It's a collective endeavour, it's collective accountability and it may not be too late.

Christine Lagarde on Climate Change

Managing Director, IMF

 

Thank you for your kind visit. Have a wonderful and beautiful day! ❤️❤️❤️

"The glory of life surmounts the fear of death. Good Christian's fear Hellfire, so to avoid it they are kind to their fellow man. Good pagans do not have this fear, so they can be who they are. Good or ill, as their nature dictates. We have no fear of God, so we are accountable to no one but each other."

― John Clare, by Penny Dreadful.

 

“How can I live without thee, how forego

Thy sweet converse, and love so dearly joined,

To live again in these wild woods forlorn?

Should God create another Eve, and I

Another rib afford, yet loss of thee

Would never from my heart; no, no, I feel

The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,

Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state

Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

 

However, I with thee have fixed my lot,

Certain to undergo like doom; if death

Consort with thee, death is to me as life;

So forcible within my heart I feel

The bond of nature draw me to my own,

My own in thee, for what thou art is mine;

Our state cannot be severed, we are one,

One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.”

― Paradise Lost, by John Milton.

 

DETAILS:

Check my new blog where you can find everything, with picture, information, etc (blogspot).

And check my picture information here too. In my tumblr blog.

  

Florida Right to Clean Water

This is a #WatershedMoment. We can make this happen.

With your help, we can bring this initiative to amend Florida's Constitution to the voters in November 2024, so the PEOPLE can decide whether we should hold our State agencies accountable for harm to Florida's waters.

www.floridarighttocleanwater.org/?fbclid=IwAR1X_66bcAGf-z...

 

With heartfelt and genuine thanks for your kind visit. Have a wonderful and beautiful day, be well, keep your eyes open, appreciate the beauty surrounding you, enjoy creating, stay safe and laugh often! ❤️❤️❤️

In the name of accountability, I feel I ought to reveal what I ate yesterday. Ready?

 

2 slices of cold pizza (chicken, mushrooms, olives and garlic butter) at the top of Tom Heights (recce)

Part of a Gregg's Cheese and Onion Bake (binned, vile)

1 packet of Doritos Cool Original

1 Peanut Chunky Kitkat

 

That saw me through to about 12 when I'd finished photographing Mary's Shell. Hmm, I can't really turn up to my sister's hungry...

 

1 quarterpounder with cheese

3 mozzarella bites

 

Sister's house:

 

Toffee Crisp

 

Then managed to make it all the way through to 5pm:

 

3 slices of garlic bread (goats cheese and caramelised onion 😍)

Chicken with a Diane sauce (the 80s called and want their sauce back)

Chocolate icecream rolled in meringue and hazelnuts.

 

-- The end --

 

This is what eating carbs does to me, I turn into a voracious bottomless pit 😂

 

I blame the Met Office.

 

Frostwick and Ill Bell from a bloody lovely Kentmere Round on Saturday!

We cannot "heal" until every treasonous tyrant is held accountable. New information is coming out every day that this insurrection was far more violent than anyone realized with people having specific targets of congressional leaders as well as VP Mike Pence that they wanted to assassinate to re-install Trump in power. People may ask why impeach now? The answer is pretty clear:

 

"If a president is impeached, convicted, and removed from office, they lose many of the benefits awarded to former presidents, such as a pension, security detail, and travel allowance. A president who is removed from office via impeachment may also be barred from holding future office."

 

The violent white supremacists on Wed, should be held accountable as should every lawmaker who encouraged the incitement of violence. We cannot allow people who swore an oath to the constitution and refused to abide by that oath to continue to hold power and somehow represent Democracy. No, that will not stand, and no we will not heal without accountability.

 

www.cnn.com/2021/01/09/media/reliable-sources-january-8/i...

 

www.snopes.com/fact-check/impeached-president-lose-benefits/

  

**All photos are copyrighted**

 

On a walk, with Pentax gear, to social distancing.

 

Man Up!

 

Credits

 

NYC

***This is my series on Soul Deep, built for the Petite Gallery Showing, September 21, 2025***

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ufeus/4/156/30

 

Soul Deep Sim

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/PixelDust/144/210/22

 

Your choices, your accountability, your responsibilities, are all in your own hands. You never have to blame someone for what they do to you. YOU have the power, its in your hands, its your choice.

 

Do not wait for your life to fall apart to understand the power of choosing a different path. Mel Robbins

  

I have shared with so many people the "Let them" Theory by Mel Robbins. Her message is unapologetic, clear, and freeing. We can not control what others believe, say, or even think. Should they decide you are not a good person, or assign you with their gossip, hate.. that is NOT on you.

 

Let them.

 

Be strong in who you are and your personal morality. Most folks should sincerely take their own inventory of action and life before judging others.

  

One of Mel Robbins' series. Please enjoy! ♥

www.melrobbins.com/episode/episode-2/

sketchbook drawing

 

It's all empty country around here, not a human in sight. I feel as if life, right here, in this spot, has been the same, decade after decade, with the exception of this hick-country road, I guess! It just gives me that sensation of being the only human on this planet. The sensation is even more intense if you lay down in the grass or, for that matter, right on this here road, just lay down, close your eyes and tune into the nature of this place. You will be totally amazed, a virtual Eco-system, all around me. I am drowning, in this particular spot...

 

If there is such a thing as The Law of Nature, the Universe, there has to be such a thing as the Law of Humanity, you know, considering life as it exists. People live and die and it has to mean something. It is not like it doesn't matter, that there is no significance to being born and to die.

While I lay down here listening to nature, all this was indeed created by a unique intelligent individual who also created me, created humanity and in His image. Wow!

