Kamera: Nikon FE2

Linse: Nikkor-S Auto 35mm f2.8 (1974)

Film: Kodak 5222 @ ISO 400 -1EV

Kjemi: Xtol (stock / 9 min. @ 20°C)

 

Monday 30 December 2024: My New Year resolutions for 2025:

 

1. Do not buy or use any goods or services coming from Israel or their Occupied Palestinian Territories. Boycott Israel - the most racist, fascist, immoral and genocidal apartheid country in the world.

 

For me, this is a simple operation and will only involve my total boycott of the Israeli online genealogy platforms MyHeritage and Geni. I have no interest in any other consumer product coming out of Israel. But many of you may have heard of Ahava Dead Sea products coming from the Occupied Territories. Don’t buy it, don’t use it.

 

2. Do not buy or use any American goods or services as far as it is humanly possible today. They only use their income for WAR. The only way to stop this MADNESS is to stop buying and using their goods and services. Money to the USA is money to Israel.

 

This task is not as simple as boycotting only Israeli goods and products, but I will do my best - just like the USA has done it’s best in supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, providing Israel with weapons and incredible amounts of money, abusing their powers in the UN Security Council, working against international law and justice, supporting apartheid and never ever actually supporting or working to establish a Free Sovereign Palestine.

 

Israel seems to have become a way for all the corrupt American politicians in their archaic 'democratic' system to get an extra income under the table, directly stealing from the people, and for the American War Industries to thrive and grow; it is a Perpetuum mobile where US politicians donate money to Israel and where Israel in return use those money given to buy off US politicians [tax-deductible] and buying their weapons to slaughter Palestinians.

 

Americans get their money back [but first, some commercials] [without paying taxes] [under the table] and the Israelis get their fascist religious extremist zionist dreams come true. Incidentally, Israel's bizarre dreams of grandeur are closely linked to the American voters' archaic dreams of extremist christian zionist Eschatology. These people all belong in the Bronze Age.

 

USA has for so many years since the end of the Cold War been endangering all of Europe’s security by abusing the NATO alliance (this abuse started back in 1999 with the bombing of Yugoslavia!) presiding over a European proxy war with Russia via Ukraine - a war that now even involves North Korea (WTF!) and has killed hundreds of thousands of lives in Europe and flooded Western Europe with refugees once again! It needs to stop, and our own nations and politicians who are hostages to the American gangster regime can do no other - so therefore I can no longer justify MY feeble hard-earned money feeding this warmongering genocidal nation. It has to stop, and the only way I can make a miniscule difference is by boycotting American goods and services.

 

- First on my list: Mark Zuckerberg (1984) and his his Facebook and all of Facebook's subsidiaries through Meta. Easy. Done. Nothing!

 

- Second on my list: Larry Page (b. 1973) and Sergey Brin’s (b. 1973) Google and Alphabet Inc. - this is not so easy. This company with their search engine, Gmail and their subsidiary companies like YouTube and Android have infested the whole world. Instead of Google's search engine I have been using DuckDuckGo for years - but this is also an American company so my search will go on for something more safe and European.

 

As for Gmail, I am using Swiss Proton Mail instead but I have yet to to make the cut final. I hope I will be able to do so during the course of 2025.

 

As for YouTube, I have no clear alternative right now that is not American.

 

Android is easy - I never used it. But instead of Android I use Apple - which I feel is safer - but here is the problem - it is an American company. Maybe the solution is to go full-on dumbphone and get a Swiss Punkt. I might in fact do that.

 

What do you really need an American ‘smartphone’ for anyways? Life is analogue.

 

More American companies and platforms to boycott:

 

- Amazon Inc. - I can get most of my (paper) books and other stuff I usually buy on Amazon locally anyways. Amazon is a convenient marketplace, that's true - but it’s American and I’d rather suffer a little inconvenience just to not let the Americans get my money.

 

- eBay - again, such a great platform and marketplace for (in my case) photographic camera equipment and whatnot - but then again - if I could buy directly from Japanese camera stores with ease and no American involvement I would do so in a heartbeat without using American eBay. Let’s hope the Japanese evolve their international trade in this regard.

 

As for FILM there's plenty of European film providers; hey, we were first with film and photography anyways and have long traditions still thriving and living here. But I do love Kodak 5222. This is a problem - but at least I only use European chemicals these days. Foma and Tetenal.

 

- PayPal - also a very convenient platform to use, but goddamned this is the brainchild of Elon Musk (b. 1971) and I’ll do my very best to never support that fascist bastard. You’ll never see me driving an American car either, and certainly not a Tesla. Most unethical car ever.

 

- Airbnb - an American company that makes it easy to rent a room or a house for anyone in all those illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories - it's just as sick as if American tourists through a 'tourist agency' could come and live in Nazi german confiscated Norwegian flats, houses and cottages to relax or just 'experience' Nazi occupied Norway in 1941. This is exactly what Airbnb is making possible in the Occupied Palestinian Territories these days - and I shall never, ever use Airbnb.

 

OK, that’s a lot but we’re not finished yet.

 

- Disney - Easy. They destroyed Star Wars. Done!

 

- Pepsi and Coca-Cola - Done. Never again. There are many other local alternatives. Easy!

 

- McDonald’s and Burger King - Done. Easy. Probably the worst hamburgers in the world anyways.

 

So when it comes to consumer products that you get in the general store, there are two really big and awful companies that I will do my best to never buy their products ever again. These two companies are the American-owned Mondelez International and the Swiss company Nestlé together with all their subsidiaries and brands.

 

Things not to buy (applicable to me):

 

- Douwe Egberts coffee (Mondelez)

- Toblerone chocolate (Mondelez)

- Heinz products (Mondelez)

 

- L’Oréal and ALL their subsidiary products Garnier, Maybelline, Biotherm, Lancôme, Prada, Yves Saint Laurent, Kérastase, Guy Laroche, Redken (Nestlé)

 

- Nespresso (Nestlé)

- Nescafé (Nestlé)

- Nesquik (Nestlé)

- Nestea (Nestlé)

 

- Smarties chocolates (Nestlé)

- After Eight chocolate (Nestlé)

- Maggi products (Nestlé)

- Purina dogfood (Nestlé)

 

[and Friskies catfood for those of you with cats - also Nestlé]

 

- Freia chocolate products (Mondelez) [The chocolate that could never ever ever be sold to Sweden otherwise we would lose our independence AGAIN - but which could easily be sold to America instead. Remember all those Edvard Grieg Freia commercials?]

 

- Friele coffee (Mondelez) in Bergen which also produce ALL the norwegian COOP cooffee products and ALL the swedish Gevalia coffee brand products

 

- Marabou candy and ALL their chocolate products (Mondelez)

 

Allright, so already quite an extensive list and that’s not half of it.

 

Therefore at the end, I want to inform you all about the Boycat app - the Ethical Shopping and Boycott Companion. Use it.

 

And if you have more suggestions of Israeli and American companies, products and services to boycott, do let me know. I’m eager ears.

 

PS: I am fully aware that Flickr is American. There are many good things coming out of America. I hope in 2025 USA can change their ways.

The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque (Arabic: جَامِع ٱلشَّيْخ زَايِد ٱلْكَبِيْر Jāmiʿ Aš-Šaykh Zāyid Al-Kabīr) is a mosque located in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. It is the country's largest mosque, and is the key place of worship for daily Islamic prayers. There is a smaller replica of this mosque in Surakarta, a city in Indonesia. The late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan built this mosque to convey historic consequence and to embody the Islamic message of peace, tolerance and diversity.

 

The Grand Mosque was constructed between 1994 and 2007 and was inaugurated in December 2007. The building complex measures approximately 290 by 420 m (950 by 1,380 ft), covering an area of more than 12 hectares (30 acres), excluding exterior landscaping and vehicle parking. The main axis of the building is rotated about 12° south of true west, aligning it in the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

 

The project was launched by the late president of the U.A.E., Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who wanted to establish a structure that would unite the cultural diversity of the Islamic world with the historical and modern values of architecture and art. In 2004, Sheikh Zayed died and was buried in the courtyard of the mosque.

 

Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Center (SZGMC) offices are located in the west minarets. SZGMC manages the day-to-day operations and serves as a center of learning and discovery through its educational cultural activities and visitor programs. The library, located in the northeast minaret, serves the community with classic books and publications addressing a range of Islamic subjects: sciences, civilization, calligraphy, the arts, and coins, including some rare publications. The collection comprises material in a broad range of languages, including Arabic, English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Korean. For two years running, it was voted the world's second favourite landmark by TripAdvisor.

 

The Grand Mosque has been a significant destination for visiting foreign leaders during official state visits to the UAE. Notable visitors include Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

My VP quest got me ten winners in the end, involving routes 52, 98, 260, 302 and 460.

My 302 move took me as far north as Blackbird Hill, and this is VP536 passing St Andrew's church as it arrives at the Tudor Gardens stop.

