All of the prisoners serving life sentences

 

Wait for the earth to suddenly shake

 

For the walls to somehow suddenly come crumbling, tumbling

 

And for the bars to somehow magically break

 

Oh there's nothing wrong with them that a thousand bucks can't fix

 

That a thousand arms can't hold down

 

In the ground they're tattooing the stones with curses like cavemen

 

"Your mama was here"

 

But they want to run through the air with no barriers or obstacles

 

Gunmen or guard dogs or priests

 

And to rise from the mud and start over and over

 

With the people all dead

 

Uh uh uh uh uh

 

If Hans Christian Anderson could have had his way with me

 

Then none of this shit would have ever gone down

 

In my cell I'm tattooing myself with mermaids and swallows

 

And though I do swallow

 

My mama thinks I'm grown but I'm really just little

 

And someday I will remember

 

Someday I will remember

 

Someday I will remember

 

Prisoners

This is another illustration I did on the vintage book pages from a dilapidated old Alice in Wonderland book. I used acrylic paints. I bordered the page with a fabric by Robert Kaufman and it looks really keen, see my blog: shebrews.com

 

this is only the beginning

Those two words are not normally in the same sentence, but they came together yesterday as Austin got hit with an unusual but awesome snowstorm. It was not a big snowstorm that snarls up everything, but it was soft and consistent and actually stuck around for a while. There was still snow today visible in a lot of places. Like many folks, once it really started coming down, I abandoned any hope of productivity and went out with the camera. I got this shot from the outlook over the 360 bridge. I also did a bunch of other shots that I will share in time, like maybe in the summer when we are sweating to 100 degree temps.

 

I also posted a color version to my website, so if you get a minute, let me know your thoughts on it if you can. It's a "Color Pop" version a la Topaz Adjust, so keep that in mind when you view it.

 

from the blog at www.nomadicpursuits.com

 

Follow me: twitter.com/jimnixaustin

 

(Studio Amsterdam)

 

This sentence is a lie.

 

Who can’t but be intrigued by this 'truth'? I certainly am.

 

"we hoed in like a horde of hungry locusts"

 

It’s like I have stopped writing. This is something I will have to get over, get beyond, I mean. It’s that feeling of dependency on others, on a correspondent, someone I feed off and attempt to feed. That principal someone has been, for 25 years, the eponymous Rack of ‘Rack and Ruin’. Image making is also directed towards ‘the other’, that ‘responder’ out there, the resplendent ‘Seven’, or whoever. It speaks of a ‘failing’. I don’t know if it might speak of a lack of imagination as well. But in ‘truth’, I don’t care. I am not sure I want to write like that anyway, that ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’ Rack speaks of.

 

I certainly couldn’t describe places, in New York or wherever, through memories, details of a place that might bring those places alive. They would be fictional. Perhaps I could re-find them through Google ‘streetview’ walks, but they have so changed since last century. I sometimes try to Google-walk some of them, those streets, ones I knew well even, such as that stroll from my 27th Street loft to my 28th street studio, in Chelsea, but it is now somewhere else. But that’s not really how I want to tell a story. It’s the convoluted interior walks I want to re-find and pillage, and that seems more doable. This, perhaps, takes one more into fiction, perhaps not. If it is, it’s another type of fiction, more comprising of the lies I have always told to myself. I don’t see this as a problem, there is always the possibility that one might have lied to oneself extravagantly, but I am more of the mind that these lies were more or less the commonplace prevarications that any and everyone might engender in their own lives to make moving forward possible. Life’s ‘drives’, and ‘drivers’, might be at the engineering of these same lies, through us, to move itself instinctively forward, to evolve, to be constantly growing through decay. Again, we are back to that kernel, the embracing of one’s own mulch. That marriage of then and now, and the inherent fertilised bed of the self, that relentless and lifelong ‘hoeing in’ (and how I have hoed), in its own time as the possible seedbed for what is to come. I don’t mean to say that this makes one exceptional in any way, mulch being mulch and all that wondrous palaver, it just speaks of a blinding equality, an absorption into that clay.

 

I don’t think I could describe Amsterdam, though I am in, shared and voluntary, quarantine, living here blissfully even. But then I wouldn’t want to attempt such a description. Amsterdam is perfectly capable of describing itself. It doesn’t need a pale echo of itself, ditto New York, London, Paris, wherever.

 

I haven’t stopped writing, but I have stopped writing that way.

 

Hoe (hoed, past tense)

verb

gerund or present participle: hoeing

1.

use a hoe to dig (earth) or thin out or dig up (plants).

"we were out in the fields, planting crops and hoeing weeds"

2.

INFORMAL•AUSTRALIAN

eat eagerly.

"we hoed in like a horde of hungry locusts"

 

I lied. I don't just like that marriage, I love it.

 

In Brooklyn, New York, on September 4th, 2018, on the Coney Island Boardwalk at Stillwell Avenue.

 

-----------------------

 

Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names terms:

• Brooklyn (7015822)

• Coney Island (7015849)

• Kings (county) (1002551)

• Long Island (7015899)

• New York (7007567)

 

Art & Architecture Thesaurus terms:

• boardwalks (300189544)

• capital letters (300055061)

• orange (color) (300126734)

• signs (declatory or advertising artifacts) (300123013)

• trailers (vehicles) (300212903)

 

Wikidata items:

• 4 September 2018 (Q45921190)

• all caps (Q3960579)

• dot-matrix display (Q1751778)

• LED display (Q2411647)

• New York City Police Department (Q328473)

• Riegelmann Boardwalk (Q4380603)

• September 4 (Q2855)

• September 2018 (Q31179569)

• variable-message sign (Q1500964)

 

Library of Congress Subject Headings:

• Electric signs (sh85042000)

OBITUARY.; Madam Eliza B. Jumel.

New York TImes

Published: July 18, 1865

 

A single sentence in this morning's TIMES serves to awaken many memories of the past, and revive remembrances of men and parties long since crumbled or forgotten. Thus it reads: "Died, on Sunday morning, July 16, at her late residence, Washington Heights, madam ELIZA B. JUMEL, in the 92d year of her age."

 

Madam JUMEL, whose death is chronicled above, was a very singular person, about whose name twined many marvelous stories, and with whose history the greatest men of colonial and Revolutionary days were intimately connected. According to one historian, she was born of an English, mother, Mrs. CAPET, in the cabin of a French frigate, which in the year of our Lord 1769 was carrying troops to the West Indies from La Brest. The mother died as the child drew the first breath of life. Somewhat embarrassed by the tender charge, the Captain concluded to keep her, but afterward, when driven into Newport, R.I., harbor, he placed her in the custody of an elderly lady named THOMPSON, who agreed to take good care of her. Mrs. THOMPSON was a good woman, and many clergymen visited her comparatively humble dwelling, so that the early years of the little one were passed amid good influences.

 

Many of His Britannic Majesty's officers dwelt in Newport. Among them was a certain Col. P. CROIX, whose personal appearance is reported to have been most taking -- whose position in society was excellent. The Colonel met Miss CAPET when she was about seventeen years of age, and fell in love with her pretty face and pleasant figure. She reciprocated the tender passion, which eventuated in an elopement, the indiscreet but entirely happy pair proceeding to New-York, where the lady lodged at a "handsome wooden structure," but recently standing where now rests the north wing of STEWART's marble palace.

 

Brought at once into contact with the best people in the city, the lady became a cultured woman of the world, fond of its pleasures, versed in its intrigues, interested in the cabals of politicians, and espousing with ardor one side or the other of the continual military emeutes with which the latter days of the eighteenth century were so cursed in New-York City. She was present at the opening of the first session of Congress at Philadelphia, in September, 1774, and at the inauguration of WASHINGTON as President, she created a decided impression by her beauty and general air of savoir faire. She was about twenty years of age then, and very elegant in person and distinguished in bearing. Mme. JUMEL first met AARON BURR when he ranked as a Captain in the army, and was greatly impressed by his power and expression. She was even then intimate with BENEDICT ARNOLD, whose wife she fancied her best friend, and with PATRICK HENRY, in whose breast of reserve she started a dangerous fire of love and passion; but, forgetful of those noted men, and of the scores who bent willingly before her shrine, she wrote thus of the man who, in after years, was destined to be her lord, if not her master. She says:

 

"Capt. AARON BURR, in the hey-day of his youth, as he now was, appeared to me the perfection of manhood personified. He was beneath the common size of men, only five feet and a half high, but his figure and form had been fashioned in the models of the graces. Petite as he comparatively was, he had a martial appearance, and displayed in all his movements those accomplishments which are only acquired in the camp and embellished in the boudior of the graces. In a word, he was a combined model of Mars and Apollo. His eye was of the deepest black, and sparkled with an incomprehensible brilliancy when he smiled; but if enraged, its power was absolutely terrific. Into whatever female society he chanced, by the fortune of war or by the vicissitudes of private life to be cast, he conquered all hearts without an effort; and, until he became deeply involved in the cares of State, and the vexations incident to the political arena, I do not believe a female capable of the gentle emotions of love ever looked upon him without loving him. Wherever he went he was petted and caressed by our sex, and hundreds vied with each other in a continuous struggle to offer him some testimonial of their adulation. And yet, with all this popularity in the polite circles, he never took advantage of his position, and I do not believe that any female ever had cause to complain of his seductive wiles, perfidy or injustice."

 

The casual meeting between the two took place at the rooms of Lady STIRLING, and resulted in Miss CAPET's acceptance of an invitation to accompany Capt. BURR that evening to the theatre. On the way to the house, BURR asked permission to stop for a friend, and so doing he brought into the carriage and introduced to Miss CAPET as his friend the afterward celebrated MARGARET MONCRIEF. A desperate flirtation followed, but beyond that nothing of any moment occurred between them, and he soon after was called away, so that for years they did not meet.

 

Continuing her gay career, Miss CAPET met and knew intimately the great leaders of the Revolutionary struggle. THOMAS JEFFERSON was a frequent visitor at her house, and a friendship formed between them which ceased only with his death, in 1826. Old BEN FRANKLIN called her his "Fairy Queen," and was on terms of such intimacy with her as permitted him to salute her lips in the presence of friends. Gen. KNOX was likewise a worshipper before her, and LAFAYETTE was greatly charmed. That such a woman as this should have gone through escapades and adventures is but natural; that she should take pleasure and pride in bringing men of loftiest position to her feet is quite understandable; that her reputation should materially suffer by the scandal of her rivals and the jealous tattlings of her female friends is what one would expect; but that she should finally accept the hand of, and marry, a quiet, hard-working, adventurous trader, is a vagary difficult of explanation. She did it, however. In the early days of this century she was wooed and won by a Frenchman named STEPHEN JUMEL, who, landing here poor, made an immense fortune in the wine trade. He became noted for his wealth, liberality and kind-hearted benevolence, and singular foresight in business matters. Of him our worthy but eccentric fellow-citizen, GRANT THORBURN, said:

 

"STEPHEN JUMEL, a Frenchman, was among our early merchant princes. One morning, about 10 o'clock, in the year 1806, this gentleman, in company with WILLIAM BAYARD, HARMON LE ROY, ARCHIBALD GRACIE, Gen. CLARKSON, and some dozen others, was reading and discussing the news just arrived from Liverpool in the extraordinary short passage of seven weeks. The matter mostly concerned NAPOLEON I. and the battle of Wagram. While thus engaged, a carman's horse backed his cart into the Whitehall-slip. The cart was got out, but the horse was drowned, and every one began pitying the poor carman's ill-luck. JUMEL instantly arose, and placing a ten-dollar bill between his thumb and finger, and holding it aloft while it fluttered in the breeze, and with his hat in the other hand he walked through the length and breadth of the crowd, exclaiming, "How much you pity the poor man? I pity him ten dollars. How much you pity him?" By this ingenious and noble coup he collected in a few moments about seventy dollars, which he gave over at once to the unfortunate and fortunate carman. This has since been imitated often, but of its originality with him there can be no question."

 

Shortly after this marriage, the downfall of the great NAPOLEON occurred, and the pacification of Europe was secured. This seemed a favorable opportunity for the wealthy Frenchman, who had long since retired from active business, to take his beautiful and accomplished wife to the centre of continental splendor. They went to Paris, purchased a magnificent establishment, and under the social patronage of LAFAYETTE and his contemporaries, Madame JUMEL became as noted in the salons of the French capital as in the parlors of the western metropolis. Her wit and talent placed her in the very van of the frequenters of the court, and while she never failed to make continual conquests, we are not of those who believe the slanderers of her reputation. Gaiety is not always guilt, frivolity not always the exponent of heartlessness, and despite Madame JUMEL's wonderful gaiety and never-ceasing frivolty, she was deep and shrewd and able enough to maintain her position against the combined attacks of those who envied her.

 

Her life of prodigious prodigality made sad inroads upon her husband's fortune, and he became low spirited. She rallied him, but investigation demonstrated the comparative wreck of his estate, and she failed to arouse him to the necessary exertion. Self-reliant, bold, independent and clear-sighted, she broke up their establishment in Paris and returned alone to New-York in 1822. Resolved to mend what she had broken, she retired to an estate of her own on the island, and devoted herself to the recuperation of her husband's fortune with such signal success that when, in 1828, at the age of sixty-four, he returned to this country, he found himself possessed of means at once abundant and satisfactory. They lived happily together until his death, which resulted in his seventieth year, from an accidental fall.

 

At this time Col. BURR was practicing law, with great success, in New-York. His legal position was in the front rank: triumph succeeded triumph and although old in years, he seemed but in the prime of life. There was talk of cholera in the city, and Madame JUMEL, who had large interests in real estate determined upon a carriage tour in the country siring, however, to take legal advice on some matters before leaving, she determined to consult Col. BURR, whose preeminence in real estate law was universally conceded. It was a long time since she had seen him. Years had changed them both; oceans and events had separated them; marriage and its consequences had turned the thoughts of each in other directions; and now, when the one was an old man and the other a well-advanced woman, they were to meet. He was perfect in all the subtleties of social life; she was the exponent, ne plus ultra, of fashionable life. The one could not hope to blind, mislead, or seduce the other. His office was at No. 23 Nassau-street, and she drove thither to consult him. Never forgetful of eye, or feature, or figure, he recognized her in a moment, and, as PARTON in his Life of Aaron Burr, says:

 

"He received her in his courtliest manner, complimented her with admirable tact, listened with soft deference to her statement. He was the ideal man of business -- confidential, self-possessed, polite -- giving his client the flattering impression that the faculties of his whole soul were concentrated upon the affair in hand. She was charmed, yet feared him. He took the papers, named the day when his opinion would be ready and handed her to her carriage with winning grace. At seventy-eight years of age, he was still straight, active, agile, fascinating.

 

On the appointed day she sent to his office a relative, a student of law, to receive his opinion. This young gentleman, timid and inexperienced, had an immense opinion of BURR's talents; had heard all good and all evil of him; supposed him to be, at least, the acutest of possible men. He went. BURR behaved to him in a manner so exquisitely pleasing, that, to this hour, he has the liveliest recollection of the scene. No topic was introduced but such as were familiar and interesting to young men. His manners were such as this age of slangy familiarity cannot so much as imagine. The young gentleman went home to Madame JUMEL only to extol and glorify him.

 

Madame and her party began their journey, revisiting Ballston, whither, in former times, she had been wont to go in a chariot drawn by eight horses; visiting Saratoga, then in the beginning of its celebrity, where, in exactly ten minutes after her arrival, the decisive lady bought a house and all it contained. Returning to New-York to find that her mansion had been despoiled by robbers in her absence, she lived for a while in the city. Col. BURR called upon the young gentleman who had been Madame's messenger, and, after their acquaintance had ripened, said to him, "Come into my office; I can teach you more in one year than you can learn in ten, in an ordinary way." The proposition being submitted to Madame JUMEL, she, anxious for the young man's advancement, gladly and gratefully consented. He entered the office. BURR kept him close at his books. He did teach him more in a year than he could have learned in ten in an ordinary way. BURR lived then in Jersey City. His office swarmed with applicants for aid, and he seemed to have quite lost the power of refusing. In no other respects, bodily or mental, did he exhibit signs of decrepitude.

 

Some months passed on without his again meeting Madame JUMEL. At the suggestion of the student, who felt exceedingly grateful to BURR for the solicitude with which he assisted his studies, Madame JUMEL invited Col. BURR to dinner. It was a grand banquet, at which he displayed all the charms of his manner and shone to conspicuous advantage. On handing to dinner the giver of the feast, he said: "I give you my hand, Madame; my heart has long been yours." This was supposed to be merely a compliment and was little remarked at the time. Col. BURR called upon the lady; called frequently; became ever warmer in his attentions; proposed, at length, and was refused. He still plied his suit, however, and obtained at lost, not the lady's consent, but an undecided no. Improving his advantage on the instant, he said, in a jocular manner, that he should bring out a clergyman to Fort Washington on a certain day, and there he would once more solicit her hand.

 

He was as good as his word. At the time appointed, he drove out in his gig to the lady's country residence, accompanied by Dr. BOGART, the very clergy, man who, just fifty years before, had married him to the mother of his THEODOSIA. The lady was embarrassed, and still refused. But then the scandal! And, after all, why not? Her estate needed a vigilant guardian, and the old house was lonely. After much hesitation, she at length consented to be dressed and to receive her visitors. And she was married. The ceremony was witnessed only by the members of Madame JUMEL's family and by the eight servants of the household, who peered eagerly in at the doors and windows. The ceremony over, Mrs. BURR ordered supper. Some bins of M. JUMEL'L wine cellar, that had not been opened for half a century, were laid under contribution. The little party was a very merry one. The parson, in particular, it is remembered, was in the highest spirits, overflowing with humor and anecdote. Except for Col. BURR's great age, (which was not apparent,) the match seemed not an unwise one. The lurking fear he had had of being a poor and homeless old man was put to rest. She had a companion who had been ever agreeable, and her estate a steward than whom no one living was supposed to be more competent.

 

As a remarkable circumstance connected with this marriage, it may be just mentionen that there was a woman in New-York who had aspired to the band of Col. BURR and who, when she heard of his union with another, wrung her hands and shed tears. A feeling of that nature can seldom, since the creation of man, have been excited by the marriage of a man on the verge of fourscore.

 

A few days after the wedding, the 'happy pair' paid a visit to Connecticut, of which State a nephew of Col. BURR's was then Governor. They were received with attention. At Hartford, BURR advised his wife to sell out her shares in the bridge over the Connecticut at that place and invest the proceeds in real estate. She ordered them sold. The stock was in demand and the shares brought several thousand dollars. The purchaser offered to pay her the money, but she said, "No; pay it to my husband." To him, accordingly, it was paid, and he had it sewed up in his pocket, a prodigious bulk, and brought it to New-York and deposited it in his own bank to his own credit.

 

Texas was then beginning to attract the tide of emigration which, a few years later, set so strongly thither. BURR had always token a great interest in that country. Persons with whom he had been variously connected in life had a scheme on foot for settling a large colony of Germans on a tract of land in Texas. A brig had been chartered and the project was in a state of forwardness, when the possession of a sum of money enabled BURR to buy shares in the enterprise. The greater part of the money which he had brought from Hartford was invested in this way. It proved a total loss. The time had not yet come for emigration to Texas. The Germans became discouraged and separated, and, to complete the failure of the scheme, the title of the lands, in the confusion of the times, proved defective. Meanwhile, Madame, who was a remarkable thrifty woman, with a talent for the management of property, wondered that her husband made no allusion to the subject of the investment, for the Texas speculation had not been mentioned to her. She caused him to be questioned on the subject. He begged to intimate to the lady's messenger that it was no affair of her's and he requested him to remind the lady that she now had a husband to manage her affairs and one who would manage them.

 

Coolness between the husband and wife was the result of this colloquy. Then came remonstrances. Then estrangement. BURR got into the habit of remaining in his office in the city. Then, partial reconciliation. Full of schemes and spebulations to the last, without retaining any of his former ability to act successfully, he lost more money, and more, and more. The patience of the lady was exhausted. She filed a complain accusing him of infidelity and praying that he might have no more control or authority over her affairs. The accusation is now known to have been groundless; nor, indeed, at the time was it seriously believed. It was used merely as the most convenient legal mode of depriving him of control over her property. At first, he answered the complaint vigorously, but afterward he allowed it to go by default and the proceedings were carried no further. A few short weeks of happiness, followed by a few alternate months of alternate estrangment and reconciliation, and this union, that begun not inauspiciously, was, in effect, though never in law, dissolved."

 

Since then Madame JUMEL, who has never resumed her late husband's name, has resided in her home at Washington Heights, comparatively alone. She knew but few, and cored not to extend her list of friends. She died on Sunday, possessed of considerable property, which her grand-children will doubtless inherit. Her funeral will be to-day.

The Painter mused on whether we might meet up at the railway station, spend some time over lunch then venture to the court where she has been framed.

 

Unremarkably, we met at the bus station. The court is The High Court, Australia's constitutional court. She is hung in the foyer, not literally, but as one of the artists to embellish its brutalist concrete walls. How was she framed? In wood. Her complaint was that the unfinished linen edge of her work was raw and undignified. Now was her opportunity to see how the framing sat with her work.

 

For such a momentous and solemn building, the attendants are charming and welcoming. Once The Painter introduced herself, it was as though we were old friends. They hold that the figure on the ramp is the lady who each morning rubs the smudges from the brass railing. It's true! This scene captures the morning light; the polishing hour.

 

We didn't use the terms rectilinear and orthorhombic as such, but when we ascended to the balcony that is the viewpoint for this work, The Painter did admit to taking liberties in the composition and perspective of her rendering of this scene. It's none the worse for taking on her expression.

 

For the curious, and just for fun, this was shot in "Pro" mode, cropped and "deskewed" in the device and posted as I watch the cycling on the idiot box… The white balance was set to daylight despite being indoors because, well, all the glass means that provides the most true colour rendering of this scene.

Film: Fuji Neopan 1600. Shot and developed as 3200

Developer: D-76 (Stock)

Taken with: Nikon FM2 with Nikkor 45mm 1:2.8

Place: Moscow, Exhibition "Samurai. 47 Ronin"

Arvid Pettersen (b. 1943) - Den nye broen [The new bridge] (1973). In the collection of KODE, Art Museums of Bergen, Norway.

 

As oil revenues started flooding the Norwegian state coffers in the 1970's, there was a big push by the political and economic establishment to develop the country's transportation infrastructure which, given the particular morphology of Noway with numerous mountains and fjords, inevitably meant lots of bridges, tunnels and tree felling. Like many fellow artists in Norway in that period, Arvid Pettersen was committed to intervene through his art in the political debates on issues such as the over-exploitation of natural resources, the environmental impact of development and the integration into the European Common Market.

Found at the top of a tower, on the door, leaving this place. To go in another world.

Goethe's Secret Revelation PART TWO THE RIDDLE IN FAUST Esoteric Two Addresses given 11nth and 12th March, 1909, at Berlin . It was in August, 1831, that Goethe sealed up a packet and handed it to his faithful secretary Eckermann and prepared his testamentary directions for the editing of this sealed-up treasure. This packet contained in a comprehensive way the whole striving of Goethe's life. It contained the second part of Goethe's Faust; which was not to be published until after Goethe's death. Goethe was aware that in this work he had given the contents of his rich, many-sided, far-reaching and deeply-penetrating life to human existence, and the importance of this moment for him may be gathered from the words he uttered at the time, ‘I am now finished my life's true work, anything I do further and whether I do it or not, is all the same!’ If we permit a fact such as this to work on the soul we can say: It would not be easy for a human life to become fruitful for the rest of humanity in a more beautiful, harmonious way, or indeed to become fruitful in a more conscious manner. There is something deeply affecting in the thought of Goethe's life at this point of time — for he lived barely one year longer — in that he should have visited Ilmenau once more and there re-read the beautiful verse he had written on the 7th of September, 1783, when he was still a comparatively young man.‘Above all heights Is rest, In the tree tops Thou feelest Scarce a breath,The birds are silent in the woods, Only wait, soon Thou too shalt rest.’One may well ask whether these lines may not have signified at that time a frame of mind regulating Goethe's ideas in a new way as he re-read them in the evening of his life with affecting tears.Goethe's Faust is truly a testament of the very first order when considered with reference to its literary and intellectual standpoint.In 1831 Goethe finished the work which had occupied him from his earliest youth, having worked energetically from the year 1824 at the second part of Faust. We find that Goethe knew from the beginning of 1770 that he had what may be called the Faust disposition and that he began in 1774 to write down the first part of Faust, returning again and again to this poem in the most important moments of his life.Notably he took the first part of Faust with him when he went to Weimar and owing to his position there entered the great world. Certainly it was not produced there. But because one of the Weimar Court ladies, Fräulein von Göchhausen, preserved a copy of the Faust which Goethe took with him to Weimar, we to-day possess the form in which it was when he took it there. We therefore know the form in which Faust was printed for the first time and published in 1790, and further we know the setting in which the whole of Goethe's works appeared in 1808 in the first edition. All that we have of Faust, including that very important document which Goethe left as his testament, shows us the different stages of Goethe's growth. It is endlessly interesting to observe how these four stages of Goethe's Faust-creation appear to us in different ways, according to its inner nature, and how they represent a crescendo in the whole of Goethe's life-endeavour. What Goethe took with him to Weimar is a literary work of a quite personal character into which he had poured the feelings, the degrees of knowledge and also the despair of knowledge, as they went with him through the Frankfort time into the Strassburg time and also into the first Weimar period. It is the work of a man hotly striving after knowledge, striving to feel himself into life, experiencing every despair that an upright honourable man can go through, and all this he had poured into this work. All this is in the first part of Faust. But when Faust appeared in 1790 as a fragment, it was recognized that Goethe had worked at it and transformed it out of a longing lying deep in his soul and inner life which had become enlightened through his contemplation of Italian nature and of Italian works of Art. Out of this personal work of one who had been tossed to and fro in life's storms there emerged the work of one, who to a certain degree, had become unshackled and who had a very clear view of life before his soul.Then came the time of Goethe's friendship with Schiller. The time when in his inner being he learned to know and experience a world which had long become rooted within him. A world of which one can say that he who experiences it has had his spiritual eyes opened, so that he can see into the surrounding spiritual world. And now Faust's personality becomes a being placed between two worlds, between the spiritual world to which man can raise himself through purification, through the ennobling of himself and that world which drags him down. Faust becomes a being placed between the world of good and the world of evil. And while previously we saw in Faust the life of the single striving personality, now we see before us a great conflict carried on between the good and evil powers around man. Man is thus placed in the centre as the worthiest object for which the good and evil beings fight in the world. Though in the very beginning Faust is seen as a man doubting all knowledge, he now comes before us as one placed between heaven and hell. Thus the poem reaches an essentially higher stage and a higher existence.In the form in which Faust appears in 1808 it seems as if thousands of years of human development resound. We are reminded of the great dramatic representation of man's life produced in ancient times in the Book of Job, where the evil spirit went among men and stood up before God, and God said to him: ‘Thou hast been to and fro on the earth, hast thou considered my servant Job?’ What is here said we find in the poem, ‘The Prologue in Heaven’ where God speaks with Mephistopheles, the messenger of the evil spirituality: ‘The self in them expands to a spiritual universe.’ At that time at Frankfort he had the feeling, ‘Away from the mere striving after ideas! Away from the merely perceptive sense observation! There must be a path to the sources of existence!’ and he came into touch with what one can call alchemistic, mystical and theosophical literature. He himself attempted the practice of alchemy. He relates how he came to know of a work through which many sought for similar knowledge at that time, Welling's ‘Opus Mago-Cabalisticum et Theosophicum.’ This book was much thought of then as giving a knowledge of the sources of existence. Goethe studied by degrees Paracelsus, Valentinus and above all a work which from its whole method must have produced a deep impression on all those who strove after such knowledge, ‘Aurea Catena Homeri.’ This was a representation of nature the Mystics in the Middle Ages believed to see. The study of these mystical, alchemistic, theosophical books must have had a similar effect on Goethe to that which a man striving to-day after the same things would experience if he took up the books of Eliphas Levy or any other thinker on the same lines. Indeed at that time these things must have had an even more bewildering effect upon Goethe because these different writers no longer really understood the magic, theosophy, etc., of which they wrote. It was impossible to speak in direct way of the real grandeur and meaning of these things, proceeding from an ancient wisdom which had lived in human souls, for the meaning was hidden under an outer garb which included all kinds of physical and chemical forms. For those who merely saw what appeared outwardly in these books it was the greatest nonsense, and at that time it was most difficult to penetrate behind these secrets and arrive at the real meaning. But we must not forget that Goethe from his deep striving for knowledge had developed an intuitive mind. He must have been greatly pleased when on opening the ‘Aurea Catena Homeri’ he saw on the first page a symbol which had a deep effect on his soul; two triangles interlaced; in the corners the signs of the planets, drawn in a wonderful way, a flying dragon wound round in a circle, beneath which another dragon had fixed stiffening itself, and when he read the words on the first page, saying that the flying dragon symbolizes the stream which sends those forces which stream down from out of the Cosmos to the stiffened dragon, showing how heaven and earth hang together, or as it is expressed there: ‘How the spiritual forces of heaven pour into the earth's centre.’These mysterious signs and words must have made a great impression upon Goethe. For instance, those which depict the whole growth of the earth: ‘From chaos to that which is called the universal quintessence’ — a remarkable sentence, curiously mixed up with signs of a chaotic nature, still undifferentiated right through the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, right up to man and to that perspective to which man is developing in ever greater refinement. But it was not easy to find a way of penetrating to the deeper meaning. So Goethe left Frankfort in a frame of mind which can be described in the following words: I have found nothing. These seekers into nature can only give me dry, empty ideas; anything that can be squeezed out of them is but life's water. I have busied myself with much that has come down to us from the past from those who declare that they saw into the secrets of life. But the way, the way drives one to despair!This was sometimes the mood in Goethe's soul. He was not to be bewitched by easy speculations or philosophizing, or by confused symbols and explanations from those old books, which worked so wonderfully and forebodingly on him. They looked at him with their mysteries as something to which he could find no way. But anyone who knew Goethe's soul, knew the seed was already sown in his soul which was to germinate later. But he felt himself as one who was rejected and unworthy to unravel the secrets of life. Then he went to Strassburg.There he met people who must have interested him in one way or the other. He got to know Jung-Stilling with his deeply mystical soul, who owing to the development of peculiar forces generally found sleeping in men, had looked deeply into the hidden side of existence. He met Herder at Strassburg, who had gone through similar moods and who in times of desperation had often been at the point of a denial of future life. In Herder he learnt to know a man who suffered from a surfeit of life and who said, I have studied much, discerning sundry things connected with men's works and men's strivings on the earth. But he was unable to say to himself, I have had one moment when my longing after the sources of life has been satisfied. This was when he was ill and inclined to deny everything with bitter irony. Yet it was Herder who pointed out many depths in the riddles of life, and Goethe found in him a truly human Faust. But that side of negation which is not the outcome of mockery and scorn Goethe learnt to know later through his friend Merck. Goethe's mother who disliked criticism of people and all moralizing said of Merck, he can never leave Mephistopheles at home, in him we are quite used to it. In Merck Goethe found a disclaimer of much that is worth striving for in life. Over against all these impressions which Goethe received from the Strassburg people, it was through Nature and his observation of Nature that many of life's puzzles were cleared up for him.At the same time we must think of Goethe as a man possessed of a sharp, penetrating mind; he was not an unpractical man. He was an advocate, but only practised for a short time. Those who knew Goethe's work as an advocate and later as a Minister, were acquainted with his eminently practical mind. As advocate he knew little more than what he had learnt by heart from law books. But he was a man able to decide very quickly on any point laid before him; such a man can also map out clearly life's course.Let us consider Goethe when during his Italian journey, he gradually arrived at the discovery of the primeval plant, he collected stones, prepared himself diligently to take up the work of research, and did not seek to know immediately ‘how one thing strives to enter another’ but said to himself: ‘If you would gain a premonition’ of ‘how one thing works and lives in another’ as heavenly powers rise and fall, offering each the ‘golden urn,’ examine the vertebras of the spinal column and the way in which one bone is connected with the next; and how one faculty helps another. Seek in the smallest thing the picture of the greatest.Goethe became a very diligent student during his travels in Italy, examining everything. He formed the opinion that if an artist acted ‘according to the laws which are followed by nature herself’ and understood by the Greeks, the divine will be present in his works even as it is in the works of creation. For Goethe, art is a ‘manifestation of the secret laws of nature.’ The creations of the artists are works of nature on a higher stage of perfection. Art is man's continuation and conclusion of nature. ‘For since man is the head of nature so he regards himself as a complete nature, but also as one which can call forth a further rise. He strives for this through the acquisition of all accomplishments and virtues which call for choice, order, harmony, and meaning, and at last rises to the production of the work of art.’