 

The very fact that God created us in His image and gave us the ability to think, feel, and act, I believe, therefore, that human relationships must concern us, whether we like it or not, don't you think? In Matthew 9:35-38, God gives a vivid description of struggling humanity. Humanity has been making excuses from the beginning, but God does not let us off the hook that easy. He knows our hearts and reads our motives. We are responsible for our ignorance that fails to see human need! The need of this world is like an open book, so to me, there is no excuse for ignorance! If we are insensitive to the cries of our fellowman then there must be heart trouble on our part!

 

Furthermore, for those of us who read or study scripture, our accountability to others is a repeated theme throughout the Bible. Jesus talks about a day of reckoning when He describes the Son of Man coming in all His glory, and setting up His throne of judgment, commending the faithful and condemning those who had failed their duty

 

When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

( Matt. 25:34-46).

 

It is getting late and I have to get home before it gets dark but my last word my friends is: Which will you be, the sheep or the goats?

 

Oh maybe, one last word... to finalize my thoughts... The goats fared poorly as during their time on this planet they overlooked, or ignored someone in need. So God herded those goats to their eternal doom while the good sheep, well he prodded them on to their eternal reward... Yea!

 

*****************************************************************************************

All you Nazis, Fascists, MAGAs, Republicans, and all other categories of Americans who abuse the law, cause people of the world harm, who steal our data, who take away jobs and healthcare from millions, who kidnap and deport innocent people to foreign prisons, who take away women's rights, who think compassion is a weakness--YOUR day of judgement is coming. You will pay for your crimes against humanity, for lives lost.

Doing a project update on my blog today.

katelore.me

Strobist: AB800 with gridded HOBD-W overhead. AB1600 with gridded 60X30 softbox camera left. Triggered by Cybersync.

Strobist: AB800 with gridded HOBD-W overhead. AB1600 with gridded 60X30 softbox camera left. Triggered by Cybersync.

BLM ✊

In secondary school I spent half a year learning about the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1 for my history GCSE. The syllabus glorified the circumnavigation of sir Francis Drake, but completely disregarded the fact that he was heavily involved in some of Britain’s earliest slave trading voyages to West Africa.

 

We spent, at most, a few weeks learning about black history and even in these lessons British crimes where whitewashed and there was no British accountability. Learning about how this country was built on slavery should become a mandatory and thorough part of education, not just half heartedly thrown in during black history month by making us watch ‘Roots’. This is not enough and there needs to be more exposure of all the damage Britain has done and still is doing.

 

The UK is not innocent and in order to move forward we must reflect upon hatred that is so deeply engrained; it cannot be covered up. Just like this whole movement, it should not and will not be a temporary trend to shed a light on the oppression of black lives in history and today... it should instead be a permanent force that makes a change for the better on a constitutional, societal and educational level.

 

- £VA LEWI$

 

The above was sent to me for a documentary I am doing about people’s lives and what is their message, all uncut.

 

This image was taken during the Black Music Protest’s (Black Music Movement now) first tour in the country. Eva sang a song. It was so good that the crowd requested for more which she obliged.

 

Thank you for viewing. If you like please fav and leave a nice comment. Hope to see you here again. Have a wonderful day 😊

 

Old Steine, Brighton 🇬🇧

22nd July, 2020

Copyright Reserved to Noolelnool

Any member trying to use or copy or download photos in any non-official permission by the photographer presents to legal accountability

  

Got this bag as a present and now don't know what to do, it feels like a nightmare to think that people could think of me as a nice guy. If you are nice or good person every slip counts.

I want to keep being bad cause than I'm not accountable, it's the matter of the nature than, not badness.

 

btw all these nice guys I know sucks, they are sticky as a chewing gum at the sole, they all got some petty agenda licking someones heals to achieve some miserable nothing, so if you are one of them say: no more mr. nice guy :)

September 23, 2022: The Special Master met with DOJ and Trump attornies at Federal Court in Brooklyn. Rise and Resist was outside.

The accountability of fallen leaves

The accountability of fallen leaves.

Vagrant clouds across the night sky.

 

Accountability.

The insinuated and sorrowful.

 

And the corruption from within.

Submitting to be changed.

By a systemic imperative.

Endowed through pressure and lip service.

 

Read more: www.jjfbbennett.com/2021/08/systemic-delusion-modellhut.html

  

"High-Speed Traders in Britain Subject to New Accountability Rules" by CHAD BRAY via NYT t.co/BinJwFqWbj (via Twitter twitter.com/felipemassone/status/695242037315112961)

Governor Hogan Signs an Executive Order Regarding School Accountability Initiatives. by Joe Andrucyk at Governors Reception Room, 100 State Circle, Annapolis MD 21401

Kamera: Olympus Pen D3

Linse: F.Zuiko f1.7 / 32mm

Film: Kodak 5222 @ ISO 400

Kjemi: Fomadon Excel (stock / 25 min. @ 20°C)

 

UN PRC: Civil Society's Legal Push Against War in Palestine (Publ. 23 May 2025) [***Great speeches by Shir Hever and Jake Romm***]

 

Lima, Peru - 23 May 2025:

 

In a landmark development for international justice, the Republic of Peru has formally opened a criminal investigation against an Israeli national accused of participating in the genocide in Gaza, following a legal complaint submitted by the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF).

 

The complaint was filed by Julio César Arbizu González (b. 1974), a prominent Peruvian human rights lawyer and legal counsel to the Foundation.

 

The individual under investigation served as a combat engineering soldier in the Israeli military and is alleged to have played a direct role in the methodical and systematic destruction of civilian neighbourhoods in the Gaza Strip during the 2023–2024 military offensive.

 

The complaint, supported by audiovisual documentation and open-source intelligence, accuses the soldier of engaging in actions that constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide.