I leave behind three, so I'll be back! 9/3/17

 

TEH1236 Charing Cross-Marble Arch 139

ADH21 Marble Arch-Shepherds Bush 94

VP515 Shepherds Bush-Savoy Circus 260

DE1898 Savoy Circus-Park Royal 95

DE1794 Park Royal-East Acton 95

VP576 East Acton-Adelaide Grove 260

VP578 Adelaide Grove-Cen Middx Hospital 260

DE1659 CMH-Harlesden 228

DE1630 Harlesden-CMH 187

VP539 CMH-Willesden 260

VP541 Willesden-Tudor Gardens 302

VP536 Tudor Gardens-Willesden 302

VP521 Willesden-Golders Green 460

VP524 Golders Green-Cricklewood 460

TEH2075 Cricklewood-Kilburn 332

VP552 Kilburn-Willesden 98

VP571 Willesden-Kensal Rise 52

DE1622 Kensal Rise-Warwick Avenue 187

LUL 3251 Warwick Avenue-Charing Cross

The “Real” KOM League

Flash Report for

Week of October 9, 2016

  

On October 6, 2016 a preliminary report was posted at: www.flickr.com/photos/60428361@N07/30037985332/ At that time I mentioned that some updating would be done in the next 24 hours. One of the things mentioned in the report was Billy Hoeft and the relationship to Don Biebel. In the report Biebel was urged to get in touch and provide some comments about his boyhood friend and high school teammate. Biebel read the report, at his Sacramento, CA estate, and it started a three way e-mail party among him, Bill O’Donnell of Durham, NC and myself, right here in Columbia, MO. Like most things that get mentioned in these reports they expand. The story turns out to involve a number of young men from Oshkosh, Wisconsin’s high school baseball team of 1949. Three of them made it to the major leagues in ways some people might never guess. So, to be up to speed for the next Flash Report, you might wish to study up on William Frederick Hoeft, Donald Floyd Biebel and Laurence Henry “Dutch” Rennert.

 

To make it easy to do your research here are a few links to the aforementioned trio:

Don Biebel

www.google.com/search?rls=aso&client=gmail&q=dutc...

Billy Hoeft

www.google.com/search?rls=aso&client=gmail&q=dutc...

Dutch Rennert

www.google.com/search?rls=aso&client=gmail&q=dutc...

 

And, while you are looking ahead you might wish to take a look back, one decade, to a story found in the Columbia, Missouri Tribune from September of 2006. One recipient of this report is Bill Clark and he doesn’t have a computer. His son prints these reports and gives them to him. So Casey doesn’t need to print out the following link. Bill you can go back to your old files and dig out the one wrote wrote about the KOM league reunion in 2006 at Carthage, Missouri.

archive.columbiatribune.com/2006/sep/20060920Feat001.asp

_____________________________________________________________________________

Recommended reading

 

If you are limited in your time and interest in reading this report I suggest you go directly to the obituary of Vincent Nicholas Kokenge and see how it dovetails to the obituary shared seven years ago with that of Martin Claude Reisch. Each pitched for the 1947 Chanute Athletics and probably the only game Reisch ever started, Kokenge finished.

 

As with most reports an attempt is made to include a photo of the team on which a deceased member played. Vince Kokenge and Martin Reisch may or may not have been present when the 1947 Chanute A’s team photo was taken. There are two players in the back row that I have not been able to identify even with the help of five guys who are in that photo. www.flickr.com/photos/60428361@N07/30037985332/

Here are those who were there when the “family” portrait was taken:

Front Row: Earl Anstaett, Lou Bejma, Bobby Johnson, Jack Jordan and Francis Urban.

Middle Row: Sam Dixon, Sheldon Lewis, Charles Kunkle, Don Phillips and Bob Phillips.

Back Row: Team President W. C. McCullough, Joe Eperasy, Rex Simpson, Unidentified, Unidentified (Possibly, Vince Kokenge), Bernie Tye, Jake Thies and Charles Bates-Manager.

 

There are two -major league players in that photo. One had been there and the other headed in that direction. If you don’t know who they were look it up. If you are still stumped and interested in knowing, let me know.

______________________________________________________________________________

A personal request:

 

Put yourself in this scene. It is a cold, dark morning on December 1. You are a member of a service club and it meets before the sun comes over the horizon and you are expected to drive to the meeting site, sign in, listen to a few announcements, eat breakfast and listen to some old guy drone on about something that happened when Harry Truman was President of these United States. Gosh, I miss Harry. By the way Harry Truman was in the same town, Columbia, Mo., where the presentation will be made, when Franklin Roosevelt died.

 

Back to the issue. Put yourself in the place of the service club members who have to appear to be interested in what the speaker has to say that has been lined up by the program committee chairman. On top of that that speaker appeared before that same group three years earlier.

 

Now, put yourself in the shoes of the speaker. The chances are the same speech could be presented once again but since the speaker is senile he can’t recall what was presented. Most likely a few members of the service club would remember and they’d either leave in disgust or heckle the speaker off the platform.

 

So, in short, that is where Yours truly stands, or sits, as the case may be, as his last appearance in a public forum rapidly approaches. The most daunting task of any speaker is to follow the three “C’s” of public speaking. If you need a refresher they are: Clear, Concise and Ceated.”

 

Now I come to my point. If you were in an audience to hear a speaker talk about something that transpired 63-70 years ago and only knew the general topic was about baseball, what questions would you pose? Tough job, right? Well, I’m asking my “vast” e-mail family to join me at the service club. No, no, not in person but by sending along a question or two that you would ask if you had to get up early and trudge through the early dawn hours in order to keep your perfect attendance record intact.

 

If you send a question, that is selected to use in my presentation, you will be given full credit for your effort and if you happened to have played professional baseball I will even embellish your career by 10 or 15 points in batting average or a have a dozen more wins tacked on if you were a pitcher.

 

There are no restrictions to the kind of questions that will be considered. I fully expect about six people to respond to this request and with that I’ll probably use my verbosity skills to fill the full 30 minute time requirement and maybe empty a meeting hall in a lot less time than that. Send me a question or two. Thanks!!!

_____________________________________________________________________________

Vincent Kokenge

 

www.legacy.com/obituaries/argusleader/obituary.aspx?n=Vin...

 

Sioux Falls, SD ~ Vincent N. Kokenge, 93, died on 9/28/16.

 

Funeral services will begin at 11 AM on Friday, 10/7/16 at George Boom Funeral Home in Sioux Falls. Visitation will begin at 5 PM on Thursday at the funeral home with the family present to greet friends from 5-7 PM. In lieu of flowers, please consider a memorial donation.

Vincent Nicholas was born on Sept.12, 1923 in Sioux County, IA to Joseph & Catherine (Kellen) Kokenge. He was raised and received his education in Sioux County attending and graduating from Paullina High School in 1941. It was as a child that Vince developed a love of baseball. Playing ball out of Granville, IA Catholic High School, Vince eventually signed to play minor league baseball with the New York Yankees organization in Quincy, IL. That dream of the "bigs" did not come to pass, but he did spend several years in Iowa and Nebraska as a baseball player. From baseball Vince moved on to throwing a hook from the left side as a bowler. In 1989 Vince was inducted into the South Dakota Bowlers Association Hall of Fame.

Vince was united in marriage with Delores Kroeger on 11/10, 1947. In 1967 he started Kokenge Painting Service, a business he owned and operated until his retirement in 1988.

Grateful for having shared his life are his wife, Delores Kokenge; 6 children: Mike (Marcia) Kokenge, Larry (Colleen) Kokenge, Kathy (Jim) Lang, Cindi (Tony) Ruggiero, Pam (Jeff) Cox, and Ron (Barb) Kokenge; daughter-in-law, Michelle Ward; 22 grandchildren; 40 great grandchildren; 2 great-great grandchildren; and a host of other relatives and friends.

Vince is preceded in death by his parents; son, Douglas Kokenge; and brothers: Raymond and Virgil Kokenge.

 

Ed comment:

 

A couple of notes were received about the death of Mr. Kokenge and I shared this with Jack Morris, baseball necrologist. “Vince gave me a lesson on how to pronounce his name many years ago. The "g" is silent and he told me to say the word ‘cocaine’ and I'd be pronouncing his name correctly. Baseball Reference didn't show what handed he was but he was a lefty.”

 

Baseball Reference officials aren’t going to change anything without some type of documentation and I shared this newspaper quote from the Iola, Kansas Register. For documenting that fact it is contained in the Iola Register. June 28, 1947--Vince Kokenge. a lefty, who lost to lola 5-3 Wednesday night, was called on to finish the game and he performed reasonably well. He retired his first two batters, but Hal Fortine then drove a triple to left to. score (Ken) Aubrey and (Bill) Chandler.

 

A little more background. Kokenge was the batboy for the Sioux City Cowboys of the Western league in the mid-1930's. He was the batboy while Hal Luby was on that team. I suspect that was 1935-36. While with the Chanute A’s, in 1947, Kokenge posted a 3-6 record. His nickname with his teammates was Cocaine.

 

With the death of Vince Kokenge the number of former 1947 Chanute A’s players, still living, are down to four: Gerald Cross—Ft. Smith, Ark., Sam Dixon—Lawrence, Kans., Robert H. Peel—Hutchinson, Kans., and Frank Urban former Carthage resident who now lives in Springfield, Mo.