We can say that during the Italian journey everything that came before Goethe took on definite forms and through inner soul experiences appeared clearly before him. So once again he took up ‘Faust,’ and we perceive how he endeavoured to bring the separate parts into union. But we also perceive how he interested himself in an objective manner in what Faust could become for the people of the North. In Italy he became particularly conscious of the great difference between people who had been brought up amid classical surroundings and those who had not. He found it strange that so little should be heard in Rome of ghost stories such as were common in the North. In the Villa Borghese he wrote at this time the ‘Witches Kitchen’ scene, as one who had lost touch with all such things, but also as one who recalled to memory the spirit of the earth. When he had previously written about the earth spirit, he represented it in such a way that Faust turned away from it, as from a ‘hideous worm.’ But the fact of turning away from it, even without understanding why, remains in the soul and works on further, as it did in Goethe. But those who become impatient and refuse to wait until after long years the seed grows, are unable to see the way clearly. And when in Italy Goethe knew that a turning away from the terrible countenance would have its effect upon his soul, and now these words arise:‘Sublime Spirit, thou gavest me, gavest me all For which I begged. It was not without reason That thou didst turn thy face in fire to me And for a kingdom gavest me the glorious nature With strength to feel it and to enjoy it. Not A coldly astonished gaze didst thou grant to me But didst permit me to look into her profound bosom As into that of a friend. Past me didst thou lead the ranks of the living And didst teach me to know, in the quiet bushes, In air, and in water, my brother. And when the storm roared and rattled in the woods And there fell the neighbouring branches of the giant fir Squashing the undergrowth and in their fall Sounding like thunder in the hollow of the hills, Thou didst lead me to a safe Grotto, where Thou didst show me myself and opened my heart To deep and secret wonders.’Before Goethe, there stands the possibility of the human soul, through its own development expanding to a spiritual universe. Through a patient sacrificial resigned search, the fruits stand before his soul which as germs were planted when he came into touch with the earth spirit. We can see through this monologue in ‘Wald und Höhle’ (wood and grotto) what a forward jerk this was towards the ripening of the fruits in his soul, for it shows us that the seed already sown was not sown in vain. And as a warning to have patience, to wait until such seeds had ripened in his soul, that fragment of ‘Faust’ meets us which appeared with this setting in 1790. And now we see how Goethe finds the way step by step after being led to his ‘safe grotto where the secret deep wonders of his own heart were opened to him,’ he obtains that comprehensive survey which bids him no longer abide with his own sorrow, but teaches him to rise above his sorrow, to send his foreseeing spirit out into the Macrocosmos, watch the fighting of the good and evil spirits and see men on their battle ground. And in ‘Faust’ in 1808 he sent out beforehand the ‘Prologue in Heaven:’Raphael: ‘The sun-orb sings, in emulation, 'Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round: His path predestined through Creation He ends with step of thunder-sound.’We next see how the macrocosmic Mights oppose the forces of the great world. We see too from out the experiences of Goethe's soul, what a remarkable light falls on the two dragons with which at one time in his youth he came in touch.‘Faust’ is such a universal poem because it contains so many warnings. It also gives us that golden saying: ‘Wait in confidence for the development of thy inner forces, even if that means waiting a very long time!’ These words also sound as a warning which stand as an attribute before Faust, when Goethe looks back to those ‘fluctuating figures which in early days had once shown a troubled countenance’ but which now are flooded with light. Now he had waited so long that the friends who had taken such a vivid interest in Faust as he had appeared to them in the first form, had died, and those who had not died were very far away. Goethe had been obliged to wait for the development of the seed already sown in him.Now these striking words meet us:‘My sorrow speaks to an unknown crowd, Their applause e'en makes my heart feel heavy, And those who once delighted in my song If they still live, in other lands are scattered.’No longer did it matter to those who in youth had felt with him. He had had to wait, as the last lines of this dedication so beautifully express it — ‘What was once a reality to me, has gone into the unreal: but what has remained for me and appears to outer vision as unreal, that to me is now true, and it is only now that I can give it as truth.’ So we see how this poem, even if only looked at in such an external manner as we have to-day, leads us into the depths of the human soul.‘Faust’ was begun in a desultory manner, some parts being pushed in between others, and therefore Goethe was unable to show in a continuous way what he had experienced in his soul. But something else led to the fact that Goethe expressed his deepest experiences in ‘Faust.’The ‘Helena scene’ also belongs to the first part of ‘Faust’ written by Goethe. But we find it was not included even in the ‘Faust’ of 1808. Why not? Because the manner in which Goethe had finished ‘Faust’ at that time would not allow it. What Goethe wished to say through the Helena scene was the expression of such a deep premonition of the deepest riddle of existence, that the first part was not sufficiently prepared to allow of this. Only when Goethe had reached an advanced age, was he able to give a true form to what really was the inner work of his life.We see how his mind had expanded so that he was able to grasp the worlds of the macrocosm, as expressed in the ‘Prologue in Heaven.’ We shall also see the way in which Goethe represents the stages of the soul's experience, leading men from the first stage up to that of imaginative vision, where the soul penetrating ever deeper and deeper, bursts at last the doors of the spiritual world, which Mephistopheles would close. Goethe also represents these inner experiences. For he places in the second part of ‘Faust’ the experiences of a soul through secret scientific study, and we see here one of the deepest riddles of existence, which if recognized, would be found to be an announcement of Western spiritual science given in imposing language. One is tempted to place such a poem as the ‘Bhagavad Gita’ and the second part of ‘Faust’ side by side. For great and powerful wisdom speaks out of such Eastern writings. It seems as if the gods themselves desired in them to speak with men to express the wisdom out of which the world was formed. Indeed it is so.Now let us look at the second part of ‘Faust.’ Here we see a striving human soul which has raised itself to spiritual vision from outer physical perception; we see how it has worked its way up to true clairvoyance when Faust enters the spiritual world and finds the spiritual choir around him ...‘Hearken! Hark! — The Hours careering Sounding loud to spirit-hearing. See the new-born day appearing! Rocky portals jarring shatter, Phœbus' wheels in rolling clatter, With a crash the Light draws near! Pealing rays and trumpet-blazes — Eye is blinded, ear amazes: The Unheard can no one hear!’Faust II, Act I.to that passage where Faust is outwardly dazzled, so that the outer world is lost to his perception and he says to himself: ‘Only within shines clear light! ...’ up to that passage in which the soul works itself up to the spheres of world existence, where the spiritual worlds are to be seen in all their purity, and the riddle of the world discloses itself to the soul. This is a way which we must designate as an esoteric one.The way in which we can penetrate from the outer to the inner life of Goethe's world enigma, we shall see to-morrow, and we shall also see from out of what depths Goethe spoke the word which at last gave him the certainty he needed with reference to all the longings, all the sorrows, pains and strivings for knowledge in his life.‘Whoever zealously strives We can redeem him; And if love from above Feels an interest in him, The blest choir will be there With a friendly greeting.’We shall consider to-morrow how Goethe solved this riddle of existence, and how that which lives in the soul can rise up to its true home. It will give us the answer to what Goethe placed as the riddle of his existence and about which he gives us such a hopeful answer at the end of the second part of ‘Faust:’‘For the spiritual world, That noble member, Is saved from evil. Whoever strives zealously We can redeem him! ...’This tells us Faust can be saved and those spirits will not conquer who by bringing men into the material bring them also to destruction.

 

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.

 

A brief history of Belgium, and the Place des Martyrs - Martelaarsplaats (Martyrs' Square) in that history -

 

Among the most moving places to visit in the capital of Belgium, is Martyrs' Square in Brussels, where over 400 heroes of the Belgian Revolution of 1830 lie buried in a crypt beneath the cobblestones. This square is usually known by its French name, La Place des Martyrs, or also by its Dutch name, De Martelaarsplaats. Many of the dead here lie not far from where they were shot, in fierce battles amid the Brussels streets and barricades.

 

A wonderful monument here honours these heroes who died for the cause of freedom, in the brief 1830-31 revolutionary war that created the Belgian nation.

 

Particularly extraordinary and moving at the Place des Martyrs - Martelaarsplaats, are four beautiful sculptures of angels, with the angels´ faces in touchingly eternal expressions of mourning for the brave ones who gave their lives for the freedom of others.

 

These are photos from the daily life of writer, journalist and political refugee from the US, Dr Les (Leslie) Sachs - I am someone who also has nearly died fighting for freedom for others.

 

These Flickr photos document my new beloved home city of Brussels, Belgium, my life among the people and Kingdom who have given me safety in the face of the threats to destroy me. Brussels has a noble history of providing a safe haven to other dissident refugee writers, such as Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Charles Baudelaire, and Alexandre Dumas, and I shall forever be grateful that Brussels and Belgium have helped to protect my own life as well. I'm happy to help convey to the world some of Brussels' wonderful cultural heritage.

 

(To read about the efforts to silence me and my journalism, the attacks on me, the smears and the threats, see the website by European journalists 'About Les Sachs' linked in my Flickr profile, and press articles such as 'Two EU Writers Under Threat of Murder: Roberto Saviano and Dr Les Sachs'.)

 

The Place des Martyrs - Martelaarsplaats remains a place where today's Belgians continue to remember and honour the heroes who died for them. Some weeks before the earlier group of these pictures were taken, on one rainy morning, I stood at the Place des Martyrs - Martelaarsplaats in the pouring rain, with a small group of Belgians in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, a number of them frail and supporting themselves unsteadily with canes on the uneven cobblestone surface, while a brass band was playing patriotic music. Though the rain was pouring down heavily on the Place des Martyrs, these elderly Belgians did not mind getting drenched, whatever the risk to their health, because these good people were children when the Nazis occupied Belgium, and that rainy day was a day to remember the Belgians who died fighting the fascist occupiers.

 

Quick sketch of the history of Belgium, and the historical role of Martyrs' Square -

 

The history of Belgium is not easy to outline. Belgium is today a nation with three official languages, reflecting its two large language groups of French and Dutch speakers, along with a small area whose native language is German. The Romans and Julius Caesar were in the neighbourhood over 2000 years ago, and Caesar wrote of fighting some fierce tribes here called the "Belgae", from whom the nation takes its name.

 

In fact, Julius Caesar referred to the Belgians or 'Belgae', in the very first sentence of his most famous book, 'De Bello Gallico', his commentary on the 'Gallic Wars': « Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae ... » « The whole of Gaul is divided into three parts, in one of which live the Belgians ... »

 

As the Roman Empire fell apart, the Belgian region was home to the Merovingian kings in the early "dark ages", and then was part of the empire of Charlemagne. Under Charlemagne's grandson Lothair and great-grandson King Lothair II, the area of current Belgium was part of a kingdom of 'Lotharingia' whose name we know today as the French 'Lorraine'. This kingdom rapidly divided among royal heirs, with 'Upper Lorraine' roughly inside what is now France, and Brussels becoming the capital of a 'Duchy of Lower Lorraine' - roughly today's Low Countries - when a castle was built in Brussels' old centre around the year 979.

 

Borders and regional identity continued to change quickly in the centuries after Charlemagne, the "high middle ages". What was 'Lower Lorraine' gave way to several of the great mediaeval territories and dukedoms spreading across differing sections of what is now Belgium, with names we still hear today: Flanders, Brabant, Luxembourg. And various smaller territories and fiefdoms were also a part here, amid the ever-shifting landscape of mediaeval and feudal Europe.

 

The middle part of Belgium, including Brussels, was the historic territory of Brabant, and the Dukes of Brabant, about the year 1100, built premises right at what is known today in Brussels as the Royal Square - Place Royale - Kongingsplaats.

 

Brabant and much of Belgium then came to be part of the great late-mediaeval dukedom of Burgundy, which reached the height of influence in the 1400s with Brussels as the Burgundian capital along with Dijon. At its height, Burgundy was regarded by many as the richest court in all Europe. Today's independent Belgium is thus a remnant of that long-ago much larger Renaissance realm of Burgundy, as well as of the even more ancient kingdom of mediaeval Lotharingia.

 

The area of today's Belgium kept its leading role in Europe in the early 1500s, as Burgundy in turn was enveloped into the Holy Roman Empire at its height. The towns of Belgium gave birth and upbringing to the Emperor Charles V, who at one point ruled most of Europe from Brussels. So, about 500 years ago, Brussels was already the 'centre' of Europe.

 

After Charles, his empire began to break apart, and the territory of today's Belgium had a succession of foreign rulers from within Charles V's widely-flung Habsburg family: First the Spanish, who kept hold of the territory we now call Belgium, while the Dutch to the north broke away during the Protestant Reformation. After the 'War of the Spanish Succession', the Habsburg territories were further divided, with Belgium going under Austrian control from 1714 onwards.

 

It was under the Austrians, in the late 1700s, that elegant buildings began to be built around a large square which was named the Place Saint-Michel, or Saint Michael's Square. This would later become Place des Martyrs - Martelaarsplaats that you see here.

 

The beginning of the end of Austrian rule, and the beginning of the story of modern independent Belgium, was the 'Brabantine Revolution' (Révolution Brabançonne - Brabantse Revolutie), whereby in 1789 much of what is now Belgium, asserted its full independence from its then-rulers, the Habsburg emperors of Austria.

 

In sympathy and parallel with the epoch-changing revolution of 1789 in next-door France, the rebellious provinces of 'Austrian Netherlands' also went into rebellion that same year, and declared the deposition of the Austrian Habsburg Emperor, and the creation of the 'United Belgian States' (États-Belgiques-Unis - Verenigde Belgische Staten), which endured only briefly in 1789-1790. The 'Belgian' name came from the Latin word used by Julius Caesar to identify the fierce fighting tribes who inhabited this region in Caesar's day, the 'Belgae'.

 

In 1789, the seals of the document declaring the 'United Belgian States' to be 'free' and 'independent', were ornamented by silken tassels of black, yellow and red. The flag of the short-lived Belgian nation of 1789-90, then used these three colours, though in horizontal stripes and in a different order than the current vertically-striped Belgian flag.

 

The Austrians were able to briefly re-assert control of Belgium in 1790, then lost it to French control in 1792, and won it back one final time in 1793-94. The French then retained control, annexing most of what is now Belgium into France in 1795. As the Napoleonic era ended, Belgium was separated from France in 1814-1815.

 

As Napoléon was being defeated and his Empire terminated, the European nations meeting at the Council of Vienna of 1814-15, thought that the territories north of France, including modern Belgium and Luxembourg, should all be under the Dutch monarch, creating a single large buffer state between France and England.

 

The European powers meeting in Vienna avoided what might have seemed a more logical idea, of uniting only Dutch-speaking regions with the Netherlands, while letting the French-speaking regions of Wallonia remain united with France. The powers of 1815 did not want to reward France with territorial expansion to the north, precisely in the area around where Napoléon met his final defeat at Waterloo.

 

But the Vienna plan of shoving the French-speakers of Wallonia into a new Dutch monarchy, and expanding the Dutch nation and doubling its size, proved to be very unstable. The Dutch of the Netherlands were predominantly Protestant, while the southern populations, including the Dutch-speakers of Flanders, were predominantly Roman Catholic. And not only did the Catholic territories have large numbers of French speakers, the people in Flanders also speak a modestly different Dutch than in the Netherlands, which led them to chafe against the Dutch monarchy in sympathy with their French-speaking neighbours.

 

Tensions grew until an August, 1830 performance at the Brussels opera house, where political rebellion portrayed on the stage, became a catalyst for rebellion in the streets.

 

In September of 1830 the street rebellions became a full-blown revolution for Belgian independence. The Place Saint-Michel, Saint Michael's Square, a few hundred metres from the opera house where the fuse for revolution had been lit, became a key site for the declaration of Belgian liberty and independence, and a pivotal site in the fierce and deadly street battles. The central days of the revolution in September 1830 - the 23rd, 24th, 25th and 26th - are the dates inscribed upon the tablet held by the high figure in the monument that you see in the photos, representing the angel or goddess of the Belgian home nation (Latin 'patria'), with a lion by her side.

 

In 1830, with the hundreds of dead from the revolutionary battles, the decision was made to bury them there at the square, which now became the Square of the Martyrs of Freedom.

 

The revolution was quickly successful. Some battles continued to take place into 1831, as the Dutch made a last try to hold onto the Belgian territory, but the separation of Belgium and Luxembourg was speedily recognised and secured by the other European powers.

 

The Revolution of 1830 enabled Belgium to finally fulfil the dreams of the Belgian revolutionaries of 1789. The current Belgian tri-colour flag was established in 1831, using the 1789 colours of the 'Brabantine Revolution'. Belgium became a nation and even acquired a king of its own, the Protestant German Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who agreed to marry the Catholic daughter of the French monarch, and raise their children as French-speaking Roman Catholics, while he became the first hereditary King of the Belgians.

 

And today, the political refugee Dr Les (Leslie) Sachs, may owe the saving of his life in the face of the threats to murder him, to protection extended from the royal household of the King of the Belgians, the descendant of that first Belgian monarch.

 

Léopold I, who was born in 1790, reigned in Belgium until 1865. Early in his reign, he supervised the building of this monument at Martyrs' Square. In one of the photos of the angels by the monument, you see between two angels the large plaque with the text in Latin. Two dates are given. The first is that of the declaration of the nation's identity, on the 25th of September 1830, a date closely tied to the death of the martyrs buried in the crypt below. The second date, the 25th of September 1840, is the date of the completion and dedication of the main part of the monument, with the final line noting that this took place under Léopold I as the reigning monarch.

 

Though the main monument structure was indeed completed and dedicated in 1840, the lovely and magnificent angels were added some years later, in 1848. Today, it is these sculptured angels which, above all, give Martyrs' Square its high character of deep emotion and magnificence.

 

The buildings around the square have, over the centuries, partially fallen into a difficult state, and you see one of the buildings undergoing inside-out comprehensive renovation in the photos. The overall revival and restoration of Martyrs' Square has been given a major boost, however, by the government of Belgium's majority Flemish-speaking region.

 

Belgium today is about 60 per cent Dutch-speaking, with most of the remainder French-speakers along with a few native German-speakers. Brussels itself is officially bi-lingual, and historically was predominantly a Dutch-speaking city through the centuries, from the mediaeval and Renaissance era down to early modern times. However, this changed in the 1800s, and Brussels today is at least 70 per cent French-speaking, with many of the rest of Brussels residents foreign-born rather than Dutch-speaking.

 

Yet, in one of the many curious paradoxes of Belgium's governmental arrangements, the predominantly French-speaking Brussels remains the 'capital' of the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders, while the French language community of Belgium has its capital in the provincial city of Namur.

 

Thus today, the Martelaarsplaats - Place des Martyrs, is the site of major national offices of Dutch-speaking Flanders. The Flemish government holds the two major buildings facing each other across the longer distance of the square, and the one you see in the photos in close-up with the three flags over the doorway (the EU flag, the Belgian flag, and the predominantly yellow Flemish flag) is actually the 'Kabinet van de Minister-President' of the 'Vlaamse Regering', or the 'Office of the Minister-President' (Prime Minister) of the Flemish government.

 

In front of the office of the Flemish Prime Minister, is a monument built in 1897 and dedicated to one of the particular martyrs of the Revolution, Jenneval. 'Jenneval' was the stage name of Louis Alexandre Hippolyte Dechez, as 'Jenneval' a well-known actor, who died from wounds in battle in October 1830. But some weeks before his death, Jenneval penned some of the original words to the Belgian national anthem, the Brabançonne. This monument to Jenneval was dedicated in 1897, on September 25th, precisely amid the 67th anniversary of the 1830 Belgian revolution for independence.

 

The inscriptions on the Jenneval monument are in both Dutch and French on opposite sides of it, though the French inscription is extremely weather-worn and hard to read. The inscriptions are:

 

Aan Jenneval

Dichter der Brabançonne

Gesneuveld voor 's lands

Onafhankelijkheid

Hulde der stad Brussel

25 september 1897

 

À Jenneval

Poète de la Brabançonne

Mort pour l'indépendance

Nationale

Hommage de la ville

de Bruxelles

25 septembre 1897

 

To Jenneval

Poet of the Brabançonne

Slain for his country's / the nation's independence

A tribute of the city of Brussels

25 September 1897

 

On the far opposite side of the Place des Martyrs - Martelaarsplaats, in front of the other Flemish government building here, is a monument to another hero of the Belgian Revolution, Comte (Count) Frédéric de Mérode, who was mortally wounded in battle in October 1830 and died a few days later in early November. His brother, Count Félix de Mérode, was a major figure in the Belgian provisional government in the weeks of revolution.

 

The Mérode monument also carries inscriptions on opposite sides in both French and Dutch:

 

À

Frédéric de Mérode

Mort pour l'indépendance

De la patrie

 

Aan

Frederic de Merode

Gestorven voor de

Onafhankelijkheid

van het vaderland

 

To

Frédéric de Mérode

Who died for the independence

Of our home country

 

The map with this Flickr photo set will show you how to walk to the Place des Martyrs - Martelaarsplaats. It is a few minutes' walk from either the De Brouckère or Rogier métro stations, via the popular rue Neuve - Nieuwstraat shopping promenade that runs between De Brouckère and Rogier. As you walk along the rue Neuve - Nieuwstraat, you see it visible a very few metres to the east along one of the intersections, at the Rue Saint-Michel - Sint-Michielsstraat, with the central monument of the Place des Martyrs - Martelaarsplaats clearly visible.

 

Strasbourg (/ˈstræzbɜrɡ/, French pronunciation: ​[stʁaz.buʁ, stʁas.buʁ]; German: Straßburg, [ˈʃtʁaːsbʊɐ̯k]) is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in north eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace were historically Alemannic-speaking, hence the city's Germanic name.[5] In 2006, the city proper had 272,975 inhabitants and its urban community 467,375 inhabitants. With 759,868 inhabitants in 2010, Strasbourg's metropolitan area (only the part of the metropolitan area on French territory) is the ninth largest in France. The transnational Eurodistrict Strasbourg-Ortenau had a population of 884,988 inhabitants in 2008.[6]

 

Strasbourg is the seat of several European institutions, such as the Council of Europe (with its European Court of Human Rights, its European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and its European Audiovisual Observatory) and the Eurocorps, as well as the European Parliament and the European Ombudsman of the European Union. The city is also the seat of the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine and the International Institute of Human Rights.[7]

 

Strasbourg's historic city centre, the Grande Île (Grand Island), was classified a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1988, the first time such an honour was placed on an entire city centre. Strasbourg is immersed in the Franco-German culture and although violently disputed throughout history, has been a bridge of unity between France and Germany for centuries, especially through the University of Strasbourg, currently the second largest in France, and the coexistence of Catholic and Protestant culture. The largest Islamic place of worship in France, the Strasbourg Grand Mosque, was inaugurated by French Interior Minister Manuel Valls on 27 September 2012.[8]

 

Economically, Strasbourg is an important centre of manufacturing and engineering, as well as a hub of road, rail, and river transportation. The port of Strasbourg is the second largest on the Rhine after Duisburg, Germany.

 

Etymology and Names

The city's Gallicized name (Lower Alsatian: Strossburi, [ˈʃd̥rɔːsb̥uri]; German: Straßburg, [ˈʃtʁaːsbʊɐ̯k]) is of Germanic origin and means "Town (at the crossing) of roads". The modern Stras- is cognate to the German Straße and English street, all of which are derived from Latin strata ("paved road"), while -bourg is cognate to the German Burg and English borough, all of which are derived from Proto-Germanic *burgz ("hill fort, fortress").

 

Geography

 

Strasbourg seen from Spot Satellite

Strasbourg is situated on the eastern border of France with Germany. This border is formed by the River Rhine, which also forms the eastern border of the modern city, facing across the river to the German town Kehl. The historic core of Strasbourg however lies on the Grande Île in the River Ill, which here flows parallel to, and roughly 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) from, the Rhine. The natural courses of the two rivers eventually join some distance downstream of Strasbourg, although several artificial waterways now connect them within the city.

 

The city lies in the Upper Rhine Plain, at between 132 metres (433 ft) and 151 metres (495 ft) above sea level, with the upland areas of the Vosges Mountains some 20 km (12 mi) to the west and the Black Forest 25 km (16 mi) to the east. This section of the Rhine valley is a major axis of north-south travel, with river traffic on the Rhine itself, and major roads and railways paralleling it on both banks.

 

The city is some 400 kilometres (250 mi) east of Paris. The mouth of the Rhine lies approximately 450 kilometres (280 mi) to the north, or 650 kilometres (400 mi) as the river flows, whilst the head of navigation in Basel is some 100 kilometres (62 mi) to the south, or 150 kilometres (93 mi) by river.

 

Climate

 

In spite of its position far inland, Strasbourg's climate is classified as Oceanic (Köppen climate classification Cfb), with warm, relatively sunny summers and cold, overcast winters. Precipitation is elevated from mid-spring to the end of summer, but remains largely constant throughout the year, totaling 631.4 mm (24.9 in) annually. On average, snow falls 30 days per year.

 

The highest temperature ever recorded was 38.5 °C (101.3 °F) in August 2003, during the 2003 European heat wave. The lowest temperature ever recorded was −23.4 °C (−10.1 °F) in December 1938.

 

Strasbourg's location in the Rhine valley, sheltered from the dominant winds by the Vosges and Black Forest mountains, results in poor natural ventilation, making Strasbourg one of the most atmospherically polluted cities of France.[10][11] Nonetheless, the progressive disappearance of heavy industry on both banks of the Rhine, as well as effective measures of traffic regulation in and around the city have reduced air pollution.

 

Prehistory

The first traces of human occupation in the environs of Strasbourg go back many thousands of years.[16] Neolithic, bronze age and iron age artifacts have been uncovered by archeological excavations. It was permanently settled by proto-Celts around 1300 BC. Towards the end of the third century BC, it developed into a Celtic township with a market called "Argentorate". Drainage works converted the stilthouses to houses built on dry land.[17]

 

From Romans

The Romans under Nero Claudius Drusus established a military outpost belonging to the Germania Superior Roman province at Strasbourg's current location, and named it Argentoratum. (Hence the town is commonly called Argentina in medieval Latin.[18]) The name "Argentoratum" was first mentioned in 12 BC and the city celebrated its 2,000th birthday in 1988. "Argentorate" as the toponym of the Gaulish settlement preceded it before being Latinized, but it is not known by how long. The Roman camp was destroyed by fire and rebuilt six times between the first and the fifth centuries AD: in 70, 97, 235, 355, in the last quarter of the fourth century, and in the early years of the fifth century. It was under Trajan and after the fire of 97 that Argentoratum received its most extended and fortified shape. From the year 90 on, the Legio VIII Augusta was permanently stationed in the Roman camp of Argentoratum. It then included a cavalry section and covered an area of approximately 20 hectares. Other Roman legions temporarily stationed in Argentoratum were the Legio XIV Gemina and the Legio XXI Rapax, the latter during the reign of Nero.

 

The centre of Argentoratum proper was situated on the Grande Île (Cardo: current Rue du Dôme, Decumanus: current Rue des Hallebardes). The outline of the Roman "castrum" is visible in the street pattern in the Grande Ile. Many Roman artifacts have also been found along the current Route des Romains, the road that led to Argentoratum, in the suburb of Kœnigshoffen. This was where the largest burial places were situated, as well as the densest concentration of civilian dwelling places and commerces next to the camp. Among the most outstanding finds in Kœnigshoffen were (found in 1911–12) the fragments of a grand Mithraeum that had been shattered by early Christians in the fourth century. From the fourth century, Strasbourg was the seat of the Bishopric of Strasbourg (made an Archbishopric in 1988). Archaeological excavations below the current Église Saint-Étienne in 1948 and 1956 unearthed the apse of a church dating back to the late fourth or early fifth century, considered to be the oldest church in Alsace. It is supposed that this was the first seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Strasbourg.

 

The Alemanni fought the Battle of Argentoratum against Rome in 357. They were defeated by Julian, later Emperor of Rome, and their King Chonodomarius was taken prisoner. On 2 January 366, the Alemanni crossed the frozen Rhine in large numbers to invade the Roman Empire. Early in the fifth century, the Alemanni appear to have crossed the Rhine, conquered, and then settled what is today Alsace and a large part of Switzerland.

 

In the fifth century Strasbourg was occupied successively by Alemanni, Huns, and Franks. In the ninth century it was commonly known as Strazburg in the local language, as documented in 842 by the Oaths of Strasbourg. This trilingual text contains, alongside texts in Latin and Old High German (teudisca lingua), the oldest written variety of Gallo-Romance (lingua romana) clearly distinct from Latin, the ancestor of Old French. The town was also called Stratisburgum or Strateburgus in Latin, from which later came Strossburi in Alsatian and Straßburg in Standard German, and then Strasbourg in French. The Oaths of Strasbourg is considered as marking the birth of the two countries of France and Germany with the division of the Carolingian Empire.[19]

 

A major commercial centre, the town came under the control of the Holy Roman Empire in 923, through the homage paid by the Duke of Lorraine to German King Henry I. The early history of Strasbourg consists of a long conflict between its bishop and its citizens. The citizens emerged victorious after the Battle of Oberhausbergen in 1262, when King Philip of Swabia granted the city the status of an Imperial Free City.

