, Eskom -
suffering from mismanagement, lack of foresight, a failure to maintain power
stations and a flight of skilled engineers to other countries - implements
rolling power cuts that plunge towns and cities into daily chaos.
Major industrial projects are on hold. The only healthy enterprise now worth
being involved in is the sale of small diesel generators to powerless
households but even this business has run out of supplies and spare parts
from China .
The currency, the rand, has entered freefall. Crime, much of it gratuitously
violent, is rampant, and the national police chief faces trial for
corruption and defeating the ends of justice as a result of his alleged
deals with a local mafia kingpin and dealer in hard drugs.
Newly elected African National Congress (ANC) leader Jacob Zuma, the state
president-in-waiting, narrowly escaped being jailed for raping an
HIV-positive woman last year, and faces trial later this year for soliciting
and accepting bribes in connection with South Africa's shady
multi-billion-pound arms deal with British, German and French weapons
manufacturers.
One local newspaper columnist suggests that Zuma has done for South Africa
's international image what Borat has done for Kazakhstan . ANC leaders in
2008 still speak in the spiritually dead jargon they learned in exile in
pre-1989 Moscow, East Berlin and Sofia while promiscuously embracing
capitalist icons - Mercedes 4x4s, Hugo Boss suits, Bruno Magli shoes and
Louis Vuitton bags which they swing, packed with money passed to them under
countless tables - as they wing their way to their houses in the south of
France.
It all adds up to a hydra-headed crisis of huge proportions - a perfect
storm as the Rainbow Nation slides off the end of the rainbow and descends
in the direction of the massed ranks of failed African states. Eskom has
warned foreign investors with millions to sink into big industrial and
mining projects: we don't want you here until at least 2013, when new power
stations will be built.
In the first month of this year, the rand fell 12% against the world's major
currencies and foreign investors sold off more than £600 million worth of
South African stocks, the biggest sell-off for more than seven years.
"There will be further outflows this month, because there won't be any news
that will convince investors the local growth picture is going to change for
the better," said Rudi van de Merwe, a fund manager at South Africa 's
Standard Bank.
Commenting on the massive power cuts, Trevor Gaunt, professor of electrical
engineering at the University of Cape Town , who warned the government eight
years ago of the impending crisis, said: "The damage is huge, and now South
Africa looks just like the rest of Africa . Maybe it will take 20 years to
recover."
The power cuts have hit the country's platinum, gold, manganese and
high-quality export coal mines particularly hard, with no production on some
days and only 40% to 60% on others.
"The shutdown of the mining industry is an extraordinary, unprecedented
event," said Anton Eberhard, a leading energy expert and professor of
business studies at the University of Cape Town .
"That's a powerful message, massively damaging to South Africa 's reputation
for new investment. Our country was built on the mines."
To examine how the country, widely hailed as Africa's last best chance,
arrived at this parlous state, the particular troubles engulfing the
Scorpions (the popular name of the National Prosecuting Authority) offers a
useful starting point.
The elite unit, modelled on America 's FBI and operating in close
co-operation with Britain 's Serious Fraud Office (SFO), is one of the big
successes of post-apartheid South Africa . An independent institution,
separate from the slipshod South African Police Service, the Scorpions enjoy
massive public support.
The unit's edict is to focus on people "who commit and profit from organised
crime", and it has been hugely successful in carrying out its mandate. It
has pursued and pinned down thousands of high-profile and complex networks
of national and international corporate and public fraudsters.
Drug kingpins, smugglers and racketeers have felt the Scorpions' sting. A
major gang that smuggle platinum, South Africa 's biggest foreign exchange
earner, to a corrupt English smelting plant has been bust as the result of a
huge joint operation between the SFO and the Scorpions. But the Scorpions,
whose top men were trained by Scotland Yard, have been too successful for
their own good.
The ANC government never anticipated the crack crimebusters would take their
constitutional independence seriously and investigate the top ranks of the
former liberation movement itself.