 

This step by Peruvian authorities is of immense significance in the global pursuit of justice. It is not only an affirmation of Peru’s adherence to the principles of international humanitarian and criminal law, but also a decisive recognition that universal jurisdiction must be exercised—not merely acknowledged—when those responsible for international crimes are found within a state’s territory.

 

Crucially, this case highlights the central role played by the Combat Engineering Corps of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in the implementation of Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian population of Gaza. Far from being a support unit, the Engineering Corps has acted as a core operational arm of destruction, systematically reducing civilian areas to rubble, erasing entire communities, and rendering large swathes of Gaza uninhabitable. This unit, through its actions, has become one of the primary mechanisms of the genocidal machine.

 

In response, the Hind Rajab Foundation has undertaken a comprehensive legal offensive targeting this formation. To date, the Foundation has prepared hundreds of individual case files against members of the Combat Engineering Corps. These cases are being progressively submitted before competent national jurisdictions in countries across multiple continents, with more filings to follow in the weeks and months ahead.

 

The opening of this investigation in Peru demonstrates that the HRF’s legal actions against travelling Israeli soldiers are not symbolic gestures—they yield tangible legal consequences. It is a powerful precedent, affirming that no perpetrator of atrocity crimes should feel shielded by distance or diplomatic complacency.

 

The Hind Rajab Foundation calls upon all states—particularly those that are parties to the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute—to follow Peru’s example by initiating proceedings against individuals implicated in the Gaza genocide who may enter their jurisdictions.

 

“Justice is not optional. Justice is imperative,” said Dyab Abou Jahjah (b. 1971), Chairman of the Hind Rajab Foundation. “This investigation marks a decisive step in the dismantling of Israeli impunity" he added.

 

The Hind Rajab Foundation will continue to pursue all responsible individuals—wherever they are, and for as long as it takes—because only justice can lay the foundation for lasting peace and human dignity in Palestine and beyond.

  

- Source: Hind Rajab Foundation -

Peru Opens Criminal Investigation into Israeli War Crimes Following Complaint by the Hind Rajab Foundation (Publ. 23 May 2025)

View large.

 

Special NOTE: On Feb. 8, 2012 I attached a comment, readable & easily discoverable on Page 2 of the comments below, that details the vast corporatist scheme, fronted by Jeb Bush, financed in part with hundreds of millions from Rupert Murdoch (FOX nooze), to privatize American public education & reduce it to 'virtual' schools - not to improve anything (as national & international educational research studies clearly show), but rather to become the final recipients of the taxes people pay so that they can skim huge profits off of the top while providing grotesquely inferior services & lots of lying propaganda to keep the public bamboozled. I beg everyone to read the report.

 

The McGuffey's Ecclectic Spelling Book was published in 1879.

 

Raymond Cyrus Hoiles (1878-1970) founded Freedom Communications, a newspaper publishing & broadcasting company that has never hesitated to shape the news to fit right wing ideology. When Hoiles was alive & roaring I lived in Orange County, California, home of the equally right wing Walt Disney & Walter Knott, & was frequently compelled to suffer people who agreed with Hoiles' constantly editorialized insistence that public education was a form of theft & communism that must at once be got rid of. Hoiles was motivated by his fundamentalist Christian persuasions, & quite serious. We should restrain our laughter at the abysmal stupidity of his example, because in many ways he & people like him won & are still winning control of public education. - To introduce the article below, I'll say a little about the Christian strategy.

 

For many years Orange County's teachers worked under a Draconian ruling that forbade the teaching of values. There is no way around the fact, however, that the statement, "Values may not be taught," is itself a value statement belonging to a class of propositions known as Epimenidean Paradoxes. A comparably illustrative sentence would be, "This is not a sentence." Or, a favorite of the best hypnotists, used when addressing a resistant subject, "Do not obey any instruction which I give you."

 

What, then, was intended by those who created the paradoxical Orange County law? Well, if any teacher dared to say or imply something that would be disagreeable to any person whose beliefs began & ended with church, flag & free-for-all capitalism, then that teacher could be charged with teaching values & be suspended. One family friend, a young man teaching at an elementary school in Anaheim, was charged, hounded, publicly disgraced, threatened with death & discharged from his post, immediately after which he died from a heart attack. The case was depicted in Life Magazine. His only crime was that he was Jewish. His wife, also a teacher, remained bereft & embittered the rest of her long life.

 

These people became increasingly invisible over time, largely by devising ever more clever ways for gaining control of both education policy & the public dialogue about education.

 

Ralph Reed, working for Pat Robertson & the Christian Coalition, devised the "stealth agenda" to place fundamentalists in every local school board in America. The plan helped select & fund candidates, who in accord with Reed's instructions never mentioned their religion or religious connections when campaigning for office. In 1983 Reed rigged an election at his university - he got started early, in other words. Recently we learned that Mr. Reed & Jack Abramoff were associate crooks. The revelation forced Reed to abandon his run to become the lieutenant governor of Georgia. Mr. Reed will not disappear, however. He remains a darling of the far Christian right, & owns Century Strategies, a dirty-tricks political consulting & lobbying organization. In 1999 Karl Rove got reed a nice contract with Enron, which was paying Reed $30,000 per month. And guess who recently went to Georgia to try to save poor Reed? Rudy Giuliani, who has the hots to be the next U.S. president & is pandering to the Christians so he can be their new burning Bush.