 

Around 1200, Gottfried von Straßburg wrote the Middle High German courtly romance Tristan, which is regarded, alongside Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and the Nibelungenlied, as one of great narrative masterpieces of the German Middle Ages.

 

A revolution in 1332 resulted in a broad-based city government with participation of the guilds, and Strasbourg declared itself a free republic. The deadly bubonic plague of 1348 was followed on 14 February 1349 by one of the first and worst pogroms in pre-modern history: over a thousand Jews were publicly burnt to death, with the remainder of the Jewish population being expelled from the city.[20] Until the end of the 18th century, Jews were forbidden to remain in town after 10 pm. The time to leave the city was signalled by a municipal herald blowing the Grüselhorn (see below, Museums, Musée historique);.[21] A special tax, the Pflastergeld (pavement money), was furthermore to be paid for any horse that a Jew would ride or bring into the city while allowed to.[22]

 

Construction on Strasbourg Cathedral began in the twelfth century, and it was completed in 1439 (though, of the towers, only the north tower was built), becoming the World's Tallest Building, surpassing the Great Pyramid of Giza. A few years later, Johannes Gutenberg created the first European moveable type printing press in Strasbourg.

 

In July 1518, an incident known as the Dancing Plague of 1518 struck residents of Strasbourg. Around 400 people were afflicted with dancing mania and danced constantly for weeks, most of them eventually dying from heart attack, stroke or exhaustion.

 

In the 1520s during the Protestant Reformation, the city, under the political guidance of Jacob Sturm von Sturmeck and the spiritual guidance of Martin Bucer embraced the religious teachings of Martin Luther. Their adherents established a Gymnasium, headed by Johannes Sturm, made into a University in the following century. The city first followed the Tetrapolitan Confession, and then the Augsburg Confession. Protestant iconoclasm caused much destruction to churches and cloisters, notwithstanding that Luther himself opposed such a practice. Strasbourg was a centre of humanist scholarship and early book-printing in the Holy Roman Empire, and its intellectual and political influence contributed much to the establishment of Protestantism as an accepted denomination in the southwest of Germany. (John Calvin spent several years as a political refugee in the city). The Strasbourg Councillor Sturm and guildmaster Matthias represented the city at the Imperial Diet of Speyer (1529), where their protest led to the schism of the Catholic Church and the evolution of Protestantism. Together with four other free cities, Strasbourg presented the confessio tetrapolitana as its Protestant book of faith at the Imperial Diet of Augsburg in 1530, where the slightly different Augsburg Confession was also handed over to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.

 

After the reform of the Imperial constitution in the early sixteenth century and the establishment of Imperial Circles, Strasbourg was part of the Upper Rhenish Circle, a corporation of Imperial estates in the southwest of Holy Roman Empire, mainly responsible for maintaining troops, supervising coining, and ensuring public security.

 

After the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1440, the first printing offices outside the inventor's hometown Mainz were established around 1460 in Strasbourg by pioneers Johannes Mentelin and Heinrich Eggestein. Subsequently, the first modern newspaper was published in Strasbourg in 1605, when Johann Carolus received the permission by the City of Strasbourg to print and distribute a weekly journal written in German by reporters from several central European cities.

 

From Thirty Years' War to First World War

The Free City of Strasbourg remained neutral during the Thirty Years' War 1618-1648, and retained its status as a Free Imperial City. However, the city was later annexed by Louis XIV of France to extend the borders of his kingdom.

 

Louis' advisors believed that, as long as Strasbourg remained independent, it would endanger the King's newly annexed territories in Alsace, and, that to defend these large rural lands effectively, a garrison had to be placed in towns such as Strasbourg.[23] Indeed, the bridge over the Rhine at Strasbourg had been used repeatedly by Imperial (Holy Roman Empire) forces,[24] and three times during the Franco-Dutch War Strasbourg had served as a gateway for Imperial invasions into Alsace.[25] In September 1681 Louis' forces, though lacking a clear casus belli, surrounded the city with overwhelming force. After some negotiation, Louis marched into the city unopposed on 30 September 1681 and proclaimed its annexation.[26]

 

This annexation was one of the direct causes of the brief and bloody War of the Reunions whose outcome left the French in possession. The French annexation was recognized by the Treaty of Ryswick (1697). The official policy of religious intolerance which drove most Protestants from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 was not applied in Strasbourg and in Alsace, because both had a special status as a province à l'instar de l'étranger effectif (a kind of foreign province of the king of France). Strasbourg Cathedral, however, was taken from the Lutherans to be returned to the Catholics as the French authorities tried to promote Catholicism wherever they could (some other historic churches remained in Protestant hands). Its language also remained overwhelmingly German: the German Lutheran university persisted until the French Revolution. Famous students included Goethe and Herder.

  

The Duke of Lorraine and Imperial troops crossing the Rhine at Strasbourg during the War of the Austrian Succession, 1744

During a dinner in Strasbourg organized by Mayor Frédéric de Dietrich on 25 April 1792, Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle composed "La Marseillaise". The same year François Christophe Kellermann, a child of Strasbourg was appointed the head of the Mosel Army. He led his company to victory at the battle of Valmy and saved the young French republic. He was later appointed Duke of Valmy by Napoléon in 1808.

 

During this period Jean-Baptiste Kléber, also born in Strasbourg, led the French army to win several decisive victories. A statue of Kléber now stands in the centre of the city, at Place Kléber, and he is still one of the most famous French officers. He was later appointed Marshal of France by Napoléon.

 

Strasbourg's status as a free city was revoked by the French Revolution. Enragés, most notoriously Eulogius Schneider, ruled the city with an increasingly iron hand. During this time, many churches and monasteries were either destroyed or severely damaged. The cathedral lost hundreds of its statues (later replaced by copies in the 19th century) and in April 1794, there was talk of tearing its spire down, on the grounds that it was against the principle of equality. The tower was saved, however, when in May of the same year citizens of Strasbourg crowned it with a giant tin Phrygian cap. This artifact was later kept in the historical collections of the city until it was destroyed by the Germans in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian war.[27]

 

In 1805, 1806 and 1809, Napoléon Bonaparte and his first wife, Joséphine stayed in Strasbourg.[28] In 1810, his second wife Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma spent her first night on French soil in the palace. Another royal guest was King Charles X of France in 1828.[29] In 1836, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte unsuccessfully tried to lead his first Bonapartist coup in Strasbourg.

 

During the Franco-Prussian War and the Siege of Strasbourg, the city was heavily bombarded by the Prussian army. The bombardment of the city was meant to break the morale of the people of Strasbourg.[30] On 24 and 26 August 1870, the Museum of Fine Arts was destroyed by fire, as was the Municipal Library housed in the Gothic former Dominican church, with its unique collection of medieval manuscripts (most famously the Hortus deliciarum), rare Renaissance books, archeological finds and historical artifacts. The gothic cathedral was damaged as well as the medieval church of Temple Neuf, the theatre, the city hall, the court of justice and many houses. At the end of the siege 10,000 inhabitants were left without shelter; over 600 died, including 261 civilians, and 3200 were injured, including 1,100 civilians.[31]

 

In 1871, after the end of the war, the city was annexed to the newly established German Empire as part of the Reichsland Elsass-Lothringen under the terms of the Treaty of Frankfurt. As part of Imperial Germany, Strasbourg was rebuilt and developed on a grand and representative scale, such as the Neue Stadt, or "new city" around the present Place de la République. Historian Rodolphe Reuss and Art historian Wilhelm von Bode were in charge of rebuilding the municipal archives, libraries and museums. The University, founded in 1567 and suppressed during the French Revolution as a stronghold of German sentiment,[citation needed] was reopened in 1872 under the name Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität.

  

Strasbourg in the 1890s.

A belt of massive fortifications was established around the city, most of which still stands today, renamed after French generals and generally classified as Monuments historiques; most notably Fort Roon (now Fort Desaix) and Fort Podbielski (now Fort Ducrot) in Mundolsheim, Fort von Moltke (now Fort Rapp) in Reichstett, Fort Bismarck (now Fort Kléber) in Wolfisheim, Fort Kronprinz (now Fort Foch) in Niederhausbergen, Fort Kronprinz von Sachsen (now Fort Joffre) in Holtzheim and Fort Großherzog von Baden (now Fort Frère) in Oberhausbergen.[32]

 

Those forts subsequently served the French army (Fort Podbielski/Ducrot for instance was integrated into the Maginot Line[33]), and were used as POW-camps in 1918 and 1945.

 

Two garrison churches were also erected for the members of the Imperial German army, the Lutheran Église Saint-Paul and the Roman Catholic Église Saint-Maurice.

 

1918 to the present

 

A lost, then restored, symbol of modernity in Strasbourg : a room in the Aubette building designed by Theo van Doesburg, Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp.

 

Following the defeat of the German empire in World War I and the abdication of the German Emperor, some revolutionary insurgents declared Alsace-Lorraine as an independent Republic, without preliminary referendum or vote. On 11 November 1918 (Armistice Day), communist insurgents proclaimed a "soviet government" in Strasbourg, following the example of Kurt Eisner in Munich as well as other German towns. French troops commanded by French general Henri Gouraud entered triumphantly in the city on 22 November. A major street of the city now bears the name of that date (Rue du 22 Novembre) which celebrates the entry of the French in the city.[34][35][36] Viewing the massive cheering crowd gathered under the balcony of Strasbourg's town hall, French President Raymond Poincaré stated that "the plebiscite is done".[37]

 

In 1919, following the Treaty of Versailles, the city was annexed by France in accordance with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points" without a referendum. The date of the assignment was retroactively established on Armistice Day. It is doubtful whether a referendum in Strasbourg would have ended in France's favour since the political parties striving for an autonomous Alsace or a connection to France accounted only for a small proportion of votes in the last Reichstag as well as in the local elections.[38] The Alsatian autonomists who were pro French had won many votes in the more rural parts of the region and other towns since the annexation of the region by Germany in 1871. The movement started with the first election for the Reichstag; those elected were called "les députés protestataires", and until the fall of Bismarck in 1890, they were the only deputies elected by the Alsatians to the German parliament demanding the return of those territories to France.[39] At the last Reichstag election in Strasbourg and its periphery, the clear winners were the Social Democrats; the city was the administrative capital of the region, was inhabited by many Germans appointed by the central government in Berlin and its flourishing economy attracted many Germans. This could explain the difference between the rural vote and the one in Strasbourg. After the war, many Germans left Strasbourg and went back to Germany; some of them were denounced by the locals or expelled by the newly appointed authorities. The Saverne Affair was vivid in the memory among the Alsatians.

 

In 1920, Strasbourg became the seat of the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine, previously located in Mannheim, one of the oldest European institutions. It moved into the former Imperial Palace.

 

When the Maginot Line was built, the Sous-secteur fortifié de Strasbourg (fortified sub-sector of Strasbourg) was laid out on the city's territory as a part of the Secteur fortifié du Bas-Rhin, one of the sections of the Line. Blockhouses and casemates were built along the Grand Canal d'Alsace and the Rhine in the Robertsau forest and the port.[40]

 

Between the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 and the Anglo-French declaration of War against the German Reich on 3 September 1939, the entire city (a total of 120,000 people) was evacuated, like other border towns as well. Until the arrival of the Wehrmacht troops mid-June 1940, the city was, for ten months, completely empty, with the exception of the garrisoned soldiers. The Jews of Strasbourg had been evacuated to Périgueux and Limoges, the University had been evacuated to Clermont-Ferrand.

 

After the ceasefire following the Fall of France in June 1940, Alsace was annexed to Germany and a rigorous policy of Germanisation was imposed upon it by the Gauleiter Robert Heinrich Wagner. When, in July 1940, the first evacuees were allowed to return, only residents of Alsatian origin were admitted. The last Jews were deported on 15 July 1940 and the main synagogue, a huge Romanesque revival building that had been a major architectural landmark with its 54-metre-high dome since its completion in 1897, was set ablaze, then razed.[41]

 

In September 1940 the first Alsatian resistance movement led by Marcel Weinum called La main noire (The black hand) was created. It was composed by a group of 25 young men aged from 14 to 18 years old who led several attacks against the German occupation. The actions culminated with the attack of the Gauleiter Robert Wagner, the highest commander of Alsace directly under the order of Hitler. In March 1942, Marcel Weinum was prosecuted by the Gestapo and sentenced to be beheaded at the age of 18 in April 1942 in Stuttgart, Germany. His last words will be: "If I have to die, I shall die but with a pure heart". From 1943 the city was bombarded by Allied aircraft. While the First World War had not notably damaged the city, Anglo-American bombing caused extensive destruction in raids of which at least one was allegedly carried out by mistake.[42] In August 1944, several buildings in the Old Town were damaged by bombs, particularly the Palais Rohan, the Old Customs House (Ancienne Douane) and the Cathedral.[43] On 23 November 1944, the city was officially liberated by the 2nd French Armoured Division under General Leclerc. He achieved the oath that he made with his soldiers, after the decisive Capture of Kufra. With the Oath of Kuffra, they swore to keep up the fight until the French flag flew over the Cathedral of Strasbourg.

 

Many people from Strasbourg were incorporated in the German Army against their will, and were sent to the eastern front, those young men and women were called Malgré-nous. Many tried to escape from the incorporation, join the French Resistance, or desert the Wehrmacht but many couldn't because they were running the risk of having their families sent to work or concentration camps by the Germans. Many of these men, especially those who did not answer the call immediately, were pressured to "volunteer" for service with the SS, often by direct threats on their families. This threat obliged the majority of them to remain in the German army. After the war, the few that survived were often accused of being traitors or collaborationists, because this tough situation was not known in the rest of France, and they had to face the incomprehension of many. In July 1944, 1500 malgré-nous were released from Soviet captivity and sent to Algiers, where they joined the Free French Forces. Nowadays history recognizes the suffering of those people, and museums, public discussions and memorials have been built to commemorate this terrible period of history of this part of Eastern France (Alsace and Moselle). Liberation of Strasbourg took place on 23 November 1944.

 

In 1947, a fire broke out in the Musée des Beaux-Arts and devastated a significant part of the collections. This fire was an indirect consequence of the bombing raids of 1944: because of the destruction inflicted on the Palais Rohan, humidity had infiltrated the building, and moisture had to be fought. This was done with welding torches, and a bad handling of these caused the fire.[44]

 

In the 1950s and 1960s the city was enlarged by new residential areas meant to solve both the problem of housing shortage due to war damage and that of the strong growth of population due to the baby boom and immigration from North Africa: Cité Rotterdam in the North-East, Quartier de l'Esplanade in the South-East, Hautepierre in the North-West. Between 1995 and 2010, a new district has been built in the same vein, the Quartier des Poteries, south of Hautepierre.

 

In 1958, a violent hailstorm destroyed most of the historical greenhouses of the Botanical Garden and many of the stained glass windows of St. Paul's Church.

 

In 1949, the city was chosen to be the seat of the Council of Europe with its European Court of Human Rights and European Pharmacopoeia. Since 1952, the European Parliament has met in Strasbourg, which was formally designated its official 'seat' at the Edinburgh meeting of the European Council of EU heads of state and government in December 1992. (This position was reconfirmed and given treaty status in the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam). However, only the (four-day) plenary sessions of the Parliament are held in Strasbourg each month, with all other business being conducted in Brussels and Luxembourg. Those sessions take place in the Immeuble Louise Weiss, inaugurated in 1999, which houses the largest parliamentary assembly room in Europe and of any democratic institution in the world. Before that, the EP sessions had to take place in the main Council of Europe building, the Palace of Europe, whose unusual inner architecture had become a familiar sight to European TV audiences.[45] In 1992, Strasbourg became the seat of the Franco-German TV channel and movie-production society Arte.

 

In 2000, a terrorist plot to blow up the cathedral was prevented thanks to the cooperation between French and German police that led to the arrest in late 2000 of a Frankfurt-based group of terrorists.

 

On 6 July 2001, during an open-air concert in the Parc de Pourtalès, a single falling Platanus tree killed thirteen people and injured 97. On 27 March 2007, the city was found guilty of neglect over the accident and fined €150,000.[46]

 

In 2006, after a long and careful restoration, the inner decoration of the Aubette, made in the 1920s by Hans Arp, Theo van Doesburg, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp and destroyed in the 1930s, was made accessible to the public again. The work of the three artists had been called "the Sistine Chapel of abstract art".

 

Architecture

 

Strasbourg, Cathedral of Our Lady

The city is chiefly known for its sandstone Gothic Cathedral with its famous astronomical clock, and for its medieval cityscape of Rhineland black and white timber-framed buildings, particularly in the Petite France district or Gerberviertel ("tanners' district") alongside the Ill and in the streets and squares surrounding the cathedral, where the renowned Maison Kammerzell stands out.

 

Notable medieval streets include Rue Mercière, Rue des Dentelles, Rue du Bain aux Plantes, Rue des Juifs, Rue des Frères, Rue des Tonneliers, Rue du Maroquin, Rue des Charpentiers, Rue des Serruriers, Grand' Rue, Quai des Bateliers, Quai Saint-Nicolas and Quai Saint-Thomas. Notable medieval squares include Place de la Cathédrale, Place du Marché Gayot, Place Saint-Étienne, Place du Marché aux Cochons de Lait and Place Benjamin Zix.

 

Maison des tanneurs.

 

In addition to the cathedral, Strasbourg houses several other medieval churches that have survived the many wars and destructions that have plagued the city: the Romanesque Église Saint-Étienne, partly destroyed in 1944 by Allied bombing raids, the part Romanesque, part Gothic, very large Église Saint-Thomas with its Silbermann organ on which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Albert Schweitzer played,[49] the Gothic Église protestante Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune with its crypt dating back to the seventh century and its cloister partly from the eleventh century, the Gothic Église Saint-Guillaume with its fine early-Renaissance stained glass and furniture, the Gothic Église Saint-Jean, the part Gothic, part Art Nouveau Église Sainte-Madeleine, etc. The Neo-Gothic church Saint-Pierre-le-Vieux Catholique (there is also an adjacent church Saint-Pierre-le-Vieux Protestant) serves as a shrine for several 15th-century wood worked and painted altars coming from other, now destroyed churches and installed there for public display. Among the numerous secular medieval buildings, the monumental Ancienne Douane (old custom-house) stands out.

 

The German Renaissance has bequeathed the city some noteworthy buildings (especially the current Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie, former town hall, on Place Gutenberg), as did the French Baroque and Classicism with several hôtels particuliers (i.e. palaces), among which the Palais Rohan (1742, now housing three museums) is the most spectacular. Other buildings of its kind are the "Hôtel de Hanau" (1736, now the city hall), the Hôtel de Klinglin (1736, now residence of the préfet), the Hôtel des Deux-Ponts (1755, now residence of the military governor), the Hôtel d'Andlau-Klinglin (1725, now seat of the administration of the Port autonome de Strasbourg) etc. The largest baroque building of Strasbourg though is the 150 m (490 ft) long 1720s main building of the Hôpital civil. As for French Neo-classicism, it is the Opera House on Place Broglie that most prestigiously represents this style.

 

Strasbourg also offers high-class eclecticist buildings in its very extended German district, the Neustadt, being the main memory of Wilhelmian architecture since most of the major cities in Germany proper suffered intensive damage during World War II. Streets, boulevards and avenues are homogeneous, surprisingly high (up to seven stories) and broad examples of German urban lay-out and of this architectural style that summons and mixes up five centuries of European architecture as well as Neo-Egyptian, Neo-Greek and Neo-Babylonian styles. The former imperial palace Palais du Rhin, the most political and thus heavily criticized of all German Strasbourg buildings epitomizes the grand scale and stylistic sturdiness of this period. But the two most handsome and ornate buildings of these times are the École internationale des Pontonniers (the former Höhere Mädchenschule, girls college) with its towers, turrets and multiple round and square angles[50] and the École des Arts décoratifs with its lavishly ornate façade of painted bricks, woodwork and majolica.[51]

 

Notable streets of the German district include: Avenue de la Forêt Noire, Avenue des Vosges, Avenue d'Alsace, Avenue de la Marseillaise, Avenue de la Liberté, Boulevard de la Victoire, Rue Sellénick, Rue du Général de Castelnau, Rue du Maréchal Foch, and Rue du Maréchal Joffre. Notable squares of the German district include: Place de la République, Place de l'Université, Place Brant, and Place Arnold

 

As for modern and contemporary architecture, Strasbourg possesses some fine Art Nouveau buildings (such as the huge Palais des Fêtes and houses and villas like Villa Schutzenberger and Hôtel Brion), good examples of post-World War II functional architecture (the Cité Rotterdam, for which Le Corbusier did not succeed in the architectural contest) and, in the very extended Quartier Européen, some spectacular administrative buildings of sometimes utterly large size, among which the European Court of Human Rights building by Richard Rogers is arguably the finest. Other noticeable contemporary buildings are the new Music school Cité de la Musique et de la Danse, the Musée d'Art moderne et contemporain and the Hôtel du Département facing it, as well as, in the outskirts, the tramway-station Hoenheim-Nord designed by Zaha Hadid.

  

Place Kléber

The city has many bridges, including the medieval and four-towered Ponts Couverts that, despite their name, are no longer covered. Next to the Ponts Couverts is the Barrage Vauban, a part of Vauban's 17th-century fortifications, that does include a covered bridge. Other bridges are the ornate 19th-century Pont de la Fonderie (1893, stone) and Pont d'Auvergne (1892, iron), as well as architect Marc Mimram's futuristic Passerelle over the Rhine, opened in 2004.

 

The largest square at the centre of the city of Strasbourg is the Place Kléber. Located in the heart of the city's commercial area, it was named after general Jean-Baptiste Kléber, born in Strasbourg in 1753 and assassinated in 1800 in Cairo. In the square is a statue of Kléber, under which is a vault containing his remains. On the north side of the square is the Aubette (Orderly Room), built by Jacques François Blondel, architect of the king, in 1765–1772.

 

Parks

 

The Pavillon Joséphine (rear side) in the Parc de l'Orangerie

 

The Château de Pourtalès (front side) in the park of the same name

 

Strasbourg features a number of prominent parks, of which several are of cultural and historical interest: the Parc de l'Orangerie, laid out as a French garden by André le Nôtre and remodeled as an English garden on behalf of Joséphine de Beauharnais, now displaying noteworthy French gardens, a neo-classical castle and a small zoo; the Parc de la Citadelle, built around impressive remains of the 17th-century fortress erected close to the Rhine by Vauban;[52] the Parc de Pourtalès, laid out in English style around a baroque castle (heavily restored in the 19th century) that now houses a small three-star hotel,[53] and featuring an open-air museum of international contemporary sculpture.[54] The Jardin botanique de l'Université de Strasbourg (botanical garden) was created under the German administration next to the Observatory of Strasbourg, built in 1881, and still owns some greenhouses of those times. The Parc des Contades, although the oldest park of the city, was completely remodeled after World War II. The futuristic Parc des Poteries is an example of European park-conception in the late 1990s. The Jardin des deux Rives, spread over Strasbourg and Kehl on both sides of the Rhine opened in 2004 and is the most extended (60-hectare) park of the agglomeration. The most recent park is Parc du Heyritz (8,7 ha), opened in 2014 along a canal facing the hôpital civil.

Phillis Robinson was charged with stealing money from a person and sentenced to 1 month at Newcastle City Gaol.

 

Age (on discharge): 34

Height: 5.2½

Hair: Red

Eyes: Blue

Place of Birth: Alnwick

Status: Single

 

These photographs are of convicted criminals in Newcastle between 1871 - 1873.

 

Reference:TWAS: PR.NC/6/1/1199

 

(Copyright) We're happy for you to share this digital image within the spirit of The Commons. Please cite 'Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums' when reusing. Certain restrictions on high quality reproductions and commercial use of the original physical version apply though; if you're unsure please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk.

 

To purchase a hi-res copy please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk quoting the title and reference number.

 

John Scott was sentenced to carry out 6 months in Newcastle City Gaol for stealing lead in 1872.

 

Age (on discharge): 29

Height: 5.5½

Hair: Brown

Eyes: Grey

Place of Birth: Newcastle

Status: Married

Occupation: Labourer

 

These photographs are of convicted criminals in Newcastle between 1871 - 1873.

 

Reference:TWAS: PR.NC/6/1/1214

 

(Copyright) We're happy for you to share this digital image within the spirit of The Commons. Please cite 'Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums' when reusing. Certain restrictions on high quality reproductions and commercial use of the original physical version apply though; if you're unsure please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk.

 

To purchase a hi-res copy please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk quoting the title and reference number.

 

The mouth that kiss is the same that spit.

Also in attendance at the Death Sentence breakfast was actor Garrett Hedlund. -- Beth Accomando

This is Bobby Bostic. Bobby was sentenced to 241 years in prison for two robberies he committed on the same day as a child. Nobody was seriously injured. He has now been in prison in Missouri for 25 years, and is serving the longest sentence ever given there to a juvenile for non-homicide offenses. You can read Bobby's full story on Wikipedia or BBC News, among other sources.

 

Even the judge who sentenced Bobby, Evelyn Baker, has publicly stated she regrets giving him such a harsh sentence, and is now campaigning for his release. None of Bobby's victims are opposed to him being granted clemency, and some have written letters of support for his release.

 

If you'd like to help end Bobby's unjust and unconstitutional sentence, please sign the petitions below. You can also follow @FreeBobbyBostic on both Instagram and Twitter, for more information.

 

www.aclu-mo.org/en/support-clemency-bobby-bostic

 

www.change.org/p/stop-bobby-bostic-from-serving-an-uncons...

 

Done with F, B, 2B, 3B and 4B graphite pencils.

Landscape Composition; Rye, New York; (c) Diana Lee Photo Designs

Long dài, short ngắn, tall cao

 

Here đây, there đó, which nào, where đâu

 

Sentence có nghĩa là câu

 

Lesson bài học, rainbow cầu vồng

   

Husband là đức ông chồng

 

Daddy cha bố, please don't xin đừng

 

Darling tiếng gọi em cưng

 

Merry vui thích, cái sừng là horn

   

Rách rồi xài đỡ chữ torn

 

To sing là hát, a song một bài

 

Nói sai sự thật to lie

 

Go đi, come đến, một vài là some

   

Đứng stand, look ngó, lie nằm

 

Five năm, four bốn, hold cầm, play chơ

 

i One life là một cuộc đời

 

Happy sung sướng, laugh cười, cry kêu

   

Lover tạm dịch ngừơi yêu

 

Charming duyên dáng,

 

mỹ miều graceful

 

Mặt trăng là chữ the moon

 

World là thế giới, sớm soon, lake hồ

   

Dao knife, spoon muỗng, cuốc hoe

 

Đêm night, dark tối, khổng lồ giant

 

Fund vui, die chết, near gần

 

Sorry xin lỗi, dull đần, wise khôn

   

Burry có nghĩa là chôn

 

Our souls tạm dịch linh hồn chúng ta

 

Xe hơi du lịch là car

 

Sir ngài, Lord đức, thưa bà Madam

   

Thousand là đúng... mười trăm

 

Ngày day, tuần week, year năm, hour giờ

 

Wait there đứng đó đợi chờ

 

Nightmare ác mộng, dream mơ, pray cầu

   

Trừ ra except, deep sâu

 

Daughter con gái, bridge cầu, pond ao

 

Enter tạm dịch đi vào

 

Thêm for tham dự lẽ nào lại sai

   

Shoulder cứ dịch là vai

 

Writer văn sĩ, cái đài radio

 

A bowl là một cái tô

 

Chữ tear nước mắt, tomb mồ, miss cô

   

Máy khâu dùng tạm chữ sew

 

Kẻ thù dịch đại là foe chẳng lầm

 

Shelter tạm dịch là hầm

 

Chữ shout là hét, nói thầm whisper

   

What time là hỏi mấy giờ

 

Clear trong, clean sạch, mờ mờ là dim

 

Gặp ông ta dịch see him

 

Swim bơi, wade lội, drown chìm chết trôi

   

Mountain là núi, hill đồi

 

Valley thung lũng, cây sồi oak tre

 

e Tiền xin đóng học school fee

 

Yêu tôi dùng chữ love me chẳng lầm

   

To steal tạm dịch cầm nhầm

 

Tẩy chay boycott, gia cầm poultry

 

Cattle gia súc, ong bee

 

Something to eat chút gì để ăn

   

Lip môi, tongue lưỡi, teeth răng

 

Exam thi cử, cái bằng licence..

 

.Lovely có nghĩa dễ thương

 

Pretty xinh đẹp thường thường so so

   

Lotto là chơi lô tô

 

Nấu ăn là cook, wash clothes giặt đồ

 

Push thì có nghĩa đẩy, xô

 

Marriage đám cưới, single độc thân

   

Foot thì có nghĩa bàn chân

 

Far là xa cách còn gần là near

 

Spoon có nghĩa cái thìa

 

Toán trừ subtract, toán chia divide

   

Dream thì có nghĩa giấc mơ

 

Month thì là tháng, thời giờ là time

 

Job thì có nghĩa việc làm

 

Lady phái nữ, phái nam gentleman

   

Close friend có nghĩa bạn thân

 

Leaf là chiếc lá, còn sun mặt trời

 

Fall down có nghĩa là rơi

 

Welcome chào đón, mời là invite

   

Short là ngắn, long là dài

 

Mũ thì là hat, chiếc hài là shoe

 

Autumn có nghĩa mùa thu

 

Summer mùa hạ, cái tù là jail

   

Duck là vịt, pig là heo

 

Rich là giàu có, còn nghèo là poor

 

Crab thì có nghĩa con cua

 

Church nhà thờ đó, còn chùa temple

   

Aunt có nghĩa dì, cô

 

Chair là cái ghế, cái hồ là pool

 

Late là muộn, sớm là soon

 

Hospital bệnh viẹn, school là trường

   

Dew thì có nghĩa là sương

 

Happy vui vẻ, chán chường weary

 

Exam có nghĩa kỳ thi

 

Nervous nhút nhát, mommy mẹ hiền.

   

Region có nghĩa là miền,

 

Interupted gián đoạn còn liền next to.

 

Coins dùng chỉ những đồng xu,

 

Còn đồng tiền giấy paper money.

   

Here chỉ dùng để chỉ tại đây,

 

A moment một lát còn ngay ringht now,

 

Brothers-in-law đồng hao.

 

Farm-work đòng áng, đồng bào

 

Fellow-countryman

   

Narrow-minded chỉ sự nhỏ nhen,

 

Open-hended hào phóng còn hèn là mean.

 

Vẫn còn dùng chữ still,

 

Kỹ năng là chữ skill khó gì!

   

Gold là vàng, graphite than chì.

 

Munia tên gọi chim ri

 

Kestrel chim cắt có gì khó đâu.

 

Migrant kite là chú diều hâu

 

Warbler chim chích, hải âu petrel

   

Stupid có nghĩa là khờ,

 

Đảo lên đảo xuống, stir nhiều nhiều

 

How many có nghĩa bao nhiêu.

