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Expanding and strengthening trading relationships abroad means real jobs here at home. The Government of British Columbia is acting to make sure that B.C. businesses are first in line to take advantage of the growing market opportunities in Asia. The upcoming Jobs and Trade Mission to China, Japan and Korea will open up new doors, connect B.C. businesses with Asian demand, and keep B.C.’s economy strong and growing.
Learn more: www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2013/10/growing-markets-in-asia-an...
Hong Kong Culture | Modern Hong Kong History started in 1841.
Visit Hong Kong - one of the World‛s GREATEST Cities!
Hong Kong is blessed with some of the most amazing panoramic city views in the World today and even better 75% of the land area consists of country parks and wetlands plus we have 575+ named hills and peaks offering some great hiking trails and lots of very fine beaches and remote islands - in a nutshell, Hong Kong is full of surprises!
Victoria Peak, The Peak Tram, Victoria Harbour, The Big Buddha | Po Lin Monastery, Tai O Fishing Village, The iconic Star Ferry, The Ocean Terminal Deck, The iconic Street Tram on HK Island, TST Promenade, Cheung Chau Island, Peng Chau Island, Temple Street Night Market, The Ladies Market, Chi Lin Nunnery | Nan Lian Garden, Statue Square, The Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple, Tsz Shan Monastery, Tai Kwun Centre, Hollywood Road, The Mid Levels Escalator, Aberdeen, Stanley, The West Kowloon Cultural Centre, Food Markets... the list goes on and on of cool and unusual places you should “visit or do” when you come to Hong Kong.
Book a Private Tour of Hong Kong to maximise your time here and gain an in depth understanding of this amazing city, in addition we have a great food culture and night life scene with some 15,000 - 20,000 Restaurants and Bars officially and unofficially and any and all visitors should take a private or group food tour in Hong Kong!
Hong Kong has one of the very best public transport systems in the world (MTR Subway and Buses + 18,163 Taxi‛s) they are cheap, reliable and easy to use.
Hong Kong - Some Facts - Population 7.5 Million people | 92% Ethnic Chinese | English is an Official Language along with Cantonese and Mandarin | 1,114 sq km or 430sq miles of diversity | 263 Islands | People | Street Scenes | Traffic Scenes | Nature Scenes | Animals | Buildings | Shopping | Gardens | The Countryside | Islands and the Ocean + Daily Life and anything interesting, all Districts, Hong Kong
☛.... and if you want to read about my personal views on Hong Kong, then go to my blog, link is shown below, I have lived in Hong Kong for over 50 years and completed 2,324 Private Tours of Hong Kong between 8th April 2011 and February 11th 2020
✚ www.j3consultantshongkong.com/j3c-blog
☛ Photography is simply a hobby for me, I do NOT sell my images and all of my images can be FREELY downloaded from this site in the original upload image size or 5 other sizes, please note that you DO NOT have to ask for permission to download and use any of my images!
October 20, 293/365- Today the Rogue Players invade the "Word Interpretation" group where we are to illustrate a word with the photo.
"M" is the producer for my television production student staff this year, since the first day in my class as a freshman we have had a great understanding with each other. She is an effective leader but also is always willing to listen to suggestions. I know when we have problems with the show I can talk to her and she can talk to me, we do have a great understanding with each other and respect!
Also wore my pink shirt today for "Pretty Pink Tuesday" and for Breast Cancer Awareness month.
Another name for linear hydraulic motor, hydraulic cylinder is a motor used to perform mechanical tasks in engineering and construction works. It is used to deliver unidirectional force using pressurized stroke of fluids and has many applications in manufacturing machinery .Please visit our website for more details www.deltasteeltech.com/serv/serv.php
Presenters were Christine Draper and Michelle Reidel.
Image by Ron Cogswell on July 13, 2012, using a Nikon D80 and minor Photoshop effects.
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The Memorandum of Understanding renews and expands collaboration on global scientific and technological solutions over the next five years. The extended agreement reaffirms both agencies’ commitment to jointly address critical development and humanitarian challenges affecting the United States and developing countries through the generation and use of scientific research, innovations, and technologies and advances further interagency collaboration under the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE). Specifically, the partnership will draw on NASA's Earth science research and space technology development to help inform USAID’s global programming.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vietnamese Justice Minister Ha Hung Cuong, flanked by U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Michael W. Michalak (left) and Vietnamese officials, smile after signing a memorandum of understanding for the U.S.-Vietnam PEPFAR Partnership Framework at Ngoc Lam Pagoda in Hanoi, Vietnam, on July 22, 2010. [USAID photo/ Public Domain]
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia—Leaders from 30 of 34 Armies across the Indo-Asia-Pacific gathered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Sept. 26 for the opening ceremony of the 40th Pacific Armies Management Seminar (PAMS XL) co-hosted by the Malaysian Army and U.S. Army Pacific.
PAMS XL is scheduled plenary discussions cover Violent Extremism: Defining the Problem from the Perspective of Regional Armies; Violent Extremism and the Information Domain: Challenges and Opportunities; and Creating Enduring Civil-Military Partnerships in Responding to Radicalization.
This year’s PAMS has representatives from Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Fiji, France, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga, United States, United Kingdom, Vanuatu, and Vietnam.
PAMS is the largest theater security and cooperation event co-hosted by USARPAC in terms of country participation and the role of co-host rotates to a different partner nation annually. The long-term objective of PAMS is to promote peace and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region through mutual understanding, dialogue, and friendship
Photo by Russell K. Dodson/released
The European Parliament's annual journalism prize, for work that promotes better understanding of EU institutions or policies, was awarded by EP President Jerzy Buzek on Thursday. The prize (€5,000 in each category), went to Ines Possemeyer (written press, Germany), Szlankó Bálint (internet, Hungary), Zbigniew Plesner (radio, Poland) and Elke Sasser and Kristian Kähler (TV, Germany).
Read more: www.europarl.europa.eu/news/expert/infopress_page/039-623...
©European Parliament/Pietro Naj-Oleari
History of the Museum
Scientific research and gathering in Austria found relatively late understanding and promotion. Indeed contained the chambers of art and curiosities of the Habsburgs also natural produce but for a long time they have been regarded as mere oddities, not as objects of scientific importance. It was not until Emperor Franz I. (Francis Stephen of Lorraine, 1745-1765), the husband of Maria Theresia, founded in 1748 with the purchase of the famous collection of Johann Baillous a private Naturalienkabinett. It was put up in accordance to Baillous' own scientific system in the Hofburg and was initially managed by this self.
The main emphasis was put on minerals and fossils as well as snail and mussel shells and corals. Plants and animals with soft parts were then (mainly because of the preparation problems) yet little appreciated as collector's items. They were held alive in botanical gardens and menageries.
After the death of Francis I the collection in which the Emperor had invested large sums of money was transferred into state ownership, reorganized and made twice a week accessible to the public. 1776 appointed Maria Theresa, particularly dear to her being mainly the earth sciences as a basis for mining and industry, the excellent mineralogist and montanist Ignaz von Born to Vienna and entrusted him with the systematic expansion of the collection. Born was a leader of the Enlightenment and Freemasonry, he might even have given the model for Sarastro in Mozart's "Magic Flute". With him for "Austria", definitely, dawned the scientific-technological age. The Naturalienkabinett (a cabinet of curiosities) then became a center of mineralogical research in Europe.