 

Bob Peel has long operated a women’s cosmetic supply company in Hutchinson, Kansas and has traveled the world in that capacity. However, nothing comes close to an experience he had in 1985 from Oct. 7 thru 10. He was aboard the Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, when it was hijacked by Palestinian Liberation Front thugs. He saw the entire episode unfold, even the death of Leon Klinghoffer. Don’t have space to rewrite that event from 31 years ago this week but here is a refresher course site: www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&am...

 

One member of the 1947 team was never found. His name was Rice Martin. He attended the University of Missouri in the spring of 1947 and then showed up in Chanute for a short time. The Chanute newspaper said that he attended Missouri University and listed his hometown as St. Louis but no trace of him was ever found.

 

Could this be Rice Martin? After looking at the 1947 Chanute roster for over two decades something finally clicked in that vacant spot above my shoulders. The only instance that I ever found the name, Rice Martin, was in a Chanute sports column. However, there was a Martin Claude Reisch who was born 8/27/1924 in St. Louis. He was in the Army from 7/5/1943 to 4/8/1946. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that he went to the University of Missouri in 1947. Reisch appeared in the same May 28, 1947 sports column as does the late Vince Kokenge.

May 28, 1947--Chanute's starting pitcher, Martin Reisch, pitched only to four batters —Bugs Redden, who doubled, Paul Box, who singled, Ken Aubrey a walk and Bill Chandler, who singled. Two scored on Chandler's hit. Vince Kokenge, a lefty, who lost to lola 5-3 Wednesday night, was called on to finish the game and he performed' reasonably well. He retired his first two batters, but Hal Fortine then drove a triple to left to score (Ken) Aubrey and (Bill) Chandler.

 

Conclusion: After 25 years of carrying Rice Martin, on my database of Chanute A’s, I officially and ceremoniously deleted his name this past week. The person was Martin Claude Reisch and he passed away June 17, 2009 in Ft. Worth, Texas. Although, I’m not 100% sure, those four Iola batters he faced on May 27, 1947 may well have represented his entire professional baseball career. When I spoke with Reisch some 20 years ago our conversation didn’t cover that subject.

 

In the August 4, 2009 edition of this seldom seen and even less often read publication I shared the obituary of Reisch. Four months after his passing his wife also died. Here is Martin’s obituary:

 

***

Martin Claude Reisch, 84, retired news bureau manager for Bell Helicopter Textron, died Monday, June 8, 2009.

Service: Memorial Mass will be at 2:30 p.m. Friday, June 19, with rosary at 2, at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church, 2016 Willis Lane, Keller.

Martin was born Aug. 27, 1924, in St. Louis, Mo. He pitched in baseball's minor leagues alongside some up-and-comers including Yogi Berra. A veteran of World War II, Martin was called to serve under Gen. Patton following the D-Day landing at Normandy.

After the war, Martin moved to Denver, Colo., where he met and married Elodie. He was the first civilian to work at the U.S. Air Force Academy, serving as sports publicity director. He later joined the Rocky Mountain News as sports columnist. During this time, he also wrote a weekly sports column for the Denver Catholic Register and hosted a bowling radio show interviewing personalities such as Don Carter. In 1966, Martin moved to Fort Worth to join Bell Helicopter Textron as chief of national media. He retired from Bell after 21 years.

Martin was always active in church and school activities. He coached Little League, was an assistant Cub Scout master, headed parish committees, and was a longtime member of the Knights of Columbus.

Martin and his wife of 60 years, Elodie, traveled the world together and enjoyed spoiling their many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

He was preceded in death by his son, John Reisch.

As a final act of generosity, he has willed his body to the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth to be used for educational purposes.

Survivors: His wife, Elodie; children, Norman and wife, Pat, of Colorado, Jim and wife, Sandy, of Dallas, Bill and wife, Betty, of Bedford, Mary Colette and husband, Don McCall, of Mansfield, Madonna Trujillo of Fort Worth, Annette and husband, Frank Kearns, of Bedford; 12 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Published in Star-Telegram on 6/17/2009

For a photo of Mr. Reisch you can go to the following URL and it will also contain the obituary that is included in this report.

www.legacy.com/obituaries/dfw/obituary.aspx?n=martin-clau...

(Ed note: There is a possibility that URL is no longer active, since this posting seven years ago.)

 

Ed note:

(This note was also written seven years ago at the time Reisch’s obituary was posted.)

 

Just so the readership knows that I know, one aspect of the obituary is not factually correct. The statement made that he played in baseball’s minor leagues with Yogi Berra is incorrect. Reisch may have played against Berra in St. Louis kid team baseball, but I cannot document that either. Some of you former St. Louisans my remember Reisch and you can fill me in on his non-professional history.

 

For Reisch to have played against Berra, in the professional ranks, old Yogi would have had to have played in the KOM League. Reisch’s career with Chanute was less than five games as a pitcher, in 1947. The Chanute newspaper from that era reported that Reisch’s nickname was “Specs.” Of course, the wearing of glasses was rare in that era and organizations frowned upon young ballplayers wearing them. Bob Field played for Miami, Okla., in 1946, and he told me it nearly cost him a chance to play for that club due to wearing spectacles

 

A quote from the September 17, 1957—Long Beach, Independent. Ken Sanders, UCLA grid boss, said "I doubt if anyone could name any players on the Air Force Academy team which UCLA plays Friday night, but we could because we wanted some of them . . . namely halfback George Pupich and guard John Dolan.”.. ..” “The Air Force is going after the same type of kids we are…good scholars who can run off tackle!" said Martin Reisch, Air Force Academy publicity chief.

__________________________________________________________________________.

Comments about last week’s report

 

Well you outdid yourself!! This one will take a while to go thru everything! Will start with the pictures of Alphie - boy has he grown up.

 

Know my Pop is reading over my shoulder with the rest - so many names of so many guys he would recall & some I even recognize after following the Hall reports.

Am recovering from stem cell injections into right knee week ago Tuesday. Used bone marrow & fat this time so am hopeful it will do the job. Dang arthritis is a literal pain!!

Keep these reports coming. The "crossing Johnny Hall" has a great ring!!—Barb Eichhorst—St. Louis.

 

***

`nother good one john Jim Skog—Davenport, Iowa

 

Ed reply:

 

Thanks for the encouragement. One other reader has also said he enjoyed it. That would be Walt Babcock. I think you two got together on this one.

 

***

A good read after your no report time. How did you get in the Carthage stadium with your grandson? I wanted to get in a couple of years ago to see the blue seats with the plaques on them. Weren't they acquired from Atlanta? Because of your mother's story, I know how you do enjoy fried green tomatoes. Immediate mystery: World Series and November election results. Jim Jay-Kansas City A’s batboy 1956-57

 

Ed reply:

 

I got in the Carthage Stadium for I knew where the keys were. Alan Bull was overseeing the place and I went over to his office on the park grounds and told him I wanted in.

 

I don't much care who plays in the World Series so I can't care much who wins. I know who is playing in the other fall classic and I do know where I stand on that subject. In fact, I don't believe anyone is undecided. I think some people use the line of "undecided" line in order to get attention or to be paid for their vote. Yes, money does go to people to vote for certain individuals. In fact, when I get those harassing robo calls I ask the person if their candidate is prepared to pay me more than their opponent has promised.

 

I never answer a telephone poll, honestly. Last time I was a 25-year old female Latino who is leaning toward Gary Johnson.

 

****

 

Hi John--Enjoyed all the stories of (Darryl) Strawberry, (Dick) Wakefield etc. I grew up 20 miles from Rochester, NY and remember when Johnny Antonelli got the big bonus of about 50K, I believe. That sure sparked me with enthusiasm for my own pitching dreams.

One of the great HS pitchers was Billy Hoeft of Oshkosh HS (Wis) I think he graduated in 50 or 51. Signed with Detroit. Had a 15 year MLB career.

Thanks for all of your writing for us baseball junkies ! -- Bill O—Durham, NC

P. S.

The mind is a weird thing. Inside it I am about 18 looking at myself be 82.

 

Ed reply:

 

Thanks for the comments. I recognize all the names you mentioned I agree with that statement about 18 and 82. It reminds me of the little boy sitting on the curb crying. An older man came up and asked the boy why he was crying and the reply was "I can't do what the big boys do." At that moment the old man sat down beside the boy and commenced crying with him.

 

Ed comment:

 

Billy Hoeft’s high school catcher was Don Biebel. Biebel was signed by the Chicago Cubs and by virtue of that was assigned to Carthage, Mo. for part of the 1950 season and all of 1951. Don managed in the Cub organization after his time looking after me on road trips and making sure I had something to eat, especially at Miami, OK one night. He wound up be the traveling secretary for the Chicago Cubs as well as the last public relations director for the Kansas City A’s. I still call him a friend when he takes the time to read these reports and responds. Come on Don, send me a note about Hoeft.

 

***

I could read this type of material and stories forever as I long to remember the (Baxter Springs) Whiz Kids and setting in the stands and watching games as a toddler. My dad told me many stories about what was going on later in life.

 

My cousins came down from Iowa and they were older. Back then they used to give out snow cones or popsicles for baseballs returned to the concession stand. As we were getting ready to go home the floor board in the back seat was covered with baseballs. My cousins told my father that they got tired of eating them and just put the balls in the backseat. He of course made them return them. Thomas Drake

  

***

 

JOHN, I SEEM TO REMEMBER MICKEY ROBERTS FROM MY STAY IN CARTHAGE IN 1951. DID HE GO TO THE U. OF MISSOURI AND HAVE A SISTER ABOUT MY AGE. I BELIEVE I MET HIM ON THE OCCASIONS HE WOULD COME HOME TO CARTHAGE FROM COLLEGE. MAYBE A BAD MEMORY. WALT Babcock—Cape Cod, Mass.