 

Too much nhiều quá, a few một vài

   

Right là đúng, wrong là sai

 

Chess là cờ tướng, đánh bài playing card

 

Flower có nghĩa là hoa

 

Hair là mái tóc, da là skin

   

Buổi sáng thì là morning

 

King là vua chúa, còn Queen nữ hoàng

 

Wander có nghĩa lang thang

 

Màu đỏ là red, màu vàng yellow

   

Yes là đúng, không là no

 

Fast là nhanh chóng,slow chậm rì

 

Sleep là ngủ, go là đi

 

Weakly ốm yếu healthy mạnh lành

   

White là trắng, green là xanh

 

Hard là chăm chỉ , học hành study

 

Ngọt là sweet, kẹo candy

 

Butterfly là bướm, bee là con ong

   

River có nghĩa dòng sông

 

Wait for có nghĩa ngóng trông đợi chờ

 

Dirty có nghĩa là dơ Bánh mì bread, còn bơ butter

   

Bác sĩ thì là doctor

 

Y tá là nurse, teacher giáo viê

 

n Mad dùng chỉ những kẻ điên

 

, Everywhere có nghĩa mọi miền gần xa.

   

A song chỉ một bài ca.

 

Ngôi sao dùng chữ star, có liền!

 

Firstly có nghĩa trước tiên

 

Silver là bạc, còn tiền money

   

Biscuit thì là bánh quy

 

Can là có thể, please vui lòng

 

Winter có nghĩa mùa đông

 

Iron là sắt còn đồng copper

   

Kẻ giết người là killer

 

Cảnh sát police, lawyer luật sư

 

Emigrate là di cư

 

Bưu điện post office, thư từ là mail

   

Follow có nghĩa đi theo

 

Shopping mua sắm còn sale bán hàng

 

Space có nghĩa không gian

 

Hàng trăm hundred, hàng ngàn thousand

   

Stupid có nghĩa ngu đần

 

Thông minh smart, equation phương trình

 

Television là truyền hình

 

Băng ghi âm là tape, chương trình program

   

Hear là nghe watch là xem

 

Electric là điện còn lamp bóng đèn

 

Praise có nghĩa ngợi khen

 

Crowd đông đúc, lấn chen hustle

   

Capital là thủ đô

 

City thành phố, local địa phương

 

Country có nghĩa quê hương

 

Field là đồng ruộng còn vườn garden

   

Chốc lát là chữ moment

 

Fish là con cá, chicken gà tơ

 

Naive có nghĩa ngây thơ

 

Poet thi sĩ, great writer văn hào

   

Tall thì có nghĩa là cao

 

Short là thấp ngắn, còn chào hello

 

Uncle là bác, elders cô.

 

Shy mắc cỡ, coarse là thô.

   

Come on có nghĩa mời vô,

 

Go away đuổi cút, còn vồ pounce.

 

Poem có nghĩa là thơ,

 

Strong khoẻ mạnh, mệt phờ dog-tiered.

   

Bầu trời thường gọi sky,

 

Life là sự sống còn die lìa đời

 

Shed tears có nghĩa lệ rơi

 

Fully là đủ, nửa vời by halves

   

Ở lại dùng chữ stay,

 

Bỏ đi là leave còn nằm là lie.

 

Tomorrow có nghĩa ngày mai

 

Hoa sen lotus, hoa lài jasmine

   

Madman có nghĩa người điên

 

Private có nghĩa là riêng của mình

 

Cảm giác là chữ feeling

 

Camera máy ảnh hình là photo

   

Động vật là animal

 

Big là to lớn, little nhỏ nhoi

 

Elephant là con voi

 

Goby cá bống, cá mòi sardine

   

Mỏng mảnh thì là chữ thin

 

Cổ là chữ neck, còn chin cái cằm

 

Visit có nghĩa viếng thăm

 

Lie down có nghĩa là nằm nghỉ ngơi

   

Mouse con chuột, bat con dơi

 

Separate có nghĩa tách rời, chia ra

 

Gift thì có nghĩa món quà

 

Guest thì là khách chủ nhà house owner

   

Bệnh ung thư là cancer

 

Lối ra exit, enter đi vào

 

Up lên còn xuống là down

 

Beside bên cạnh, about khoảng chừng

   

Stop có nghĩa là ngừng

 

Ocean là biển, rừng là jungle

 

Silly là kẻ dại khờ, Khôn ngoan smart, đù đờ luggish

   

Hôn là kiss, kiss thật lâu.

 

Cửa sổ là chữ window

 

Special đặc biệt normal thường thôi

 

Lazy... làm biếng quá rồi

 

Ngồi mà viết tiếp một hồi die soon

 

Hứng thì cứ việc go on,

 

Còn không stop ta còn nghỉ ngơi!

The Port Arthur massacre of 28–29 April 1996 was a mass shooting in which 35 people were killed and 23 wounded in Port Arthur, Tasmania. The murderer, Martin Bryant, pleaded guilty for the incident and was given 35 life sentences without possibility of parole. It is the deadliest mass shooting in Australian history. Fundamental changes of gun control laws within Australia followed the incident. The case is regarded to be amongst the most notable massacres in Australia's history.

 

Location

The main location of the incident was the historic Port Arthur former prison colony, a popular tourist site in south-eastern Tasmania, Australia.

 

Perpetrator

See also: Martin Bryant

In 1992, Martin Bryant - then 25 - was bequeathed about $570,000 in property and assets from a friend, Helen Harvey, who left her estate to him following her death in a car crash.[6] He used part of this money to go on many trips around the world from 1993 onwards.[7] Bryant also withdrew many thousands of dollars during this period. He used at least some of this money in late 1993 to purchase an AR-10 semi-automatic rifle through a newspaper advertisement in Tasmania.

 

Bryant's father had tried to purchase a bed and breakfast property called Seascape, but Noelene (also known as Sally) and David Martin bought this property before his father could ready his finances, much to the disappointment of Bryant's father, who often complained to his son of the "double dealing" the Martins had done to secure the purchase. Bryant's father offered to buy another property from the Martins at Palmers Lookout Road, but they declined the offer. Bryant apparently believed the Martins had deliberately bought the property to hurt his family and believed this event to be responsible for the depression that led to his father's 1993 suicide. Bryant later described the Martins as "very mean people" and as "the worse [sic] people in my life."

 

In late 1995, Bryant became suicidal after deciding he had "had enough". He stated, "I just felt more people were against me. When I tried to be friendly toward them, they just walked away". Although he had previously been little more than a social drinker, his alcohol consumption increased and, although he had not consumed any alcohol on that day, had especially escalated in the six months prior to the massacre.

 

In March 1996, Bryant had his AR-10 repaired at a gun shop and made inquiries about AR-15 rifles in other gun shops. At the time of purchase, non-handguns were not required to be registered in Tasmania.

 

According to Bryant, he thought the plan for Port Arthur may have first occurred to him four to 12 weeks before the event.[8][9]

 

Motivation

Bryant's motivation for the massacre remains a closely guarded secret, known only to his lawyer, who is bound not to reveal confidences without his client's consent. The lawyer later released a book outlining that Bryant was motivated largely by the media reports of the then-recent Dunblane school massacre. From the moment he was captured, he continually wanted to know how many people he had killed and seemed impressed by the number. Bryant is only allowed to listen to music on a radio outside his cell, and is denied access to any news reports of his massacre. Photographers allowed in to take pictures of him in his prison cell were forced to destroy the film in his presence when the Governor found out

 

Gun laws in Australia before the Port Arthur massacre[edit]

A redesign of the laws for all States and Territories of Australia had been finished[by whom?] and presented at a meeting of police ministers in Launceston in 1995. It had been rejected by Tasmania.

 

Attacks

28 April 1996

The events of this day were pieced together after investigation by police. The facts were then presented in court on 19 November 1996.

 

Morning events

Bryant was awakened at 6:00 a.m. by his alarm clock. His girlfriend and other family members said he had never been known to use it since he did not work and had no other commitments. At 8:00 a.m., his girlfriend left the house to visit her parents. Bryant left the house and switched on the burglar alarm, which registered the time as 9:47 a.m.

 

Bryant travelled to Forcett, arriving some time around 11:00 a.m. He continued down to Port Arthur and was seen driving into Seascape down the Arthur Highway around 11:45 a.m. He stopped at the Seascape guest accommodation site (43.11888°S 147.85326°E[15]) that his father had wanted to purchase, owned by David and Noelene Martin. Bryant went inside and fired several shots, then gagged David Martin and stabbed him. Witnesses testified to different numbers of shots fired at this time. It was stated in court that it was believed that this was the time that Bryant killed the Martins, his first two victims.

 

A couple stopped at Seascape and Bryant met them outside. When they asked if they could have a look at the accommodation, Bryant told them that they could not because his parents were away and his girlfriend was inside. His demeanour was described as quite rude and the couple felt uncomfortable. They left at about 12:35 p.m.

 

Bryant drove to Port Arthur, taking the keys to the Seascape properties after locking the doors. Bryant stopped at a car which had pulled over from overheating and talked with two people there. He suggested that they come to the Port Arthur café for some coffee later.

 

He travelled past the Port Arthur historic site toward a Palmer's Lookout Road property owned by the Martins, where he came across Roger Larner. Larner had met him on some occasions more than 15 years before. Bryant told Larner he had been surfing and had bought a property called Fogg Lodge and was now looking to buy some cattle from Larner. Bryant also made several comments about buying the Martins' place next door. He asked if Marian Larner was home, and asked if he could continue down the driveway of the farm to see her. Larner said OK, but told Bryant he would come also. "Bryant then responded that he might go to Nubeena first" and he was going to return in the afternoon.

 

Port Arthur Historic Site

 

Port Arthur Bay, Port Arthur, was the location of most of the shootings

At around 1:10 p.m., Bryant got in line at the toll booth at the entrance to the historic site. He paid the entry fee and proceeded to park near the Broad Arrow Café, near the water's edge. The site security manager told him to park with the other cars because that area was reserved for camper-vans and the car park was very busy that day. Bryant moved his car to another area and sat in his car for a few minutes. He then moved his car back near the water, outside the café. The security manager saw him go up to the café carrying a "sports-type bag" and a video camera, but ignored him. Bryant went into the café and purchased a meal, which he ate on the deck outside. He attempted to start conversations with people about the lack of "WASPs" in the area and there not being as many Japanese tourists as usual. He appeared nervous and "quite regularly" looked back to the car-park and into the café.

 

Broad Arrow Café murders

Bryant finished his meal, walked into the café and returned his tray, assisted by some people who opened the door for him. He put his bag down on a table and pulled out of it a Colt AR-15 SP1 Carbine with a Colt scope and one 30-round magazine attached. The bag also contained, among other things, the knife he had used to stab Martin. It is believed the Colt magazine was partially emptied from the shootings at Seascape.

 

The café was very small, with the tables very close together, and was particularly busy that day, with many people waiting for the next ferry. The following events happened extremely quickly. Bryant took aim from his hip and pointed his rifle at Moh Yee (William) Ng and Sou Leng Chung, who were visiting from Malaysia and were seated at a table beside Bryant. He shot them at close range, killing both instantly. Bryant then fired a shot at Mick Sargent, grazing his scalp and knocking him to the floor. He fired a fourth shot that killed Sargent's girlfriend, 21-year-old Kate Elizabeth Scott, by hitting her in the back of the head.

 

A 28-year-old New Zealand winemaker, Jason Winter, had been helping the busy café staff. As Bryant turned towards Winter's wife Joanne and their 15-month-old son Mitchell, Winter threw a serving tray at Bryant in an attempt to distract him. Joanne Winter's father pushed his daughter and grandson to the floor and under the table.

 

The café structure in 2015. A memorial garden has been established at the site.

44-year-old Anthony Nightingale stood up after the sound of the first shots, but had no time to move. Nightingale yelled "No, not here!" as Bryant pointed the weapon at him. As Nightingale leaned forward, he was fatally shot through the neck and spine.

 

The next table had held a group of ten friends, but some had just left the table to return their meal trays and visit the gift shop. Bryant fired one shot that killed Kevin Vincent Sharp, 68.The second hit Walter Bennett, 66, passed through his body and struck Raymond John Sharp, 67, Kevin Sharp's brother, killing both.The three had their backs towards Bryant, and were unaware what was happening — they at first believed someone was letting off firecrackers. One of them made the comment "That's not funny" after hearing the first few shots, not realising that they were real. The shots were all close range, with the gun at, or just inches away from, the back of their heads. Gerald Broome, Gaye Fidler and her husband John were all struck by bullet fragments, but survived.

 

Bryant then turned towards Tony and Sarah Kistan and Andrew Mills.[16] Both men stood up at the noise of the initial shots, but had no time to move away. Andrew Mills was shot in the head. Tony Kistan was also shot from about two metres away, also in the head, but had managed to push his wife away prior to being shot. Sarah Kistan was apparently not seen by Bryant, as she was under the table by that time.

 

Thelma Walker and Pamela Law were injured by fragments before being dragged to the ground by their friend, Peter Crosswell, as the three sheltered underneath the table. Also injured by fragments from these shots was Patricia Barker.

 

It was only then that the majority of the people in the café began to realise what was happening and that the shots were not from a reenactment at the historical site. At this point, there was great confusion, with many people not knowing what to do, as Bryant was near the main exit.

 

Bryant moved just a few metres and began shooting at the table where Graham Colyer, Carolyn Loughton and her daughter Sarah were seated. Colyer was severely injured in the jaw, nearly choking to death on his own blood. Sarah Loughton ran towards her mother, who had been moving between tables. Carolyn Loughton threw herself on top of her daughter. Bryant shot Carolyn Loughton in the back; her eardrum was ruptured by the muzzle blast from the gun going off beside her ear. She survived her injuries, but learned after she came out of surgery that, despite her efforts, Sarah had been fatally shot in the head.

 

Bryant pivoted around and shot Mervyn Howard who was seated. The bullet passed through him, through a window of the café, and hit a table on the outside balcony. Bryant quickly followed up with a shot to the neck of Mervyn Howard's wife, Mary.[16] Bryant then leaned over a vacant baby stroller and pointed the gun at her head and shot her a second time. Both of the Howards' injuries were fatal.

 

Bryant was near the exit, preventing others from attempting to run past him and escape. Bryant moved across the café towards the gift shop area. There was an exit door through the display area to the outside balcony, but it was locked and could only be opened with a key. As Bryant moved, Robert Elliott stood up. He was shot in the arm and head, left slumping against the fireplace but alive.

 

All of these events, from the first bullet that killed Ng, took approximately 15–30 seconds, during which twelve people were killed and ten more wounded.

 

Gift shop murders[edit]

Bryant moved toward the gift shop area, giving many people time to hide under tables and behind shop displays. He fatally shot the two local women who worked in the gift shop: 17-year-old Nicole Burgess, in the head, and 26-year-old Elizabeth Howard, in the arm and chest.

 

Coralee Lever and Vera Jary hid behind a hessian (burlap) screen with others. Lever's husband Dennis was fatally shot in the head.Pauline Masters, Vera Jary's husband Ron, and Peter and Carolyn Nash had attempted to escape through a locked door but could not. Peter Nash lay down on top of his wife to hide her from Bryant. Bryant moved into the gift shop area where several people, trapped with nowhere to go, were crouched down in the corners. Gwen Neander, trying to make it to the door, was shot in the head and killed.

 

Bryant saw movement in the café and moved near the front door. He shot at a table and hit Peter Crosswell, who was hiding under it, in the buttock. Jason Winter, hiding in the gift shop, thought Bryant had left the building and made a comment about it to people near him before moving out into the open. Bryant saw him, with Winter stating "No, no" just prior to being shot, the bullet hitting his hand, neck and chest. A second shot to the head proved fatal to Winter. Fragments from those shots struck American tourist Dennis Olson, who had been hiding with his wife Mary and Winter. Dennis Olson suffered fragment injuries to his hand, scalp, eye and chest, but survived.

 

It is not immediately clear what happened next, although at some point, Bryant reloaded his weapon. Bryant walked back to the café and then returned to the gift shop, this time looking down to another corner of the shop where he found several people hiding in the corner. He walked up to them and shot Ronald Jary through the neck, then Peter Nash and Pauline Masters, killing all three. He did not see Carolyn Nash, who was lying under her husband. Bryant aimed his gun at an unidentified Asian man, but the rifle's magazine was empty. Bryant then quickly moved to the gift shop counter, where he reloaded his rifle, leaving an empty magazine on the service counter, and left the building.

 

Up to this time, Bryant had killed 22 people and injured 12.

 

Car park murders

During the café shooting, some staff members had been able to escape through the kitchen and alerted people outside. There were a number of coaches outside with lines of people, many of whom began to hide in the buses or in nearby buildings. Others did not understand the situation or were unsure where to go. Some people believed there was some sort of historical reenactment happening, and moved towards the area.

 

Ashley John Law, a site employee, was moving people away from the café into the information centre when Bryant fired at him from 50–100 metres (50–110 yards) away. The bullets missed Law and hit some trees nearby.

 

Bryant then moved towards the coaches. One of the coach drivers, Royce Thompson, was shot in the back as he was moving along the passengers' side of a coach. He fell to the ground and was able to crawl, then roll under the bus to safety, but later died of his wounds. Brigid Cook was trying to guide a number of people down between the buses and along the jetty area to cover. Bryant moved to the front of this bus and walked across to the next coach. People had quickly moved from this coach towards the back end, in an attempt to seek cover. As Bryant walked around it, he saw people scrambling to hide and shot at them. Brigid Cook was shot in the right thigh, causing the bone to fragment, the bullet lodging there. A coach driver, Ian McElwee, was hit by fragments of Miss Cook's bone. Both were able to escape and survived.

 

Bryant then quickly moved around another coach and fired at another group of people. Winifred Aplin, running to get to cover behind another coach, was fatally shot in the side. Another bullet grazed Yvonne Lockley's cheek, but she was able to enter one of the coaches to hide, and survived.

 

Some people then started moving away from the car park towards the jetty. But someone shouted that Bryant was heading that way, so they tried to double back around the coaches to where Brigid Cook had been shot. Bryant doubled back to where Janet and Neville Quin, who owned a wildlife park on the east coast of Tasmania, were beginning to move toward Mason Cove and away from the buses. Bryant shot Janet Quin in the back, where she fell, unable to move, near Royce Thompson.

 

Bryant then continued along the car park as people tried to escape along the shore. Doug Hutchinson was attempting to get into a coach when he was shot in the arm. He quickly ran around the front of the coach, and then along the shore to the jetty and hid.

 

Bryant then went to his vehicle, which was just past the coaches, and changed weapons to the self loading rifle. He fired at Denise Cromer, who was near the penitentiary ruins. Gravel flew up in front of her as the bullets hit the ground. Bryant then got in his car and sat there for a few moments before getting out again and going back to the coaches. Some people were taking cover behind cars in the car park, but because of the elevation, Bryant could see them and the cars did not provide much cover. When they realized Bryant had seen them, they ran into the bush. He fired several shots. At least one hit a tree behind which someone was taking cover, but no one was hit.

 

Bryant moved back to the buses where Janet Quin lay injured from the earlier shot. Bryant shot her in the back, then left; she later died from her wounds. Bryant then went onto one of the coaches and fired a shot at Elva Gaylard who was hiding inside, hitting her in the arm and chest and killing her. At an adjacent coach, Gordon Francis saw what happened and moved down the aisle to try to shut the door of the coach he was on. He was seen by Bryant and shot from the opposite coach. He survived, but needed four major operations.

 

Neville Quin, husband of Janet, had escaped to the jetty area, but returned to look for his wife. He had been forced to leave her earlier after Bryant shot her. Bryant exited the coach and, spotting Quin, chased him around the coaches. Bryant fired at him at least twice before Quin ran onto a coach. Bryant entered the coach and pointed the gun at Neville Quin's face, saying, "No one gets away from me" Mr Quin ducked when he realised Bryant was about to pull the trigger. The bullet missed his head but hit his neck, momentarily paralysing him. After Bryant left, Quin managed to find his wife, although she later died in his arms. Neville Quin was eventually taken away by helicopter and survived.

 

Bryant fired at James Balasko, a U.S. citizen, hitting a nearby car. Balasko had been attempting to film the shooter. Many people, unable to use their parked cars, were hiding or running along Jetty Road and did not know where Bryant was because the gunfire was extremely loud and difficult to pinpoint.

 

At this time, Bryant had killed 26 people and injured 18.

 

Toll booth murders and carjacking[edit]

Bryant then got back into his car and left the car park. Witnesses say he was sounding the horn and waving as he drove. Bryant drove along Jetty Road towards the toll booth where a number of people were running away. Bryant passed by at least two people.

 

Ahead of him were Nanette Mikac and her children, Madeline, 3, and Alannah, 6.[19] Nanette was carrying Madeline, and Alannah was running slightly ahead. By this point, they had run approximately 600 metres (660 yd) from the car park.[19] Bryant opened his door and slowed down. Mikac moved towards the car, apparently thinking he was offering them help in escaping. Several more people witnessed this from further down the road. Someone recognised him as the gunman and yelled out "It's him!"[19] Bryant stepped out of the car, put his hand on Nanette Mikac's shoulder and told her to get on her knees.[19] She did so, saying, "Please don't hurt my babies" Bryant shot her in the temple, killing her. Next, he fired a shot at Madeline, which hit her in the shoulder, then shot her fatally through the chest.[19] Bryant shot twice at Alannah, as she ran behind a tree, missing.[19] He then walked up, pressed the barrel of the gun into her neck and fired, killing her instantly.

 

Bryant fired at some people hiding in a bush, but missed. Having seen the murders of the children, some people further up the road began running. They told drivers of cars coming down the road to go back. The people thought Bryant would head up the road, so instead they proceeded on foot down a dirt side road and hid in the bush. The cars reversed up the road to the toll booth.

 

Bryant drove up to the toll booth, where there were several vehicles, and blocked a 1980 BMW 7 Series (E23) owned by Mary Rose Nixon.[19] Inside were Nixon, driver Russell James Pollard and passengers Helene and Robert Graham Salzmann An argument with Robert Salzmann ensued, and Bryant took out his rifle and shot Salzmann at point-blank range, killing him. Pollard emerged from the BMW and went towards Bryant, who shot him in the chest, killing him.[19] More cars then arrived, but seeing this, the drivers were quickly able to reverse back up the road. Bryant then moved to the BMW and pulled Nixon and Helene Salzmann from the car and shot them dead, dragging their bodies onto the road. Bryant transferred ammunition, handcuffs, the AR-15 rifle and a fuel container to the BMW. Mary Nixon, Russell Pollard, Helene Salzmann and Robert Salzmann are the people Bryant was charged with killing at the toll booth.

 

Another car then came towards the toll booth and Bryant shot at it. The driver, Graham Sutherland, was hit with glass. A second bullet hit the driver's door. Sutherland quickly reversed back up the road and left. Bryant then got into the BMW, leaving behind his Volvo 244, including his Daewoo shotgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

 

At this point, Bryant had killed 33 and injured 19.

 

Service station murder and abduction[edit]

Graham Sutherland, who had just been shot at in his car, reversed back up the road and drove to the service station close by, where he tried to inform people what was happening. Bryant drove up to the service station and cut off a white Toyota Corolla that was attempting to exit onto the highway. Glenn Pears was driving, with girlfriend Zoe Hall in the passenger seat. Bryant quickly exited the car with his rifle in hand and tried to pull Hall from the car. Pears got out of the car and approached Bryant. Bryant pointed the gun at Pears and pushed him backwards, eventually directing him into the now open boot of the BMW, locking Pears inside.

 

Bryant then moved back to the passenger side of the Corolla as Hall attempted to climb over to the driver's seat.[19] Bryant raised his rifle and fired three shots, killing her.[19] Many people around the service station witnessed this and ran to hide in nearby bushland. The service station attendant told everyone to lie down and he locked the main doors. He grabbed his rifle, but by the time he could retrieve some ammunition and load his gun, Bryant had left in the BMW. A police officer arrived several minutes later and then set out in pursuit of Bryant.

 

Zoe Hall was the 34th victim killed.

 

Seascape roadway

As Bryant drove down to Seascape, he shot at a red Ford Falcon coming the other way, smashing its front windscreen.[19] Upon arriving at Seascape, he got out of his car. A Holden Frontera 4WD vehicle then approached Seascape along the road. Those in the vehicle saw Bryant with his gun, but believed him to be rabbit hunting and actually slowed down as they passed him. Bryant fired into the car; the first bullet hit the bonnet and broke the throttle cable. He fired at least twice more into the car as it passed, breaking the windows. One bullet hit the driver, Linda White, in the arm. The car was going downhill so it was able to roll down the road out of sight around a corner, despite its broken throttle cable. White swapped seats with her boyfriend, Michael Wanders, who attempted to drive the car, but was unable to, because of the broken throttle cable.

 

Another vehicle then drove down the road, carrying four people. It was not until they were almost adjacent to Bryant that they realised he was carrying a gun. Bryant shot at the car, smashing the windscreen. Douglas Horner was wounded by pieces of the windscreen.[19] The car proceeded ahead where White and Wanders tried to get in, but Horner did not realise the situation and drove on. When they saw that White had been shot, they came back and picked them up. Both parties then continued down to a local establishment called the Fox and Hound, where they called police.

 

Yet another car drove past and Bryant shot at it, hitting the passenger, Susan Williams, in the hand.[19] The driver, Simon Williams, was struck by fragments.[19] The driver of another approaching vehicle saw this and reversed back up the road. Bryant also fired at this car, hitting it but not injuring anyone. Bryant then got back into the BMW and drove down the Seascape driveway to the house where the Martins, his first victims, lay dead.

 

Sometime after he stopped, Bryant removed Pears from the boot and handcuffed him to a stair rail within the house.[19] At some point, he also set the BMW on fire.[19] He is believed to have arrived at the house by about 2:00 p.m.

 

29 April 1996

Capture

Bryant was captured the following morning, when a fire started in the guest house, presumably set by Bryant.[21] Bryant taunted police to "come and get him", but the police, believing the hostage was already dead, decided that the fire would eventually bring Bryant out. Bryant eventually ran out of the house with his clothes on fire, suffering burns to his back and buttocks. He was arrested and taken to hospital for treatment.

 

It was discovered that Glenn Pears had been shot during or before the standoff and had died before the fire. The remains of the Martins were also found. It was also determined they had been shot, and that Noelene Martin had suffered blunt-force trauma. They both died before the fire; witness accounts of the gunfire, as presented to the Supreme Court of Tasmania, place the time of death of David and Noelene Martin as being approximately noon on 28 April. One weapon was found burnt in the house, and the other on the roof of the adjacent building where police believed they had seen Bryant the night before. Both weapons had suffered from massive chamber blast pressure, possibly from the heat of the house fire.

Dog meat refers to the flesh and other edible parts derived from dogs. Historically, human consumption of dog meat has been recorded in many parts of the world, including East and Southeast Asia, West Africa, Europe, Oceania and the Americas.

 

In the 21st century, dog meat is consumed in many parts of China, Korea and Vietnam, parts of Switzerland, as well as parts of Europe, Americas, the African continent, such as Cameroon, Ghana and Liberia.

 

Today, a number of cultures view the consumption of dog meat to be a part of their traditional and day-to-day cuisine, while others - such as Western culture - consider consumption of dog to be a taboo, although they have been consumed in times of war and/or other hardships. It was estimated in 2014 that worldwide, 25 million dogs are eaten each year by humans.

 

DOG BREEDS USED FOR MEAT

NUREONGI

The Nureongi (Korean: 누렁이) is a yellowish landrace from Korea. Similar to other native Korean dog breeds, such as the Jindo, nureongi are medium-sized spitz-type dogs, but are larger with greater musculature and a distinctive coat pattern. They are quite uniform in appearance, yellow hair and melanistic masks. Nureongi are most often used as a livestock dog, raised for its meat, and not commonly kept as pets.

 

HAWAIIAN POI

The Hawaiian Poi Dog or ʻīlio (ʻīlio mākuʻe for brown-furred Poi dogs) is an extinct breed of pariah dog from Hawaiʻi which was used by Native Hawaiians as a spiritual protector of children and as a source of food.

 

XOLOITZCUINTLE (MEXICAN HAIRLESS)

The Xoloitzcuintle, or Xolo for short, is a hairless breed of dog, found in toy, miniature and standard sizes.The Xolo also comes in a coated variety and all three sizes can be born to a single litter. It is also known as Mexican hairless dog in English speaking countries, is one of several breeds of hairless dog and has been used as a historical source of food for the Aztec Empire.

 

BY REGION

AFRICA

CAMEROON

Among the Vame people, domestic dogs are only eaten for specific rituals.

 

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Despite tests showing 156 dogs were infected with Ebola, the consumption of dog meat is no longer taboo.

 

GHANA

The Tallensi, the Akyim's, the Kokis, and the Yaakuma, one of many cultures of Ghana, consider dog meat a delicacy. While the Mamprusi generally avoid dog meat, it is eaten in a "courtship stew" provided by a king to his royal lineage. Two Tribes in Ghana, Frafra and Dagaaba are particularly known to be "tribal playmates" and consumption of dog meat is the common bond between the two tribes. Every year around September, games are organised between these two tribes and the Dog Head is the trophy at stake for the winning tribe

 

MOROCCO

Islamic law bans the eating of dog meat as does the government of Morocco, however the consumption of dog meat still occurs particularly in poorer regions, often being passed off as other meats as was the case in 2013 and 2009 cases

 

NIGERIA

Dogs are eaten by various groups in some states of Nigeria, including Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Plateau, Ondo, Kalaba, Taraba and Gombe of Nigeria. They are believed to have medicinal powers.

 

In late 2014, the fear of contracting the Ebola virus disease from bushmeat led at least one major Nigerian newspaper to imply that eating dog meat was a healthy alternative. That paper documented a thriving trade in dog meat and slow sales of even well smoked bushmeat.

 

AMERICA

CANADA

It is legal to sell and serve dog meat, providing that it must be killed and gutted in front of federal inspectors. If a dog is killed out of the view of federal inspectors, the killing might involve cruelty, which would be a violation of the Criminal Code, and those convicted may be sentenced to up to 5 years in prison.

 

ANCIENT MEXICO

In the time of the Aztec Empire in what is now central Mexico, Mexican Hairless Dogs were bred, among other purposes, for their meat. Hernán Cortés reported when he arrived in Tenochtitlan in 1519, "small gelded dogs which they breed for eating" were among the goods sold in the city markets. These dogs, Xoloitzcuintles, were often depicted in pre-Columbian Mexican pottery. The breed was almost extinct in the 1940s, but the British Military Attaché in Mexico City, Norman Wright, developed a thriving breed from some of the dogs he found in remote villages.

 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The term "dog" has been used as a synonym for sausage since 1884 and accusations that sausage makers used dog meat date to at least 1845. The belief that sausages contained dog meat was occasionally justified.