The nature-loving Emperor Franz II (I, 1792-1835) expanded the natural history collection for a private animal cabinet. The foundation for this were the trophies of the Habsburgs, which date back to Emperor Maximilian II (1564-1576), as well as the famous collection of prepared native vertebrates and insects of the falconer Joseph Natterer. After several reclassifications followed in 1807 the foundation of a separate plants cabinet. The Emperor lay with the gift of his Privatherbars (private plant collection) the foundation.
The exhibition practice around 1800 was marked by an often curious juxtaposition of little scientific and very progressive tendencies. The stuffed animals were shown in artificial landscape dioramas, ie already in ecological context. Alongside, however, stood also Stopfpräparate (stuffed compounds) of people of non-native breeds such as the "high princely Moor' Angelo Soliman, who came to literary fame.
The eminent scholar and organizer Carl Schreibers who from 1806 until 1851 headed the Natural History Collection, provided for key reforms in all areas. He extented all departments to major research centers and was supported not only by the museum officials, but also by a number of often highly skilled, unpaid volunteers.
On the occasion of the marriage of his daughter Leopoldina with the Brazilian crown prince Dom Pedro in 1817 sent Emperor Franz also well-known researchers to South America. Through their collecting activities, the growth of the museum's experienced a glorious climax. So stayed the zoologist Johann Natterer for 18 years in South America and established an in an exemplary manner documented collection of scientific and ethnographic objects for Vienna. This contributed significantly to the worldwide reputation of the museum, but also led to a decades-long lack of space.
With various, not always felicitous chosen emergency solutions on tried in vain to handle space problems sussesfully. During the revolutionary turmoil of 1848, the Imperial Palace was bombarded by imperial troops and partially set on fire. A part of the collection was destroyed, tragically, also many irreplaceable objects from the Brazilian material.
In the years after the Revolution, the collection was converted into an independent zoological, botanical and mineralogical Hofkabinett (Court cabinet). These cabinets with their extremely rich stocks offered not only ideal possibilities to explore, they contributed to the establishment of scientific disciplines in the university sector in 1870 also considerably to the formation of young scientists. The collections have been enhanced through exchange and purchases, by the collecting activities of the researchers as well as legacies, especially of scientifically inclined travelers, constantly . In addition, the by the Imperial Court generously funded cooperation with the Austrian navy became very important: Especially the circumnavigation of the world of the frigate "Novara" (1857-1859), which was attended by numerous excellent naturalist, gave an exceedingly rich collection of new material to the museum. The scientific word off should take decades.
This scientific Poiniergeist (pioneering spirit), reflecting the general belief in progress in the second half of the 18th Century, was facing the more and more oppressive need of space. Although Emperor Franz Joseph had already in 1857 the razing of the fortification lines around the city center ordered. On the cleared area should along a boulevard alongside other representative public buildings also new museums emerge. Up to the completion of this project, however, it was still a long way to go.
The liberal bourgeoisie then undergoing a steep political and economic upswing was inclined to replace the old cabinets through research and education centers for broad strata of the population and thus make its own cultural advancement clearly visible. But the neo-absolutist empire of the gradually decaying Habsburg monarchy, too, wanted erect itself a modern, artistically accomplished monument: A monumental Imperial Forum following the ancient example was planned, that should be reaching from the Imperial Palace to the royal stables. Realized of it was only a torso: the New Castle and Maria Theresa Square with Museum of Art History and Museum of Natural History.
The internal organization of the new 'Imperial and Royal Natural History Court Museum", which on 10 August was officially opened in 1889, goes back to the great geologist, New Zealand researcher and first director of the museum, Ferdinand von Hochstetter, and has been preserved largely in its clear systematic today. However, the proliferation of resources and new demands on the research and display collection activities required new spatial and structural solutions. Thus, an underground storage was created in 1990, which extends under the building on four levels and in fully air-conditioned rooms keeps a portion of the collection material. Due to the roof extension (1991 to 1995) further collection, but also numerous new working rooms were gained.
The research, the preservation and completing of the major scientific collections and the presentation of selected natural objects to this day have not lost any of their topicalities. In a time of increasingly rapid destruction of our environment, they are more important than ever. Just as the white patches have become smaller on the map, penetrates the science into ever smaller areas. Long scanning electron microscope and X-ray equipment have replaced hand magnifier. In the permanent exhibition area visitors also have access to advanced optical devices, especially in "Microcosmos" ( Hall 21). The preservation of collection, too, follows modern conservation knowledge.
Over a century ago, the Museum hace been created for the systematic presentation - the diversity of nature sorted strung together, the palace-like building, the interplay of means and objects as well as the historic atmosphere giving it a distinctive character.
Even with the redesign of many exhibition halls systematic classification was basically retained to make the visitors aware of the immense diversity of life. However, the presentation is successively adapted to the museological requirements and needs of the 21st century. Also presented are interesting topics and new contents in a contemporary didactic form.
Copyright Museum of Natural History
www.wien-konkret.at/kultur/museum/naturhistorisches-museu...
Wings still up a little, but starting to accept our presence as non-threatening! Eventually she settled down, having made her position abundantly clear. 😀
Laura Silvia Battaglia
Philip Di Salvo
Jessica Dorsey
Jack Serle
Francesco Vignarca
Gli attacchi con droni sono gli elementi più caratteristici della guerra contemporanea. Sia quando utilizzati in scenari di guerra convenzionali sia quando utilizzati per programmi di uccisioni mirate, i droni armati militari sono solitamente operati dietro un velo di segretezza che impedisce ai cittadini e ai giornalisti di accedere ai dati e alle statistiche riguardanti le morti di civili e l’efficienza degli attacchi. Gli Stati Uniti sono di certo il maggior attore nel settore, ma l’uso dei droni si sta diffondendo in tutto il mondo. Le nazioni dove l’utilizzo degli attacchi con drone è maggiormente preoccupante sono lo Yemen, il Pakistan, l’Iraq, l’Afghanistan e la Siria. Il panel proposto discuterà le questioni attuali riguardanti le fonti e il reporting giornalistico sul tema, raccogliendo speaker provenienti da ambienti diversi, inclusi giornalisti investigativi, ricercatori e sostenitori del disarmo. Il panel discuterà le migliori pratiche e i case study per il monitoraggio degli attacchi con drone, come il lavoro svolto dal Bureau of Investigative Journalists; le problematiche riguardanti l’accesso alle informazioni e la trasparenza; il ruolo dei whistleblower e le implicazioni per l’Italia, in particolare per ciò che riguarda il coinvolgimento della base di Sigonella nei programmi di droni e il caso Lo Porto.
Drone strikes are among the most defining elements of contemporary warfare. Both when used in conventional war scenarios or for targeted killing programs, military armed drones are usually operated behind a veil of secrecy preventing citizens and journalists to access data and statistics about civilian deaths and strikes efficiency. The US are certainly the biggest players in the field, but the use of drones is expanding worldwide. Countries where drone strikes usage is more troubling are Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. The proposed panel will discuss current issues when it comes to journalistic sourcing and reporting on the matter by putting together speakers of different backgrounds, including investigative journalists, researchers and advocates. The panel will discuss best practices and case studies of monitoring drone strikes, such as the work of The Bureau of Investigative Journalists; the issues concerning access to information and transparency; the role of whistleblowers and the implication for Italy, in particular when it comes to the involvement of the Sigonella base in the drone programs and the Lo Porto case.
video: media.journalismfestival.com/programme/2017/understanding...