 

Stealthiness did not go away when the Christian Coalition folded & Reed went off on his own to rig elections for big bucks. Rather, the stealth moved into policy matters. For instance, all the phony propaganda claiming religious & private education is more successful, creating the excuse to promote vouchers (for which the motives are both religious & racist). Or, most recently, Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, which was sought by the Christians not because they believed all the testing of students would lead to improved education, but rather because they wanted teachers to be made too busy preparing students for endless tests about facts to find time to do the great evil thing, which is the teaching of concepts. Teaching concepts leads to teaching logic, scientific & other academic methodologies which by their nature instill respect for critical - read, skeptical - thinking. Dogmatists, advertisers & con men have equal cause to fear skepticism.

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

 

From: Truthdig.com

 

Taking Back Our Schools--and Fixing Them

 

Full text with links: www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060425_taking_back_our_sch...

 

Posted on Apr. 25, 2006

 

By Wellford Wilms

 

The recent news reported in The New York Times that schools are throwing out science, social studies and art to make time for drilling students in remedial math and reading is a sign of things gone terribly wrong. Former New York State Commissioner of Education Thomas Sobol told the Times that narrowing education to just math and reading would be akin to restricting violin students to playing scales day after day. “They’d lose their zest for music.” But most schools that serve poor populations, like those in Cuero, Texas, are squeezed to meet federal math and reading standards. Cuero Superintendent Henry Lind told the paper, “When you have so many hours per day and you’re behind in some area that’s being hammered on, you have to work on that.”

 

But by the looks of things, hammering students for higher test scores isn’t making much of a difference. Most students have already lost their zest for learning. How do we know? In Los Angeles, upwards of 50% of Latino and African American students never finish high school. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

I’ve been a professor of education at UCLA for more than 25 years and am convinced that despite the fads that come and go, nothing has put a dent in the public schools’ failure to educate inner-city children. In fact, things are getting worse. But I am also convinced that we’ve been looking in the wrong places for solutions. My own research across a wide array of organizations—corporations, trade unions, public schools, colleges, teacher unions and police agencies—suggests another way of looking at the problem and that solutions will come from a new direction.

 

This essay is a proposition—one that I hope will spark a lively debate among Truthdig readers and inform policy leaders. Future essays will examine Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaign to take over the public schools, analyze whether teacher unions can be a force for productive change, and expose promising ways to rebuild public investment in the schools.

 

Let’s start with Jonathan Kozol’s new book, “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.” It is a scathing indictment of American social policy that banned racial segregation in public schools in 1955 and then turned a blind eye to its implementation. Today, Kozol says, schools are more segregated than ever. But he fails to explain why resegregation has occurred. Because Kozol overlooks the root causes of the problem, his solutions—spending more money on dysfunctional schools and wishing for a social mandate to desegregate the schools—miss the point.

 

To be sure the problems are undeniable. Kozol examines the appalling condition of big-city schools. In school after school we see children who are brimming with potential but who are walled off from the larger society and abandoned by the schools. Most middle-class white Americans simply cannot comprehend the horrid schools that Kozol describes. Ceilings fall in, toilets are filthy, libraries, music and arts have been stripped away. Teachers in these schools, who are paid 40% less than teachers in the suburbs, are forced to teach “scripted” lessons that are written for children who are deemed incapable of learning.

 

It is all part of the latest reform pushed by the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind initiative, a reform aimed at the singular pursuit of increasing test scores. Learning has been stripped of its intrinsic meaning and reduced to simplistic steps—“Authentic Writing,” “Active Listening,” “Accountable Talk”—that hamper teachers in teaching anything but how to take a test. Behind it all is an attempt to impose control, much as mass production techniques were used a century ago, to standardize instruction to fit new immigrants to the system.

 

Meanwhile, millions of children are failing. In nearly half of the high schools in America’s 100 largest districts, fewer than 50% of students graduate in four years. Most of these students are from poor Latino and African-American families. And from 1993 to 2000 the number of failing schools has mushroomed by 75%. Mayor Villaraigosa calls Los Angeles’ high dropout rates “numbers that should put a chill down your spine.”

 

The reasons, Kozol argues, are lack of money and racial discrimination that produce inferior and segregated schools. No doubt this is partly true. We have tried to desegregate the schools for a half-century and failed. Middle-class white parents have voted for individual freedom with their feet, enrolling their children in private schools, leaving the public schools more segregated than ever. The same is true for middle-class black families. Gail Foster, an educator who has studied black independent schools, was quoted in 2004 in The New York Times as saying: “Many of the most empowered parents and families are removing their children. What’s left, in even working-class communities, are schools filled with the least empowered families. Families with the least parent involvement to offer, families with the least help with homework to offer. There’s been a continual outflow for at least 10 years, and it isn’t stopping now.”

 

More money is not the answer either. Kozol points to wide disparities in educational expenditures ranging from $11,700 per student in New York City to $22,000 in suburban Manhasset. Disturbing as that is, study after study shows that equalizing money does not necessarily equalize learning.

 

In 1966, sociologist James Coleman conducted the most extensive study ever made of desegregating education and found that what mattered most in students’ learning was the economic status of their peers rather than the racial makeup of the school. He also found that school funding was not closely related to students’ achievement—their families’ economic status was far more predictive. Coleman’s findings were controversial and led to a bitter debate, but they have been replicated many times. Daniel Patrick Moynihan summed it up best when he commented shortly after Coleman’s groundbreaking study, “We should begin to see that the underlying reality is not race but social class.”

 

Since social class matters because money follows privilege, and since desegregation will take generations to eradicate, what can be done now? Are poor children doomed to attend grossly inadequate schools? Surely not. We must find ways to remove the influences that have crippled the schools. Money must be diverted from bloated bureaucracies that snuff out innovation. Instead it must go directly to schools where principals and teachers can influence what is taught and what children learn, and help bring parents back into the fold. Otherwise, it is going down a rat hole.