 

Ed reply:

 

You probably are thinking about Terry Roberts who was Mickey's cousin.. He attended MU on a football scholarship and was an All Big Seven lineman. Mickey didn't graduate from high school until 1952. He may have come around with some of the guys you ran with such as Jim McKinney, Charlie Scott and Danny Woodward. Mike didn't have any sisters.

 

Babcock’s reply:

 

THANKS, FOR REVIVING MY MEMORY. YOU ARE CORRECT. THANKS, WALT

 

Ed reply:

 

I'm correct, as always, right?

____________________________________________________________________________

A former Independence Yankee-- John M. Bachar Jr. still churning out the numbers.

 

A member of the 1947 Independence Yankee pitching staff was John M. Bachar Jr. not to be confused with Medar Joseph Backers another pitcher on that team. Bachar was born in Chicago in 1928 and Backers in Detroit in 1927. Over the years I communicated with Backers who died in St. Clair, Mich. in 2010.

 

For many years Bachar has been a statistical guru in the California system of higher education and now writes for Progressive Magazine in his emeritus status. While playing in the KOM league he was a student at Northwestern University. If you want to know more about him here is a link. www.laprogressive.com/author/john-m-bachar-jr/

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Once again, the conclusion

 

Defying all the odds of time and finding material about an old league that went belly up at the end of the 1952 baseball season, this concludes another report. Will there be another one? The answer to that question basically depends upon the feedback received.

 

Trichrome photography involves taking three exposures of the same subject on black and white film. Each exposure is taken through a red, green or blue filter.

One of the early users of the process, over a hundred years ago, was Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky , he used projectors with coloured filters to make a combined image, nowadays it can be done with photo editing software such as Photoshop.

For this trichrome, I used the Harris Shutter technique, which was invented by Robert Harris of Kodak for making colour photographs with the different primary colour layers exposed in separate time intervals in succession. Using an Olympus ECR35 35mm camera, I took three photos of the scene on black and white film (Rollei RPX400) with a red, green or blue filter in front of the lens. It took several seconds to change the filter, so moving subjects, such as clouds or people, appear in different positions and in different colours, while static subjects appear normal.

 

With regards to marriage, Periyar has stated that it is one of the worst customs in India. He claimed that the marriage principle, briefly, involves the enslavement of a woman by her husband and nothing else. This enslavement is concealed under the cover of marriage rites to deceive the women concerned by giving the wedding the false name of a divine function.[7]

 

There have been numerous papers in South India reporting how husbands have killed their wives, suspecting immoral behavior. The husband's suspicion of his wife's character has often led to murders. Those who believe in the divine dispensation, according to Periyar, do not have the knowledge to ask themselves why marriages conducted according to religious rites and the approval of God end in this fashion.[7]

 

Periyar further states that the very idea that the only proper thing for women to do is to be slaves of domesticity, bear children and bring them up, is a faulty one. As long as these restrictions are imposed on women, we can be sure that women have to be subservient to men and depend on men for help. If women have to live on terms of equality with men, they must have the liberty, like men, to have the kind of education they like and also to do unhampered, any work suitable to their knowledge, ability and taste.[8]

 

Furthermore, Periyar objected to terms like "giving of a maid" and "given in marriage". They are, "Sanskrit terms" and treat woman as a thing. He advocated the substitution of the word for marriage taken from the Tirukkual "Valkai thunai" or "life partner".

With marriage comes the expenses. Periyar stated that in our country, and particularly in Hindu society, a marriage is a function causing a lot of difficulties and waste to all people concerned. But those who conduct the marriage function and those who are getting married do not appear to notice the attendant difficulties because they think that social life necessitates wasteful expense and many difficulties and therefore they must necessarily face those inconveniences and hardships.[10]

 

Wedding feast, jewels, expensive clothes, procession, pandal, dance, music—money is spent on all these to satisfy the vanity of the organizers. Whatever may be the amount of money spent on the wedding and however pompous each of the items may be, the mirth and jollity associated with these are over in two or three days. In a week's time the prestige and honor connected with these are forgotten.[10] But the wedding expenses leave many families crushed; for many poor families hese expenses leave an enormous burden and the debts remain uncleared for a number of years.[11]

 

However, if the money intended for the wedding expense is not borrowed and belongs to either of the marriage parties, then that amount could be used by her to bring up her children and to educate them. Such a procedure would be highly beneficial to her

Arranged marriages[edit]

In South Asia we mostly hear of arranged marriages as part of custom, heritage, and religions. Periyar thought that the Aryan wedding methods were barbarous because of the Aryan religion and art: Vedas, Sastras, Puranas, and Epics belong to the barbaric age. He further stated that is the reason why their wedding methods involve the parents giving the girl, prostituting the girl children and some stranger carrying the girl away by force or stealth.[13]

 

Arranged marriages in general were meant to enable the couple to live together throughout life and derive happiness, satisfaction and a good reputation, even years after the sexual urge and sexual pleasure are forgotten.[14]

 

But, with the selfish manipulation of this pact, Periyar claimed that women find 'pleasure' in slavish marriage because they have been brought up by their parents without education, independence and self-respect and because they have been made to believe that marriage means subordination to males. The inclusion of such slavish women in the group of 'chaste' women is another lure to them, leading them to find pleasure in such marriages.

 

Because a man is also married before he has understood the nature of life, its problems and its pleasures, he is satisfied with the slavish nature of the wife and the sexual pleasure she gives. If he finds any incompatibility, he adapts himself to his partner and the circumstances and puts up with his lot.

Love marriages[edit]

Love marriages, claims Periyar, on the other hand will suit only those who have no ideals in life. Such a wedding gives primacy to sexual union along and it is doubtful if it indicates an agreement between the couple for good life. Sexual compatibility alone does not ensure happy married life; the couple should be able to live together cheerfully. Suitability for life or living together can be determined only if the man and woman get used to the company of each other, and are satisfied with each other. Only then, they can enter into an agreement to live together.[13]

 

Periyar further states that love marriages can give pleasure only as long as there is lust and the ability to satisfy that lust. If there is no compatibility between the partners in other respects, such marriages end only in the enslavement of women. The lies of such women resemble the lives of bullocks which are tied to a cart, beaten up and made to labor endlessly until they die.[14]

 

Therefore, there is a proverb stating, "A deeply loving girl is unfit for family life; a suitable life partner is unfit for love." Periyar believed that the agreement between partners to live together will constitute a better marriage than a love marriage

In a leading article of Viduthalai, Periyar states that a self-respect wedding is based on rationalism. Rationalism is based on the individual's courage. Some may have the courage to conduct it during the time which almanacs indicate as the time of the planet Rahu and that, particularly in the evening. Some others may have just enough daring to avoid the Brahmin priest and his mother tongue - the Sanskrit language.[15] Some may feel nervous about not keeping the traditional lamp burning in broad daylight. Some others may have the rotten thought that conducting a wedding without 'mangala sutra' is disgraceful.

 

Still, the self-respect weddings conducted during the past thirty years have some basic limits. They are: Brahmins and their mantras should be utterly avoided; meaningless rituals, piling mud pots, one on another, having the traditional lamp during day time, ritual smoke - all these should be avoided. Rationalism does not approve of these. Periyar then asks why can't the government pass an Act that legalizes weddings which avoid the above-mentioned superstitious practices. If all these details cannot be accommodated in the Act, the latter can legalize weddings which don't have Brahmin priests, the Sanskrit language and the so called holy fire.[16]

 

Thus, marriages styled as Self-Respect marriages carried a threefold significance: a) replacing the Purohit, b) inter-caste equality, c) man-woman equality. Periyar claimed to have performed Self-Respect marriages unofficially since 1925 and officially since 1928.[17] Self-Respect marriages were legalized in 1967 by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) Government

On the remarriage of widows, Periyar states that among the atrocities perpetrated by the Hindu male population against women, here we have to consider the treatment meted out to widows alone. If a girl loses her husband, even before knowing anything of worldly pleasures, she is compelled to close her eyes to everything in the world and die broken-hearted. Even in Periyar's community at the time, there were widowed girls below the age of 13 years. Periyar stated how it is a touching sight to see the parents of those widowed children treating them like untouchables.[19]

 

He goes on to say that whatever may be the reason for the present state of the Hindu society, my firm belief that the low position given permanently to widows may prove to be the reason for the utter ruin of the Hindu religion and the Hindu society.[20]

 

If we try to find the reason for such conduct, we will have to conclude that they instinctively feel that women are slaves, subservient to men and that they must be kept under control. That is why these people treat women like animals. They seem to feel that giving freedom to women is equivalent to committing a very serious crime. The result of this attitude is that there is no independence or freedom to one half of the human race. This wicked enslavement of half of the human race is due to the fact that men are physically a little stronger than women. This principle applies to all spheres of life and the weaker are enslaved by the stronger.