Our Financial Trading Lab is a state-of-the art classroom facility designed to reflect a real-world trading room. Specialized software will enable you to access and interpret real-time information, and build your understanding of current business and banking practices.
Skiing holidays are a great way to enjoy all that France offers, but they aren’t without risks. One risk during ski holidays France is avalanches.
Avalanches are dangerous occurrences that can abruptly end your holiday skiing in France. Note that you’re at very little risk of being caught in an avalanche while skiing on piste. This is because all pistes are made safe by the French piste rescue services. It’s up to you whether you ski on or off piste during your ski holidays France. Determine if the thrills off piste are worth it during your group ski holidays France. It’s also worth remembering that the risk of avalanches is highest during Spring.
During the spring, there are point release avalanches, caused by the warming of the snow. The snow at this point is heavy and wet, so despite the greater number of avalanches there are few people on the mountain. Accidents from these avalanches occur when they reach inhabited areas, such as a ski chalet France based on the mountain.
Avalanches are a real risk, but they shouldn’t stop you from enjoying your ski holidays France. By being knowledgeable, you can keep yourself and your fellow mountain users safe.
Expanding and strengthening trading relationships abroad means real jobs here at home. The Government of British Columbia is acting to make sure that B.C. businesses are first in line to take advantage of the growing market opportunities in Asia. The upcoming Jobs and Trade Mission to China, Japan and Korea will open up new doors, connect B.C. businesses with Asian demand, and keep B.C.’s economy strong and growing.
Learn more: www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2013/10/growing-markets-in-asia-an...
As part of the Atmosphere to Electrons initiative, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) developed a 3-year collaborative research plan to develop and field test wind turbine controls. New control systems, such as the advanced feedforward control system that incorporates lidar and is currently under development at NREL, will help researchers improve simulations and increase the understanding of the physics impacting wind plant performance. The plan developed by the two laboratories identified collaborative field testing of wind plant controls at SNL's Scaled Wind Farm Technology (SWiFT) Facility.
At the beginning of this course I was given the topic of Clash, Culture, Chaos. From this title I began my journey by venturing different aspects of each word, and I was instantly attracted to the fashion side of the subject as I found ways that each noun could be interpreted into this area. I chose fashion as a starting point because of this and I also feel like it reflects my own personal inspiration. From this starting point I went on to look at basic fashion as we know it and I then looked at in more depth by viewing areas such as Fair Trade fashion that may not be as well-known and I found a photographer working with fair trade who I then went on to take photographs in a similar way creating connections. Throughout this process I also began to look at old cameras and had a go at using a 35mm SLR camera. I carried on my adventure through old time periods as I linked in fashion and other cameras over time. As I enjoy artwork as well as photographing as you can see in my work, I came across Bert Stern’s photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe and their final photos which inspired me to use art materials in my final pieces.
From the beginning of my journey I explored the work of many different photographers. I tried to emulate the work of Trevor Leighton, which I felt worked really well and I also managed to learn some skills such as the use of light therefore I created some successful photographs. I also investigated the work of Erwin Blumenfeld as I found his work very different and creative. However, I did not feel inspired by his photographs there did not influence it in my own work. As previously stated, I found Bert Stern’s ‘The Last Sitting’ photo shoot which inspired me to use a combination of art and photography in my final pieces.
My work is about how things have changed over. For my final piece I decided to focus on an aspect of fashion and cameras that we no longer regularly find in present day. When I look at my work I think about the comparison between my digital SLR and disposable camera photographs. The messages that I want to get across in my final outcomes is that although technology and fashion has moved on and improved from the past, you can still create work that is just as good by using old processes and that a simple difference in a photograph can show two different ways of looking at it. I have shown this through the paint strike across the images on acetate. To inform and inspire my work I looked at the work of Trevor Leighton and Bert Stern. Trevor inspired me to use a fashion photo shoot for my final pieces and Bert’s work influenced me to get creative with my outcomes. I took secondary source photographs in a similar style to Trevor’s Fair Trade photo shoot creating connections between our work. I have learned that photography is not only about the photographs themselves; they can also have other aspects like in my final products.
I took my photographs on a cannon digital SLR camera and a disposable camera. I also took photographs on a singlex 35mm SLR camera to show more variety in my theme of cameras over time however when I processed my film in the darkroom the negatives came out blank.
I used aperture to touch up my digital SLR images and I also completely reduced the saturation so that they were black and white to fit in with the theme. I feel that making them black and white also helped to show the clash with the coloured paint once I had added it. Once I had received my disposable camera outcomes, I began to cut down and paint the pieces of acetate that were to be sewn to all of the photos. I hand sewed the acetate to the images to influence show my understanding of my fair trade research. Using acetate instead of painting straight onto my photographs helps to show how there are two way to look at them as you can still easily view the images without the paint.
In my work I have shown that I can use the basic elements. I have used form, texture, colour and tone. Using these I could ensure that my photos weren’t too simple or basic, and that they can maintain attention and interest from viewers. You can see that I have used some rules of composition such as changing the positioning of the model, in the centre and slightly off centred. I think that if my work was larger it would show a better understand of the point that I was trying to get across, however I did not have the facilities to do so.
Before finishing my final pieces I did a couple of experiments to see what else I could use on my work. I tried the effect of tea staining as it again showed the theme of ‘over time’, and I also attempted to print my final outcomes out onto acetate. I decided that I did not like these processes therefore did not use them.
I managed to settle on my final ideas and techniques for my final piece by looking through all of the work that I have completed and I picked out certain things that I thought worked and that I liked. I used these as my guidelines and I put them all together to get my plan for my final outcomes.
As a conclusion, I personally think that I have responded very well to the brief and have created some interesting forms of photography from the starting theme of Clash, Culture, Chaos. I feel this way as all of my work and research is somehow linked in with my final pieces. I think that my work connected to the work of Bert Stern for both obvious and deeper reasons such as the paint strikes, fashion portraits, and positions of the models. When I look at my work I feel like I can see how technology has changed over time yet still looks just as good in its own way. The most successful part of my work in my opinion is how you can see the comparison of the cameras, and how you can see two ways to view the images. I think that my photographs are successful.
I've was at an open user group session today about BBC websites. (Full post is over at www.ghostschool.co.uk/
Expanding and strengthening trading relationships abroad means real jobs here at home. The Government of British Columbia is acting to make sure that B.C. businesses are first in line to take advantage of the growing market opportunities in Asia. The upcoming Jobs and Trade Mission to China, Japan and Korea will open up new doors, connect B.C. businesses with Asian demand, and keep B.C.’s economy strong and growing.
Learn more: www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2013/10/growing-markets-in-asia-an...