 

Parents have a significant role to play in their children’s education, but their voices have been largely silenced. Over the last 40 years, we have witnessed the decline of civic involvement and the growing dominance of self-interest over the greater good, a social deterioration that sociologist Robert Putnam calls “hollowing out” in his 2000 book “Bowling Alone.” One result, as the old saying goes, is that “the rich get richer” and the poor fall ever further behind in crumbling schools.

 

Over the last 25 years, education in general has been taken from ordinary citizens and teachers by politicians, administrators, union leaders, publishers, test makers, consultants, university professors, hardware and software developers and the media, each playing its part in keeping alive the illusion of reform. All in all, this $1-trillion industry has replaced the common interest, and no one, it seems, can muster the will to rein it in.

 

Local control is only a dim memory. Decisions now come from the top—from the federal and state governments, school boards and high-level administrators who have little knowledge of what goes on in the classroom. Teachers are left out of these decisions, carrying on the best they can, safe in the assumption that the newest fad, like those before it, will blow over. Parents are all but forgotten.

 

While command-and-control management may seem to produce results in the short run, it strips schools of the capacity to develop the stable leadership that is necessary to sustain success. Principals are besieged with demands from district offices and from the educational fads that emanate from publishers and university researchers. Many principals know that they put their careers in peril unless they do what their bosses want. One elementary school principal told me, “District directives undermine our own abilities to think for ourselves, to believe in what we see and know.” When schools discover something that works, it is rarely sustained because they lack authority or stable leadership.

 

In 1969 when I worked for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, I monitored the schools in impoverished Ocean Hill-Brownsville in New York City. The local school board hired a charismatic superintendent, who fired incompetent teachers and hired young and idealistic ones. The firings set the local board at odds with the huge teachers’ union, which demanded due process for the fired teachers. The superintendent, Rhody McCoy, was convinced that good teachers had to respect the children they taught. He put it in plain words: “If you’re convinced that this kid is doomed by nature or by something else to lead a shrunken and curtailed life, then you’re basically incompetent to teach that child.” The experiment worked. Observing classrooms left no doubt in my mind that students were learning. Eager first-graders sat attentively on the floor in semicircles shouting out answers to fraction problems and reading aloud. The schools buzzed with excitement as parent helpers streamed in and out of classrooms. But in a bitter power struggle the board seized authority and the experiment ended.

 

Years later, in 1985, Deborah Meier, a passionate educator who founded Harlem’s Central Park East Secondary School, achieved stunning successes that led the school to be celebrated as a model alternative school in Time magazine. But it could not be sustained beyond Meier’s unique leadership. Today, 10 years after Meier left, a respected children’s advocacy group, Insideschools and Advocates for Children, reports that the Harlem school “…has fallen on hard times in recent years with rapid staff turnover, low staff morale and uneven discipline.”

 

In risk-averse environments like public schools, few principals will stick out their necks, because they don’t want to buck the bosses downtown. Courageous and visionary principals like Rhody McCoy and Deborah Meier keep coming. But charismatic leadership is no match for heavy-handed district management, which always wins out.

 

Take Foshay Learning Center in Los Angeles, for example. In 1989, Howard Lappin took over a failing middle school. With the help of teachers and an infusion of money, Lappin wrested control from the district and transformed Foshay. The school expanded into a K-12 “learning center” and became largely autonomous of the district’s bureaucratic requirements. Teachers and administrators decided who would be hired and what would be taught. Foshay succeeded, and in 2000 its high school was selected by Newsweek as one of the 100 best in America. But in 2001 Lappin retired, and his unique leadership was lost. Today Foshay is being threatened with sanctions by the district and the county because gains in students’ test scores have stalled. As the school has fallen under the district’s “one-size-fits all” bureaucratic requirements, the impact has been to undermine the once vibrant teacher leadership that made the school so enviable.

 

The problem with public education is not with the teachers, or with the children, but the way we organize the schools. Probably the greatest casualties are teachers themselves, who are forced to accept decisions by authorities about teaching that they know to be nonsense. One professor interviewed by Kozol said that forcing an absurdity on teachers teaches something: acquiescence. For example, in study after study, teachers report that relying on test scores as sole marks of student achievement and teaching scripted lessons destroy students’ natural love of learning. And such practices also erode teachers’ professional authority, which is fundamental to student learning.

 

Why is it so hard to foster the only kind of reform that really works, which is right in the schoolhouse? Because politicians, school board members and administrators are under intense pressure to produce immediate results, i.e., higher and higher test scores—a goal that is pursued through directives from districts with little input of principals, teachers and parents. Superintendents serve at the pleasure of school boards, and most board members are elected or appointed and have limited terms of office. As test scores have become the measure of educational quality, everyone is under immense pressure to show fast results or be turned out.

 

No wonder that school boards hire superintendents who promise to deliver quick results. But few do. Superintendents last on average only three or four years. Many are thwarted by outmoded bureaucracies that were designed a century ago using top-down control practiced in American industry to mass-produce learning. Within these organizations, power has quietly accumulated, making them all but impervious to outside influence. Sid Thompson, former superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, told me: “Trying to change the district is like trying to change the direction of a fast-moving freight train. You might knock it off course for a moment, but before you know it it’s rattling right down the tracks again.”