The Scorpions have probed into, and successfully prosecuted, ANC MPs who
falsified their parliamentary expenses. They secured a jail sentence for the
ANC's chief whip, who took bribes from the German weapons manufacturer that
sold frigates and submarines to the South African Defence Force. They sent
to jail for 15 years a businessman who paid hundreds of bribes to then state
vice-president Jacob Zuma in connection with the arms deal. Zuma was found
by the judge to have a corrupt relationship with the businessman, and now
the Scorpions have charged Zuma himself with fraud, corruption, tax evasion,
racketeering and defeating the ends of justice. His trial will begin in
August.
The Scorpions last month charged Jackie Selebi, the national police chief, a
close friend of state president Thabo Mbeki, with corruption and defeating
the ends of justice. Commissioner Selebi, who infamously called a white
police sergeant a "f***ing chimpanzee" when she failed to recognise him
during an unannounced visit to her Pretoria station, has stepped down
pending his trial.
But now both wings of the venomously divided ANC - ANC-Mbeki and ANC-Zuma -
want the Scorpions crushed, ideally by June this year. The message this will
send to the outside world is that South Africa 's rulers want only certain
categories of crime investigated, while leaving government ministers and
other politicians free to stuff their already heavily lined pockets.
No good reason for emasculating the Scorpions has been put forward. "That's
because there isn't one," said Peter Bruce, editor of the influential
Business Day, South Africa 's equivalent of, and part-owned by, The
Financial Times, in his weekly column.
"The Scorpions are being killed off because they investigate too much
corruption that involves ANC leaders. It is as simple and ugly as that," he
added.
The demise of the Scorpions can only exacerbate South Africa 's
out-of-control crime situation, ranked for its scale and violence only
behind Colombia . Everyone has friends and acquaintances who have had guns
held to their heads by gangsters, who also blow up ATM machines and hijack
security trucks, sawing off their roofs to get at the cash.
In the past few days my next-door neighbour, John Matshikiza, a
distinguished actor who trained at the Royal Shakespeare Company and is the
son of the composer of the South African musical King Kong, had been
violently attacked, and friends visiting from Zimbabwe had their car stolen
outside my front window in broad daylight.
My friends flew home to Zimbabwe without their car and the tinned food
supplies they had bought to help withstand their country's dire political
and food crisis and 27,000% inflation. Matshikiza, a former member of the
Glasgow Citizens Theatre company, was held up by three gunmen as he drove
his car into his garage late at night. He gave them his car keys, wallet,
cellphone and luxury watch and begged them not to harm his partner, who was
inside the house.
As one gunman drove the car away, the other two beat Matshikiza unconscious
with broken bottles, and now his head is so comprehensively stitched that it
looks like a map of the London Underground.
These assaults were personal, but mild compared with much commonplace crime.
Last week, for example, 18-year-old Razelle Botha, who passed all her
A-levels with marks of more than 90% and was about to train as a doctor,
returned home with her father, Professor Willem Botha, founder of the
geophysics department at the University of Pretoria, from buying pizzas for
the family. Inside the house, armed gunmen confronted them. They shot
Professor Botha in the leg and pumped bullets into Razelle.
One severed her spine. Now she is fighting for her life and will never walk
again, and may never become a doctor. The gunmen stole a laptop computer and
a camera.
Feeding the perfect storm are the two centres of ANC power in the country at
the moment. On the one hand, there is the ANC in parliament, led by
President Mbeki, who last Friday gave a state-of-the-nation address and
apologised to the country for the power crisis.
Mbeki made only the briefest of mentions of the national Aids crisis, with
more than six million people HIV-positive. He did not address the Scorpions
crisis. The collapsing public hospital system, under his eccentric health
minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, an alcoholic who recently jumped the
public queue for a liver transplant, received no attention. And the name
Jacob Zuma did not pass his lips.
Last December Mbeki and Zuma stood against each other for the leadership of
the ANC at the party's five-yearly electoral congress. Mbeki, who cannot
stand again as state president beyond next year's parliamentary and
presidential elections, hoped to remain the power behind the throne of a new
state president of his choosing.
Zuma, a Zulu populist with some 20 children by various wives and mistresses,
hoped to prove that last year's rape case, and the trial he faces this year
for corruption and other charges, were part of a plot by Mbeki to use state
institutions to discredit him. Mbeki assumed that the notion of Zuma
assuming next year the mantle worn by Nelson Mandela as South Africa 's
first black state president would be so appalling to delegates, a deeply sad
and precipitous decline, that his own re-election as ANC leader was a
shoo-in.