THE IMAGES PRODUCED MUST BE CRITICAL TO UNDERSTANDING MY PSYCHOLOGY..THE FILTERING OF THE MUNDANE AND THE WORKPLACE HALFWIT HAS ITS USES BY THE FILTERING THROUGH THE CHOAS INTO THE COSMOS AS AN AESTHETIC PROCESS
TO BE ABLE TO WORK WITHIN A STRICT AND SEVERELY RESTRAINED FRAMEWORK YET ALLOWING A REGIMENTAL FREEDOM OF HIGHLY CONTROLLED YET ARBITRARIAL DEVELOPMENT TO FLOURISH AND CRYSTALISE....
A REASONABLE ANALOGIE WILL BE TO SUGGEST THAT THAT MY WORKING METHOD IS THAT OF THE HUNCHBACK WITHI DRIVING A VEHICLE IN PITCH DARK WITHOUT HEADLAMPS AND ARRIVING AT EXACTLY WHERE IT NEEDS TO BE AT ALL TIMES IN A PARALLEL CONTINUUM OF BOUNDLESSNESS..
HOWEVER RECKLESS OR INANE OR IRRATIONAL THE BEHAVIOUR,IT WILL ONLY SERVE AS A SLAVE TO THE IMAGE THAT WILL BE REALISED THROUGH SUCH BAHAVIOUR...NOTHING MATTERS BUT THE IMAGE...IT IS AKIN TO A TYPE OF HOLY GRAIL WHEREBY I RISK DESTROYING THE FOUNDATION OF MY EXISTENCE PURELY TO ACHIES=VE AN IMMORTALITY THROUGH THE INNER AESTHETE THAT DWELLS WITHIN LIKE A PARASITE THAT FEEDS OFF OF A HIGHER "SOURCE ENERGY" FOR ITS CREATIVE NOURISHMENT...
TO BE ABLE TO WITHSTAND THE "WAR ZONE" OF THE WORKPLACE AND ITS ATTENDANT HALFWITS OF THIS CESSPOOL OF OBSEQUIOUS DUPLICITY AND EXECUTE MY SELF-OBSERVATIONS TO A HIGH DEGREE OF IMAGINATIVE DISCIPLINE AND DEDICATED UNDERSTANDING AND EXECUTION IS TESTAMENT TO MY SERIOUSNESS OF DEVOTION TO THE CLOWN....
This is a highly detailed, original watercolor painting of the 1989 Denver Broncos uniform. It was created as part of a collection of 13 pieces of original art celebrating the history of the uniforms of the NFL's Denver Broncos franchise. This original painting, and more than 1500 other NFL, MLB, NHL, NCAA football and CFL uniform paintings, is available for sale at our Heritage Sports Art website.
To get a good understanding of the art, the history behind this whole project and what the art looks like when it's framed, please check out our Denver Broncos Artwork YouTube video.
You can also read several Denver Broncos history posts at our Heritage Jerseys and Uniforms blog including a history of every home stadium the Broncos have ever played in - and also several hundred other NFL, MLB, NHL, NCAA football and CFL posts too.
Facebook: fb.me/Japan.Kyoto.de
Copyright: ©2012, Christian Kaden
Licence: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0
ID: IMG_8649
IT'S ALL ABOUT TRUST
It's really ok to use this photo as your wallpaper etc., but if you reuse it on the web or other public spaces, please read following lines carefully and don't give the impression that you took the photo yourself. A lot of work was done creating it, so please be respectful and help build some 'internet trust', thanks!
Credits as stated below are mandatory, not optional!
# If you want to use this photo under the given Creative-Commons-Licence, please credit it with:
©Christian Kaden / www.Japan-Kyoto.de
# If sharing or reuploading to Facebook, in addition to the above mentioned credits please add a link to the Facebook-Page of Japan-Kyoto as well. Either directly linked via @Japan-Kyoto (preferred) or fb.me/Japan.Kyoto.de (if @Japan-Kyoto is not possible).
# Want to use it in a commercial or monetized project? Leave me a message.
Examples
In general: ©Christian Kaden - www.Japan-Kyoto.de
On Facebook: ©Christian Kaden - www.Japan-Kyoto.de - @Japan-Kyoto (linked)
Thank you for your understanding.
GPS data available, check out the link:
ATOLL: Aquaculture Training for On-Line Learning
The Aquaculture Training for On-Line Learning program consists of four courses with more than 60 videos and digital games to give you an understanding of:
Aquaculture and fisheries management
Aquaponics concepts and systems
Basic water chemistry, water quality, fish health and nutrition
Basic biology, genetics, coral farming, reef ecology, marketing and business
Course 1. Introduction to Aquaculture
Learn about aquaculture, fisheries management, aquaculture in the Pacific, and traditional Hawaiian aquaculture. Developed and taught by Dr. Benny Ron, University of Hawai‘i Aquaculture Program coordinator; Dr. Paul Bienfang, UH Oceanography Department fisheries research specialist; Ephraim Temple, University of Hawai‘i Sea Grant aquaculture extension agent to American Samoa; and Dr. Carlos Andrade, University of Hawai‘i Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies director and professor whose specialization includes indigenous geography and resources management .
Course 2: Introduction to Aquaponics
Go through the steps needed to build and maintain your own aquaponics or permaculture system. Learn aquaponics concepts and system designs to grow vegetables, fruits, and houseplants in a symbiotic relationship with your fish. Taught by Glenn Martinez, owner/operator of Olomana Gardens, a certified organic farm in Waimanalo, and avid spokesperson for local farming, organic growing, and the end of GMO.
Course 3: Fish Farm Essentials I
Learn the basic water chemistry and water quality information you need to have a successful aquaculture operation. Includes fish health and nutrition (feed, common pests & diseases), troubleshooting for problems, ornamental fish production, and basic marketing concepts for fish farmers. Taught by Dr. Allen C. Riggs, State of Hawai‘i aquaculture veterinarian, and Dr. Tim Miller-Morgan, extension officer for the Oregon SeaGrant program.
Course 4: Fish Farm Essentials II
Advanced information regarding basic biology and genetic concepts necessary for today`s fish farms. Includes modules on corals, reef ecology, coral farming for reef restoration or aquariums, and more on marketing and business. Taught by Dr. Benny Ron; Dr. Jinzeng Yang, associate professor of animal molecular biology at the University of Hawai‘i; Kelly Davidson, lecturer in aquaculture marketing and economics at the University of Tennessee Martin; and Dr. Shai Shafir, Oranim Academic College of Education (Israel) professor and internationally recognized expert in coral ecology, aquatic bio-technology and reef restoration.
What kind of equipment do I need?
A fairly new computer (less than 5 years old-capable of watching internet videos). Be aware that course materials may not work on all mobile devices.
A recently updated internet browser (Firefox, Chrome or Safari work best) capable of playing .mp4 video files
High-speed internet access capable of viewing online videos up to 30 minutes in length.
For more details, visit videolearning.uhatoll.com.
The ATOLL online program is now approved by the State of Hawai‘i Employment and Training Fund (ETF) program for incumbent workers. ETF may pay 50%, up to a maximum of $250 of course fees for students employed by eligible businesses and nonprofits. For information, go to hawaii.gov/labor/etf and click on the Employer Referral ("micro") program link.