 

If slavery has to be abolished in society, the male arrogance and wickedness which lead to the enslavement of women must be abolished first. Only when this is achieved, the tender sprouts of freedom and equality will register growth.[21]

 

One of the reasons why Periayr hated Hinduism and the orthodoxy practiced in the name of Hinduism was the practice of child marriage. Many of the girl children who were married before they were ten or twelve years old became widows before they knew the meaning of the word. According to the 1921 All India Census the details of the child widows reported living in the country that time were as follows

1 year baby widows - 497

1 to 2 year child widows - 494

2 to 3 year child widows - 1,257

3 to 4 year child widows - 2,837

4 to 5 year child widows - 6,707

Total number of widows - 11,342

5 to 10 year young widows - 85,037

10 to 15 year young widows - 232,147

15 to 20 year young widows - 396,172

20 to 25 year young widows - 742,820

25 to 30 year young widows - 1,163,720

Total number of widows - 2,631,238[22][23]

Periyar was deeply disturbed when he realized that among the widows in India, 11,892 were little children below 5 years and that young widows below 15 years numbering 232,147 were denied the pleasures of life.[24]

 

With regards to the re-marriage of widows, Periyar stated that it is the practice of our people to refer to such a wedding as "a widow's marriage". Such an expression is used only with reference to women and in connection with men. Just as this lady is marrying another husband after the death of the first husband, many men marry again after the death of the first wife. But the second marriage of a man is not referred to as "a widower's marriage", though that is the proper thing to do.

 

Periyar himself was a widower. After becoming one, he took a second wife. He claimed that in the ancient days, both men and women in the country had this practice. There were numerous instances in sastras and puranas of women getting married again after the death of their first husband. Periyar further stated that this is not an unusual practice in the rest of the world though it might appear strange for us at the present time. Christian and Muslim women marry again after the death of the first husband. 90 percent of women in Muslim countries get married again soon after the death of the first husband. This may be unusual in certain sections of Indian societies. But it is a common practice in certain other sections of our society which are called very backward communities.[25]

 

Further, inter-caste marriages and remarriage of widows are on the increase in India. Brahmins oppose these because they are afraid that they cannot exploit the people any more in the name of sastras. For the same reason they oppose the Sharada Act which is necessary for social well-being

Child marriage[edit]

In all the meetings of the non-Brahmins and the Self-Respectors, Periyar condemned child marriages and emphasized the need for educating all girl children and giving right to young widows to get married again.

 

Periyar has been very much against child marriage and stated that it reflects the cruelty to which innocent girls were subjected by their well-meaning parents. Periyar asked that if these parents can be considered civilized in any sense of the term. There was no other leader other than Periyar who reacted against this practice of child marriage.[24]

 

Those who supported child marriage were strongly against Periyar's condemnation of this act. Take for example, the Sharada Act. Those who opposed this Act say that it was against the Sastras to conduct the marriage of a girl after she has attained puberty. They further say that those who conduct such marriages are committing a sin and therefore will go to hell

Periyar claimed that "household duties" have risen out of the foolishness of people and were not natural duties.[28] He went on to say that it was our selfish greed which has multiplied our household work. Nobody need worry that without household work, the women will lose their "chastity". On chastity, Periyar went on to say that it is something that belongs to women and is not a pledge to men. Whatever, chastity is, it was something that belonged to individuals.

 

In society, it was believed that if people lose their chastity, they will get divine punishment. Others are not going to get that punishment. Referring to the doctrines of institutionalized orthodox religions, he went on to say that men need not to worry themselves that women are committing a sin by not doing household work. Thus, let men realize that women are not slaves and that men are not their masters or guardians. Women should be allowed to develop the competence to protect themselves and their chastity and men need not be their watchdogs. He also believed that it was derogatory for men to play such a role.[citation needed]

 

It was said by the orthodox[who?] that women will develop diseases if they lose their chastity. The disease that a woman gets affects the husbands also. If we[who?] educate the women, they will develop the capability to keep themselves and their husbands pure. Thus, Periyar stated in the Kudi Arasu for the society to think deeply about taking a decision and do the right thing for their sisters and girl children.[29]

 

Periyar kindled the thoughts of everybody by also ridiculing the use of the word chastity only with reference to women. (Periyar-Father of Tamil 32) He stated that character is essential for both men and women and that speaking of chastity only with reference to women degraded not merely women but men also. He extended this thought and said that in any sphere of activity, civilized society cannot think of one law for men and another for women. He also said that the way most men treated their women was far worse than the way the upper class people treated the lower class, the way in which rich men treated the poor and the way in which a master treated his slave

On education, Periyar stated that some foolish parents believe that if girls get educated, they will correspond with their secret lovers. That it is a very foolish and mischievous notion. No parent need be anxious about it. If a girl writes a letter, it will only be to a male. We can even now caution men not to read any love letter addressed to them by a woman and, even if they read it, not to reply to it. If men do not listen to this advice, they, as well as the girls who write them must be punished. It will be a hopelessly bad thing, if parents keep their girl children uneducated for this reason.[29]

 

At a speeched delivered by Periyar at the Prize Distribution function in the Municipal School for Girls at Karungal Palayam, Erode, he stated that girl children should be taught active and energetic exercises like running, high jump, long jump,and wrestling so that they may acquire the strength and courage of men. Their time and energy should not be wasted in light pastimes like Kummi (groups going in a circle, clapping their hands rhythmically) and in Kolatam (striking with sticks rhythmically).

 

In ancient Tamil literature, poets have stressed the value of education for women. In a famous verse, a poet by the name of Naladiar stated that, "What gives beauty to a woman is not the hair style or the patter of her dress or the saffron on her face but only education".[31] In a verse of Eladhi it states, "Beauty does not lie in the style of wailing or in the charm of a blush but only in the combination of numbers and letters (education).[32]

 

In a 1960 issue if Viduthalai Periyar stated that "There should be a drastic revolution in the desires and ideals of Indian women. They should equip themselves to do all types of work that men are doing. They should have good domestic life without allowing nature's obstacles in their own lives. Therefore, there should be a welcome change in the minds of our women. The administrators also most pay special attention to the advancement of women"

Periyar advocated for women to be given weapons to protect themselves in reply to a question put in the Central Legislature. He stated that we have no hope that the state governments will do anything in this sphere because most of the state ministers hold the orthodox belief that women are slavish creatures.[34] Though here and there we[who?] find women also as ministers, they are old-fashioned traditionalists who will say, "We don't want any kind of freedom. We are perfectly happy with slavery".[33]

 

In Periyar's time he explained that ""Indian" women had no self-determination in any sphere of life like education property and marriage. They thought that modern civilization meant dressing themselves like British and American women and adorning themselves. Even our educated women do not entertain any thought that they must enter the police and army departments and learn to pilot airplanes like the women of Russia and Turkey. Just as modern education has made men cowards an book-worms, it has made our women decoratie [sic] dolls and weaklings".[33]

 

In a leading article written by Periyar in Viduthalai in 1946, he claimed that unless there is a drastic, fundamental and revolutionary change in our[who?] administrative machinery, it is impossible to make our women independent beings.[33]

 

Periyar goes on to explain that in our country also, there are thousands of women with the courage, competence and desire to work in the police department. Just as girls going to school was considered wonderful and cycle-riding by girls was considered funny, a few years ago, women on police duty may appear to be wonderful or strange for a few years. Then, in course of time, this will be considered natural.[33]

 

We[who?] need methods that will effect an astounding revolution in the world of women. Until we acquire those methods, we will be moving forward like a tortoise and writing and talking about Drowpath and Sita.[35]

 

Periyar, in a 1932 article of Kudi Arasu, explained that "women should develop physical strength like men. They must take exercise and get training in the use of weapons. They must acquire the ability to protect themselves when any sex-mad person tries to molest them. They should get the necessary training to join the armey [sic] when need arises and fight the enemy. This is the view of all civilized people. Women also wholeheartedly support this view. When the general view in the world is like this, who can accept the statement of some people that there is no use in giving higher education to women?