But Mbeki completely miscalculated his own unpopularity - his perceived
arrogance, failure to solve health and crime problems, his failure to
deliver to the poor - and he lost. Now Zuma insists that he is the leader of
the country and ANC MPs in parliament must take its orders from him, while
Mbeki soldiers on until next year as state president, ordering MPs to toe
his line.
Greatly understated, it is a mess. Its scale will be dramatically
illustrated if South Africa 's hosting of the 2010 World Cup is withdrawn by
Fifa, the world football body.
Already South African premier league football evening games are being played
after midnight because power for floodlights cannot be guaranteed before
that time. Justice Malala, one of the country's top newspaper columnists,
has called on Fifa to end the agony quickly.
"I don't want South Africa to host the football World Cup because there is
no culture of responsibility in this country," he wrote in Johannesburg's
bestselling Sunday Times.
"The most outrageous behaviour and incompetence is glossed over. No-one is
fired. I have had enough of this nonsense, of keeping quiet and ignoring the
fact that the train is about to run us over.
"It is increasingly clear that our leaders are incapable of making a success
of it. Scrap the thing and give it to Australia, Germany or whoever will
spare us the ignominy of watching things fall apart here - football tourists
being held up and shot, the lights going out, while our politicians tell us
everything is all right."
- CEDWYNN TOWEEL
11:50pm Saturday 9th February 2008
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Secretary-General António Guterres (left) greets Mary Robinson, Chair of The Elders, ahead of the launch of "The Drive for Five: A Call to Action for the Education of Adolescent Girls". In the centre is Bono (centre), U2 frontman and Co-Founder of the ONE Campaign. The event took place on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.
UN Photo/Mark Garten
11 February 2020
United Nations, New York
Photo # 838153
Foreign Consuls listen to the 3rd State of the Nation Address in the Assembly Hall, Legislative Building, Manila.
Excerpt from the Third State of the Nation Address of President Manuel L. Quezon delivered on October 18, 1937:
"Since the news of my proposal to have the transition period shortened was published, voices in opposition to it have been heard both in public and in private. Let me say in all earnestness to those Filipinos who believe in good faith that the security, liberty, prosperity, and peace of our common country lie in some kind of political partnership with the United States rather than in complete independence, that they should say so frankly and come out courageously in the open with an alternative plan, instead of merely adopting dilatory tactics in the belief that when the fourth of July, 1946, shall have arrived, some unforeseen event will prevent the establishment of the Philippine Republic. They have nothing to fear: there is here freedom of thought and of speech, and one may be as much a patriot advocating some other political status for the Philippines as favoring complete independence so long as in advocating he is inspired not by selfish motives but by what he honestly believes is for the commonweal. As long as the essentials of freedom are not sacrificed –and they must not be sacrified under any consideration- the formula for securing and enjoying it may well be debated upon."
(Photo from the Assembly of the Nation.)
Goma, North Kivu, DRC – August 1, 2022 –Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General in charge of Peace Operations accompanied by MONUSCO SRSG Bintou Keita, UN Military Adviser General Biame Diop, UN Police Adviser Commissioner Luís Carrilho, visited Goma after MONUSCO was targeted by violent anti-UN protests the past week and there was a loss of life. The delegation attended a memorial service for those who lost their lives in the protest. The delegation visited the RVA logistics base and Level III hospital site, which were attacked and looted. The delegation met with the North Kivu Governor. Later, the delegation participated in a Town Hall meeting with staff throughout the country to address their concerns.
Photo: MONUSCO/Kevin Jordan
Increasing floods in between dry periods represent ideal conditions for spreading diseases such as cholera. In Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania located in the desert, precipitations - when they occur - are always accompanied by a cholera epidemic, especially in poor areas where waste matter is not managed. Cholera had almost disappeared globally by the mid 1950s, but it reappeared and spread throughout the world during the last few decades. The World Health Organization (WHO) fears that a rapidly changing climate, combined with declining socio-economic conditions in the poorest part of the population, will contribute to an increasing spread of the disease.
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This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: Philippe Rekacewicz, February 2006