Course Information:
Online program • register anytime, complete by Dec 31 • instructions on accessing the course are emailed after registration is completed • $100
with Benny Ron, ATOLL Faculty
Click here videolearning.uhatoll.com/ to register for this course
Kids From Randolph School, Huntsville, AL
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★What IS THE INTERNATIONAL FIBER COLLABORATIVE?
As the leading voice for collaborative public art projects around the world, the International Fiber Collaborative is dedicated to promoting understanding and appreciation of contemporary art & craft through educational experiences. We are committed to developing vital education programs that elevate, expand, modernize and enhance the image of collaboration and education today.
★WHAT IS THE DREAM ROCKET PROJECT?
The Dream Rocket Team is collecting nearly 8,000 artworks from participants around the globe. The artwork will be assembled together to create a massive cover in which will wrap a 37 story Saturn V Moon Rocket at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. We will also be displaying submitted artwork in dozens of national venues prior to the wrapping of the Saturn V. Additionally, we are posting images of submitted artwork & their stories on our Website, Flickr, and Facebook.The Dream Rocket project uses the Saturn V Moon Rocket as a symbolism of universal values of the human spirit. Optimism, hope,
caring for our natural resources, scientific exploration, and harnessing technological advancements for a better quality of life while safeguarding our communities, are all common desires across national and international boundaries. Participants are able to express and learn about these values through this creative collaboration. With the completion of each artwork, participants are asked to write an essay explaining their artwork, and the dream theme in which they chose.
★How can I Participate & Have my Artwork Displayed?
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History of the Museum
Scientific research and gathering in Austria found relatively late understanding and promotion. Indeed contained the chambers of art and curiosities of the Habsburgs also natural produce but for a long time they have been regarded as mere oddities, not as objects of scientific importance. It was not until Emperor Franz I. (Francis Stephen of Lorraine, 1745-1765), the husband of Maria Theresia, founded in 1748 with the purchase of the famous collection of Johann Baillous a private Naturalienkabinett. It was put up in accordance to Baillous' own scientific system in the Hofburg and was initially managed by this self.
The main emphasis was put on minerals and fossils as well as snail and mussel shells and corals. Plants and animals with soft parts were then (mainly because of the preparation problems) yet little appreciated as collector's items. They were held alive in botanical gardens and menageries.
After the death of Francis I the collection in which the Emperor had invested large sums of money was transferred into state ownership, reorganized and made twice a week accessible to the public. 1776 appointed Maria Theresa, particularly dear to her being mainly the earth sciences as a basis for mining and industry, the excellent mineralogist and montanist Ignaz von Born to Vienna and entrusted him with the systematic expansion of the collection. Born was a leader of the Enlightenment and Freemasonry, he might even have given the model for Sarastro in Mozart's "Magic Flute". With him for "Austria", definitely, dawned the scientific-technological age. The Naturalienkabinett (a cabinet of curiosities) then became a center of mineralogical research in Europe.
The nature-loving Emperor Franz II (I, 1792-1835) expanded the natural history collection for a private animal cabinet. The foundation for this were the trophies of the Habsburgs, which date back to Emperor Maximilian II (1564-1576), as well as the famous collection of prepared native vertebrates and insects of the falconer Joseph Natterer. After several reclassifications followed in 1807 the foundation of a separate plants cabinet. The Emperor lay with the gift of his Privatherbars (private plant collection) the foundation.
The exhibition practice around 1800 was marked by an often curious juxtaposition of little scientific and very progressive tendencies. The stuffed animals were shown in artificial landscape dioramas, ie already in ecological context. Alongside, however, stood also Stopfpräparate (stuffed compounds) of people of non-native breeds such as the "high princely Moor' Angelo Soliman, who came to literary fame.
The eminent scholar and organizer Carl Schreibers who from 1806 until 1851 headed the Natural History Collection, provided for key reforms in all areas. He extented all departments to major research centers and was supported not only by the museum officials, but also by a number of often highly skilled, unpaid volunteers.
On the occasion of the marriage of his daughter Leopoldina with the Brazilian crown prince Dom Pedro in 1817 sent Emperor Franz also well-known researchers to South America. Through their collecting activities, the growth of the museum's experienced a glorious climax. So stayed the zoologist Johann Natterer for 18 years in South America and established an in an exemplary manner documented collection of scientific and ethnographic objects for Vienna. This contributed significantly to the worldwide reputation of the museum, but also led to a decades-long lack of space.
With various, not always felicitous chosen emergency solutions on tried in vain to handle space problems sussesfully. During the revolutionary turmoil of 1848, the Imperial Palace was bombarded by imperial troops and partially set on fire. A part of the collection was destroyed, tragically, also many irreplaceable objects from the Brazilian material.
In the years after the Revolution, the collection was converted into an independent zoological, botanical and mineralogical Hofkabinett (Court cabinet). These cabinets with their extremely rich stocks offered not only ideal possibilities to explore, they contributed to the establishment of scientific disciplines in the university sector in 1870 also considerably to the formation of young scientists. The collections have been enhanced through exchange and purchases, by the collecting activities of the researchers as well as legacies, especially of scientifically inclined travelers, constantly . In addition, the by the Imperial Court generously funded cooperation with the Austrian navy became very important: Especially the circumnavigation of the world of the frigate "Novara" (1857-1859), which was attended by numerous excellent naturalist, gave an exceedingly rich collection of new material to the museum. The scientific word off should take decades.
This scientific Poiniergeist (pioneering spirit), reflecting the general belief in progress in the second half of the 18th Century, was facing the more and more oppressive need of space. Although Emperor Franz Joseph had already in 1857 the razing of the fortification lines around the city center ordered. On the cleared area should along a boulevard alongside other representative public buildings also new museums emerge. Up to the completion of this project, however, it was still a long way to go.
The liberal bourgeoisie then undergoing a steep political and economic upswing was inclined to replace the old cabinets through research and education centers for broad strata of the population and thus make its own cultural advancement clearly visible. But the neo-absolutist empire of the gradually decaying Habsburg monarchy, too, wanted erect itself a modern, artistically accomplished monument: A monumental Imperial Forum following the ancient example was planned, that should be reaching from the Imperial Palace to the royal stables. Realized of it was only a torso: the New Castle and Maria Theresa Square with Museum of Art History and Museum of Natural History.
The internal organization of the new 'Imperial and Royal Natural History Court Museum", which on 10 August was officially opened in 1889, goes back to the great geologist, New Zealand researcher and first director of the museum, Ferdinand von Hochstetter, and has been preserved largely in its clear systematic today. However, the proliferation of resources and new demands on the research and display collection activities required new spatial and structural solutions. Thus, an underground storage was created in 1990, which extends under the building on four levels and in fully air-conditioned rooms keeps a portion of the collection material. Due to the roof extension (1991 to 1995) further collection, but also numerous new working rooms were gained.
The research, the preservation and completing of the major scientific collections and the presentation of selected natural objects to this day have not lost any of their topicalities. In a time of increasingly rapid destruction of our environment, they are more important than ever. Just as the white patches have become smaller on the map, penetrates the science into ever smaller areas. Long scanning electron microscope and X-ray equipment have replaced hand magnifier. In the permanent exhibition area visitors also have access to advanced optical devices, especially in "Microcosmos" ( Hall 21). The preservation of collection, too, follows modern conservation knowledge.