 

Frustration and suspicion about who might emerge from the shadows to sabotage their plans often lead superintendents to jealously guard their power. In 2002, Day Higuchi, then president of United Teachers Los Angeles, the Los Angeles teacher union, had high hopes for working with the school district’s new “can-do” superintendent, Roy Romer. Higuchi hoped that Romer would endorse a new union initiative called Lesson Study, a plan to help teachers work collectively to improve classroom lessons. At a breakfast meeting that I attended, Higuchi presented Romer with an invitation to work with the union to develop and spread Lesson Study across the district. When Higuchi finished, Romer flipped over his paper placemat and with a red felt pen drew a box with an S in it. “That’s me,” he said. Beneath he drew 11 boxes with smaller s’s in them, representing the 11 local superintendents, and below that, a number of small boxes with roofs, representing schools and teachers. Then, pulling his face near to Higuchi’s, he drew bold red arrows pointing downward from the top. Romer jabbed his pen in the air to accentuate each word: “You cannot usurp my authority to manage this district!” It was a dumbfounding moment, one that revealed the true underside of the use of power. Here was a chance for a new superintendent to forge a small but significant step with the union, but Romer, who recently announced his resignation, explained that he was “in a hurry.” He clearly had little time for ideas that were at odds with his own. In the end his refusal to work with the union undermined the possibility of creating a broader base of power that could transcend self-interest.

 

Nor are the unions exempt from self-interest. A few years ago I helped establish a national group of union presidents called TURN (Teacher Union Reform Network) who were dedicated to remaking their unions as forces to improve education. One way was to cooperate with administrators and encourage teachers to use their classroom know-how to redesign teaching at the schoolhouse. But hostility and mistrust run deep. The union leaders became nervous, fearing that fellow unionists would attack them for “collaborating” with the enemy and that if the effort to collaborate failed they would share the blame. Don Watley, president of the New Mexico Federation of Educational Employees, commented: “It’s like the Normandy landing. We’ve got the best troops in the world. We’ve got the best officers in the world. And we’ve got the best equipment in the world. But at 0800 when we hit the beach half of us are going to get killed!” Sadly, in the years to come, the ingrained mistrust, and the unpredictable dance of union politics, prevented these unionists from becoming a positive force in educational reform. Instead, they have been reduced to stockpiling power, much as the Soviets and Americans stockpiled nuclear weapons during the Cold War, to oppose any hostile moves the other side might make.

 

So what can be done to break the standoff between teacher unions and districts? How can teachers’ professional authority be restored? How can parents be awakened and brought back into the fold? Experience shows that it can be done. Schools such as Harlem’s Central Park East Secondary, Los Angeles’ Foshay Learning Center, those in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, and many others attest to the fact that schools can be made into safe places where children learn. Sustaining them is the hard part.

 

There is little doubt that trying to build good schools with command-and-control management doesn’t work. School boards, superintendents and union officials need to clear the obstacles—unnecessary bureaucratic requirements and outmoded work rules—to make innovation at the schoolhouse possible. These top-level educational leaders also must make resources available to support new ways of teaching. Jonathan Kozol has it right. Teaching is the only reform that counts and it can be done only at the schoolhouse by teachers, principals, parents and students working together.

 

Turning school districts upside down will also mean turning a century of top-down management on its head. But where is such bold leadership to be found? One promising place is among big-city mayors. But they must resist trying to take over the schools, as they did in New York, Chicago and Boston with mixed results at best. Instead, popular mayors could use their influence and visibility to tell the truth about the condition of education and to build a popular consensus about how change must occur.

 

In the next essay I am going to examine what mayors can do. Waiting for the schools to be saved by someone else is nonsense. Only concerted local action offers a chance. Doubters should recall Margaret Mead’s observation: “Never doubt that a small group of concerned people can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

 

A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.

Copyright © 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.

 

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Jan. 29, 2023. Somerville, MA.

Hundreds of people rallied at Somerville High School to demand justice and accountability for Sayed Arif Faisal who was shot and killed by Cambridge police and Tyre Nichols who was killed by Memphis police officers. Arif was a graduate of Somerville High, a UMass Boston student, and Mystic Mural participant.

© 2023 Marilyn Humphries

 

The writing's on the wall

All empires and tyrants will fall

Too many of us have been killed

We don't need another wake-up call

Out in the streets we gave it our all

Watered by blood and tears, the streets bloomed with rage

The cavalry came, how can we forget

We were the ones they were ordered to attack

All the tear gas made it clear

What we can do when we overcome our fear

Justice and humanity are the truths that inspire

Our desire to set the night on fire

« If you appreciate my work and would like to support me becoming an independent photographer, become a Patreon supporter at www.patreon.com/alexdehaas, or buy me a coffee at www.buymeacoffee.com/alexdehaas :) »

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.

20230217, MSC, Munich Security Conference, Bayerischer Hof: Main Stage I: Panel Discussion.Against Lawlessness: Ensuring Accountability.Conference Hall: (from left to right) Nadia Murad.Founder and President, Nadia's Initiative; Goodwill Ambassador, Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking, United Nations; Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2018; Lindsey O. Graham Senator, Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, United States of America; Karim Khan Prosecutor, International Criminal Court; Kaja Kallas.Prime Minister, Republic of Estonia, David Miliband (Moderator).President and Chief Executive Officer, International Rescue Committee; former Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom; Member of the Advisory Council, Munich Security Conference.

This is a section of HWY 41 that was devastated by the Ferguson Fire, going through Yosemite National Park. I posted a picture previously from a different location. It’s 9 images in 1 stop increments, layered in Photmatix Pro 5 (Default Preset), final edit in Lightroom CC.

 

Last week I posted “Inyo Face” and told what it’s like to live in Yosemite’s Housing. I mentioned my neighbors being allowed to harass and mob me daily. When you’re a Target, you are harassed, bullied, mobbed and intimidated beyond belief. I say they are allowed, because that is exactly what is happening in Yosemite National park. No one here is held accountable and I will give you more examples.