 

In the late 19th century, a cure for tuberculosis (then colloquially termed "consumption") using an exclusive diet of dog meat was tried. Reports of families eating dog meat out of choice, rather than necessity, were rare and newsworthy. Stories of families in Ohio and Newark, New Jersey who did so made it into editions of The New York Times in 1876 and 1885.

 

In the early 20th century, dog meat was consumed during times of meat shortage.

 

NATIVE AMERICANS

The traditional culture surrounding the consumption of dog meat varied from tribe to tribe among the original inhabitants of North America, with some tribes relishing it as a delicacy, and others (such as the Comanche) treating it as a forbidden food.

 

Native peoples of the Great Plains, such as the Sioux and Cheyenne, consumed it, but there was a concurrent religious taboo against the meat of wild canines.

During their 1803–1806 expedition, Meriwether Lewis and the other members of the Corps of Discovery consumed dog meat, either from their own animals or supplied by Native American tribes, including the Paiutes and Wah-clel-lah Indians, a branch of the Watlatas, the Clatsop, the Teton Sioux (Lakota), the Nez Perce Indians, and the Hidatsas. Lewis and the members of the expedition ate dog meat, except William Clark, who reportedly could not bring himself to eat dogs.

 

The Kickapoo people include puppy meat in many of their traditional festivals. This practice has been well documented in the Works Progress Administration "Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma".

 

AUSTRALIA

It is legal to eat dogs in most States and Territories, except for South Australia. However, it is illegal to sell dog meat in any Australian State or Territory.

 

ARTIC AND ANTARCTIC

British explorer Ernest Shackleton and his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition became trapped, and ultimately killed their sled dogs for food. Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was known to have eaten sled dogs during his expedition to the South Pole. By eating some of the sled dogs, he required less human or dog food, thus lightening his load. When comparing sled dogs to ponies as draught animals he also notes:

 

"...there is the obvious advantage that dog can be fed on dog. One can reduce one's pack little by little, slaughtering the feebler ones and feeding the chosen with them. In this way they get fresh meat. Our dogs lived on dog's flesh and pemmican the whole way, and this enabled them to do splendid work. And if we ourselves wanted a piece of fresh meat we could cut off a delicate little fillet; it tasted to us as good as the best beef. The dogs do not object at all; as long as they get their share they do not mind what part of their comrade's carcass it comes from. All that was left after one of these canine meals was the teeth of the victim – and if it had been a really hard day, these also disappeared."

 

Douglas Mawson and Xavier Mertz were part of the Far Eastern Party, a three-man sledging team with Lieutenant B.E.S. Ninnis, to survey King George V Land, Antarctica. On 14 December 1912 Ninnis fell through a snow-covered crevasse along with most of the party's rations, and was never seen again. Mawson and Mertz turned back immediately. They had one and a half weeks' food for themselves and nothing at all for the dogs. Their meagre provisions forced them to eat their remaining sled dogs on their 507 km return journey. Their meat was tough, stringy and without a vestige of fat. Each animal yielded very little, and the major part was fed to the surviving dogs, which ate the meat, skin and bones until nothing remained. The men also ate the dog's brains and livers. Unfortunately eating the liver of sled dogs produces the condition hypervitaminosis A because canines have a much higher tolerance for vitamin A than humans do. Mertz suffered a quick deterioration. He developed stomach pains and became incapacitated and incoherent. On 7 January 1913, Mertz died. Mawson continued alone, eventually making it back to camp alive.

 

ASIA/PACIFIC

CHINA

Selling dog meat for consumption is legal in Mainland China and approximately 10 million dogs each year are slaughtered for consumption. The eating of dog meat in China dates back thousands of years. Dog meat (Chinese: 狗肉; pinyin: gǒu ròu) has been a source of food in some areas from around 500 BC and possibly even earlier. It has been suggested that wolves in southern China may have been domesticated as a source of meat. Mencius, the philosopher, talked about dog meat as being an edible, dietary meat. It is thought to have medicinal properties, and is especially popular in winter months in northern China, as it is believed to raise body temperature after consumption and promote warmth. Historical records have moreover shown how in times of food scarcities (as in war-time situations), dogs could also be eaten as an emergency food source.

 

Dog meat is sometimes called "fragrant meat" (香肉 xiāng ròu) or "mutton of the earth" (地羊 dì yáng) in Mandarin Chinese and "3–6 fragrant meat" (Chinese: 三六香肉; Cantonese Yale: sàam luhk hèung yuhk) in Cantonese (3 plus 6 is 9 and the words "nine" and "dog" have close pronunciation. In Mandarin, "nine" and "dog" are pronounced differently).

 

In modern times, the extent of dog consumption in China varies by region, most prevalent in Guangdong, Yunnan and Guangxi, as well as the northern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning. It is still common to find dog meat served in restaurants in Southern China, where dogs are specially raised on farms. However, there are instances of finding stolen pet meat on menus. Chinese netizens and the Chinese police intercepted trucks transporting caged dogs to be slaughtered in localities such as Chongqing and Kunming. In 2014, 11 people in the Hunan province were sentenced to prison for allegedly poisoning over 1,000 dogs and selling the poisonous meat to Yulin, Guangxi has held an annual festival of eating dog meat. This purportedly celebrates the summer solstice, however, in 2014, the municipal government published a statement that the festival is not a cultural tradition, rather, a commercial event held by restaurants and the public. Various dog meat dishes (and more recently, cats) are eaten, washed down by lychees wine. The festival in 2011 spanned 10 days, during which 15,000 dogs were consumed. Estimates of the number of dogs eaten during the festival range between 10 and 15 thousand. Festival organisers say that only dogs bred specifically for consumption are used, however, there are claims that some of the dogs purchased for slaughter and consumption are strays or stolen pets, as evidenced by their wearing collars. Some of the dogs eaten at the festival are burnt or boiled alive and there are reports that the dogs are sometimes clubbed or beaten to death in the belief that the increased adrenalin circulating in the dog's body adds to the flavour of the meat. At the 2015 festival, there were long queues outside large (300-seat) eateries which sold the dog meat for around £4 (€5.60) per kilogram. Prior to the 2014 festival, eight dogs (and their two cages) sold for 1,150 yuan ($185) and six puppies for 1,200 yuan. Prior to the 2015 festival, a protester bought 100 dogs for 7,000 yuan ($1,100; £710). The animal rights NGO Best Volunteer Centre claims the city has more than 100 slaughterhouses, processing between 30 and 100 dogs a day. However, the Yulin Centre for Animal Disease Control and Prevention claims the city has only eight dog slaughterhouses selling approximately 200 dogs, although this increases to about 2,000 dogs during the Yulin festival. There are several campaigns to stop the festival; more than 3,000,000 people have signed petitions against it on Weibo (China’s version of Twitter) and a petition to stop the festival (addressed to the Chinese Minister of Agriculture, Chen Wu) reads "Do the humane thing by saying no to this festival and save the lives of countless dogs that will fall victim to this event - an event that will butcher, skin alive, beat to death etc. thousands of innocent dogs." Prior to the 2014 festival, doctors and nurses staff were ordered not to eat dog meat there, and local restaurants serving dog meat were ordered to cover the word "dog" on their signs and notices.

 

The movement against the consumption of cat and dog meat was given added impetus by the formation of the Chinese Companion Animal Protection Network (CCAPN). Expanded to more than 40 member societies, CCAPN in 2006 began organizing protests against eating dogs and cat, starting in Guangzhou and following up in more than ten other cities with a positive response from the public. Before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, officials ordered dog meat to be taken off the menu at its 112 official Olympic restaurants to avoid offending visitors from various nations who might have been concerned by the offering of dog meat.

 

In 2010, draft legislation was proposed to prohibit the consumption of dog meat. The legislation, however, was not expected to be enforced, making the consumption of dog meat illegal if it passed. In 2010, the first draft proposal of the legislation was introduced, with the rationale to protect animals from maltreatment. The legislation includes a measure to jail people for up to 15 days for eating dog meat. However, certain cultural food festivals continue to promote the meat. For example, in 2014, 10,000 dogs were killed for the Yulin dog eating festival.

 

As of the early 21st century, dog meat consumption is declining or disappearing. In 2014, dog meat sales decreased by a third compared to 2013. It was reported that in 2015, one of the most popular restaurants in Guangzhou serving dog meat was closed after the local government tightened regulations; the restaurant had served dog meat dishes since 1963. Other restaurants that served dog and cat meat dishes in the Yuancun and Panyu districts also stopped serving these in 2015.

 

HONG KONG

In Hong Kong, the Dogs and Cats Ordinance was introduced by the British Hong Kong Government on 6 January 1950. It prohibits the slaughter of any dog or cat for use as food, whether for mankind or otherwise, on pain of fine and imprisonment. In February 1998, a Hong Konger was sentenced to one month imprisonment and a fine of two thousand HK dollars for hunting street dogs for food. Four local men were sentenced to 30 days imprisonment in December 2006 for having slaughtered two dogs.

 

TAIWAN

In 2001, the Taiwanese government imposed a ban on the sale of dog meat, due to both pressure from domestic animal welfare groups and a desire to improve international perceptions, although there were some protests. In 2007, another law was passed, significantly increasing the fines to sellers of dog meat. However, animal rights campaigners have accused the Taiwanese government of not prosecuting those who continue to slaughter and serve dog meat at restaurants. Although the slaughter and consumption of dog meat is illegal in Taiwan, there are reports that suggest the practice continues as of 2011. In Taiwan, dog meat is called "fragrant meat" (Chinese: 香肉; pinyin: xiāngròu). In 2007, legislators passed a law to fine sellers of dog meat NT$250,000 (US$7,730). Dog meat is believed to have health benefits, including improving circulation and raising body temperature.

 

INDIA

In India, dog meat is eaten by certain communities in the Northeast Indian border states of Mizoram, Nagaland, and Manipur where it is considered to be a delicacy. These states border Burma and may have been influenced by Chinese culture and traditions.

  

INDONESIA

Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, a faith which considers dog meat, along with pork to be "haraam" (ritually unclean) and therefore do not eat it. However, dog meat is eaten by several of Indonesia's non-Muslim minorities.

 

The consumption of dog meat is associated with the Minahasa culture of northern Sulawesi, Maluku culture, and the Bataks of northern Sumatra, where dog meat is considered a festive dish usually reserved for occasions such as weddings and Christmas.

 

Popular Indonesian dog-meat dishes are rica-rica, also called rintek wuuk or "RW", rica-rica waung, guk-guk, and "B1". On Java, there are several dishes made from dog meat, such as sengsu (tongseng asu), sate jamu, and kambing balap.

 

Dog consumption in Indonesia gained attention in United States where dog is a taboo food, during 2012 Presidential election when incumbent Barack Obama was pointed by his opponent to have eaten dog meat served by his Indonesian stepfather Lolo Soetoro during his stay in the country

 

JAPAN

The consumption of dog meat is not a feature of modern Japanese culture because Japanese people believe that certain dogs have special powers in their religion of Shintoism and Buddhism. Dog meat was consumed in Japan until 675 AD, when Emperor Temmu decreed a prohibition on its consumption during the 4th–9th months of the year. Normally a dog accompanied the emperor for battle, so it was believed that eating a dog gave emperors bad luck.[citation needed] In Japanese shrines certain animals are worshipped, such as dogs as it is believed they will give people a good luck charm. Animals are described as good luck in scrolls and Kakemono during the Kofun period, Asuka period and Nara period. According to Meisan Shojiki Ōrai (名産諸色往来) published in 1760, the meat of wild dog was sold along with boar, deer, fox, wolf, bear, raccoon dog, otter, weasel and cat in some regions of Edo. Ōta Nampo recorded witnessing puppies being eaten in Satsuma Province in a dish called Enokoro Meshi (えのころ飯).

 

KOREA

Gaegogi (개고기) literally means "dog meat" in Korean. The term itself, however, is often mistaken as the term for Korean soup made from dog meat, which is actually called bosintang (보신탕; 補身湯, Body nourishing soup) (sometimes spelled "bo-shintang").

 

The consumption of dog meat in Korean culture can be traced through history. Dog bones[further explanation needed] were excavated in a neolithic settlement in Changnyeong, South Gyeongsang Province. A wall painting in the Goguryeo Tombs complex in South Hwangghae Province, a World Heritage site which dates from the 4th century AD, depicts a slaughtered dog in a storehouse. The Balhae people also enjoyed dog meat, and the modern-day tradition of canine cuisine seems to have come from that era.

 

Although their Mohe ancestors did not respect dogs, the Jurchen people began to respect dogs around the time of the Ming dynasty and passed this tradition on to the Manchu. It was prohibited in Jurchen culture to use dog skin, and forbidden for Jurchens to harm, kill, and eat dogs, as the Jurchens believed the "utmost evil" was the usage of dog skin by Koreans.

 

SOUTH KOREA

Dog meat is often consumed during the summer months and is either roasted or prepared in soups or stews. The most popular of these soups is bosintang and gaejang-guk, a spicy stew meant to balance the body's heat during the summer months. This is thought to ensure good health by balancing one's "Qi", the believed vital energy of the body. A 19th-century version of gaejang-guk explains the preparation of the dish by boiling dog meat with vegetables such as green onions and chili pepper powder. Variations of the dish contain chicken and bamboo shoots.

 

Over 100,000 tons[94] of dog meat, or 2.5 million dogs, are consumed annually in South Korea. Although a fair number of South Koreans (approximately 42% to 60%) have eaten dog meat at least once in their lifetime, only a small percentage of the population is believed to eat it on a regular basis.

 

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety recognizes any edible product other than drugs as food. South Korean Food Sanitary Law (식품위생법) does not include dog meat as a legal food ingredient. In the capital city of Seoul, the sale of dog meat was outlawed by regulation on February 21, 1984 by classifying dog meat as 'repugnant food' (혐오식품), but the regulation was not rigorously enforced except during the 1988 Seoul Olympics. In 2001, the Mayor of Seoul announced there would be no extra enforcement efforts to control the sale of dog meat during the 2002 FIFA World Cup, which was partially hosted in Seoul. In March 2008, the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced its plan to put forward a policy suggestion to the central government to legally classify slaughter dogs as livestock, reigniting debate on the issue.

 

The primary dog breed raised for meat, the Nureongi (누렁이), or Hwangu (황구); is a non-specific, mixed breed.

 

There is a large and vocal group of Koreans (consisting of a number of animal welfare groups) who are against the practice of eating dogs. Popular television shows like 'I Love Pet' have documented, in 2011 for instance, the continued illegal sale of dog meat and slaughtering of dogs in suburban areas. The program also televised illegal dog farms and slaughterhouses, showing the unsanitary and horrific conditions of caged dogs, several of which were visibly sick with severe eye infections and malnutrition. However, despite this growing awareness, there remain some in Korea that do not eat or enjoy the meat, but do feel that it is the right of others to do so, along with a smaller but still vocal group of pro-dog cuisine people who want to popularize the consumption of dog in Korea and the rest of the world. A group of pro-dog meat individuals attempted to promote and publicize the consumption of dog meat worldwide during the run-up to the 2002 FIFA World Cup, co-hosted by Japan and South Korea, which prompted retaliation from animal rights campaigners and prominent figures such as Brigitte Bardot to denounce the practice. Opponents of dog meat consumption in South Korea are critical of the eating of dog meat, as some dogs are beaten, burnt or hanged to make their meat more tender.

 

The restaurants that sell dog meat, often exclusively, do so at the risk of losing their restaurant licenses. A case of a dog meat wholesaler, charged with selling dog meat, arose in 1997 where an appeals court acquitted the dog meat wholesaler, ruling that dogs were socially accepted as food. According to the National Assembly of South Korea, more than 20,000 restaurants, including the 6,484 registered restaurants, served soups made from dog meat in Korea in 1998. In 1999 the BBC reported that 8,500 tons of dog meat were consumed annually, with another 93,600 tons used to produce a medicinal tonic called gaesoju (개소주).

 

NORTH KOREA

Daily NK reported that the North Korean government included dog meat in its new list of one hundred fixed prices, setting a fixed price of 500 won per kilogram in early 2010.

 

NEW ZEALAND

Dog meat is rarely eaten in New Zealand but has been said to be becoming more popular as it is not illegal as long as the dog is humanely killed.

 

A Tongan man living in New Zealand caused public outrage when he was caught cooking his pet dog in his backyard; this event led to calls for change in the law.

 

PHILIPPINES

The “Malays”, a sea-faring population that is now scattered throughout South-East Asia, introduced the practice of domesticating dogs for meat consumption to the indigenous population of the Philippines.

 

In the capital city of Manila, Metro Manila Commission Ordinance 82-05 specifically prohibits the killing and selling of dogs for food. Generally however, the Philippine Animal Welfare Act 1998 prohibits the killing of any animal other than cattle, pigs, goats, sheep, poultry, rabbits, carabaos, horses, deer and crocodiles, with exemptions for religious, cultural, research, public safety and/or animal health reasons. Nevertheless, the consumption of dog meat is not uncommon in the Philippines, reflected in the occasional coverage in Philippine newspapers,.

 

The Province of Benguet specifically allows cultural use of dog meat by indigenous people and acknowledges this might lead to limited commercial use.

 

Asocena is a dish primarily consisting of dog meat originating from the Philippines.

 

In the early 1980s, there was an international outcry about dog meat consumption in the Philippines after newspapers published photos of Margaret Thatcher, then British Prime Minister, with a dog carcass hanging beside her on a market stall. The British Government discussed withdrawing foreign aid and other countries, such as Australia, considered similar action. To avoid such action, the Filipino government banned the sale of dog meat, despite dog meat being the third most consumed meat, behind pork and goat. The ban eventually became totally disregarded, although it was reinstated by President Ramos in 1998 in the Animal Welfare Act (Republic Act 8485).

 

POLYNESIA

Dogs were historically eaten in Tahiti and other islands of Polynesia, including Hawaii at the time of first European contact. James Cook, when first visiting Tahiti in 1769, recorded in his journal, "few were there of us but what allow'd that a South Sea Dog was next to an English Lamb, one thing in their favour is that they live entirely upon Vegetables". Calwin Schwabe reported in 1979 that dog was widely eaten in Hawaii and considered to be of higher quality than pork or chicken. When Hawaiians first encountered early British and American explorers, they were at a loss to explain the visitors' attitudes about dog meat. The Hawaiians raised both dogs and pigs as pets and for food. They could not understand why their British and American visitors only found the pig suitable for consumption. This practice seems to have died out, along with the native Hawaiian breed of dog, the unique Hawaiian Poi Dog, which was primarily used for this purpose. The consumption of domestic dog meat is still commonplace in the Kingdom of Tonga, and has also been noted in expatriate Tongan communities in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States.

 

THAILAND

Unlike other countries where dog meat consumption has been shown to have historical precedents, Thailand does not have a mainstream culture of dog eating. However, in recent years, the consumption of dog meat in certain areas of the country, especially in certain northeastern provinces like Sakon Nakhon and Nakhon Phanom, notably Sakon Nakhon province's Tha Rae sub-district, which has been identified as the main center for the country's illegal, albeit lucrative, dog meat trade, has attracted widespread attention from the Thai population and local news media. This has led large groups of Thai citizens to become increasingly vocal against the consumption of dog meat and the selling of dogs that are transported through Laos to neighbouring Mekong countries, including Vietnam and China. According to news reports, a considerable number of these dogs continue to be stolen from people's homes by illegal carriers. This was also the case following the 2011 Thailand Floods. Dubbed as the country's 'Trade of Shame', Thai netizens, in particular, have now formed several informal animal welfare and rescue groups in an attempt to stop this illegal trade, with the collective attitude being that 'Dogs are not food'. Established not-for-profit animal charity organizations like the Soi Dog Foundation have also been active in raising awareness and working in conjunction with local Thai authorities to rehabilitate and relocate dogs rescued from trucks attempting to transport live dogs across the border to nearby countries. Significantly, this issue has strengthened the nation's animal rights movement, which continues to call on the Thai government to adopt a stricter and more comprehensive animal rights law to prevent the maltreatment of pets and cruelty against all animals.

 

TIMOR LESTE

Dog meat is a delicacy popular in East Timor.

 

UZBEKISTAN

Although not commonly eaten, dog meat is sometimes used in Uzbekistan in the belief that it has medicinal properties.

 

VIETNAM

Dog meat is consumed more commonly in the northern part of Vietnam than in the south, and can be found in special restaurants which specifically serve dog meat. Dog meat is believed to bring good fortune in Vietnamese culture. It is seen as being comparable in consumption to chicken or pork. In urban areas, there are sections that house a lot of dog meat restaurants. For example, on Nhat Tan Street, Tây Hồ District, Hanoi, many restaurants serve dog meat. Groups of customers, usually male, seated on mats, will spend their evenings sharing plates of dog meat and drinking alcohol. The consumption of dog meat can be part of a ritual usually occurring toward the end of the lunar month for reasons of astrology and luck. Restaurants which mainly exist to serve dog meat may only open for the last half of the lunar month. Dog meat is also believed to raise the libido in men. The Associated Press reported in October 2009 that a soaring economy has led to the booming of dog restaurants in Hanoi, and that this has led to a proliferation of dognappers. Reportedly, a 20 kilograms dog can sell for more than $100 — roughly the monthly salary of an average Vietnamese worker. The Vietnamese Catholic Church is a major consumer of dog meat during the Christmas holiday. There is a large smuggling trade from Thailand to export dogs to Vietnam for human consumption.

 

In 2009, dog meat was found to be a main carrier of the Vibrio cholerae bacterium, which caused the summer epidemic of cholera in northern Vietnam.

 

Prior to 2014, more than 5 million dogs were killed for meat every year in Vietnam according to the Asia Canine Protection Alliance. However, there are indications that the desire to eat dog meat in Vietnam is waning. Part of the decline is thought to be due to an increased number of Vietnamese people keeping dogs as pets, as their incomes have risen in the past few decades. “[People] used to raise dogs to guard the house, and when they needed the meat, they ate it. Now they keep dog as pets, imported from China, Japan, and other countries. One pet dog might cost hundreds of millions of dong [100 million dong is $4,677].”

 

EUROPE

BRITAIN & IRELAND

Eating dog meat is considered entirely taboo, as is common with most European societies, and has been taboo for many centuries outside of times of scarcity such as sieges or famines. However, early Brittonic and Irish texts which date from the early Christian period suggest that dog meat was sometimes consumed but possibly in ritual contexts such as Druidic ritual trance. Sacrificial dog bones are often recovered from archaeological sites however they were typically treated differently, as were horses, from other food animals. One of Ireland's mythological heroes Cuchulainn, had two geasa, or vows, one of which was to avoid the meat of dogs. The breaking of his geasa led to his death in the Irish mythology.

 

BELGIUM

A few meat shops sold dog meat during the German occupation of Belgium in World War I, when food was extremely scarce. According to The New York Times, in the 19th century the Council of the Veterinary School of Belgium occasionally recommended dog meat for human consumption after being properly inspected.

 

FRANCE

Although consumption of dog meat is uncommon in France, and is now considered taboo, dog meat has been consumed in the past by the Gauls. The earliest evidence of dog consumption in France was found at Gaulish archaeological sites, where butchered dog bones were discovered. French news sources from the late 19th century carried stories reporting lines of people buying dog meat, which was described as being "beautiful and light." During the Siege of Paris (1870–1871), there were lines at butcher's shops of people waiting to purchase dog meat. Dog meat was also reported as being sold by some butchers in Paris, 1910.

 

GERMANY

Dog meat has been eaten in every major German crisis since, at least, the time of Frederick the Great, and is commonly referred to as "blockade mutton". In the early 20th century, high meat prices led to widespread consumption of horse and dog meat in Germany.

 

The consumption of dog meat continued in the 1920s. In 1937, a meat inspection law targeted against trichinella was introduced for pigs, dogs, boars, foxes, badgers, and other carnivores. Dog meat has been prohibited in Germany since 1986.

 

SAXONY

In the latter part of World War I, dog meat was being eaten in Saxony by the poorer classes because of famine conditions.

 

THE NETHERLANDS

During severe meat shortages coinciding with the German occupation from 1940 to 1945, sausages found to have been made of dog meat were confiscated by authorities in the Netherlands.

 

POLAND

While dog meat is not eaten, some rural areas of Poland especially Lesser Poland, dog fat can be made into lard, which by tradition is believed to have medicinal properties - being good for the lungs, for instance. Since the 16th century, fat from various animals, including dogs, was used as part of folk medicine, and since the 18th century, dog fat has had a reputation as being beneficial for the lungs. It is worth noting that the consumption of such meat is considered taboo in Polish culture, also making lard out of dogs' fat is illegal. In 2009, a scandal erupted when a farm near Częstochowa was discovered rearing dogs to be rendered down into lard. According to Grazyna Zawada, from Gazeta Wyborcza, there were farms in Czestochowa, Klobuck, and in the Radom area, and in the decade from 2000 to 2010 six people producing dog lard were found guilty of breaching animal welfare laws (found guilty of killing dogs and animal cruelty) and sentenced to jail. As of 2014 there have been new cases prosecuted.

 

SWITZERLAND

Dogs, as well as cats, are eaten regularly by farmers in rural areas for personal consumption. While commercial slaughter and sale of dog meat is illegal, cultural attitudes toward slaughtering of animals for meat is traditionally liberal in Switzerland. The favorite type of meat comes from a dog related to the Rottweiler and consumed as 'mostbrockli' a form of marinated meat. Animals are slaughtered by butchers and either shot or bludgeoned.

 

In his 1979 book Unmentionable Cuisine, Calvin Schwabe described a Swiss dog meat recipe gedörrtes Hundefleisch served as paper-thin slices, as well as smoked dog ham, Hundeschinken, which is prepared by salting and drying raw dog meat.

 

It is illegal in Switzerland to commercially produce food made from dog meat, or to produce such food for commercial purposes.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Ann Wood was sentenced to do 2 months in prison after being caught stealing money.

 

Age (on discharge): 30

Height: 5.3½

Hair: Brown

Eyes: Blue

Place of Birth: Cramlington

Status: Married

 

These photographs are of convicted criminals in Newcastle between 1871 - 1873.

 

Reference:TWAS: PR.NC/6/1/1145

 

(Copyright) We're happy for you to share this digital image within the spirit of The Commons. Please cite 'Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums' when reusing. Certain restrictions on high quality reproductions and commercial use of the original physical version apply though; if you're unsure please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk.

 

To purchase a hi-res copy please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk quoting the title and reference number

 

Original Youkleptein

Sentenced to drift far away now

Nothing is quite what it seems

Sometimes entangled in your own dreams (Genesis)

 

And there are neither words or a sentence in French either. I just added some yellow lines and dots to one of Henry Holiday's illustrations to Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark".

 

 

Neither the "beek" (or whatever that is) grabbing the hand of the Baker nor anything else in this illustration is a cigar.

 

Henry Holiday is known as the creator of many eye pleasing pieces of art. But when he illustrated Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, he allowed himself some experiments. And you, the beholder of his illustrations, are a part of these experiments. Yet, this went mostly unnoticed since more than 130 years.

 

Most of this image is Henry Holiday's illustration (1876, cut by Joseph Swain) to The Vanishing, last "fit" (chapter) in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark. It is the "darkest" illustration to Carroll's poem. To that treachery of images I only added some yellow lines and dots.

 

As to the meaning of this image? I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense! I was walking on a hillside, alone, one foggy autumn day, when suddenly there came into my head one line - one solitary line - "Ceci n'est pas une cigare". I knew not what it meant, then: I know not what it means, now; but I just inserted it into Henry Holiday's dark Snark illustration.

 

Well - I told you at least thrice. So it must be true that this image has no meaning, and you are responsible for what you see.

 

One possibility to cope with this is to declare that Carroll's and Holiday's work is nonsense. Let's prove that it is nonsense:

 

www.flickr.com/photos/bonnetmaker/4974368277/#comment7215...

 

As you see, the strict selection criteria for "I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense!" have been met.

 

 

 

But seriously, it is nonsense: About nonsense as an art of deniability I first learned from Mahendra Singh. But if - and the thing is wildly possible - the charge of presenting nonsense were ever brought against me because of this image and all my Snark comparisons, it would be based, I feel convinced, on these lines:

 

369    "The method employed I would gladly explain,

370        While I have it so clear in my head,

371    If I had but the time and you had but the brain--

372        But much yet remains to be said.

 

373    "In one moment I've seen what has hitherto been

374        Enveloped in absolute mystery,

375    And without extra charge I will give you at large

376        A Lesson in Natural History."

 

 

So far for that. Now, here is the last Snark chapter, to which that illustration (without yellow lines and dots) belongs:

 

THE VANISHING

 

529    They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;

530        They pursued it with forks and hope;

531    They threatened its life with a railway-share;

532        They charmed it with smiles and soap.

 

533    They shuddered to think that the chase might fail,

534        And the Beaver, excited at last,

535    Went bounding along on the tip of its tail,

536        For the daylight was nearly past.

 

537    "There is Thingumbob shouting!" the Bellman said,

538        "He is shouting like mad, only hark!

539    He is waving his hands, he is wagging his head,

540        He has certainly found a Snark!"

 

541    They gazed in delight, while the Butcher exclaimed

542        "He was always a desperate wag!"

543    They beheld him--their Baker--their hero unnamed--

544        On the top of a neighbouring crag.

 

545    Erect and sublime, for one moment of time.

546        In the next, that wild figure they saw

547    (As if stung by a spasm) plunge into a chasm,

548        While they waited and listened in awe.

 

549    "It's a Snark!" was the sound that first came to their ears,

550        And seemed almost too good to be true.

551    Then followed a torrent of laughter and cheers:

552        Then the ominous words "It's a Boo-"

 

553    Then, silence. Some fancied they heard in the air

554        A weary and wandering sigh

555    That sounded like "-jum!" but the others declare

556        It was only a breeze that went by.

 

557    They hunted till darkness came on, but they found

558        Not a button, or feather, or mark,

559    By which they could tell that they stood on the ground

560        Where the Baker had met with the Snark.

 

561    In the midst of the word he was trying to say,

562        In the midst of his laughter and glee,

563    He had softly and suddenly vanished away--

564        For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

 

 

 

 

Discussion: www.flickr.com/groups/thisisnot/discuss/72157624793953727/

  

 

 

Quotes:

 

• "Only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide."

Heinz von Foerster: Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics, 1990-10-04 (Système et thérapie familiale, Paris)

 

• "It is possible that the author was half-consciously laying a trap, so readily did he take to the inventing of puzzles and things enigmatic; but to those who knew the man, or who have devined him correctly through his writings, the explanation is fairly simple."

Henry Holiday (1898-01-29) on Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark

 

• To Paint is Not to Affirm

Michel Foucault. This is Not a Pipe, Chapter 6 (excerpt), 1968

 

• Honi soit qui mal y pense

 

• "An anti-subject painting might effectly conceal its subject, hiding it from everyone except the painter; or it might tease viewers with clues; or it might be so arcane that few people can see its subject: What counts is the retreat from the obvious, unambiguous primary meaning."