Over a century ago, the Museum hace been created for the systematic presentation - the diversity of nature sorted strung together, the palace-like building, the interplay of means and objects as well as the historic atmosphere giving it a distinctive character.
Even with the redesign of many exhibition halls systematic classification was basically retained to make the visitors aware of the immense diversity of life. However, the presentation is successively adapted to the museological requirements and needs of the 21st century. Also presented are interesting topics and new contents in a contemporary didactic form.
Copyright Museum of Natural History
www.wien-konkret.at/kultur/museum/naturhistorisches-museu...
Kamera: Nikon F3 (1989)
Linse: Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f1.4 (1970)
Film: Kodak 5222 @ ISO 1600
Kjemi: Xtol (stock / 25 min. @ 20°C)
*** ZIONISM IS FASCISM ***
Ur-Fascism (1995) - by Umberto Eco (1932-2016)
In 1942, at the age of ten, I received the First Provincial Award of Ludi Juveniles (a voluntary, compulsory competition for young Italian Fascists — that is, for every young Italian). I elaborated with rhetorical skill on the subject “Should we die for the glory of Mussolini and the immortal destiny of Italy?” My answer was positive. I was a smart boy.
I spent two of my early years among the SS, Fascists, Republicans, and partisans shooting at one another, and I learned how to dodge bullets. It was good exercise.
In April 1945, the partisans took over in Milan. Two days later they arrived in the small town where I was living at the time. It was a moment of joy. The main square was crowded with people singing and waving flags, calling in loud voices for Mimo, the partisan leader of that area. A former maresciallo of the Carabinieri, Mimo joined the supporters of General Badoglio, Mussolini’s successor, and lost a leg during one of the first clashes with Mussolini’s remaining forces. Mimo showed up on the balcony of the city hall, pale, leaning on his crutch, and with one hand tried to calm the crowd. I was waiting for his speech because my whole childhood had been marked by the great historic speeches of Mussolini, whose most significant passages we memorized in school. Silence. Mimo spoke in a hoarse voice, barely audible. He said: “Citizens, friends. After so many painful sacrifices … here we are. Glory to those who have fallen for freedom.” And that was it. He went back inside. The crowd yelled, the partisans raised their guns and fired festive volleys. We kids hurried to pick up the shells, precious items, but I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric.
A few days later I saw the first American soldiers. They were African Americans. The first Yankee I met was a black man, Joseph, who introduced me to the marvels of Dick Tracy and Li’l Abner. His comic books were brightly colored and smelled good.
One of the officers (Major or Captain Muddy) was a guest in the villa of a family whose two daughters were my schoolmates. I met him in their garden where some ladies, surrounding Captain Muddy, talked in tentative French. Captain Muddy knew some French, too. My first image of American liberators was thus — after so many palefaces in black shirts — that of a cultivated black man in a yellow-green uniform saying: “Oui, merci beaucoup, Madame, moi aussi j’aime le champagne …” Unfortunately there was no champagne, but Captain Muddy gave me my first piece of Wrigley’s Spearmint and I started chewing all day long. At night I put my wad in a water glass, so it would be fresh for the next day.
In May we heard that the war was over. Peace gave me a curious sensation. I had been told that permanent warfare was the normal condition for a young Italian. In the following months I discovered that the Resistance was not only a local phenomenon but a European one. I learned new, exciting words like réseau, maquis, armée secrète, Rote Kapelle, Warsaw ghetto. I saw the first photographs of the Holocaust, thus understanding the meaning before knowing the word. I realized what we were liberated from.
In my country today there are people who are wondering if the Resistance had a real military impact on the course of the war. For my generation this question is irrelevant: we immediately understood the moral and psychological meaning of the Resistance. For us it was a point of pride to know that we Europeans did not wait passively for liberation. And for the young Americans who were paying with their blood for our restored freedom it meant something to know that behind the firing lines there were Europeans paying their own debt in advance.
In my country today there are those who are saying that the myth of the Resistance was a Communist lie. It is true that the Communists exploited the Resistance as if it were their personal property, since they played a prime role in it; but I remember partisans with kerchiefs of different colors. Sticking close to the radio, I spent my nights — the windows closed, the blackout making the small space around the set a lone luminous halo — listening to the messages sent by the Voice of London to the partisans. They were cryptic and poetic at the same time (The sun also rises, The roses will bloom) and most of them were “messaggi per la Franchi.” Somebody whispered to me that Franchi was the leader of the most powerful clandestine network in northwestern Italy, a man of legendary courage. Franchi became my hero. Franchi (whose real name was Edgardo Sogno) was a monarchist, so strongly anti-Communist that after the war he joined very right-wing groups, and was charged with collaborating in a project for a reactionary coup d’état. Who cares? Sogno still remains the dream hero of my childhood. Liberation was a common deed for people of different colors.
In my country today there are some who say that the War of Liberation was a tragic period of division, and that all we need is national reconciliation. The memory of those terrible years should be repressed, refoulée, verdrängt. But Verdrängung causes neurosis. If reconciliation means compassion and respect for all those who fought their own war in good faith, to forgive does not mean to forget. I can even admit that Eichmann sincerely believed in his mission, but I cannot say, “OK, come back and do it again.” We are here to remember what happened and solemnly say that “They” must not do it again.
But who are They?
If we still think of the totalitarian governments that ruled Europe before the Second World War we can easily say that it would be difficult for them to reappear in the same form in different historical circumstances. If Mussolini’s fascism was based upon the idea of a charismatic ruler, on corporatism, on the utopia of the Imperial Fate of Rome, on an imperialistic will to conquer new territories, on an exacerbated nationalism, on the ideal of an entire nation regimented in black shirts, on the rejection of parliamentary democracy, on anti-Semitism, then I have no difficulty in acknowledging that today the Italian Alleanza Nazionale, born from the postwar Fascist Party, MSI, and certainly a right-wing party, has by now very little to do with the old fascism. In the same vein, even though I am much concerned about the various Nazi-like movements that have arisen here and there in Europe, including Russia, I do not think that Nazism, in its original form, is about to reappear as a nationwide movement.
Nevertheless, even though political regimes can be overthrown, and ideologies can be criticized and disowned, behind a regime and its ideology there is always a way of thinking and feeling, a group of cultural habits, of obscure instincts and unfathomable drives. Is there still another ghost stalking Europe (not to speak of other parts of the world)?
Ionesco once said that “only words count and the rest is mere chattering.” Linguistic habits are frequently important symptoms of underlying feelings. Thus it is worth asking why not only the Resistance but the Second World War was generally defined throughout the world as a struggle against fascism. If you reread Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls you will discover that Robert Jordan identifies his enemies with Fascists, even when he thinks of the Spanish Falangists. And for FDR, “The victory of the American people and their allies will be a victory against fascism and the dead hand of despotism it represents.”
During World War II, the Americans who took part in the Spanish war were called “premature anti-fascists” — meaning that fighting against Hitler in the Forties was a moral duty for every good American, but fighting against Franco too early, in the Thirties, smelled sour because it was mainly done by Communists and other leftists… . Why was an expression like fascist pig used by American radicals thirty years later to refer to a cop who did not approve of their smoking habits? Why didn’t they say: Cagoulard pig, Falangist pig, Ustashe pig, Quisling pig, Nazi pig?