Property rights and divorce[edit]

With regards to property rights for women, Periyar stated that there was no difference between men and women. He went on to say that like men, women should have the right to own property and enjoy its benefits. With regards to divorce or separations, he advocated that a woman can lie away from her husband if he is an undesirable person and if he has nay virulent disease. When a woman has to live apart from her husband in these circumstances, she is entitled to maintenance allowance and a claim on the husband's property. Even if a widow gets remarried, she must be given the right to claim a share of the first husband's property.[41]

 

On February 4, 1946, the Central Legislature passed an Act giving the right the Hindu married woman to get from her husband in certain circumstances a separate place to live in and a maintenance allowance. Periyar explained how that it was a useless Act. since it seems that the members of the Hindu Mahasabha and Sanadahnis agitated against the grant of even this right

Dowry[edit]

On the Dowry system practiced widely throughout the Indian sub-continent not only by Hindus but Christians too, Periyar calls it a "serious disease that was spreading fast amongst Tamilians". He went on to state that the disease was also found in its virulent form among the Andhras and the Brahmins of Tamil Nadu. Periyar also argued that if a man with property worth one lakh has three daughters, he has to become a beggar by the time these daughters are married. In the name of dowry, the parents of the young men who marry the three daughters, squeeze the man's property out of him.[43]

 

In the 1959 issue of Viduthalai, Periyar stated that, "according to a new legislation, women have the right to a share of the parents' property. Therefore every girl will definitely get her legitimate share from the parents' wealth - if the parents are wealth. It is inhuamane [sic] on the part of the parents of a boy to dump on him a girl whom he does not like and to plan to such as much as they can from the property of the girl's father. There is basically no difference between selling education and love for money and selling one's chastity for money. 'Prostitute' is a germ of contempt for a woman; a boy should not be reduced by his avaricous [sic] parents to get the name, 'a prostituted boy' or 'a boy that has been sold'. A father-in-law who has means, however miserly he may be by nature, will not be indifferent when his daughter suffers out of poverty. Therefore, it is very shameful on the part of the bridegroom's parents to demand from the bride's father that at the time of the marriage he should gie jewels worth so many thousands along with so many thousand rupees as dowry and that he should provide the bridegroom with a house and a care. The fact that another party makes such demands at the time of his daughter's marriage does not justify any parent's demands at the time of his son's wedding. All people must realize that both demanding and giving dowry are wrong and they must boldly declare this when occasion arises."[44]

 

Periyar calls the dowry an evil and exploitative practice depriving tens of thousands of talented and beautiful young women with sound character remaining spinsters without any chance of getting married.

Devadasis[edit]

Among the atrocities the Tamil society committed against women was the practice of keeping some women attached to temples as Devadasis. Dr. Muthulakshmi proposed the resolution at the Madras Legislature that the Devadasi system should be abolished. The Government wanted comments on that from all important people. Periyar in his statement pointed out that the Devadasi system was a disgrace to Hindu religion. The fact that, in the name of a temple or a god, some women are kept as common property is an insult to all the women in the society. He also remarked that the prevalence of this system encouraged immorality among men and thus set the pattern for unprincipled life in many families. This was stoutly opposed in the Assembly by Satyamurthi Iyer, an orthodox Congress member, under the pretext of safeguarding the Hindu traditions. It should be said to the credit of Dr. Muthulakshmi and the leaders like Periyar that the proposal of the Doctor was accepted and a law was enacted against the Devadasi system.[30]

 

Periyar's example of the degradation of women in the Devadasi system is explained that "if a man's physical passion is aroused when his wife is not with him, he immediately goes to a prostitute. Rough stones are planted where cows and bufaloes [sic] graze to facilitate the animals to rub against the stones when they feel like it.[46] Likewise, Devadasis served in temples and in all villages rough stones planted on the borders and they say that these two (employing devadasis and the planting rough stones) are aamong [sic] the 32 dharmas mentioned in the sastras. When we consider why his kindness to the suffering and also the 32 dharmas are all bogus"

Resolutions passed[edit]

As the Self-Respect conference held in Chengalpattu, Tamil Nadu in 1929, the following were among the many resolutions passed with regards for women's rights:

 

Women should be given equal right along with men for the family property.

There should be no objection to employing women to any job for which they are qualified.[47]

Schools, particularly schools, should try to employ only women teachers.

At the conference held in Erode in 1930, the same resolutions were passed again reminding the delegates and others that the interest of women was still uppermost in Periyar's mind. M.R. Jayakar who presided oer the Erode conference was greatly impressed by the progressive views of Periyar and other members. He was particularly happy that the movement included not merely non-Brahmin Hindus but Christians and Muslims too. He pointed out that the Self-Respect movement was more progressive than Congress. Furthermore, at the Virudhnagar conference the women members held a separate conference and passed some resolutions demanding that women should have the right to select their life partners without any consideration of religion or community and that weddings should not involve wasteful expenditure and elaborate ceremonies

On John Knox's memorial in the Glasgow Necropolis

The two-part episode The Incident presents two stories in parallel: a science-fiction adventure involving time-travel, electro-magnetism, and a mad scientist hoping to change things with a hydrogen bomb; and a fantasy myth involving mortals enslaved by ancient demigods, trying to change things with a knife and sacrificial fire. (In keeping with the disclaimer introduced earlier, it must be noted that ‘science’ and ‘fantasy’ are terms loosely applied, and that perhaps even the Jacob story might craft a more plausible scientific explanation than the Incident itself.) This work of fiction exists somewhere at the intersection of drama, sci-fi, and fantasy, but wholly within the category of Mythology. The episode’s first images evoke the dawn of human culture, the harnessed power of fire, shelters made of rock, hand-spun clothing and sandals, and primitive tools to gather fish from the ocean. After mankind adapted the necessary technology to survive, his mind began to expand to other pursuits, darkening his bare walls to produce painted images, carving majestic statues into rock, weaving decorative tapestries dyed different colors, telling stories through language, and even building ships to explore the seas (and planes to conquer the skies). Although Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey still holds the record for the longest flash-forward in cinema history, the centuries-long transition after the opening scene achieves a similar narrative effect. Even though man has evolved from taming the Promethean fire to building Edison’s light bulb to unleashing the power of the atom, our civilization is still in its infancy. Human beings themselves have not matured at the same rate as our technological progress. “They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.” The same petty jealousies that motivated the biblical rivalry of Jacob and Esau, also inform our nuclear-age warfare. A doctor can now perform once-unthinkable paralysis-saving surgery on your spine, but can that same doctor ever fix his own backbone when dealing with his father? Even our artwork, after generations of progress from cave paintings to wireless transmission of digital media, have also taken us from Homer to New Kids on the Block.

  

LOCKE: Years later a visiting prince came into Michelangelo's studio and found the master staring at a single 18 foot block of marble. Then he knew that the rumors were true -- that Michelangelo had come in everyday for the last four months, stared at the marble, and gone home for his supper. So the prince asked the obvious -- what are you doing? And Michelangelo turned around and looked at him, and whispered, sto lavorando, I'm working. Three years later that block of marble was the statue of David.

 

Two special artifacts from this classic opening scene, which are revisited at the ending of the episode, deserve special attention. The first is Jacob’s tapestry. The meticulously hand-crafted decoration initially appears in incomplete form. He has emblazoned the top section of the tapestry with ancient Greek lettering, a phrase from Homer’s Odyssey: “May the Gods grant thee all that thy heart desires”. Under those letters, the Egyptian symbol of the Eye of Horus, a symbol of divine power, occupies the center, between two massive wings. When Ben arrives at the statue centuries later, Jacob’s masterpiece is complete. Arms stretch down from the eye, towards nine human figures, while two kings observe from both sides. The image offers a visual representation of Jacob’s long-term plan, to give each piece ‘a little push’ into place for his endgame. Presumably, those nine individuals correspond to Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, Ilana, Locke, Sun, Jin, Jack, and Hurley (although Ben might be the final person, as Ben received Jacob’s touch rather than Ilana). Much like the sequence of literal and figurative long cons that preceded this one, the tapestry doubles as a metaphor for the show’s writing process. The gods of this particular story, writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, strung the audience along for several years, slowly revealing pieces, painting each character with care, until it was time to unveil this man behind the curtain. Of course, they understood that the journey was more important than the final destination. As Jacob later confesses: “It takes a very long time when you're making the thread, but, uh... I suppose that's the point, isn't it?”.

   

Allusions to outside mythology, of course, occur quite frequently on Lost. For every direct reference that the show makes, there are a dozen other meaningful comparisons to be made, some intentional (such as Apollo the son of Zeus, or Everything That Rises Must Converge) but many others are merely fortuitous. Minds working independently across the globe tend to converge on the same core ideas or mythemes. Mythology scholars have produced a number of different theories to explain why authors from different cultures, without any direct contact, produce legends with such striking similarities. Each theory of mythology necessary rests on a simplification and generalization, more valid for some works than for others. In my assessment, the work of French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss offers the deepest insight into the objectives of Lost-style myth-making. Lévi-Strauss posited that human beings organize information primarily through binary oppositions (pairs like faith-empiricism, freedom-determinism). The underlying storytelling purpose of any myth is to unify those irreconcilable opposites, or at least create the illusion that the conflict has been resolved. Through the clash of thesis and antithesis, we can arrive at a synthesis. The commonly-cited analysis of the tragedy of Oedipus Rex offers a useful example: Sophocles revealed the consequences for a son showing not nearly enough affection for one parent, by killing his father; and far too much affection for the other parent, by marrying his mother. The great Lost myth revolves around the mirroring psyches of its pair of heroes, Jack Shephard and John Locke, one child who received far too much parenting (with Christian pushing his adult son around the clock) and another child who received far too little parenting (with Cooper pushing his adult son out of the eight-story window). The endless dichotomies of Lost are indeed false ones, and no one who chooses one extreme side, can ever be fully correct.

  

LOCKE: Backgammon is the oldest game in the world. Archeologists found sets when they excavated the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia. Five thousand years old. That's older than Jesus Christ.

WALT: Did they have dice and stuff?

LOCKE: [nods] But theirs weren't made of plastic. Their dice were made of bones.

WALT: Cool.

LOCKE: Two players. Two sides. One is light … one is dark.