James Elkins (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago): Why are our Pictures Puzzles?, p. 129, 1999 (see also book review)

 

• "To say it fully, a cryptomorph is an image that is hidden at its making, remains invisible for some period, and then is revealed so that it becomes an image that once was hidden (and the can no longer be hidden again)."

James Elkins ..., p. 184

 

• "The act of revealing fully hidden cryptomorphs is an act of terrorism against pictorial sense."

James Elkins ..., p. 203

 

 

 

... french way...

The Ideas Notes page got too long. It is broken up in two parts, now.

These two indexes show what is on each page:

Ideas:

A- BY DESIGN.

B- MODERN SENTENCES.

C- BRAND NEW, OLD SAYINGS.

D- OBSERVATIONS.

 

E- ABIT. A BIT. ALOT. A LOT.

F- ODD EFFECTS OF SMALL AND BIG.

G- BUILDING 7.

H- "THE HARD WAY".

I- MONEY.

J- JOKE IDEA.

K- POLITICAL.

  

Ideas 02:

A- HUMANS ARE ARTISTS.

B- ARCHIVE SET NOTE. SIGNED WORK NOTE for the future.

C-

 

______

A- BY DESIGN-

These notes are for the 'By design' page in this set:

www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/2790735974/in/set-72057...

 

More notes on the painting, "Sleepwalker"-

( I'm breaking my rule here and talking about the painting. Normally, I would leave this for the viewer to discover but- since art school- I don't know many people who really look at paintings. Also, we lost track of this one. It may be lost or was given away. )

 

The title of this piece is "Sleepwalker", but it is not a literal reference to that phenomenon, which involves actual walking while still asleep.

This person is still in bed.

The visual clue is the hair, which can be interpreted as 'dream hair'.

But- if you tilt your head to the left- you see that the dream hair is actually splayed out on a narrow bed. The figure is lying down, dreaming that she is walking.

  

This is a rare case where the text leads the picture. I was writing an email to Jordan Cohen…

www.flickr.com/photos/doneastwest/2327352614/in/set-72057...

... and realized it could be a rich Flickr page.

  

[ Don note- is there a color slide of this? i only remember this b-w photo in the binder for the Guggenheim. it is monochromatic. maybe the base color was a neutralized green or orangy yellow. ]

 

______

B- MODERN SENTENCES-

[ there will be a group of "Modern Sentences"- oddities of the present that would have sounded bizarre in the past.- some of them still sound bizarre. there is only one so far and it won't have a photo. there will come one eventually that will naturally have a photo. then the modern sentences will be moved out of this text page.

- this is the first one:

 

- When i get up in the night, I don't have to turn on the bathroom light because the sink area is faintly lit by my toothbrush.

 

______

C- BRAND NEW, OLD SAYINGS-

An older one from the 80s:

You could fly a trillion miles in space and never find enough iron to make a paper clip.

and

You can't talk ABOUT art.

You can only talk about it, in the sense that you can talk AROUND it.

and

The word, 'talent' is problematic, because humans are artists.

and

Up Your Art ( also, 'Up Yer Art'. )

 

An older one from, maybe, 1995-

Don't eat any processed food, whose list of ingredients is longer than the Declaration of Independence.

 

2007-

Life is not as funny as sex, but almost.

 

America needs to get out more.

 

2008-

The enemy of power is education.

 

2009-

Get an education, or you will be targeted for your money and your vote.

 

[ Nov. 5, 2009- working on something like, "Check the facts" or "Get the facts", what with all the manipulation this summer, such as the Tea Baggers, the Birthers, and the shouters at Town Hall Meetings, yelling to prevent any discussion.

 

Nov. 23, 2010-

- variation on Democracy is not a free ride:

It's a free country but it's not a free ride.

 

Dec. 25, 2011-

Privilege does not imply superiority.

(- i asked George about the writing of the 'brand new, old saying' to see if it could be shorter. he suggested, "Privilege is not superiority".

- i think the assumption that privilege and superiority go together is pervasive in all classes.

/- i think the assumption that privilege and superiority exist together in the same space is pervasive in all classes.)

Jan. 22, 2012-

- Privilege does't make you superior, but it makes you feel superior.

- Privilege makes you feel superior. Too bad.

Dec. 8, 2012-

If you're ever bored, look at your hand.

 

___

- this one is less of a brand new old saying: more of a teaching method:

Regarding two, too, and to: " There are two 'o's in too, but that is too many 'o's to say to. "

______

D- OBSERVATIONS-

 

D1- Regarding "watching" television-

It's not an audience; it's a vidience.

 

D1b- Related note- when i was a kid, living in Guadalcanal Village on Mare Island, i used to listen to a local comedian named Red Blanchard. speaking of vidence, he used to refer to his listeners as the "audio radiance". ( i had a Red Blanchard card i got from the radio station, called an "I Dread Red Card". i wore it out in my wallet, later, when i had a wallet. )

- i assume the radio station was out of Vallejo.

 

D2- i introduced an idea at a meeting of the Penny University (Page Smith, Mary Holmes, Paul Lee.) in around 1973 or 4:

The United States is not really a NATION: it's an overdue and much needed WORLD MEETING, which will take a few hundred years.

 

D3- a few years ago, from watching good movies:

We're alive right now and we're missing it.

 

D4- Aug. 22, 2010-

Don't let your life be too explainable.

 

D5- 2010-

Exemplar for the source of the economic crisis, stated in a conversation between a billionaire and a friend:

billionaire- "... I worry alot."

friend- "But you're a billionaire."

billionaire- "But what if something happened?"

 

D6- Sept. 28, 2011.

- people don't give police the kind of respect that is their due.

- if we say, "You just take care of it and leave me out of it and don't ever park in front of my house, " - this leaves a bad taste in the mouth. it's harder to serve and protect people who don't want to get involved and think of you as a servant.

 

D7- Oct. 16, 2011.

"You're not applying your intelligence to this; you're applying your obedience."

- [ i'll have to test this. don't know if it stands on its own feet.

- but contrasting intelligence and obedience is useful.

- if intelligence is applied, you have an honest search; if obedience is applied, you get the safe answer.

- i'm thinking that people won't get the ref. to obedience. it follows from being told what to say- even what to think. often enough, this is imposed upon a person at a young age- often in situations where questions are not allowed.

- alot of political hay has been made with the word, terrorism. similarly, alot of hay has been made from the word, faith. my view is that children pick up pretty soon that the 'fix' is in: they realize that adults are depending upon their size, for one, to settle issues that they have handled incompetently. (… because i SAY so. )

- what i don't get is, if that sad understanding is retained, or if it drifts into a fog of memory. after all, people speak proudly of their Faith, as if they are born with it. i, of course, don't think they are. otherwise, questions would be encouraged in sunday school, rather than discouraged and punished.

faith is referred to as a rock. at the beginning it turns on a knife edge.

 

D8- Jazz singer, Peggy Lee said, " I learned how to live from Jesus, Cary Grant, and Buddha."

 

D9- a mind bending quote from a History Channel, Universe, program:

"The oldest evidence of life on Earth is not evidence of the oldest life."

- this came from an Australian scientist. she studies stromatolites on the northeastern coast.

 

D10- PASCAL-

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

 

D11- CATS-

All cats are celebrities.

 

_______________

E- ABIT. A BIT. ALOT. A LOT-

- if you type combined words like abit and alot and thankyou, your spell checker redlines them (just now, this spellchecker underlined abit and alot and thankyou, but it did not underline 'redlines' and 'spellchecker'.

- am i being bad to write it anyway? i say no (but i would).

- compare these. what do you think? :

 

No redlines here:

- a while, awhile.

- on to, onto.

- holy day, holiday.

- up on, upon.

- an other, another.

- in stead, instead.

- all right, alright.

- all one, alone.

- dish washing, dishwashing.

- all together, altogether.

- home made, homemade.

- some where, somewhere.

- no where, nowhere.

 

This one redlines the second version of the word:

- a lot, alot. i like both versions of this word: a lot is good when used for emphasis; alot is good when used in passing

- a bit, abit. again, when emphasizing: ... "not a BIT ! ", but- in passing- ... " that was abit to much. "

- thank you, thankyou. i'm not so sure that abit and alot will be adopted but i have hopes for thankyou. again, i think both versions are good: ..." I want to THANK you for your help." "Thankyou for coming."

- a few, afew. ditto.

 

_________

F- ODD EFFECTS OF SMALL AND BIG. big and small. slides of paintings. volcanoes and valleys, on Mars are bigger.

[ don- put in 2 pages on the oddity of big and small:

1) - the slide of the small painting in the slide sheet, dominates the page. the large paintings are lost on the page.

2) - mountains, volcanoes and valleys on small planets are bigger than those on larger planets- probably due to the lighter gravity:

- the largest volcano on Mars is 70,000 feet higher than the surrounding land.

- the largest volcano on Earth is 29,000 feet higher than the ocean floor.

 

- the famous gash on Mars * dwarfs the Grand Canyon.

 

___

* - largest volcano on Mars- Olympus Mons.

- largest canyon on Mars- Valles Marineris.

 

- maybe don't scan the slides. rather, shoot a photo on a light screen.

 

/ Mars, Olympus Mons is about 70,000 feet higher than the surrounding land.

Earth, the largest volcano- Mona Loa is only 29,000 feet above the ocean floor.

- source- "Red Thunder" by John Varley- paperback page 330.

/ land forms, land masses, mountains, volcanoes and valleys.

 

_____

G- 9/11. BUILDING 7.

Pete sent me this video: naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=100AB0D5050B41D63CBC2FC1451CEAED

I wrote back:

(Maybe better to read this on the laptop. sentences are long for a phone. no rush on it.)

Back and forth between pros and cons:

- saw half of the video so far. that's the building that made me wonder. ( i like Ed Asner. )

- the prep to 'implode' it takes months, the video says.

- also, setting it up so that there is no sign of the preparations would take much longer, if that is even possible.

- if it is possible- if you could hide the process from the outside- in an empty building, how could you do it with thousands of people populating the building? the word would definitely get out. (what the hell are these guys doing in here?)

- if there was something to hide in the building, it seems easier to just take those months to move the stuff out.

 

- on the other hand, there is talk that building 7 contained some kind of control center. don't remember the details on that.

- but how could you count on the control center being lost in the wreckage. i'd think you'd find it.

 

- the idea, that those office fires caused it seems pretty outlandish.

 

- if a lower floor did give way, the line of least resistance would be straight down, like an implosion, so that's not a giveaway.

- the 'authorities' say that the crash was caused by a furniture fire. there is footage of such fires attributed to WTC 7. ( i mean, we have to assume that the footage is of building 7. what i've seen of it is vague.

- but the designers of modern buildings take furniture fires into account. otherwise, it would happen often that a building would come down from fires in lower floors.

- by the way, the black square thing on the top, fell in before the rest of the building started to go. what does that indicate?

 

- where does all that leave us?

___

____

H- "THE HARD WAY".

Book idea- (not that i would write. i'm just putting it out there.):

"The Hard Way"

- the way things were done before technology stepped in and made things easier.

 

- this section is in the Notes of Voodoopad:

- can't find the writing. thought it was already in TextEdit at least.

- there's the stuff about the camera kites, above the San Francisco Fire. i have the small paper article- maybe the good Times- that talks about this.

 

Taper recorder, special effects, sound effects, Foley example:

- i could tell the story about slowing down the end of ..."the power structure". Robert Scheer. "Sons and Daughters".

 

- just heard one on the radio about the first TV coverage of the Olympics in 1960. Jim McCay was in New York, not in Rome. it was filmed and put onto commercial jet liners (in the hold, so they came off the plane very cold and had to be warmed up. McCay wrote his copy while the film was processed.

 

- by the way, i told the idea of the hard way to Mark Forry, who is a real writer. he said- rather than a book- it should be a series of books. neat. (but it's not me who will write it.)

 

- i'm putting this into the Ideas page at the end of the Ideas set in Flickr, today, 10.3.09. But idea goes farther back.

 

_____

I- MONEY-

Clay Eugene Smith-

We don't have a bad economy, we have a bloated corporate oligarchy.

Don-

- yes, Clay.

- Michael Moore said we don't have a money problem: there is no shortage of money.

- i say there is plenty of money to go around. the problem is, it's not going around. it's concentrated at the top.

- but it's our money up there, out of reach.

___

The Rich must live more simply so that the Poor may simply live” ~ Ghandi

 

_____

J- JOKE IDEA-

- first version, regarding diet drinks: i so dislike the aftertaste of diet drinks that it becomes a beforetaste.

 

- idea that you anticipate the bad taste when you see the container.

- needs work.

 

K- POLITICAL-

- Put in here my paper written before the first Iraq War started.

Keywords- april glaspy. first Bush,

the piece was based on what i was learning from papers and the radio. look back on it and it's pretty good- except i thought i was hearing the name April Gillespie, but it was Glaspy.

PUT IT HERE:

  

___RELATED TO THE ABOVE, about the beginning of the second Iraq war:

 

You family values people are supporting the the idea to invade Iraq.

Ok, let the divorces begin...

  

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______________________________________________________________________

[ Don note- remember to refer back to the relevant page for people who come to the Notes page first.

- BEST WAY TO EDIT THIS PAGE IS TO BRING THE WHOLE THING OVER TO A BLANK TextEdit PAGE AND WORK ON IT THERE. ]

 

The "art note" tag refers to text, but there is a " don art" tag, as well, for images.

The " don art " tag is only used to send you to my own refined work.

(Shaq's obit)

 

1991-2008

Shaquille

 

Tears dropped down onto his lifeless form from the eyes of those who had gathered around Shaq to ease him over to the other side. His black spotted fur, dappled by the afternoon sun, glistened but no longer gave rise and fall to his sedated breathing. His 17 year prison sentence ended today.

   

We were remembering the proud, fearless leopard and how he had touched all of our lives with his strength to overcome the awful lot he had been dealt. Shaq had been born in a cage. He was bred to be used in a nightclub act by a trainer who made his living from the suffering of many big cats. As long as people would pay to see big cats doing stupid pet tricks he could count on a good living by providing the disposable product of the trade; young, compliant felines.

   

Cubs live with their mothers for the first few years, so breeders pull the cubs before their eyes open and bottle raise them to be completely dependent and subservient to their human master. By the time the cats are a year old, they are nearly full sized; appearing to be adults, but still mentally kittens. The crowd is wowed by the mastery of the trainer over what they think to be a full-grown and fully intact lion, tiger or leopard. Usually they are declawed, defanged cubs who have been beaten into submission repeatedly behind the scenes.

   

A well known tiger tamer boasted to me that the way you teach a big cat “who is boss” is to chain them to a wall and beat them with a whip, standing just out of reach. After a while the cat learns that no matter how hard he tries, he cannot retaliate and after a while gives up hope. His spirit dies and he is considered tamed or trained. The training goes on behind locked doors because the public would never support these wild animal acts if they knew the truth.

   

The trainers all claim that they only use “positive reinforcement” and when in front of the public they do, but the cats are ever reminded of the brutal force that will be used against them if they fail to comply. Sometimes it is in the carrying of a whip, which the trainer will defend as only being a guide, and sometimes it is in the verbal threats using words that only the cats in the ring can hear. It can be as subtle as a look (remember how your mom could do that?) or a gesture that the cat associates with pain.

   

At Big Cat Rescue we use positive reinforcement or operant conditioning as it is often called as a way to keep the cats’ minds stimulated and to assist us in their care and it works… when the cat wants it to work. This sort of training involves rewarding the cat with a little cube of meat for doing something we need them to do, like come into their feeding area, or show us a paw, or lay down next to the wall of the cage so we can give them their vaccinations or treat minor injuries. We do it because taking care of 100+ cats goes a lot easier if you have to get flea treatments on them and they come when called. It isn’t feasible to chase down a tiger just to put a few drops of Advantage on him. The cats at Big Cat Rescue do it because it is something fun to do and they are bored out of their minds. The agonizing boredom of captivity is the hardest issue for anyone to address when caring for animals who cannot be set free. We never withhold food from their main meals, so the treats are merely the cat’s way of measuring if they got our request right.

   

It’s helpful, but it isn’t reliable. The cats only respond to this kind of training on their own terms and for those who are being paid to perform for the public there isn’t the option of just turning to the crowd and saying, “Sorry, the cat doesn’t want to jump through the hoop today.”

   

In Shaquille’s case, people paid to see him jump through the burning hoop in the nightclub show and he was going to jump or die, and he knew it. He knew what would happen if he didn’t and one day, upon reaching adulthood, he proudly decided he wasn’t going to do it any more. It was in the early days of the sanctuary when we would rescue a cat but not require the owner give up their rights to own again. Our policies evolved as we witnessed time and again that breeders, trainers, photo booth operators and exotic pet owners would dump the cats as they grew up in favor of new babies.

   

The first time I saw Shaquille and the cougar who came with him, I thought that some horrible accident must have happened en route to us. Calling the former owner we learned that the injuries they suffered from had been the result of the beating they had taken at his hand for not performing. He had no remorse and had broken no laws because there are virtually none that protect the big cats. When we complained to USDA we were told that beating big cats to make them perform was considered “standard training methods.”

   

The cougar had a fungal infection in her brain because it had been exposed from the crashing blows to her head and wasn’t long for this world after that. Shaq’s face was the consistency of ground hamburger and his eye sockets had been crushed so that even years later, when he had fully recovered, his eyes teared constantly. His involuntary trail of tears were a solemn reminder of the abuse he had endured. His story was told to thousands who visited him at the sanctuary, once he was comfortable around people, and to millions who visited his page on the Internet.

   

Shaquille’s indomitable spirit has been an inspiration to so many. He purr-sonified strength in adversity and the ability to forgive. As a result many people around the globe made a connection with him that bridged the gap perceived as “us” and “them.” All of those thoughts were passing through our minds as he breathed his last in our arms.

   

The silence of the moment was shattered by an unearthly howling across the refuge. Hallelujah, a cougar and, the first big cat to come to the sanctuary, made the same proclamation as has become his habit when cats cross over. To my ears it was both chilling and comforting. Hal’s timing and the fact that he never otherwise makes such a call let us know that we really are all connected. We feel each other and that connection transcends our physical bodies.

   

It is sad for us to lose the physical connection with another that we best understand, but Hallelujah reminded us that Shaquille and all thosewho have gone on before him are ever in our midst.

   

Leopards are designed to run 40 mph and leap 20 feet. They are strong swimmers and climbers and in my opinion are the smartest of all cat species. No cage is sufficient for their needs. Shaq was born in a cage, lived 17 years in a cage, and died in a cage…but now he is free. His work is done. He brought to light the dark side of the entertainment industry and he put the torch in your hands to continue exposing animal abuse until it ends. You are his voice.

       

Tributes from those who loved Shaquille

Send to Carole at MakeADifference@BigCatRescue.org to be included.

 

My first introduction to Big Cat Rescue was a Saturday Tour with some friends. Our tour guide was Denny and because of his inspirational tour, I began volunteering at Big Cat Rescue. One of the few stories that I remember from that day was Shaquille's. I was quite naive when it came to how people mistreated animals and Shaq's story brought tears to my eyes and was really the reason I wanted to volunteer at Big Cat Rescue. I've been there going on 5 remarkable years and I owe it all to Shaq! I will miss him on the tour path because I know he inspired many, many, people besides me…..Pat, Volunteer Senior Partner

   

When I first became a yellow shirt, we were allowed to clean leopards, and I remember my first day by myself in the section called “Snow Leopards.” I had managed to dodge Sundari's frisky ways, Nyla's attempts to rip my face off because she had a raccoon and she didn't want me to take it, and Simba's watchful eye. I thought, “Geez I don't really like this section at all.....until I came to Shaq.” I was petrified...I had watched Shaq lunge at the side of his enclosure at Scott, so I knew he meant business. But, what I found when I approached his enclosure was a very calm, sweet, enduring Black Leopard, who took one look at me and plopped down, rolled over and showed me his belly as if to say "See Regina, leopards aren't so bad. We can be quite silly when we want to be." From that point, whenever I cleaned his cat-a-tat, he would follow me around the enclosure, stopping when I did and never missed a chance to show me his belly.

 

I took that as his way of giving back to us....since certain special people eased him into the world of human kindness, he would ease me into the leopard world.

 

Now it is our turn to shed the tears sweet boy......you have shed far too many. Have a peaceful journey Shaquille...run free now, climb trees, act silly. There is a beautiful tigress that will make your journey easier....her name is NINI…..look for her. You can't miss her, she'll be sticking her tongue out at you….Regina, Volunteer Senior Keeper

   

Oh Shaq! You had us all cry and cry so much for you during all these years by just looking at your eyes and knowing how much you suffered before you came to us. And today I hope you are not crying anymore. I hope you are enjoying your freedom and peace. As for the rest of us, today we are still remembering your tears and your pain. But don't worry Shaq, we will all continue our mission! No more Big Cats should suffer the way you did! Again, I feel so fortunate to have spent so much time talking to you and cleaning "your room!" I told you that day "I love you" - for the millionth time! You just looked at me, but this time was the last time! We all loved you Shaq, we all love you! Go and dry your tears now...let us do the rest and get some rest…Marie, Volunteer Senior Keeper

   

I first encountered Shaquille on 28th December 2001. It was the dead of night and my first ever visit to Big Cat Rescue, The Wild Eyes at Night Tour with Jennifer as our guide. Of course, he saw us well before we saw him and he came forward to the sound of Jen's voice. She told us his sad story, how he had been abused because he refused to jump through a hoop of fire and how it had left him scarred both physically and mentally. We saw him from a distance in daylight the following day - he was shy and unsure and it was obvious that he really didn’t like men.

 

The following year I returned to BCR and immediately I could see a huge change in this magnificent creature. There he lay, on his rock, proud and splendid in his black glossy coat. Suddenly, something caught his eye, he jumped from the rock and began chasing round after a play ball in his cage, acting like a little cub again.

 

Year after year, as I returned to BCR, I saw his confidence improve and I would spend quiet periods with him, just talking softly. It was a great privilege to be able to spend quality time with him. He has been a focus point for every school/event presentation I have ever made about BCR and his story will continue to be told.

 

Run free Shaquille, you will always have a piece of my heart with you.....Daphne, Volunteer Keeper Trainee/Advocat

   

Shaquille was such an important and poignant part of my tours, carrying the vital message that we have the power to stop this abuse by not spending our money to see such acts. On one of my tours a few weeks before, one of the little girls asked who I thought had the saddest story, and I answered unhesitatingly, Shaq, since he was not only a victim of greed, ignorance or neglect, but had endured such cruelty; yet to me he meant so much more, the will to survive, the power to forgive. I always took such joy in watching him basking in the sun, knowing he was now safe and loved; the rescue seems a bit colder with his passing..........Deborah, Volunteer Keeper Trainee

   

Fragile Circle

 

dedicated to Shaquille by Deborah

 

We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own

 

live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached.

 

Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way.

 

We cherish memory as the only certain immortality,

 

never fully understanding the

necessary plan. - Irving Townsend

   

On a day in early April 2007, my sister and I took a day tour of the cats at Big Cat Rescue. As we stopped a distance away from Shaquille's place, I listened very closely as the guide told us Shaq's horrible background of torture while at a Las Vegas circus. As I listened to the terrible abuse this beautiful cat had suffered at the hands of man (and I say that word lightly), I could not get him out of my mind.

 

And though the laws were such that I could never get close enough to whisper "I love you Shaquille," I vowed to 'adopt' him and help the big cats as much as I could. At night, I would sent many positive messages to Shaquille and hoped that somehow is eyes could be fixed to stop the tears. I knew that all of the great people at Big Cat Rescue had done as much as they could, but his eyes always

haunted me.

 

Shaq's spirit and absolute diginity in the face of all he had endured, gave me renewed hope and faith in continuing on in life no matter how gloomy one's circumstances seem at times. Our animal friends are great teachers, and they participate easily in the flow of life and surely accept death with greater courage than most of us humans.

 

I feel very blessed to have taken that tour and seen Shaq for at least a few moments. I envy those volunteers who were able to reach out to him and be near him on a daily basis. How rich and blessed their lives have been by this lovely leopard. I am sure Shaquille is watching over all of his caretakers, and the other cats from above. He is whole and free of pain now and will be forever at Peace.... Sandra Hricik

   

I just read the May advocat and my heart broke when I read about Shaquille. In 2005 for my birthday my husband, dad, step-mom, cousin and I went to Big Cat Rescue. It was our first time there and I had wanted to go for some time. It was the most amazing experience getting to see all the beautiful cats that you have rescued. As we approached Shaq's cage the volunteer guiding our tour told us Shaq's story. I started crying when I heard about all the horrible things he had gone through. I stayed behind from the group for a moment just to gaze at this wonderful creature and hoping he knew he was loved, even by someone who could never enter his cage. I felt like I made a connection with him. The following year I told my husband that all I wanted for my birthday was to "adopt" Shaq. His picture remains in a frame at my house.

 

I am always sad when I hear about the passing of any of the cats at the rescue, but Shaquille hurts my heart the most. I know he is in a better place and can now run free. I am so grateful for having the chance to have Shaq touch my life and to be able to tell others about this brave, strong, beautiful cat. I just wish I could have been able to get close enough to him and tell him "I love you". I want to say thank you to everyone at the rescue for all your hard work and dedication to these cats, you are amazing people.... Tara Barrs

  

Originally from 1926

Museo de Semana Santa

Zamora

Castilla y León

España 2007

Graffiti 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.

 

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.

Photograph by: Ryan Nyenhuis

 

Sunday June 15th 2008, Fathers Day. Ryan and I woke with a plan. The plan being to sneak into the abandon R.L. Hearn Thermal Generation Power Plant which is located in the south east area of downtown Toronto. We wanted to photograph the beauty of decay.

 

We had made a trip over to the power plant a week prior to scout out the area, to see where guards were located and to find easy access inside.

 

Sneaking past the guard house located at the front of the property and making our way along the north west section of property towards the back of the plant where the barbed wire fence was weakest.

 

We then smoked three quarters of a joint together before working up the nerve to hop the fence. Ryan went first, watching him hop the fence and dart out into the yard and hiding behind scrap metal for cover then finally making it to the back of the building. Then it was my turn. What excitement that was, knowing your breaking the law to do something adventurous.

 

After getting onto the property we were standing at the back of the Hearn and looking for our way inside. To do so we had to hop up onto a metal fence post and from there had to reach up and grab a hold of plywood that covered up the tall entrance area. A good 15 foot climb up, over and in.

 

Once inside the first photo that was taken was the one of Ryan and I standing together, titled "final hours".

 

This place was like no other we had ever explored together. The shear size of it all was breathtaking and mind blowing at the same time. The beauty of destruction.

 

After the first photo was taken we started exploring the plant. Taking the necessary precautions we had come prepared with asbestos masks and flashlights.

 

We had made our way around on the ground floor, through locker rooms, showers, storage rooms. Then we started making our way up stairs to the 2nd and 3rd level offices, had the remainder of our joint together.

 

From the office levels we went back onto the factory area and started climbing the metal stairs up further still. Some photos show how high up we were in that building.

 

We then made ourselves up onto the roof. What a view from there looking out over the city core. Looking out over Lake Ontario we saw really dark storm clouds. Ryan pulled out a cigarette and had a smoke.

 

We were up on the roof for about a half hour before Ryan asked me "what do you want to do now man?". "Do you want to go home now or stay a bit longer and explore?". My camera battery had died at this point and being there any longer served no purpose for me. I was hesitant on a response because at the same time I wanted to keep exploring because the plan was to keep coming back weekend after weekend to explore and document the old structure.

 

I then agreed to keep exploring. We came in off the roof, coming down a level, walked through a doorway into a long looking dark room. All across the top level of The Hearn runs conveyor belts that run coal from one end to the other. Walking together along the metal grating flooring. Ryan was 2 feet in front of me.

 

I then ended up tripping over a small extruded piece of metal on the floor, and from that second on I pointed my flashlight directly onto the floor to see where I was walking.

 

Very shortly after this happens, in mid sentence Ryan just falls into blackness. All I see is from his waist up as he plunges into complete blackness and followed by about 4-5 seconds before hearing a sick crash far below.

 

I then look 2 feet in front of me and see there is no more floor. My imediant thought is that he is dead. Then my brain clicks "I have to get my best friend out of here".

 

I then tried my best to back track to get out of the building, taking a route that he and I had not taken to get to this point. All I knew is I had to get out of The Hearn and find someone that could help.

 

I don't even know how I got out of that place. When I did I came out on the back side of the building, ran around to the guard house screaming for help.

 

I screamed to the guard that my best friend just fell in there and is hurt really bad, he asked what we were doing in there and I told him we were just taking photos.

 

The guard then called like every paramedic, fire and police officer in the city. About 10 minutes after the call was made all I could hear were the sirens. Scared and relived at the same time I was.

 

Once they all showed up I told them Ryan was in there, that we were up high in the building and he fell. All the cops were telling me to retrace my steps, they wanted to see where we came in from. I screamed at them "we don't have time for that right now, my best friend is dying in there". I then started leading them to the front of the Hearn because I knew it was the closet way inside. We get to the front and all entrances were boarded up. One cops said to me "Ian there is no way in through this way, you have to show us where you came in from". I then demanded to the fire fighters that they bust this plywood down to get inside.

 

Once inside the cops started fucking with my mind, me being in total shock at the time they started asking me where we had explored, they wanted me to take them on what would have been a few hours of exploration, which we didn't have time for.

 

Then an officer finds his asbestos mask and glasses. My first thought is he was okay, that he somehow managed to crawl out under his own power. I was wrong. His mask and glasses had bounced off of objects on the fall and Ryan was nowhere to be found.

 

The police tried getting a hold of Rogers Communication to see if they could pin point his location with the cell phone he had on him. They ended up using thermal vision to locate him. He was trapped in a coal hopper located high up in the building.

 

I was escorted out at this point in time because I was too "hysterical" for the cops liking.

 

Two and a half hours went by, a fierce thunderstorm was passing through.

 

While they were working on getting Ryan out I was giving my statement to the police. Never gave one of those in my life. I told them everything that I am writing here right now, everything, even the joint smoking. I had Nothing to hide.

 

We went in undetected but I didn't care if the whole world was watching at this point, I was doing what any best friend would do. I was trying to save him. City Pulse News was there and I was trying to hide from them. I was scared that this is how his family would find out and how my family would find out, being Fathers days and all.

 

After two and a half hours of hell they finally got Ryan out. I watched them carry him out on a backboard and I yelled to him that I loved him.

 

Ryan was rushed to St. Micheal's Hospital, the best in all the city for trauma.

 

I followed about an hour after him, being escorted in a police car. On the drive one officer said to me "this is going to cost you and your buddy about a hundred thousand dollars for all that had to be done here today". What a jackass thing to say. I responded by saying "I don't give a fuck about money, take all I have from me I don't care, I'm loosing the most important person in my life right now".