Mein Kampf is a manifesto of a complete political program. Nazism had a theory of racism and of the Aryan chosen people, a precise notion of degenerate art, entartete Kunst, a philosophy of the will to power and of the Ubermensch. Nazism was decidedly anti-Christian and neo-pagan, while Stalin’s Diamat (the official version of Soviet Marxism) was blatantly materialistic and atheistic. If by totalitarianism one means a regime that subordinates every act of the individual to the state and to its ideology, then both Nazism and Stalinism were true totalitarian regimes.
Italian fascism was certainly a dictatorship, but it was not totally totalitarian, not because of its mildness but rather because of the philosophical weakness of its ideology. Contrary to common opinion, fascism in Italy had no special philosophy. The article on fascism signed by Mussolini in the Treccani Encyclopedia was written or basically inspired by Giovanni Gentile, but it reflected a late-Hegelian notion of the Absolute and Ethical State which was never fully realized by Mussolini. Mussolini did not have any philosophy: he had only rhetoric. He was a militant atheist at the beginning and later signed the Convention with the Church and welcomed the bishops who blessed the Fascist pennants. In his early anticlerical years, according to a likely legend, he once asked God, in order to prove His existence, to strike him down on the spot. Later, Mussolini always cited the name of God in his speeches, and did not mind being called the Man of Providence.
Italian fascism was the first right-wing dictatorship that took over a European country, and all similar movements later found a sort of archetype in Mussolini’s regime. Italian fascism was the first to establish a military liturgy, a folklore, even a way of dressing — far more influential, with its black shirts, than Armani, Benetton, or Versace would ever be. It was only in the Thirties that fascist movements appeared, with Mosley, in Great Britain, and in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Yugoslavia, Spain, Portugal, Norway, and even in South America. It was Italian fascism that convinced many European liberal leaders that the new regime was carrying out interesting social reform, and that it was providing a mildly revolutionary alternative to the Communist threat.
Nevertheless, historical priority does not seem to me a sufficient reason to explain why the word fascism became a synecdoche, that is, a word that could be used for different totalitarian movements. This is not because fascism contained in itself, so to speak in their quintessential state, all the elements of any later form of totalitarianism. On the contrary, fascism had no quintessence. Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions. Can one conceive of a truly totalitarian movement that was able to combine monarchy with revolution, the Royal Army with Mussolini’s personal milizia, the grant of privileges to the Church with state education extolling violence, absolute state control with a free market? The Fascist Party was born boasting that it brought a revolutionary new order; but it was financed by the most conservative among the landowners who expected from it a counter-revolution. At its beginning fascism was republican. Yet it survived for twenty years proclaiming its loyalty to the royal family, while the Duce (the unchallenged Maximal Leader) was arm-in-arm with the King, to whom he also offered the title of Emperor. But when the King fired Mussolini in 1943, the party reappeared two months later, with German support, under the standard of a “social” republic, recycling its old revolutionary script, now enriched with almost Jacobin overtones.
There was only a single Nazi architecture and a single Nazi art. If the Nazi architect was Albert Speer, there was no more room for Mies van der Rohe. Similarly, under Stalin’s rule, if Lamarck was right there was no room for Darwin. In Italy there were certainly fascist architects but close to their pseudo-Coliseums were many new buildings inspired by the modern rationalism of Gropius.
There was no fascist Zhdanov setting a strictly cultural line. In Italy there were two important art awards. The Premio Cremona was controlled by a fanatical and uncultivated Fascist, Roberto Farinacci, who encouraged art as propaganda. (I can remember paintings with such titles as “Listening by Radio to the Duce’s Speech” or “States of Mind Created by Fascism.”) The Premio Bergamo was sponsored by the cultivated and reasonably tolerant Fascist Giuseppe Bottai, who protected both the concept of art for art’s sake and the many kinds of avant-garde art that had been banned as corrupt and crypto-Communist in Germany.
The national poet was D’Annunzio, a dandy who in Germany or in Russia would have been sent to the firing squad. He was appointed as the bard of the regime because of his nationalism and his cult of heroism — which were in fact abundantly mixed up with influences of French fin de siècle decadence.
Take Futurism. One might think it would have been considered an instance of entartete Kunst, along with Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. But the early Italian Futurists were nationalist; they favored Italian participation in the First World War for aesthetic reasons; they celebrated speed, violence, and risk, all of which somehow seemed to connect with the fascist cult of youth. While fascism identified itself with the Roman Empire and rediscovered rural traditions, Marinetti (who proclaimed that a car was more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace, and wanted to kill even the moonlight) was nevertheless appointed as a member of the Italian Academy, which treated moonlight with great respect.
Many of the future partisans and of the future intellectuals of the Communist Party were educated by the GUF, the fascist university students’ association, which was supposed to be the cradle of the new fascist culture. These clubs became a sort of intellectual melting pot where new ideas circulated without any real ideological control. It was not that the men of the party were tolerant of radical thinking, but few of them had the intellectual equipment to control it.
During those twenty years, the poetry of Montale and other writers associated with the group called the Ermetici was a reaction to the bombastic style of the regime, and these poets were allowed to develop their literary protest from within what was seen as their ivory tower. The mood of the Ermetici poets was exactly the reverse of the fascist cult of optimism and heroism. The regime tolerated their blatant, even though socially imperceptible, dissent because the Fascists simply did not pay attention to such arcane language.
All this does not mean that Italian fascism was tolerant. Gramsci was put in prison until his death; the opposition leaders Giacomo Matteotti and the brothers Rosselli were assassinated; the free press was abolished, the labor unions were dismantled, and political dissenters were confined on remote islands. Legislative power became a mere fiction and the executive power (which controlled the judiciary as well as the mass media) directly issued new laws, among them laws calling for preservation of the race (the formal Italian gesture of support for what became the Holocaust).
The contradictory picture I describe was not the result of tolerance but of political and ideological discombobulation. But it was a rigid discombobulation, a structured confusion. Fascism was philosophically out of joint, but emotionally it was firmly fastened to some archetypal foundations.
So we come to my second point. There was only one Nazism. We cannot label Franco’s hyper-Catholic Falangism as Nazism, since Nazism is fundamentally pagan, polytheistic, and anti-Christian. But the fascist game can be played in many forms, and the name of the game does not change. The notion of fascism is not unlike Wittgenstein’s notion of a game. A game can be either competitive or not, it can require some special skill or none, it can or cannot involve money. Games are different activities that display only some “family resemblance,” as Wittgenstein put it. Consider the following sequence:
1. abc
2. bcd
3. cde
4. def
Suppose there is a series of political groups in which group one is characterized by the features abc, group two by the features bcd, and so on. Group two is similar to group one since they have two features in common; for the same reasons three is similar to two and four is similar to three. Notice that three is also similar to one (they have in common the feature c). The most curious case is presented by four, obviously similar to three and two, but with no feature in common with one. However, owing to the uninterrupted series of decreasing similarities between one and four, there remains, by a sort of illusory transitivity, a family resemblance between four and one.
Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism (which never much fascinated Mussolini) and you have Ezra Pound. Add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail mysticism (completely alien to official fascism) and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola.
But in spite of this fuzziness, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.