The 40 some year old woman that threw a 2 yo temper-tantrum, in front of my room as I had the door open, editing photos, is not held accountable. Two days after I posted “Inyo Face”, she and her roommate tried to set me up. I was leaving for work, there is a dresser that’s been in the hallway for weeks. This dresser was located by her room to funnel me towards her door. As I walk down the hall and squeeze pass the dresser, she steps out of her room. The horror and sight will be embedded in my retinas forever. She steps out of her room and almost into me, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Her roommate had just stepped into the hall from the kitchen and was behind me; to witness in case I acted out of character. These two know when I leave and come home, pretty much everyone in my building does. This was a conspired, premeditated act, to get me terminated or lose my housing privileges. The following day; she waits in the parking lot to put on a big show as I come home. The same housing staff that rallies my neighbors into a stupid-fest frenzy, was backing his car up to fill my face full of car exhaust. The 40 something, temper-tantrum woman follows me into our building, waits until I get to my room, then says “hi, how are you doing”, gloating. I ignored her; it pissed her off, so she slams the door hard enough to shake walls and floors. Yep, this is what these people do, they harass you, then get “Inyo Face”. The following day; the same housing staff was here to rally her and the woman that used to live directly across the hall into another frenzy. I was trying to take a nap, they were in the kitchen yelling, being noisy as possible. They would come to and from the kitchen stomping through the hall and extremely at my door. I got up and opened my door; the housing guy rushes and hides in his janitor room, the others rushed into the kitchen thinking I wouldn’t go in there, I did. Same people, same skits, they went rushing to their rooms.

The roommate that helped temper-tantrum woman try and step into me; is now stalking in the hall. I leave for work, photos, laundry room; she steps out of her room to walk pass me. And the woman I mentioned before that did the same, 6 times in one day; she crawled back out from under her rock. I’m trying to be nice here; I really do like rocks. Remember when you were I grade, Jr and High School; you had some little piece-of-shit that pushed your buttons every day. Then, that piece-of-shit would hide behind the teacher or someone else. Here in Yosemite they hide behind the Superintendents Office.

You see folks, these people have been doing this for years. There is management that has been in place for years, they not only allows this Toxic behavior; some also participate. They have every excuse you could ever think of already in place. I’ve been here almost 10 years and have never seen it so bad. Two nights ago; a woman who cursed me out in the hall a month ago, was using a small child in front of my door, trying to carry on a conversation with her right at my door, to distract me from the evening news. She borrowed the little girl from one of the other perps in the building. It’s an adult building and no children live here, other than the adults that act like them. I want to repeat this so you fully get the scope of how unethically low these people will stoop. THEY WILL USE CHILDREN TO HARASS THEIR TARGET! I've witnessed it repeatedly. Oh, and the smokers are back at work and home; waiting to blow smoke in my face at every chance.

I served this country proudly for almost 10 years, my father fought during the Korean war. Is this what we (the millions) served this country for? So, we could come home and be tormented beyond belief. I used to hardly ever talk about my military service. My medals, awards, accolades are all stored in boxes. I don’t have a Veteran’s plate on my car. My father never talked about his time during the Korean War, even after I joined. We didn’t or want to talk about it. Now that I have many of Yosemite’s Toxic community trying to discredit me daily; the gloves are coming off bitches. I do not condone violence in any way and will use the truth and the evidence I’ve collected over the many years.

Folks, I wasn’t the highest decorated soldier in my unit for petting puppies, and I do love me some puppies. And, I wasn’t awarded Noncommissioned Officer of the Year for being a dumbass. I did live recons in live combat zones, behind enemy lines. I gathered information, detailed information; I was awarded medals gathering this information; you know, secret shit. Now here’s the kicker folks; I report information on Yosemite’s Toxic employees and residents; I’m treated like shit. I have mangers and HR lying right to my face, giving me excuses a 5-year-old would laugh at. I witness fraud, waste, abuse, theft, defacing government property, tons and tons of recyclable items going to landfills daily, harassment, bullying, intimidation, wrongful termination, incompetence, but it’s me that’s wrong.

There are lot of good dedicated people that do work here, but are overshadowed by the EXTREAM TOXIC living and working conditions in Yosemite.

I want everyone to understand this is not about me, I don’t want your sympathy. I want Yosemite’s Superintendent to be accountable. I want people to be treated with dignity and respect. I want those involved in this Toxic Mobbing, to be removed from this and every National Park. Do you really think these people are Stewards of this magnificent place? It’s embarrassing covering for them day after day, or to explain to guest; that I’ve yet to meet someone that truly cares. I’ve met plenty that will lie right to your face and tell you they do.

We can’t keep treating each other like this, period. I thought I live in the United States, but apparently, its laws don’t apply in Yosemite National Park. If you want to know the truth about Yosemite, look through my photostream. I will continue to expose it weekly or more often. If I see change in a good way, I will report that too. As I wrote this and edited this photo; I had to keep my door open to keep my neighbors from stomping at my door. As I did; the many involved in this harassment walked pass my room repeatedly to just annoy me.

Mr. Superintendent what do you need to see clearly?

 

What is happening in Yosemite is WRONG!

 

Yosemite’s current Superintendent is: Michael T Reynolds

 

Nominated Director National Parks Services is: David Vela

  

• The truth about Yosemite 2016 to current 11-2-18: www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Yosemite-Chief-Retiring-Ami...

 

Thank you for visiting my photostream

 

Brisbane August 10, 2014 Queensland, Australia. We fly home later today.

 

After four years working closely with Yayoi Kusama and the Public Art Unit in Brisbane, Sydney based Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery were finally able to announce the opening of the epic outdoor sculpture Eyes are Singing Out at Brisbane’s Queen Elizabeth II Courts of Law on the 30th of August.