 

We get to the hospital, I enter the trauma wing of St. Micheal's. They told me that I was going to be the one to call the home of the Nyenhuis'. I thought that was insane, and told them I could not make that call, that they would have to.

 

I then went into the waiting room, sat down. I remember the NBA finals were on the televisions in there and I ended up falling asleep somehow.

 

Waking to Stevie and Tammy's faces hours later (Stevie being Ryan's room mate and Tammy being Ryan's girlfriend).

 

Stevie told me that John and Cheryl were on their way and that we could go up stairs to the trauma ward to see Ryan.

 

The trauma centre, located on the 9th floor of St. Micheal's Hospital.

 

Hours passed by, as the night went on the news kept getting worse and worse about his condition.

 

I ended up leaving to come back to my apartment at 6am the following morning, I had to talk to my parents and try and shovel some food into my system. Still being in shock and never got treatment for shock when it happened.

 

I returned to the hospital at 3pm that day. Only to find nothing had changed with his condition.

 

Then came the worst words I ever had to hear, Ryan's father coming in the room and telling me it was time to say goodbye to Ryan.

 

We made our way into where he was being cared for. To see my best friend in the state he was in broke my heart. Blood coming out the back of his head, body black and blue bruised from head to toe, internal damage that could not be repaired, feeling his forehead and it being ice cold. He was laying there in front of us, dead. Machines were the only thing keeping him "alive".

 

I said my goodbyes to him, telling him that he can't leave me here, he can't leave the creation of Studies In Comfort behind, something that is so brilliant, that we were supposed to take over the world together and do all that was planned. I told him to haunt me.

 

I then looked at his eyes and saw tears. He may have been brain dead but I know he heard every word I said. Doctors did not give an explanation to what was coming out of his eyes.

 

If only I had said to Ryan "hey man watch your step" he might still be alive today. I have been told over and over again that I can not blame myself for what happened that day. I sometimes still do.

 

Ryan and I once had a conversation that if something ever happened to one of us that Studies In Comfort would stop, without a core creator there is no sense to continue it. Well I am going against those wishes. I can't lose what he and I created even before it took off the ground.

 

I now know my purpose in life. To carry on Studies In Comfort. I must continue on for him, finish off the 3 studio albums we had in the works and continue on with this art form.

 

Ryan died at the wheel and I have moved his lifeless body to the passengers seat and now a fucking insane madman is driving.

 

Ryan Nyenhuis, whos favourite artist was Nine Inch Nails, who lived on floor number 9, who wore a roman numeral 9 on his right arm, who died on the 9th floor at St. Micheal's Hospital, Toronto.

 

Thank you to 55 Division and all the paramedics and fire fighters who helped get Ryan out of that terrible dark place.

 

Ryan Nyenhuis is survived by his father, John, mother Cheryl, sisters, Jennifer and Leah, their beautiful children, myself and Studies In Comfort.

  

Ryan John Nyenhuis

July 28th 1981 - June 15th 2008

 

We love and miss you.

___________________________

 

All photographs were taken by Ryan Nyenhuis & Ian Levack with a Casio EX-Z1050 camera.

Sentenced to Life without parole for stabbing a stranger to death

Nicht tun Stare*

tun nicht besorgt über deine Ausrüstungen, MOTHERFUCKER! ich nicht borge es aus!

 

Weird, or weird? I just heard he was handed a second life sentence for murder.

And here he is all smiley faced and everything.

French prisons must be rather cushy for international terrorists these days.

 

By the way, if you want to visit him, here's his address:

22 Rue de l'Abbaye Clairvaux,

10310 Ville-sous-la-Ferté,

France

 

***

News story from The Guardian

Carlos the Jackal receives second life sentence

 

French court sentenced the Venezuelan-born terrorist after finding him guilty of organising terrorist attacks in the 80s

by Kim Willsher, in Paris

The Guardian, Thursday 15 December 2011

 

A French court gave a second sentence of life imprisonment late on Thursday night to the Venezuelan-born terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, after finding him guilty of organising terrorist attacks in France.

 

Just before midnight on December 16, the specially convened panel of judges at the Palais de Justice declared that the 62-year-old, was the mastermind behind four 1980s bombings in France that killed 11 people and wounded more than 100.

 

Right to the end of the six-week trial, Ramírez – a familiar figure at the height of his notoriety in the 1970s with his trademark black sunglasses – remained defiant and appeared to mock the court.

 

Asked if he had one last thing to say in his defence on Thursday afternoon, he proceeded to talk for more than five hours. He described himself as a "living martyr" and defended his innocence.

 

Ramírez's rambling diatribes covered an eclectic range of subjects, including fallen comrades, the Zionist state, Soviet passports, French judges, hashish and the death penalty. During the trial, he frequently gave the raised-fist salute – the international revolutionary gesture – to members of the audience or waved and blew kisses.

 

He praised the former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu for "wiping out his country's debt", read a tearful tribute to Muammar Gaddafi, and described Osama bin Laden as a "great man".

 

Once the world's most wanted men, Ramírez, who had dubbed himself an "elite gunman", has been in prison in France since 1994 after French secret agents snatched him from Sudan. He was given his first sentence of life imprisonment in December 1997 after being found guilty of the 1975 murder of two French policemen and an informant.

 

This latest trial was an anachronism, taking the courtroom at Paris' Palais de Justice back to the days when Carlos and his band of Marxist revolutionary brothers waged war on "capitalist imperialism".

 

Ramírez was standing trial for a bomb attack on a Paris-Toulouse train in March 1982 that killed five people and wounded 77 more. The following month a car bomb exploded in front of the offices of the El Watan al Arabi newspaper, killing one person and wounding 63. A total of 145 people were injured in the attacks. In December 1983 he was found guilty in his absence.

 

Before the judges retired to consider their verdict in the latest trial, Ramírez fired one last shot.

 

"You are independent and the decision you're about to take, you will be, each one of you, personally responsible for it," he said, reading from a spiral notebook. "I am a living archive. Most of the people of my level are dead … Excuse me, I am taking my time, it's a small recapitulation … I am talkative. Revolutionaries tend to be."

 

In interviews given from his cell just before appearing in court, Ramírez boasted of killing up to 2,000 people. He described his victims as people who had "found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time".

 

However, in the hearing he staunchly refused to admit any part in any terrorist attack in the 1970s and 80s, but said he had been a "cold-blooded" fighter.

 

"I am emotional, but in a battle I have an unimaginable sangfroid. That's my nature," he told the court.

 

At one point, the court was read a letter from Hugo Chávez addressed to "citizen Ilich Ramírez Sánchez" and described as a missive of support.

 

The court heard that Ramírez arrived in London in 1971, after taking part in Black September in Jordan, when King Hussein ordered the army to quash Palestinian groups in the country. This led to the death of thousands and the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organisation to Lebanon.

 

Talking about his "comrades" who died in the conflict, the elderly revolutionary abandoned his arrogant mocking and unexpectedly burst into tears.

 

"Most of my comrades are dead and I am partly to blame," he muttered. "All those people dead, killed like dogs … there were civilians … and my comrades, sacrificed for the cause."

 

Although responsible for operations in the British Isles and Ireland as a commander in the Front Populaire de Libération de la Palestine, he claimed: "We didn't do anything [in the UK], we didn't have the means", before contradicting himself and saying he had carried out "a hundred operations" between 1971 and 1976, when he resigned from the FPLP. He refused to give details of these operations.

 

In 1976, Ramírez created the Organisation of International Revolutionaries, whose objective was "to mobilise revolutionaries at a world level for the liberation of Palestine and against the imperialist, Zionist forces wherever they were".

 

Asked why it did not appear to have carried out a single military operation, Carlos admitted members "would meet in the Sorbonne café to talk and smoke hash".

 

One of the lawyers representing him was Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, the woman he "married" in an unofficial Islamic ceremony in prison in 2001.

 

Three others defendants were tried in absentia. The court convicted two of Ramírez's accomplices, Palestinian Kamal al-Issawi and German Johannes Weinrich, giving them life sentences, and acquitted a third, Christa-Margot Fröhlich.

 

I'm doing my best impersonation of a truncated sentence. Here I am trying to explain it to my senior class who swear that they've never heard of it.

Except for the green footless tights from 'Sportsgirl', everything is Thrifted & Remixed - animal print wrap dress, tourist scarf of Venice & YSL flats.

see my blog here

Taman Sari Water Castle, also known as Taman Sari (Javanese: ꦠꦩꦤ꧀ ꦱꦫꦶ), is the site of a former royal garden of the Sultanate of Yogyakarta. It is located about 2 km south within the grounds of the Kraton, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Built in the mid-18th century, the Taman Sari had multiple functions, such as a resting area, a workshop, a meditation area, a defense area, and a hiding place.

 

Taman Sari consisted of four distinct areas: a large artificial lake with islands and pavilions located in the west, a bathing complex in the centre, a complex of pavilions and pools in the south, and a smaller lake in the east. Today only the central bathing complex is well preserved, while the other areas have been largely occupied by the Kampung Taman settlement.

 

Since 1995, the Yogyakarta Palace Complex including Taman Sari has been listed as a tentative World Heritage Site.

 

ETYMOLOGY

The name Taman Sari comes from the Javanese words taman, meaning a "garden" or "park" and sari, which means "beautiful" or "flowers". Hence, the name Taman Sari means an area of a beautiful garden adorned with flowers. An old article described it as a "water castle" (Dutch: waterkasteel); as by shutting the watergates, the complex would be completely immersed in water, leaving tall structures standing out.

 

HISTORY

The building of Taman Sari commenced during the reign of Sultan Hamengkubuwono I (1755–1792), the first sultan of the Yogyakarta Sultanate, and was completed by the time of Sultan Hamengkubuwono II. The building site, however, had already been known as a bathing place called Pacethokan Spring since Sunan Amangkurat IV’s reign (1719–1726). According to Kitab Mamana in Yogyakarta Kraton, the project leader for the construction of Taman Sari was Tumenggung Mangundipura. He had travelled twice to Batavia to learn about European architecture, which is the reason why the architecture of Taman Sari has marks of European style. The Regent of Madiun, Raden Rangga Prawirasentika, participated in funding the construction of Taman Sari. Prawirasentika also beseeched the Sultan to be relieved of Madiun's tax obligation. He offered other alternative ways of payment. The Sultan accepted his proposal. In 1758, the Sultan commanded the Regent to supervise the making of bricks and various complements, which would be used to build a beautiful garden. The sultan wanted a place where he could spend some time to relax after many years of wars that he had just experienced. Raden Tumenggung Mangundipura, under supervision of Raden Arya Natakusuma (who later became Sri Pakualam II), was responsible for the construction. The building was started in 1684 Javanese year (1758 AD). After finding out how large the complex was, Raden Rangga Prawirasentika realized that the cost would have been greater than the taxes. He resigned from the project and was replaced by Prince Natakusuma who continued the project to completion.

 

Taman Sari was built three years after the Giyanti Agreement as a resting place for Sultan Hamengkubuwono I. The complex consists of about 59 buildings including a mosque, meditation chambers, swimming pools, and a series of 18 water gardens and pavilions surrounded by artificial lakes. The complex was effectively used between 1765–1812.

 

The British invasion of the Yogyakarta Kraton saw considerable parts of the complex destroyed in 1812.

 

The building of Taman Sari ended upon the completion of the gates and the walls. A sengkalan memet (a Javanese chronogram) on the western gate (Gedhong Gapura Hageng) marks the year with the Javanese words Lajering Kembang Sinesep Peksi, denoting the Javanese year of 1691 or about 1765: lajering, "core" for 1; kembang, "flower" for 9; sinerep, "suck" or "drink" for 6; peksi, "bird" for 1; the sentence can be read as "birds gathering nectar of the flower". The relief around this sengkalan memet shows birds siphoning honey from flowery trees.

 

The maintenance of Taman Sari was abandoned shortly after Hamengkubuwono I died, partly because the elaborate hydraulic works were so difficult to maintain. The gardens were neglected and the buildings suffered some damage during the Java War of 1825–1830.

 

The palace complex fell out of use following an earthquake in 1867, which destroyed several buildings and drained the water features. Over time, squatters began to inhabit the site, surrounding the ruins of the deserted pavilions and filling the empty lakebeds.

 

In early 1970s, effort at restoration was made. Only the bathing complex has been completely restored.

 

DEMANG TEGIS

The manuscript of Serat Rerenggan mentions the story of Demang Tegis, a Portuguese man said to be one of the architect of Taman Sari. According to the manuscript, a strange man suddenly appeared in Mancingan Village (a locality name on the south coast of Java near Parangtritis). With long nose, white complexion, and a foreign language, the villagers suspected that the person was some kind of spirit or forest fairy. They presented him to the current sultan, Hamengkubuwono II. Apparently the sultan found interest in the person and took the strange man as his servant. Some years had passed and the man had finally learned to talk in Javanese. According to him, he was a Portuguese (or in Javanese, Portegis) who was stranded from a shipwreck. He also claimed to have been a housebuilder, so the sultan ordered him to erect a fortress. Satisfied by the man's work, the sultan gave him the title "demang." From then on that person was known as Demang Portegis or Demang Tegis.

 

There is a controversy whether Demang Tegis was actually the architect of Taman Sari, as the design resembles a hybrid of Javanese and Dutch styles, rather than Portuguese. P.J. Veth, in Java – Book III, page 631 wrote, "Local research says that [Taman Sari’s architecture] was designed by either a Spanish or Portuguese engineer, who was stranded off his sunken ship at the southern beach. However, [the architecture] that strongly shows Javanese character contradicts this." The evidence about Demang Tegis remains an inconclusive, yet the architecture of Taman Sari moved a number of Portuguese experts on architecture and cultural heritage to examine the Taman Sari in 2001.

 

The widespread assumption of European influence in the design of Taman Sari has been also challenged by the research of Hélène Njoto-Feillard from the University of Pantheon-Sorbonne, presented in a 2003 conference paper. Analysing the historic context and architectural style of the complex, the conclusion is that the creators are most likely local Javanese. The absence of any mention of European involvement in the construction of Taman Sari in Dutch historic descriptions is presented as further evidence in support of this hypothesis.

 

BUILDINGS

Taman Sari can be divided into four areas. The first area is the artificial lake Segaran located in the west. The second area is a bathing complex in the south of the Segaran lake, called the Umbul Binangun bathing complex. The third area, now completely gone, is the Pasarean Ledok Sari and Garjitawati Pool, located in the south of the bathing complex. The fourth area is the east side of the first and second area, which extend far to the east and to the southeast complex of Magangan.

 

THE SEGARAN LAKE AREA

The Segaran lake area was the main complex of the Taman Sari during its era. This complex consisted of a man-made lake called Segaran ("artificial sea") with some buildings located on artificial islands in the middle of a lake. The buildings are connected by an underwater tunnel. It was used as the starting point for the royal family to reach the Taman Sari pools via a vessel. Today, the Segaran lake cannot be seen any longer as the water had been drained and the lake bed is now filled with human settlements. The underwater tunnel, which is now underground after the water had gone, still exist and can be accessed.

 

In the middle of Segaran was an artificial island known as Kenongo Island (Javanese Pulo Kenongo). It was named after the cananga trees which once covered the island. On this island is a one-storeyed structure called the Kenongo building (Javanese Gedhong Kenongo), now in ruins.

 

On the south side of Kenongo Island is a row of small buildings called the Tajug. These buildings were originally used as air vents for the tunnel located below the lake. This underground tunnel, constructed in 1761, was an alternative way to reach the Kenongo Island other than by a vessel. Also on the south side of the Kenongo Island is another artificial island called Cemethi Island (Javanese Pulo Cemethi) or Panembung Island (Javanese Pulo Panembung). It is a one-storeyed structure for the Sultan to meditate, or some said, a hiding place for the royal family during an attack. Another name for this island is Sumur Gumantung, because on the south side of this island is a well that hangs above the ground. This place could only be reached via the underwater tunnel. The building of Cemethi Island is now also in ruin. A legend says that there is a secret tunnel that connects the palace with the south sea (Indian Ocean) where Nyai Roro Kidul or the Queen of the South has her palace. The supernatural Queen becomes the spiritual wife of Yogyakarta Sultan for many generations.On the west side of Kenongo Island is another one-storeyed circular structure that forms another artificial island in the past called Gumuling Well (Sumur Gumuling). These one-storeyed building can only be entered via the underwater tunnel. The building was used as a mosque. A niche in the wall of this building was used as a mihrab. The central area of this building is an elevated platform where four staircases meet, and then from the platform, one staircase reach the first floor. On the ground level of this platform is a small pool that was used for Muslim ritual ablution.

 

THE BATHING COMPLEX

The second area is located on the south of the former artificial lake of Segaran. Even though this area was not the focal point of Taman Sari, it is the best preserved area in the complex and is currently the most popular tourist attraction. The area is accessed via two gates on the east and the west side, each of these gates leads to the center of the complex, first to an inner octagonal-shaped courtyard on the east and the west, and then each of these courtyards leads to a central bathing complex in the center.

 

THE GATES

There are two gates that lead to the bathing complex, the western one called Gedhong Gapura Hageng and the eastern one called Gedhong Gapura Panggung. Both gates are decorated with ornaments of stylized birds and flowering foliages.

 

The west entrance, the Gedhong Gapura Hageng was formerly used as the main entrance to the bathing complex. The east facade of the gate is still visible today, but the west facade is blocked by settlements. The construction of this gate was finished in 1691 Javanese Year (about 1765 AD). The east entrance, the Gedhong Gapura Panggung is still functioning as a gate and is now the main entrance for tourists. The east entrance is a building with four staircases, two on the west side and two on the eastside. Four nagas once decorated this gate, now there are only two nagas left. The building was finished in 1684 Javanese calendar (about 1758 AD).

 

THE OCTAGONAL COURTYARDS

Each of the gates leads to an octagonal-shaped courtyard. The western gate leads to a western octagonal-shaped enclosed courtyard. In the past, a building stood in the center of this courtyard, which was called the Lopak-lopak building (Javanese Gedhong Lopak-lopak).

 

The eastern gate leads to an octagonal-shaped enclosed courtyard as well. It has a similar layout with the Gedhong Lopak-lopak courtyard, but within it, there are four pavilions known as Gedhong Sekawan. These pavilions were used as the resting place for the royal family.

 

The eastern and the western octagonal courtyards lead to the central bathing complex.

 

UMBUL PASIRAMAN BATHING COMPLEX

Umbul Pasiraman, also known as Umbul Binangun or Umbul Winangun, is a bathing complex for the royal family. The bathing complex is an enclosed space surrounded by tall structures. It consists of three pools decorated with mushroom-shaped springs and large flower pots.

 

There are two buildings in the bathing complex. The northernmost building was used as the resting place and changing room for the daughters and concubines of the sultan. On the south side of this building is a pool known as Umbul Muncar. The pool is divided into two by a central pathway (known as Blumbang Kuras) that runs east-west. The next building on the south is a building with a tower in its center. The right wing of the building was used as the sultan's changing room, the east wing was used as his resting place. The central tower was used by the sultan to observe his daughters and concubines bathing in the pool.

 

On the south of this building is the third pool that was used only by the sultan and his concubines. During its era, only females and the sultan were allowed to enter this bathing complex.

 

GEDHONG TEMATEN

On the southeast and northeast of the Gedhong Gapuro Panggung are two buildings known as Gedhong Temanten. The buildings were formerly used by the castle guard. According to archeological study, on the south side of this building was another building and a garden whose remain cannot be seen anymore and is filled with settlements.

 

THE THIRD AREA

This area that is located south of the bathing complex, but no visible remains are left. According to a reconstruction of the site, this complex consisted of the complex of Pasarean Dalem Ledok Sari and the pool complex of Garjitawati with several pavilions and a garden. Pasarean Dalem Ledok Sari is the only part of the complex that is still protected. Pasarean Dalem Ledok Sari was probably used as a meditation place for the sultan, or some said as the meeting place for the sultan and his concubines. In the middle of the building was also a sleeping room for the sultan with water flowing beneath it. There was also a kitchen, a looming room, a storage, two pools for the servants, and a garden.

 

THE FOURTH AREA

The fourth complex is the part of the Taman Sari complex that is practically has no visible remains, except for a former hanging bridge and remains of a pier. The description of this area is retrieved from a reconstruction made from the 1812 English army sketch of the Yogyakarta kraton. This area extends about 600 meters to the east of the Segaran lake area. This area consisted of another artificial lake on the southeast of the Magangan complex toward the northeast of Siti Hinggil Kidul complex. In the middle of this artificial lake is another artificial island called Kinupeng Island (Javanese Pulo Kinupeng). A building, known as Gading building (Javanese Gedhong Gading) stood in the middle of the island.

 

This artificial lake is connected to the east side of the Segaran Lake via a 380 meter long canal that runs east to west. The canal was about 20 meter wide and there are two bottlenecks that are thought to be the place where a hanging bridge once stood. One of the bridge is now located in the street that connects the kraton complex of Magangan with the Kamandhungan Kidul. The layout of the bridge can still be recognized, although the bridge itself has gone. On the west side of the hanging bridge is a pier that was used by the sultan as his starting point for his journey to the Taman Sari pool on his royal vessel.

 

The canal is bounded on the south and north with a garden, now located on the west side of the kraton complex of Kamanghungan Kidul and Siti Hinggil Kidul. Today, all of these canals, bridges, lakes, and gardens have been filled with local settlements; the garden becomes the Kampung Ngadisuryan, the lake becomes the kampung Segaran.

 

AROUND TAMAN SARI

Today, the area around the Taman Sari castle complex is occupied by a settlement called Kampung Taman with 2,700 residents. The community is known for their batik and traditional painting craft traditions. Also located in this area is the Ngasem Traditional Market (Pasar Ngasem), which hosted the biggest bird market in Yogyakarta for a long time (until the bird market was relocated to PASTY on Jl. Bantul in 2010), and the Sokotunggal mosque, a unique mosque built in the early 20th century with a single pillar that is different from the usual Javanese traditional architecture.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Sentenced to sleepytime.

This is a leaf from a Thomas Aquinas "Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard" that was produced in Italy during the second half of the fifteenth century.

 

The text is from Book I, Distinctio XIX, from Question IV at the end of Articulus I, followed by the Solutio to that Articulus, Articulus II followed by its Solutio and Questio V “Circa secundam” followed by the beginning of its Articulus I.

 

The size of the leaf is 288mm x 212mm (11 3/10ins. x 8 3/10ins.).

 

PROVENANCE: -

From a manuscript that was number 12 in an American bookseller's catalogue at a time when it had 309 leaves. Single leaves emerged in Otto Ege “Original Leaves from Medieval Manuscripts …. Copiously Annotated”, Cleveland, mid 1940's, no. 26 at $4 each.

 

Gwara Handlist 40.

 

GENERAL COMMENTS: -

With the exception of two age related marks on the verso this is a superb, clean, leaf containing a superb script that was influenced by the model of Petrarch's handwriting. It is a handsome leaf from an important text of the Middle Ages crowning several centuries of study in Biblical exegesis, doctrine and Canon Law.

 

THOMAS AQUINAS: -

Born in Lombardy and educated by the Benedictines at Monte Casino, in about 1239 he went to the University of Naples where the Dominican Friars in whose Order he enrolled in 1244 impressed him. He was ordained in 1250 in Cologne.

After studying at Paris he became a teacher there and wrote various commentaries. He then went to teach in several Italian cities before returning to Paris but in 1272 Naples demanded him back. It was there on 6th. December 1273 that he experienced a devine revelation so wonderful that he left his great Summa Theologica incomplete, saying that all his writings were like so much straw compared to the glory which had been shown to him. He died on 7th. March 1274.

 

PETER LOMBARD AND HIS “SENTENCES”: -

Peter Lombard, a scholastic theologian of the twelfth century, was commonly known as "the Lombard" after his birthplace which actually was probably Novara. It is expected that he then moved to Lombardy approximately after his birth in 1105-1110 CE He died in Paris, France about 1160 (1164). Although his family was poor, he found powerful patrons such as St. Bernard, that enabled him to gain a higher education at Bologna, then at Reims in France, and finally in Paris. In Paris, Peter taught theology in the cathedral school of Notre Dame, and it was there he found the time to produce the works discussed later in this article. Their dates can be only approximately fixed. The most famous of them, the Libri quatuor sententiarum , was probably composed between 1147 and 1150, although it may be placed as late as 1155. Nothing is certainly known of his later life except that be became bishop of Paris in 1159. According to Walter of St. Victor, a hostile witness, Peter obtained the office by simony; the more usual story is that Philip, younger brother of Louis VII, and archdeacon of Paris, was elected but declined in favour of Peter, his teacher. The date of his death can not be determined with certainty. The ancient epitaph in the church of St. Marcel at Paris assigns it to 1164, but the figures seem to be a later addition. The demonstrable fact that Maurice of Sully was bishop before the end of 1160 seems conclusive against it, although it is possible that in that year he resigned his see and lived three or four years longer.

The historic importance of Peter Lombard rests on his Sentences and the position taken by them in medieval philosophy. The earlier dogmatic theologians, such as Isidore of Seville, Alcuin, and Paschasius Radbert, had attempted to establish the doctrine of the Church from Bible texts and quotations from the Fathers. In the eleventh century this method gave place to dialectical and speculative working over of the traditional dogmas. Peter Lombard came into the field at a time when the new methods and their dialectical artifices were still exposed to wide-spread objection, but when the thirst for knowledge was exceedingly keen. One text-book after another was being published, the majority of them either issuing from the school of Abelard, or in some degree inspired by him. Of these works the greatest influence was attained by that of Peter, which was, for the time, an admirable compendium of theological knowledge. It is written under the influence pre-eminently of Abelard, Hugo of St. Victor, and the Decretum of Gratian. Whether Peter had himself seen the early writers whom he cites is frequently uncertain. As to his contemporaries, whom he knew thoroughly, he shows the influence of Abelard in his whole method and in countless details, while preserving a critical attitude toward his most pronounced peculiarities. On the other hand, he follows Hugo very closely and often textually, though here also with a tendency to avoid the purely speculative elements. For his sacramental doctrine, Gratian is very useful, especially through the quotations adduced by him and his legal attitude toward these questions.

 

Spain 2002 - Toledo - Castile-La Mancha

  

Santa María la Blanca (literally Saint Mary the White, originally known as the Ibn Shushan Synagogue, or commonly "The Congregational Synagogue of Toledo'") is a museum and former synagogue in Toledo, Spain. Erected in 1180,[1] it is disputably considered the oldest synagogue building in Europe still standing. It is now owned and preserved by the Catholic Church.

 

Its stylistic and cultural classification is unique as it was constructed under the Christian Kingdom of Castile by Islamic architects for Jewish use. It is considered a symbol of the cooperation that existed among the three cultures that populated the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages.

 

Contents

 

1 Style

2 Location

3 Design

4 Stylistic origins

5 Patron

6 History After Synagogue Life

7 Gallery

8 See also

9 Notes

 

Style

 

The synagogue is a Mudéjar construction, created by Moorish architects on Christian soil for non-Islamic purposes. But it can also be considered one of the finest example of Almohad architecture because of its construction elements and style. The plain white interior walls as well as the use of brick and of pillars instead of columns are characteristics of Almohad architecture.[2] The typology also presents nuances in its classification, because although it was constructed as a synagogue, its hypostyle room, and the lack of a women's gallery, make it closer in character to a mosque. Though it does not have a women's gallery today, it did at one time have a women's gallery according to an early 20th-century architect.[3]

 

The synagogue was turned into a church in 1405 or 1411,[4] but no major reforms were done for the change. It took then the name of Santa María la Blanca (Saint Mary, the White), and today it is known by this name.

Antiquity

 

Toledo (Latin: Toletum) is mentioned by the Roman historian Livy (ca. 59 BCE – 17 CE) as urbs parva, sed loco munita ("a small city, but fortified by location"). Roman general Marcus Fulvius Nobilior fought a battle near the city in 193 BCE against a confederation of Celtic tribes including the Vaccaei, Vettones, and Celtiberi, defeating them and capturing a king called Hilermus.[2][3] At that time, Toletum was a city of the Carpetani tribe, and part of the region of Carpetania.[4] It was incorporated into the Roman Empire as a civitas stipendiaria, that is, a tributary city of non-citizens. It later achieved the status of municipium by Flavian times.[5] With this status, city officials, even of Carpetani origin, obtained Roman citizenship for public service, and the forms of Roman law and politics were increasingly adopted.[6] At approximately this time were constructed in Toletum a Roman circus, city walls, public baths, and a municipal water supply and storage system.[7]

 

The Roman circus in Toledo was one of the largest in Hispania, at 423 metres (1,388 feet) long and 100 metres (330 feet) wide, with a track dimension of 408 metres (1,339 feet) long and 86 metres (282 feet) wide.[7] Chariot races were held on special holidays and were also commissioned by private citizens to celebrate career achievements. A fragmentary stone inscription records circus games paid for by a citizen of unknown name to celebrate his achieving the sevirate, a kind of priesthood conferring high status. Archaeologists have also identified portions of a special seat of the sort used by the city elites to attend circus games, called a sella curulis. The circus could hold up to 15000 spectators.[7]

 

During Roman times, Toledo was never a provincial capital nor a conventus iuridicus.[8] It started to gain importance in late antiquity. There are indications that large private houses (domus) within the city walls were enlarged, while several large villas were built north of the city through the third and fourth centuries.[9] Games were held in the circus into the late fourth and early fifth centuries C.E., also an indication of active city life and ongoing patronage by wealthy elites.[10] A church council was held in Toledo in the year 400 to discuss the conflict with Priscillianism.[11] A second council of Toledo was held in 527. The Visigothic king Theudis was in Toledo in 546, where he promulgated a law. This is strong though not certain evidence that Toledo was the chief residence for Theudis.[8] King Athanagild died in Toledo, probably in 568. Although Theudis and Athangild based themselves in Toledo, Toledo was not yet the capital city of the Iberian peninsula, as Theudis and Athangild's power was limited in extent, the Suevi ruling Galicia and local elites dominating Lusitania, Betica, and Cantabria.[12][13] This changed with Liuvigild (Leovigild), who brought the peninsula under his control. The Visigoths ruled from Toledo until the Moors conquered the Iberian peninsula in the early years of 8th century (711–719).

 

Today the historic center is pierced of basements, passages, wells, baths and ancient water pipes that since Roman times have been used in the city.

Visigothic Toledo

The city of Toledo as depicted in the Codex Vigilanus in 976.