1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counter-revolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but it was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of them indulgently accepted by the Roman Pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages — in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little known religions of Asia.
This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, “the combination of different forms of belief or practice”; such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.
As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.
One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements. The most influential theoretical source of the theories of the new Italian right, Julius Evola, merged the Holy Grail with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, alchemy with the Holy Roman and Germanic Empire. The very fact that the Italian right, in order to show its open-mindedness, recently broadened its syllabus to include works by De Maistre, Guenon, and Gramsci, is a blatant proof of syncretism.
If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge — that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.
2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. Both Fascists and Nazis worshiped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon Blood and Earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life, but it mainly concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course). The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.
3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.” The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.
4. No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.
6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old “proletarians” are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.
7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the U.S., a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson’s The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.
8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such a “final solution” implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.
10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler. Since the group is hierarchically organized (according to a military model), every subordinate leader despises his own underlings, and each of them despises his inferiors. This reinforces the sense of mass elitism.
11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as “Long Live Death!”). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.
12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons — doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.
13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view — one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. To have a good instance of qualitative populism we no longer need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or the Nuremberg Stadium. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.
Because of its qualitative populism Ur-Fascism must be against “rotten” parliamentary governments. One of the first sentences uttered by Mussolini in the Italian parliament was “I could have transformed this deaf and gloomy place into a bivouac for my maniples” — “maniples” being a subdivision of the traditional Roman legion. As a matter of fact, he immediately found better housing for his maniples, but a little later he liquidated the parliament. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in 1984, as the official language of Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.
On the morning of July 27, 1943, I was told that, according to radio reports, fascism had collapsed and Mussolini was under arrest. When my mother sent me out to buy the newspaper, I saw that the papers at the nearest newsstand had different titles. Moreover, after seeing the headlines, I realized that each newspaper said different things. I bought one of them, blindly, and read a message on the first page signed by five or six political parties — among them the Democrazia Cristiana, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Partito d’Azione, and the Liberal Party.
Until then, I had believed that there was a single party in every country and that in Italy it was the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Now I was discovering that in my country several parties could exist at the same time. Since I was a clever boy, I immediately realized that so many parties could not have been born overnight, and they must have existed for some time as clandestine organizations.
The message on the front celebrated the end of the dictatorship and the return of freedom: freedom of speech, of press, of political association. These words, “freedom,” “dictatorship,” “liberty,” — I now read them for the first time in my life. I was reborn as a free Western man by virtue of these new words.
We must keep alert, so that the sense of these words will not be forgotten again. Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier, for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, “I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares.” Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt’s words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling:
I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.
Freedom and liberation are an unending task. Let me finish with a poem by Franco Fortini:
Sulla spalletta del ponte
Le teste degli impiccati
Nell’acqua della fonte
La bava degli impiccati.
Sul lastrico del mercato
Le unghie dei fucilati
Sull’erba secca del prato
I denti dei fucilati.
Mordere l’aria mordere i sassi
La nostra carne non è più d’uomini
Mordere l’aria mordere i sassi
Il nostro cuore non è più d’uomini.
Ma noi s’è letto negli occhi dei morti
E sulla terra faremo libertà
Ma l’hanno stretta i pugni dei morti
La giustizia che si farà.
(On the bridge’s parapet
The heads of the hanged
In the flowing rivulet
The spittle of the hanged.
On the cobbles in the market-places
The fingernails of those lined up and shot
On the dry grass in the open spaces
The broken teeth of those lined up and shot.
Biting the air, biting the stones
Our flesh is no longer human
Biting the air, biting the stones
Our hearts are no longer human.
But we have read into the eyes of the dead
And shall bring freedom on the earth
But clenched tight in the fists of the dead
Lies the justice to be served.)
— poem translated by Stephen Sartarelli
On August 24, 2022, WIPO Director General Daren Tang (center) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Mr. Lennon Tan, President of the Singapore Manufacturing Federation (left) and Ms. Audrey Yap, Chairperson of the Singapore Innovation & Productivity Institute (right).
Under the agreement, the three organizations will work together to select an initial batch of 57 Singaporean Manufacturing Federation members to pilot WIPO’s Intellectual Property for Business tools and materials.
More: WIPO Director General Takes Part in IP Week @ SG 2022
Photo: Singapore Manufacturing Federation
Cosplay Leipzig
Leipziger Buchmesse 2011
Leipzig Book Fair 2011
2011-03-20_122
2011#071
Mikiyo (___) 350699 as Su "Wolkenstürmer" McGee from Steampunk
Zipp (Natalie) 022848 as Matilda Sterling from Steampunk
Pictures posted are 1024x768 pixels. 3000x2000 version for models only, sorry.
Dear Flickr friends: I am very grateful for group invites. However, I am determined to protect the models and myself from inappropriate interest in the photos. Therefore, I will NEVER accept invitations which come from groups that I am not permitted to check (This group is not available to you"). I hope for your understanding..
Expanding and strengthening trading relationships abroad means real jobs here at home. The Government of British Columbia is acting to make sure that B.C. businesses are first in line to take advantage of the growing market opportunities in Asia. The upcoming Jobs and Trade Mission to China, Japan and Korea will open up new doors, connect B.C. businesses with Asian demand, and keep B.C.’s economy strong and growing.
Learn more: www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2013/10/growing-markets-in-asia-an...
Understanding the landscape around Yanonge, DRC.
Photo by Ahtziri Gonzalez/CIFOR
If you use one of our photos, please credit it accordingly and let us know. You can reach us through our Flickr account or at: cifor-mediainfo@cgiar.org and m.edliadi@cgiar.org
Drop me in rivers of mercy, yeah
Dare I imagine some faith and understanding?
Drop me in rivers of mercy, yeah
Bring out the dead tonight
And bathe them in your sacred light to
Wash away the pain
Save me from the shadows, yeah
Cry like a siren, the light on my horizon
Drop me in rivers of mercy, yeah
5th model in my "Moments of Melancholy" series. Build only uses white, light bley, dark bley, black, lavender, medium lavendar, dark purple, trans-clear, glitter & regular trans-purple, and satin trans-clear. Started in April 2024, Completed in May 2024, and photographed March 2025.
Title of the build and lyrics from the Tears For Fears song, which might be my favorite. I was privileged enough to see this song performed live with Nick Jensen and Simon Liu just before Brickworld 2022.
Leipziger Buchmesse 2017 / Leipzig Book Fair 2017
2017-03-25 (Saturday)
2017_031
2017#318
Don_Boris (Boris) 352332 as Joker from Batman (DC Direct Secret Files 2)
Tarulein (Janette) 172883 as Harley Quinn from Batman
Thank you for any group invites which I'd be glad to accept. However, if I can't check the content of such groups ("This group is not available to you") I'd rather not add any of my photos. Thank you for your understanding.
The Memorandum of Understanding renews and expands collaboration on global scientific and technological solutions over the next five years. The extended agreement reaffirms both agencies’ commitment to jointly address critical development and humanitarian challenges affecting the United States and developing countries through the generation and use of scientific research, innovations, and technologies and advances further interagency collaboration under the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE). Specifically, the partnership will draw on NASA's Earth science research and space technology development to help inform USAID’s global programming.