 

Composed of 350 enamelled steel eyes secured onto a 90 metre long arcing concrete wall, the sculpture is the only permanent artwork of Yayoi Kusama’s in Australia and is the largest artwork by this significant artist internationally.

  

The various eye designs that are utilised for the installation were created by Kusama using ink and brush and then translated into the steel and enamel pieces that cover the wall which spans one entire city centre block between Roma and George Streets.

 

Installed in conjunction with the construction of the new Queen Elizabeth II Courts of Law building as designed by Professor John Hockings of the highly acclaimed architectural firm Architectus, Eyes are Singing Out is a poignant reminder of the power and responsibility bestowed upon the guardians of law and justice.

 

”In a time when public accountability is of the utmost importance Kusama’s eyes not only look back at you, they surround the courts with looking” explains Jay Younger, the curator of the project. “Metaphorically the process of justice is made transparent through the building’s glass façade to the unblinking eyes, forever watching.”

 

Often described as the “window to the soul”, the eye is presented by Kusama as not only for looking out from within, but also for looking in from without. In her artist’s statement, Kusama says that “There is no end to the glorification of the peoples around the world. Their beautiful souls, having turned into hundreds of millions of eyes, continue to watch our future.”

 

Artist’s Statement:

 

"The numerous eyes that we dreamed about have spread into the whole sky, carrying with them a message of visual sensation.

 

It is a message of world peace and the overflowing happiness of humankind we have been praying for all the time.

 

There is no end to the glorification of the peoples around the world.

 

Their beautiful souls, having turned into hundreds of millions of eyes, continue to watch our future.

 

These eyes will keep on singing out louder and louder that love is forever and infinite, to the ends of the universe."

For more Info: www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/829205/yayoi-kusamas-epi...

and accountable to no one.

 

One for my "Tarnished" Album

www.flickr.com/photos/twoblackcatscom/albums/721576761905...

 

Please : Right Click and select "Open link in new tab"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ2ANR_vF2E

 

Overload - Yard Act

 

The overload of discontent

The constant burden of making sense

It won't relent, it won't repent

How to remain in dissonance

The overload of discontent

The constant burden of making sense

It won't relent, it won't repent

How to remain in dissonance

  

Show some respect and listen to my advice

'Cause if you don't challenge me on anything

You'll find I'm actually very nice

Are you listening?

I'm actually very fucking nice

  

See also:

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World a film by Werner Herzog.

 

20230217, MSC, Munich Security Conference, Bayerischer Hof: Main Stage I: Panel Discussion.Against Lawlessness: Ensuring Accountability.Conference Hall: Kaja Kallas Prime Minister, Republic of Estonia

"Guardians of Trust And Accountability"

This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:

www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-679

 

AVIATION SAFETY: FAA's Risk-Based Oversight for Repair Stations Could Benefit from Additional Airline Data and Performance Metrics

 

Note: The electronic version of this report was reissued September 2, 2016, to correct errors related to figure 1 on page 10.

 

Note: The United States and Canada have a bilateral aviation safety agreement under which FAA and the Transport Canada Civil Aviation Directorate (TCCA) each grant mutual recognition of the other's Part 145 repair station certificates. FAA does not require Canadian repair stations (referred to as Approved Maintenance Organizations) to obtain a FAA-issued repair station certificate to conduct work on U.S. commercial aircraft as long as a repair station maintains a Canadian repair station certificate and is inspected by TCCA. Because of this mutual recognition, there are no FAA-certificated repair stations in Canada.

 

Grab your coat and get your hat

Leave your worry on the doorstep

Just direct your feet

To the sunny side of the street

[Songwriters - Jimmy McHugh; Dorothy Fields]

 

perhaps it's time for positive direction and action in our world? ... we can't force "the big guys" but we can do our part!

Ukraine and the Netherlands are working on joint defense production and continue preparing the necessary legal infrastructure to hold all those responsible for Russian aggression accountable. This was stated by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy following his meeting with Prime Minister of the Netherlands Dick Schoof in The Hague.

The Head of State expressed gratitude for the principled and unwavering support of Ukraine, which affects the ability to protect lives. The President also highlighted the recent EUR 700 million defense package, support for the PURL initiative, and assistance for energy resilience.

 

"We are working towards joint defense production as well, including modern drones, in Ukraine and in the Netherlands. Ukraine is defending its independence, defending the lives of its people, and therefore, every step of support now carries special significance," said Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

In recent days, the Head of State briefed Dick Schoof and other partners on the situation on the battlefield. Russia constantly seeks to create a false impression at the front, but Ukrainian warriors are accomplishing incredible feats and defending positions, no matter how difficult the circumstances.

"Putin has never counted the lives of his own people or his losses at the front. And now – when he wants to use every meter as an argument in negotiations – those losses matter even less to him. Russian assaults are indeed tough, but we are holding our positions – and this helps us greatly, particularly in our political dialogue among leaders, certainly first and foremost with our partners from the United States," the President emphasized.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy also stressed that Ukrainian and Dutch teams continue preparing the necessary legal infrastructure. Our country, on its part, will do everything to identify and hold Russian murderers accountable.

 

"But it is also essential that international law functions and ensures legal accountability and appropriate compensation for losses. The Netherlands is helping us in this regard. It is crucial that all justice mechanisms work – from a Tribunal on Russian aggression to the Claims Commission," the Head of State emphasized.

Dick Schoof noted that the Netherlands has expressed willingness to host, under the auspices of the Council of Europe, an International Claims Commission for Ukraine.

"Our ultimate goal is a sustainable and just peace for Ukraine. And this can only be achieved simultaneously with ensuring the rule of law. Without justice for the millions of Ukrainians affected by Putin’s aggression, we open the door to further violence," emphasized the Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

Another half a pound off.

 

16.5 lbs in total.