 

A series of church councils was held in Toledo under the Visigoths. A synod of Arian bishops was held in 580 to discuss theological reconciliation with Nicene Christianity.[14] Liuvigild's successor, Reccared, hosted the third council of Toledo, at which the Visigothic kings abandoned Arianism and reconciled with the existing Hispano-Roman episcopate.[15] A synod held in 610 transferred the metropolitanate of the old province of Carthaginensis from Cartagena to Toledo.[16] At that time, Cartagena was ruled by the Byzantines, and this move ensured a closer relation between the bishops of Spain and the Visigothic kings. King Sisebut forced Jews in the Visigothic kingdom to convert to Christianity; this act was criticized and efforts were made to reverse it at the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633.[17] The Fifth and Sixth Councils of Toledo placed church sanctions on anyone who would challenge the Visigothic kings.[18] The Seventh Council of Toledo instituted a requirement that all bishops in the area of a royal city, that is, of Toledo, must reside for one month per year in Toledo. This was a stage in "the elevation of Toledo as the primatial see of the whole church of the Visgothic kingdom".[19] In addition, the seventh council declared that any clergy fleeing the kingdom, assisting conspirators against the king, or aiding conspirators, would be excommunicated and no one should remove this sentence. The ban on lifing these sentences of excommunication was lifted at the Eighth Council of Toledo in 653, at which, for the first time, decisions were signed by palace officials as well as bishops.[20]

 

The eighth council of Toledo took measures that enhanced Toledo's significance as the center of royal power in the Iberian peninsula. The council declared that the election of a new king following the death of the old one should only take place in the royal city, or wherever the old king died.[21] In practice this handed the power to choose kings to only such palace officials and military commanders who were in regular attendance on the king. The decision also took king-making power away from the bishops, who would be in their own sees and would not have time to come together to attend the royal election. The decision did allow the bishop of Toledo, alone among bishops, to be involved in decisions concerning the royal Visigothic succession. The ninth and tenth councils were held in rapid succession in 655 and 656.[21]

 

When Reccesuinth died in 672 at his villa in Gerticos, his successor Wamba was elected on the spot, then went to Toledo to be anointed king by the bishop of Toledo, according to the procedures laid out in prior church councils.[22] In 673, Wamba defeated a rebel duke named Paul, and held his victory parade in Toledo. The parade included ritual humiliation and scalping of the defeated Paul.[23] Wamba carried out renovation works in Toledo in 674-675, marking these with inscriptions above the city gates that are no longer extant but were recorded in the eighth century.[24] The Eleventh Council of Toledo was held in 675 under king Wamba. Wamba weakened the power of the bishop of Toledo by creating a new bishopric outside Toledo at the church of Saints Peter and Paul. This was one of the main churches of Toledo and was the church where Wamba was anointed king, and the church from which Visigothic kings departed for war after special ceremonies in which they were presented with a relic of the True Cross. By creating a new bishopric there, Wamba removed power over royal succession from the bishop of Toledo and granted it to the new bishop.[25] The Twelfth Council of Toledo was held in 681 after Wamba's removal from office. Convinced that he was dying, Wamba had accepted a state of penitence that according to the decision of a previous church council, made him inelegible to remain king. The Twelfth Council, led by newly installed bishop Julian confirmed the validity of Wamba's removal from office and his succession by Ervig. The Twelfth Council eliminated the new bishopric that Wamba had created and returned the powers over succession to the bishop of Toledo.[26]

 

The Twelfth Council of Toledo approved 28 laws against the Jews. Julian of Toledo, despite a Jewish origin, was strongly anti-Semitic as reflected in his writings and activities.[27] The leading Jews of Toledo were assembled in the church of Saint Mary on January 27, 681, where the new laws were read out to them.

 

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Councils of Toledo were held in 683, 684, and 688. The Thirteenth Council restored property and legal rights to those who had rebelled against King Wamba in 673.[28] The Thirteenth Council also approved laws protecting the king's family after the king's death. In 687, Ervig took the penitent state before dying, and the kingship passed to Egica, who was anointed king in Toledo on November 24.[29] In 688, the Fifteenth Council lifted the ban on taking property from the families of former kings, whereupon Egica was able to plunder Ervig's family properties.[30]

 

In the late seventh century, Toledo became a main center of literacy and writing in the Iberian peninsula. Toledo's development as a center of learning was influenced by Isidore of Seville, an author and advocate of literacy who attended several church councils in Toledo.[31] King Chindasuinth had a royal library in Toledo, and at least one count called Laurentius had a private library.[32] Sometime before 651, Chindasuinth sent the bishop of Zaragoza, Taio, to Rome to obtain books that were not available in Toledo. Taio obtained, at least, parts of pope Gregory's Moralia.[33] The library also contained a copy of a Hexameron by Dracontius, which Chindasuinth liked so much that he commissioned Eugenius II to revise it by adding a new part dealing with the seventh day of creation.[34] Chindasuinth issued laws that were gathered together in a book called Liber Iudiciorum by his successor Reccesuinth in 654; this book was revised twice, widely copied, and was an important influence on medieval Spanish law.[35] Three bishops of Toledo wrote works that were widely copied and disseminated in western Europe and parts of which survive to this day: Eugenius II, Ildefonsus, and Julian.[36] "In intellectual terms the leading Spanish churchmen of the seventh century had no equals before the appearance of Bede."[37]

 

In 693, the Sixteenth Council of Toledo condemned Sisebert, Julian's successor as bishop of Toledo, for having rebelled against King Egica in alliance with Liuvigoto, the widow of king Ervig.[38] A rebel king called Suniefred seized power in Toledo briefly at about this time. Whether or not Sisebert's and Suniefred's rebellions were the same or separate is unknown. Suniefred is known only from having minted coins in Toledo during what should have been Egica's reign.[39] The Seventeenth Council of Toledo was held in 694. The Eighteenth Council of Toledo, the last one, took place shortly after Egica's death around 702 or 703.[40]

 

By the end of the seventh century the bishop of Toledo was the leader of the Spanish bishops, a situation unusual in Europe: "The metropolitan bishops of Toledo had achieved by the last quarter of the seventh century an authority and a primacy that was unique in Western Europe. Not even the pope could count on such support from neighbouring metropolitans."[37] Toledo "had been matched by no other city in western Europe outside Italy as the governmental and symbolic center of a powerful monarchy."[41] Toledo had "emerged from relative obscurity to become the permanent governmental centre of the Visigothic monarchy; a true capital, whose only equivalent in western Europe was to be Lombard Pavia."[42]

 

When Wittiza died around 710, Ruderic became Visigothic king in Toledo, but the kingdom was split, as a rival king Achila ruled Tarraconensis and Narbonensis.[43] Meanwhile, Arabic and Berber troops under Musa ibn Nusayr had conquered Tangiers and Ceuta between 705 and 710, and commenced raids into the Visigothic kingdom in 711.[44] Ruderic led an army to confront the raiders. He was defeated and killed in battle, apparently after being betrayed by Visigothic nobles who wished to replace him as king and did not consider the Arabs and Berbers a serious threat. The commander of the invading forces was Tariq bin Ziyad, a Luwata Berber freedman in the service of governor Musa.[45] It is possible that a king called Oppa ruled in Toledo between Ruderic's death and the fall of Toledo.[46] Tariq, seizing the opportunity presented by the death of Ruderic and the internal divisions of the Visigothic nobles, captured Toledo, in 711 or 712.[47] Governor Musa disembarked in Cádiz and proceeded to Toledo, where he executed numerous Visigothic nobles, thus destroying much of the Visigothic power structure.[48][49] Collins suggests that the Visigothic emphasis on Toledo as the center of royal ceremony became a weakness. Since the king was chosen in or around Toledo, by nobles based in Toledo, and had to be anointed king by the bishop of Toledo in a church in Toledo, when Tariq captured Toledo and executed the Visigothic nobles, having already killed the king, there was no way for the Visigoths to select a legitimate king.[50][51]

Toledo under Arab rule

 

Soon after the conquest, Musa and Tariq returned to Damascus. The Arab center of administration was placed first in Seville, then moved to Cordoba. With most of the rest of the Iberian peninsula, Toledo was ruled from Cordoba by the governor of Al-Andalus, under the ultimate notional command of the Umayyad Caliph in Damascus. Arab conquerors had often replaced former capital cities with new ones to mark the change in political power, and they did so here: "Toledo suffered a period of profound decline throughout much of the earlier centuries of Arab dominance in the peninsula."[52] The invaders were ethnically diverse, and available evidence suggests that in the area of Toledo, Berber settlement predominated over Arab.[53]

 

In 742 the Berbers in Al-Andalus rebelled against the Arab Omeyyad governors. They took control of the north and marched south, laying siege to Toledo. After a siege of one month the Berber troops were defeated outside Toledo by troops sent from Cordoba by the governor Abd al-Malik ibn Katan and commanded by the governor's son.[54] However, while Ibn Katan's troops were engaged with the Berbers, his Arab allies betrayed and killed him and took over Cordoba. After the Arabs' first leader, Talama ibn Salama, died, Yusuf al-Fihri became ruler of Al-Andalus. The Omeyyad dynasty in Damascus collapsed and Yusuf ruled independently with the support of his Syrian Arab forces. The Qays Arab commander As-Sumayl was made governor of Toledo under Yusuf around 753.[55]

 

There is evidence that Toledo retained its importance as a literary and ecclesiastical center into the middle 700s, in the Chronicle of 754, the life of Saint Ildefonsus by Cixila, and ecclesiastical letters sent from Toledo.[56] The eighth century bishop of Toledo, Cixila, wrote a life of Saint Ildefonsus of Toledo, probably before 737.[57] This life of Ildefonsus emphasized two episodes in the life of the bishop of Toledo. In the first episode the covering of the tomb of Saint Leocadia levitated while Ildefonsus was saying mass, with king Reccesuinth present. In the second episode Mary appears to Ildefonsus and Reccesuinth. These episodes are said to have resulted from Ildefonsus' devotion to Saint Leocadia, patroness saint of Toledo.[58] Collins suggests that Cixila's life of Ildefonsus helped maintain Ildefonsus' appeal and helped the church in Toledo to retain some of its authority among Christian churches in the Iberian peninsula.[59]

 

An archdeacon in Toledo called Evantius, who was active around 720 and died in 737, wrote a letter to address the existence of judaizing tendencies among the Christians of Zaragoza, specifically the belief that there are unclean forms of meat and the literal interpretation of Deuteronomic law.[60] A deacon and cantor from Toledo called Peter wrote a second letter, to Seville, in about the year 750, to explain that they were celebrating Easter and a September liturgical fast incorrectly, again confusing them with Jewish feasts celebrated at the same time.[61] These letters show that some of the primacy of the church of Toledo within the Iberian peninsula still existed in the 700s: "Not only were its clerics still well enough equipped in intellectual terms to provide authoritative guidance on a wide range of ecclesiastical discipline and doctrine, but this was also actively sought."[62]

 

There is a strong possibility that the Chronicle of 754 was written in Toledo (though scholars have also proposed Cordoba and Guadix) based on the information available to the chronicler.[63] The chronicler showed awareness of the Historia Gothorum, the Etymologiae, and the chronicle of Isidore of Seville, the work of Braulio of Zaragoza, the acts of the councils of Toledo, De Perpetua Virginitate by Ildefonsus, and De Comprobatione Sextae Aetatis and Historia Wambae by Julian of Toledo, all works that would have existed in the Visigothic libraries of seventh century Toledo and whose existence together "makes more sense in a Toledan context than in any other."[64]

 

In 756 Abd ar-Rahman, a descendant of the fallen Omeyyad caliphs, came to Al-Andalus and initiated a revolt against Yusuf. He defeated Yusuf and forced him to reside in Cordoba, but Yusuf broke the agreement and raised a Berber army to fight Abd ar-Rahman. In this conflict, Toledo was held against Abd ar-Rahman by Yusuf's cousin Hisham ibn Urwa. Yusuf attempted to march on Seville, but was defeated and instead attempted to reach his cousin in Toledo. He was either killed on his way to Toledo, or he reached Toledo and held out there for as many as two or three years before being betrayed and killed by his own people. Whether or not Yusuf himself held out in Toledo, Hisham ibn Urwa did hold power in Toledo for several years, resisting the authority of Abd ar-Rahman. In 761 Hisham is reported as again being in rebellion in Toledo against Abd ar-Rahman. Abd ar-Rahman failed to take Toledo by force and instead signed a treaty allowing Hisham to remain in control of Toledo, but giving one of his sons as hostage to Abd ar-Rahman. Hisham continued to defy Abd ar-Rahman, who had Hisham's son executed and the head catapulted over the city walls into Toledo. Abd ar-Rahman attacked Toledo in 764, winning only when some of Hisham's own people betrayed him and turned him over to Abd ar-Rahman and his freedman Badr.[65] Ibn al-Athir states that towards the end of Abd ar-Rahman's reign, a governor of Toledo raided in force into the Kingdom of Asturias during the reign of Mauregatus,[66] though the Asturian chronicles do not record the event.[67]

 

Under the Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba, Toledo was the centre of numerous insurrections dating from 761 to 857.[68] Twenty years after the rebellion of Hisham ibn Urwa, the last of Yusuf's sons, Abu al-Aswad ibn Yusuf, rebelled in Toledo in 785.[69][70] After the suppression of ibn Yusuf's revolt, Abd ar-Rahman's oldest son Sulayman was made governor of Toledo. However, Abd ar-Rahman designated as his successor a younger son, Hisham. On Hisham's accession to the Emirate in 788, Sulayman refused to make the oath of allegiance at the mosque, as succession custom would have dictated, and thus declared himself in rebellion. He was joined in Toledo by his brother Abdallah. Hisham laid siege to Toledo. While Abdallah held Toledo against Hisham, Sulayman escaped and attempted to find support elsewhere, but was unsuccessful. In 789, Abdallah submitted and Hisham took control of Toledo. The following year, Sulayman gave up the fight and went into exile.[71] Hisham's son Al-Hakam was governor of Toledo from 792 to 796 when he succeeded his father as emir in Cordoba.

 

After Al-Hakam's accession and departure, a poet resident in Toledo named Girbib ibn-Abdallah wrote verses against the Omeyyads, helping to inspire a revolt in Toledo against the new emir in 797. Chroniclers disagree as to the leader of this revolt, though Ibn Hayyan states that it was led by Ibn Hamir. Al-Hakam sent Amrus ibn Yusuf to fight the rebellion. Amrus took control of the Berber troops in Talavera. From there, Amrus negotiated with a faction inside Toledo called the Banu Mahsa, promising to make them governors if they would betray Ibn Hamir. The Banu Mahsa brought Ibn Hamir's head to Amrus at Talavera, but instead of making them governors, Amrus executed them. Amrus now persuaded the remaining factions in Toledo to submit to him. Once he entered Toledo, he invited the leaders to a celebratory feast. As they entered Amrus' fortress, the guests were beheaded one by one and their bodies thrown in a specially dug ditch. The massacre was thus called "The Day of the Ditch." Amrus' soldiers killed about 700 people that day. Amrus was governor of Toledo until 802.[72][73]

 

"In 785, Bishop Elipandus of Toledo wrote a letter condemning the teaching of a certain Migetius."[74] In his letter, Elipandus asserted that Christ had adopted his humanity, a position that came to be known as Adoptionism.[75] Two Asturian bishops, Beatus and Eterius, bishop of Osma, wrote a treatise condemning Elipandus' views.[76] Pope Hadrian wrote a letter between 785 and 791 in which he condemned Migetius, but also the terminology used by Elipandus.[77] The Frankish court of Charlemagne also condemned Adoptionism at the Synod of Frankfurt in 794.[78] Although Ramon Abadals y de Vinyals argued that this controversy represented an ideological assertion of independence by the Asturian church against the Moslem-ruled church of Toledo,[79] Collins believes this argument applies eleventh century ideology to the eighth century and is anachronistic.[80] However, Collins notes that the controversy and the alliances formed during it between Asturias and the Franks broke the old unity of the Spanish church.[81] The influence of the bishops of Toledo would be much more limited until the eleventh century.[82]

 

By the end of the 700s, the Omeyyads had created three frontier districts stretching out from the southern core of their Iberian territories. These were called Lower March (al-Tagr al-Adna), Central March (al-Tagr al-Awsat), and Upper March (al-Tagr al-A'la). Toledo became the administrative center of the Central March, while Merida became the center of the Lower March and Zaragoza, of the Upper March.[83]

 

Following the death of Abd al-Rahman II, a new revolt broke out in Toledo. The Omeyyad governor was held hostage in order to secure the return of Toledan hostages held in Córdoba. Toledo now engaged in an inter-city feud with the nearby city of Calatrava la Vieja. Toledan soldiers attacked Calatrava, destroyed the walls, and massacred or expelled many inhabitants of Calatrava in 853. Soldiers from Cordoba came to restore the walls and protect Calatrava from Toledo. The new emir, Muhammad I, sent a second army to attack the Toledans, but was defeated. Toledo now made an alliance with King Ordoño I of Asturias. The Toledans and Asturians were defeated at the Battle of Guadacelete, with sources claiming 8000 Toledan and Asturian soldiers were killed and their heads sent back to Cordoba for display throughout Al-Andalus. Despite this defeat, Toledo did not surrender to Cordoba. The Omeyyads reinforced nearby fortresses with cavalry forces to try to contain the Toledans. Toledans attacked Talavera in 857, but were again defeated. In 858 emir Muhammad I personally led an expedition against Toledo and destroyed a bridge, but was unable to take the city. In 859, Muhammad I negotiated a truce with Toledo. Toledo became virtually independent for twenty years, though locked in conflict with neighboring cities. Muhammad I recovered control of Toledo in 873, when he successfully besieged the city and forced it to submit.[84]

Azulejo in Seville's Plaza de España despicting the conquest of Toledo in 1085.

 

The Banu Qasi gained nominal control of the city until 920 and in 932 Abd-ar-Rahman III captured the city following an extensive siege.[85] According to the Chronicle of Alfonso III, Musa ibn Musa of the Banu Qasi had, partly by war and partly by strategy, made himself master of Zaragoza, Tudela, Huesca, and Toledo. He had installed his son Lupus (Lubb) as governor of Toledo. King Ordoño I of Asturias fought a series of battles with Musa ibn Musa. According to the Chronicle, Musa ibn Musa allied with his brother-in-law Garcia, identified as Garcia Iñiquez, King of Pamplona. Ordoño defeated Musa's forces at the Battle of Monte Laturce. Musa died of injuries, and his son Lubb submitted to Ordoño's authority in 862 or 863, for the duration of Ordoño's reign (up to 866). Thus, according to the Chronicle of Alfonso III, Toledo was ruled by the Asturian kings. However, Arabic sources do not confirm these campaigns, instead stating that Musa ibn Musa was killed in a failed attack on Guadalajara, and that Andalusi forces repeatedly defeated Asturian forces in the area of Alava from 862 to 866.[86]

 

By the 870s the Omeyyads had regained control over Toledo. In 878 Al-Mundhir led an expedition against Asturias, of which one of the main components was a force from Toledo. One source portrays this raid as an attack by the 'King of Toledo', but other sources portray it as an Omeyyad raid involving substantial Toledan forces. The forces from Toledo were defeated by Alfonso III of Asturias at the Battle of Polvoraria. Spanish chronicles state that twelve to thirteen thousand in the Toledo army were killed in the battle. Collins states that these figures are "totally unreliable" but demonstrate that Asturian chroniclers thought of this as an important and decisive battle.[87]

 

In 920s and 930s, the governors of Toledo were in rebellion against the Umayyad regime in Cordoba, led by Abd al-Rahman III. In 930, Abd al-Rahman III, having now adopted the title of caliph, attacked Toledo.[88] The governor of Toledo asked for help from King Ramiro II of Leon, but Ramiro was preocuppied with a civil war against his brother Alfonso IV and was unable to help.[89] In 932, Abd al-Rahman III conquered Toledo, re-establishing control of al-Tagr al-Awsat, the Central March of the Omeyyad state.[90]

 

In 1009 one of the last Umayyad caliphs, Muhammad II al-Mahdi, fled to Toledo after being expelled from Cordoba by Berber forces backing the rival claimant Sulayman. Al-Mahdi and his Saqaliba general Wadih formed an alliance with the Count of Barcelona and his brother the Count of Urgell. These Catalans joined with Wadih and al-Mahdi in Toledo in 1010 and marched on Cordoba. The combination of Wadih's army and the Catalans defeated the Berbers in a battle outside Cordoba in 1010.[91]

 

After the fall of the Omeyyad caliphate in the early 11th century, Toledo became an independent taifa kingdom. The population of Toledo at this time was about 28 thousand, including a Jewish population estimated at 4 thousand.[92] The Mozarab community had its own Christian bishop, and after the Christian conquest of Toledo, the city was a destination for Mozarab immigration from the Muslim south.[93] The taifa of Toledo was centered on the Tajo River. The border with the taifa of Badajoz was on the Tajo between Talavera de la Reina and Coria. North, the border was the Sierra de Guadarrama. Northeast, Toledo lands stretched past Guadalajara to Medinaceli. Southeast was the border with the taifa of Valencia, in La Mancha between Cuenca and Albacete. South were the borders with Badajoz around the Mountains of Toledo.[94]

 

In 1062, Fernando I of Leon and Castile attacked the taifa of Toledo. He conquered Talamanca de Jarama and besieged Alcala de Henares. To secure Fernando's withdrawal, king al-Mamun of Toledo agreed to pay an annual tribute, or parias, to Fernando.[95] Three years later in 1065, al-Mamun invaded the taifa of Valencia through La Mancha, successfully conquering it. Toledo controlled the taifa of Valencia until al-Mamun's death in 1075.[96]

 

After the death of Fernando I in 1065, the kingdom of Leon and Castilla was divided in three: the kingdoms of Galicia, Leon, and Castilla. The parias that had been paid by Toledo to Fernando I were assigned to the Kingdom of León, which was inherited by Alfonso VI.[97] However, in 1071, Alfonso's older brother Sancho II invaded Leon and defeated his younger brother. Alfonso VI was allowed to go into exile with al-Mamun in Toledo.[98] Alfonso VI was in exile in Toledo approximately from June to October 1071, but after Sancho II was killed later in the same year, Alfonso left Toledo and returned to Leon. Some sources state that al-Mamun forced Alfonso to swear support for al-Mamun and his heirs before allowing him to leave.[99]

 

In 1074, Alfonso VI campaigned against the taifa of Granada with the assistance of al-Mamun of Toledo. Alfonso received troops from al-Mamun in addition to the parias payment, facilitating his military campaigns. The campaign was successful, and Granada was forced to begin parias payments to Alfonso VI. After this, al-Mamun proceeded to attack Cordoba, which was then under the control of his enemy al-Mutamid, taifa king of Sevilla. He conquered Cordoba in January 1075.[100]

 

The parias of Toledo to Alfonso VI in the 1070s amounted to approximately 12 thousand gold dinars. This money contributed strongly to Alfonso VI's ability to project military strength throughout the Iberian peninsula.[101]

 

In 1076, al-Mamun of Toledo was killed in the city of Cordoba, which he had conquered only the year before. The taifa king of Sevilla took the opportunity to reconquer Cordoba and seize other territory on the borderlands between the taifas of Sevilla and Toledo. Al-Mamun was succeeded by his son, al-Qadir, the last taifa king of Toledo. Possibly keeping an earlier promise to al-Mamun, Alfonso VI at first supported the succession of al-Qadir. The taifa of Valencia, which had been conquered by al-Mamun, revolted against al-Qadir and ceased parias payments to Toledo.[102]

 

Taking advantage of al-Qadir's weakness, al-Mutamid of Sevilla took lands in La Mancha from the taifa of Toledo, and from there conquered the taifas of Valencia and Denia in 1078. After this, al-Qadir lost popularity in Toledo. There was a revolt against him, and he was forced to flee the city and appeal to Alfonso VI for help. The rebels invited the king of Badajoz, al-Mutawakkil, to rule Toledo. The king of Badajoz occupied Toledo in 1079, but Alfonso VI sent forces to help al-Qadir recover Toledo. Alfonso captured the fortress town of Coria, which controlled a pass from Castilian lands into the lands of the taifa of Badajoz. Since Alfonso now threatened him through Coria, al-Mutawakkil withdrew from Toledo and al-Qadir was able to return to Toledo. As the price of his help, Alfonso obtained the right to station two garrisons of his soldiers on the lands of Toledo, at al-Qadir's expense.[103]

 

A second revolt against al-Qadir took place in 1082. This time al-Qadir defeated the rebels in Toledo, chased them to Madrid, and defeated them there.[104] It was about this time at the latest that Alfonso VI decided to seize Toledo for himself, though some authors have argued that the plan to conquer Toledo existed by 1078.[105] In 1083, Alfonso VI campaigned against al-Mutamid, bringing his forces right up against Sevilla and reaching the city of Tarifa, with the intention of dissuading al-Mutamid from any resistance against the coming seizure of Toledo.[106] In 1084, Alfonso set siege to Toledo, preventing the city from being supplied and also preventing agricultural work in the area. Over the winter of 1084 to 1085 the siege was maintained, while the king spent the winter north in Leon and Sahagun. In spring 1085 Alfonso personally rejoined the siege with new forces. The city soon fell and Alfonso made his triumphant entry to the city on May 24, 1085.

 

Toledo experienced a period known as La Convivencia, i.e. the co-existence of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Under Islamic Arab rule, Toledo was called Ṭulayṭulah. After the fall of the caliphate, Toledo was the capital city of one of the richest Taifas of Al-Andalus. Its population was overwhelmingly Muladi, and, because of its central location in the Iberian Peninsula, Toledo took a central position in the struggles between the Muslim and Christian rulers of northern Spain. The conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI of Castile in 1085 marked the first time a major city in Al-Andalus was captured by Christian forces; it served to sharpen the religious aspect of the Christian reconquest.

Medieval Toledo after the Reconquest

Toledo in the 16th century

View of Toledo by resident El Greco c. 1608.

 

On May 25, 1085, Alfonso VI of Castile took Toledo and established direct personal control over the Moorish city from which he had been exacting tribute, ending the medieval Taifa's Kingdom of Toledo. This was the first concrete step taken by the combined kingdom of Leon-Castile in the Reconquista by Christian forces. After Castilian conquest, Toledo continued to be a major cultural centre; its Arab libraries were not pillaged, and a tag-team translation centre was established in which books in Arabic or Hebrew would be translated into Castilian by Muslim and Jewish scholars, and from Castilian into Latin by Castilian scholars, thus letting long-lost knowledge spread through Christian Europe again. Toledo served as the capital city of Castile intermittently (Castile did not have a permanent capital) from 1085, and the city flourished. Charles I of Spain's court was set in Toledo, serving as the imperial capital.[107] However, in 1561, in the first years of his son Philip II of Spain reign, the Spanish court was moved to Madrid, thus letting the city's importance dwindle until the late 20th century, when it became the capital of the autonomous community of Castile–La Mancha. Nevertheless, the economic decline of the city helped to preserve its cultural and architectural heritage. Today, because of this rich heritage, Toledo is one of Spain's foremost cities, receiving thousands of visitors yearly. Under the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toledo multiple persecutions (633, 653, 693) and stake burnings of Jews (638 CE) occurred; the Kingdom of Toledo followed up on this tradition (1368, 1391, 1449, 1486–1490 CE) including forced conversions and mass murder and the rioting and blood bath against the Jews of Toledo (1212 CE).[108][109]

 

During the persecution of the Jews in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, members of the Jewish community of Toledo produced texts on their long history in Toledo. It was at this time that Don Isaac Abrabanel, a prominent Jewish figure in Spain in the 15th century and one of the king's trusted courtiers who witnessed the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, wrote that Toledo was named Ṭulayṭulah by its first Jewish inhabitants who, he stated, settled there in the 5th century BCE, and which name – by way of conjecture – may have been related to its Hebrew cognate טלטול (= wandering), on account of their wandering from Jerusalem. He says, furthermore, that the original name of the city was Pirisvalle, so-called by its early pagan inhabitants.[110] However, there is no archaeological or historical evidence for Jewish presence in this region prior to the time of the Roman Empire; when the Romans first wrote about Toledo it was a Celtic city.[111][112]

Historical population

Year Pop. ±%

1991 59,000 —

1996 66,006 +11.9%

2001 68,382 +3.6%

2004 73,485 +7.5%

2006 77,601 +5.6%

Modern Era

Toledo's Alcázar (Latinized Arabic word for palace-castle, from the Arabic القصر, al-qasr) became renowned in the 19th and 20th centuries as a military academy. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, its garrison was famously besieged by Republican forces.

this sentences my good friend BOOK once painted into a supernice «BERLIN» piece. so when i got asked to contribute a drawing for the «wall of friends» at the 2year amateur magazine show next friday at Bonsoir Bern. this sentence came to my mind. that's what it became... a portrait of the good friends minotaur and kauz reaching for the moon.

 

china ink, marker, pencil on 300gr A4 paper, Berlin 24/10/2010

#1 1/2 filter

Ilford Warmtone MGIV

Neutol WA (1+14)

 

Nikon

Ilford HP5+ EI 320

Perceptol

Gender Bender

© 2014 K Jabbour

 

Vive la différence, say the French

But for many females it’s nothing to celebrate

Destiny determined by gender

 

For some

The second X chromosome is a death sentence

Parents can only afford one child, and they want a boy

So execution comes by water or fire

Or abandoned, to starve or be eaten alive

 

For others

The extra X chromosome is a prison sentence

Life behind curtains, never to feel the sun on skin

Glimpsing the outside world through a grate of mesh

Darting unnoticed through the crowds, invisible

 

For most

The extra X chromosome means servitude

Restrictions and double standards

Reduced to a possession with a purpose

Like a cow for milk or ox for heavy lifting

 

For the lucky

The lack of Y chromosome means low expectations

No need to be smart or hardworking

Only pretty and charming, to marry well

Ok not so lucky for plain or independent girls

 

For the severely unlucky

The second X chromosome ravages

Savage rape, incest, sexual slavery

Or genital mutilation (“circumcision”) –

Never to know pleasure

 

But what baffles me most –

Maybe I’m naïve or androgynous –

How much difference is there, anyway?

 

We all have hearts, minds and souls

Remarkably similar bodies

Dreams, hopes and desires

One life to live –

Why can’t all of us be allowed to live?

 

Of course there are differences

It can’t all be socialization

Even if the great divide

Is miniscule in some individuals

But is it enough to merit injustice?

 

Yin and yang speak of balance and equality

But where is the gender equality

In the nation that produced this philosophy?

Yang is a gong, demanding glory

Yin is the slow growth of crops a farmer takes credit for

 

Is it any wonder then –

American women increasingly nurture the yang

And banish the yin

 

Where have our “feminine qualities” gotten us?

Gentleness, grace, consensus and compassion

Gets us underemployed and underappreciated

Disrespected and disregarded

So we’ve learned to get ahead by mimicking men

 

Aggressive, dominant, badass

Amassing material possessions, power and ego

Hard to believe we couldn’t even vote a century ago!

Now politicians sweat rocks to woo us

And our power as consumers is formidable

 

But at what cost

To us and the world?

Can’t we use our power to change our culture

To value the subtle, understated and essential

Wherever it’s found, in male or female?

 

And how does it advance the cause of women

If we have to become like men to succeed?

Denying a part of ourselves so desperately needed

In our families, friendships, and communities

Raw nerves at every turn

 

If only we could honor all of who we are

We could join the French with enthusiasm:

Oui, vive la différence!