 

The second key artifact is Jacob’s home, the Statue itself. As confirmed through outside sources (although hardly apparent from the actual episode), the Statue represents the hippopotamus-headed Egyptian fertility goddess Tawaret. (The interior chamber also includes a painting of the Egyptian deity Isis, another goddess similarly associated with protection, birth, and motherhood.) Before this revelation, many people, including myself, predicted incorrectly that the Statue would depict Anubis, the jackal-faced god of death, judgment, and the underworld. Images of Anubis last appeared during Season Five's Dead is Dead, on the tunnel walls where Linus confronted the black Smoke, also known by its Greek mythological moniker, Cerberus. The overall implication here is that the dividing lines have been drawn, with Jacob’s light side linked to Life, with the Man in Black associated with Death. In flashback, Jacob’s touch breathes life in Locke’s fallen body, while his nemesis apparently has been manipulating corpses for years to help him commit a murder.

  

Among the ancient secrets revealed in this episode, Ricardus answers Ilana’s ongoing riddle “What lies in the shadow of the Statue?” with the Latin phrase: ille qui nos omnes servabit. The standard translation apparently characterizes Jacob as a messiah figure: the one who will save us all. Despite all preliminary indications, it would be a premature mistake to equate the light-dark imagery with a good-evil metaphor. As Frank Lapidus wisely remarks: “In my experience, the people who go out of their way to tell you that the good guys are the bad guys.” The basic conclusions are undisputed: Jacob wants to keep bringing people to the Island to bring about an Ending, while the Man in Black wants to kill Jacob and keep the Island isolated. (The physical acting of the two rivals even conveys their dueling outlooks, with Mark Pellegrino relaxing as he scans the horizon, but with Titus Welliver squinting uncomfortably in the reflected sunlight.) Conceivably, Jacob’s Ending, his desire for change, could include the death of all mankind, to make way for the birth of a new progressive era. A phrase on the bottom of his tapestry offers a foreboding hint of Jacob’s final solution to end human corruption: “Only the dead have seen the end of war”. Keep in mind, the first on-screen action of Jacob, the great fisher of men, was to gather life from the ocean, rip its guts out, and then devour it.

  

(Here is another fun etymological fact for all of the Latin lovers out there. Early in the episode, Bram and Ilana share a cryptic exchange about whether Frank might be a Candidate for their side, a term that undoubtedly will reappear in Season Six scripts. The Latin adjective candidatus literally means “dressed in white,” and Mr. Lapidus clearly fits that bill. The word developed its English meaning from the white gowns worn by Romans seeking senatorial election. The word also shares a common origin with the adjective candidus which could be used for its literal meaning of “white,” or in a more figurative sense as “clear”, “candid”, or in other words “Frank.”)

  

MIKHAIL: Ha! Don’t waste your time. For ten years I have tried to defeat that game. But it was programmed by three grand masters. And it cheats.

LOCKE: Hmm. Well, I’ve played a lot of computers and I’m pretty sure they don’t know how to cheat. That’s what makes being human so distinctly wonderful.

 

For the first time, The Incident allows the viewer to rise up from a ground-level view of the game pieces on earth, to see the chess board from the player’s perspective in the sky. The story begins with the Man in White and the Man in Black trapped in an eternal stalemate. The fisherman Jacob gathers people from the seas, and then his enemy the hunter watches them destroy each other. Like the layman’s definition of insanity, Jacob repeats the same action over and over, while expecting a different result, faithful that one day the humans will change their nature, and the outcome. As Jacob points out, though, time is on his side: only one counterexample is necessary to disprove a negative. The rules of the game favor an endless cycle of perfectly symmetrical violence, until one of the players can find a way to change, break, or at least bend the rules. The Man in Black found the loophole in the rules that would allow him to kill Jacob. Evidently, he needed to impersonate Locke (and a number of other departed souls along the way) in order to persuade Ben, the leader of the Others, to choose to murder Jacob. At the same time, Jacob knew that his opponent would exploit the technicality eventually. In response, Jacob found his own way to cheat the rules: he brought a handful of special individuals to the Island, so that they could erase the events that lead to his death. To borrow a key phrase from Lost creator J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek opus: “Going back in time, changing history ... that's cheating.” Both master plans required a tremendous degree of faith in mankind: Jacob placed his confidence in the better angels of our nature, the ability of separate individuals to collaborate on one final goal; the Man in Black went all-in gambling on the inherent weakness of Locke, the corruption of Ben, and the mindlessness of his followers.

  

Their debate about whether mankind can change its nature arrives alongside the time-travel corollary question of whether human beings can alter their future. The “we’re the variables” framework presented in Season Five - note the emphasis on the plural - suggests that one person acting alone cannot alter history. Due to our natural tendency to oppose each other, the reactions of some other person will negate that action. Season Five's test case demonstrated the principle, as Kate's efforts to save little Benjamin negated Sayid's attempts to destroy him. The light will drive away the darkness, and vice-versa. However, if enough individuals combine in an effort to alter history, then the magnetism of their aggregate positive charge can overcome the negative pull. When the dark energy approaches the Swan (Jack, Sayid, Jin, and Hurley - all shown as adults in flashback), the forces of light gather to stop them (James, Juliet, and Kate – each one appearing as a child). The ensuing argument between echoes the central time-travel issue of Season Five: James asserts “What’s done is done,” and Jack responds “If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.” The resulting boxing match between the Black-Jack and Light-LaFleur depicts the larger war between the dueling demigods in microcosm: the two men are evenly matched when trading punches, so James exploits a few holes in Jack’s rulebook. In the end, though, one side prevails with nothing more than a little push to tip the scales. Juliet’s paradoxical, circular logic, a freely-willed decision grounded on her concept of predestination, resolves the conflict into its synthesis.

   

BERNARD: You realize we're the only two married guys on the island?

[He shows his ring]

BERNARD: Married?

JIN: Married.

BERNARD: Yeah, well, no, not to each other. No. (laughing) You got it. It's not easy, is it? Oh, I mean, it's--it's wonderful, but... let's face it, every decision that you make takes twice as long. 'Cause you always gotta talk them into it.

 

The episode’s black-and-white motif takes on a completely different meaning in the context of the Island’s two married couples. Part One includes the long-awaited return of Rose and Bernard, a couple whose bond transcends not only the color barrier between black and white, but also the perhaps deeper divide between a woman of faith and a man of science. The retired couple sets the example that the children refuse to follow, to lay down their differences and evolve into peaceful harmony. Subsequent flashbacks also reunite our other married couple, the wedding between Sun in her white dress and Jin in his black tuxedo. Western observers often mistakenly refer to the prominent Eastern symbols of yin and yang, as images of the struggle between good and evil. On the contrary, the black-and-white emblem common from Chinese philosophy (also incorporated into the flag of South Korea) represents duality rather than polarity. The dark and the light, the male and the female, instead of opposing each other become unified halves of a stronger whole. Jin provides another useful image: “We will never be apart, because being apart would be like the sky being apart from the earth.” Their wedding rings reinforce the idea of interconnectedness between the two halves of the same story, an unbreakable bond despite decades of separation. Sun’s later discovery of Charlie’s Driveshaft ring suggests a similar connection between the living and the dead, the past and the future. On a more depressing note, this episode also includes a third married couple, with the tragedy of Sayid and Nadia. While Sayid bleeds to death from his gunshot wound on the island, he suffers a deeper wound in flashback, his own sky being ripped away from his earth.

   

In what is either a sheer accident, or the product of intelligent design, the dark and light phenomenon even extends into the ongoing turmoil between the episode’s four romantic leads. On the physical level, James and Juliet share the same light-haired, lighter-eyed look of Jacob, while Jack and Kate share the same dark-haired, darker-eyed look of his nemesis. As Radzinsky might attest, basic electromagnetism holds that like charges repel and opposite charges attract. Even heading into the final season, the love quadrangle has never settled into a stable equilibrium, due to a peculiar mix of shared-physical-traits-with-opposite-personality-traits and vice versa. If you wanted a second opinion from Dr. Freud, then he could tell you a thing or too about Ms. Austen and Mrs. Shephard, Ms. Burke and Mrs. Ford. (Speaking of Freud, what can a psychoanalyst say about writers who changed temporarily the name of one of its leads from the revenge-driven Sawyer to flower-sniffing LaFleur. The Flower, as it translates from French to English, is traditionally associated with femininity, fertility, and even serves a common symbol for a certain part of the female anatomy. Fortunately, The Incident confirms that, “there ain’t no more LaFleur,” and with it the nominal castration of James Ford comes to an end.) The Incident focuses much of its creative energy on manufacturing motivations for each of the four lovers, to join forces to detonate Jughead, mostly at the expense of the supporting players. For each of these four characters, Lindelof and Cuse go too far in spelling out the answers to the audience in childish black-and-white terms, when shades of adult gray would have sufficed.

  

KATE: So, do you believe it?

JACK: Believe what?

KATE: That everything's going to be okay?

JACK: Yeah, I do.

KATE: Kind of unlike you -- the whole glass half-full thing.

JACK: There's a glass?

 

The childish immaturity of adults often comes across in a negative light, but child-like innocence can also be seen as a positive trait. Hurley, more than any other character, has been blessed (or, depending on your perspective, cursed) with the heart of a child. The adult Hugo not only enjoys a nice cherry Fruit Rollup on his ride home from jail, but he is thoughtful enough to offer to share it with a stranger. Just as any girl Juliet’s age will blame her own actions for her parents’ failed marriage, Hurley similarly internalizes the misfortunes of others as his own personal shortcoming. Hurley’s conversation with Jacob carries the same tune as any kid in need of parental guidance. Jacob’s words add another classic binary opposition to this tapestry of black and white: optimism and pessimism. There are always two ways to look at any situation. Even the darkest curse might be viewed as a brilliant blessing in disguise. As a point of caution, though, the converse of that principle also holds some merit. Throughout this story, Jack plays the unlikely role of a zealous optimist. Absolutely confident in the plan’s improbable success, he illuminates all of the wonderful merits of the revised timeline (Sayid’s life will be saved, Jin will get reunite with Sun, Claire will have the chance to keep Aaron, etc.). Foolish optimism can be a more dangerous force than cautious pessimism. His alternate future easily could result in an abyss of darkness, rather than a beacon of sunshine.

  

After so many rays of hope, the story of John Locke now ends in the gloomiest depths of tragedy. Frank quotes the same eternal question that links together Through the Looking Glass with There’s No Place Like Home: “What’s in the box?”. Three years later, the answer remains the same: Locke’s rotting corpse. John's life ended with him alone, miserable, and a failure. He was a puppet on strings, pulled by Cooper, by Ben, and by the Man in Black, and then discarded as a piece of trash, like on the day he was born. In a way, the entity now occupying Locke’s body has been fulfilling John Locke’s lifelong dreams. Locke always wanted to become a decisive leader, a man strong enough stand up to the Coopers and Linuses and Jacobs of the world. This master pulling the strings is unburdened by John’s emotional scars, his neediness, his self-doubt, even his morality. John’s ambitions of divinity could not be reconciled with his identity as a mortal, so one of those two needed to die. Even so, Locke’s tragic curse can be viewed as a blessing of martyrdom. Seemingly, Locke’s last chance for redemption hinges upon the success of Shephard’s mission to erase history. His phony resurrection in The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham could be explained only by a cheap deus ex machina. The alternative option, resuming his life in a wheelchair at LAX, would be the product of his own leadership, the effect of mentoring Jack into a true believer. Jack drops the warhead onto the Swan site, like a kid tossing a coin into a wishing well, with the hope that when the magic box opens again, whatever he imagines will come true.

   

LOCKE: You have to do it.

JACK: You do it yourself, John.

LOCKE: No, you saw the film, Jack. This is a two person job, at least. […] I can't do this alone, Jack. I don't want to. It's a leap of faith, Jack.

 

Jack’s mad quest to detonate the bomb and prevent the Incident should remind the audience of Locke’s equally mad quest to end the 108-minute cycle of button-pushing once and for all. The content of Season Two’s Live Together, Die Alone resembles The Incident in other ways as well, a two-hour flashback episode to introduce a new character, with a timer ticking down to a scheduled event, which ends with one last heroic gesture to "make it all go away" in a flash of light. (Also, it never hurts to add liberal doses of the Great Radzinsky into your script.) These two episodes pull their characters violently towards the same magnetic focal point, with metal projectiles flying through the air. In each case, the man of faith puts his blind beliefs to an empirical test, to find a yes-or-no, black-and-white scientific question. Locke told us: “I’m more sure about this than anything in my entire life,” and he was wrong. For Jack, the words are: “Nothing... nothing in my life has ever felt so right.” (These statements also reveal a great deal about the degree of confidence the two men felt in themselves over the years.) The destinies of these two great men have been intertwined quite beautifully. Indeed, the outcome of one question hinges upon the answer to the other. If Jack had succeeded in destroying the energy, then Locke would have been correct as the timer ticked down to zero. On the other hand, if the Button truly served no purpose, then Oceanic 815 would have crashed regardless of any Incident, and Jack’s plan would have no effect on the timeline. I cannot help but admire their pure strength of will required to risk everything, seemingly beyond good and evil, beyond fate and free will.

  

Lost’s famous Live Together, Die Alone dichotomy reappears in another form, in the story of Juliet. When Jack first spoke those words in Season One’s White Rabbit, he phrased it as an either-or choice: “if we can’t live together, then we’re going to die alone.” When Juliet references the mantra in The Incident, she makes a crucial misstatement, “Live together and die alone” (at least, according to the closed-captions on my DVD.) A few minutes later, Juliet indeed does die alone, in the hope that everyone else might live again, together at LAX. The method of her death, proved to be an inspired creative choice. James, who tried desperately to lift John from the well in This Place is Death, once again found himself on the losing end of a tug-of-war with the grim reaper. Despite moving on from the death of his parents to build a new life, he finds himself in the same place as his childhood self in Tennessee, losing the woman he loves most in the world. The magnetically-charged chains, pulling her down into the gaping hole, offers a more scientific counterpart to the fantasy-inspired image of the Smoke Monster’s black hand of Death. Chains commonly serve as a symbol of restraint, imprisonment, inevitability, the antithesis of human liberty. In the famous words of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Pulled underground against her will, Juliet makes one last free choice, to erase countless freely-willed decisions of others. She achieves her destiny by destroying the chain of events that caused her to fulfill that destiny.

  

When the final white screen with black letters appears for the first time, after five years of white-on-black writing, the implication is clear: the Lost universe as we know it has inverted itself. The central binary dilemma of Season Five hangs in the balance with the flash of light. Two players, two sides. Did the events of the Season-Five-ending Incident prevent the Season One-opening Pilot’s crash of Oceanic 815? Or did the characters cause the very future they were trying to prevent? Both options offer a mix of positives and negatives. A brand new timeline would offer fresh storytelling opportunities, and a chance to revisit old friends long gone. On the other hand, the explosion would also incinerate the entire five-season hand-crafted tapestry of the Island story. The entire post-1977 universe, including the 2007 storyline of the Incident, would amount to nothing more than a dream. Preserving the old timeline would re-affirm the show’s fundamental rules for meaningful storytelling stakes: dead is dead; whatever happened, happened. With that solution, the entire time-travel story arc that lead to this finale event, and all those post-cliffhanger months of anticipation, would become meaningless. (Logistically, I don’t think either solution even makes much logical sense.) Perhaps the fatal flaw of this debate is that we view it as a debate. As Juliet did, maybe we should simple replace the word ‘OR’ with the word ‘AND’. There can be two universes, one in which Jacob succeeds, and one in which the Man in Black succeeds. Instead of conflict, we can find harmony. As the men who first painted on cave walls understood, one color is not enough. A world of pure white and a world of pure black would be indistinguishable from chaos. But, when you combine the dark and the light in some kind of balance, then any work of art becomes possible.

       

There was something for everyone at the Student Involvement Fair on Friday, 14 September, 2018, and judging by the signups there will be plenty of student led activities happening on campus in the weeks and months ahead. Photography by Glenn Minshall.

Stephen William Bragg (born 20 December 1957) is an English singer-songwriter and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, with lyrics that mostly span political or romantic themes. His music is heavily centred on bringing about change and involving the younger generation in activist causes.

Early life[edit]

Bragg was born in 1957 in Barking, Essex (which is now in Greater London)[2] to Dennis Frederick Austin Bragg, an assistant sales manager to a Barking cap maker and milliner, and his wife Marie Victoria D'Urso, who was of Italian descent.[3] Bragg's father died of lung cancer in 1976,[4] and his mother died in 2011.[5]

Bragg was educated at Northbury Junior School and Park Modern Secondary School (now part of Barking Abbey Secondary School[6]) in Barking. He failed his eleven-plus exam, effectively precluding him from going to university.[7] However he developed an interest in poetry at the age of twelve, when his English teacher chose him to read a poem he had written for a homework assignment on a local radio station.[8] He put his energies into learning and practising the guitar with his next-door neighbour, Philip Wigg (Wiggy); some of their influences were the Faces, Small Faces and the Rolling Stones. He was also exposed to folk and folk-rock music during his teenage years, citing Simon & Garfunkel and Bob Dylan as early influences on his songwriting.[8]

During the rise of punk rock and new wave in the late 1970s, Elvis Costello also served as an inspiration for Bragg.[9] He was also particularly influenced by the Clash, whom he'd seen play live in London in May 1977 on their White Riot Tour, and again at a Rock Against Racism carnival in April 1978, which he admits was the first time he really stepped into the world of music as it is used for political activism.[10] The experience of the gig and preceding march helped shape Bragg's left-wing politics, having previously "turned a blind eye" to casual racism.[10]

Career[edit]

Early career[edit]

In 1977 Bragg formed the punk rock/pub rock band Riff Raff with Wiggy. The band decamped to rural Oundle in Northamptonshire in 1978 to record a series of singles (the first on independent Chiswick Records) which did not receive wide exposure. After a period of gigging in Northamptonshire and London, they returned to Barking and split in 1980.[11] Taking a series of odd jobs including working at Guy Norris' record shop in Barking high street, Bragg became disillusioned with his stalled music career and in May 1981 joined the British Army as a recruit destined for the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars of the Royal Armoured Corps. After completing three months' basic training, he bought himself out for £175 and returned home.[12]

Bragg peroxided his hair to mark a new phase in his life and began performing frequent concerts and busking around London, playing solo with an electric guitar under the name Spy vs Spy (after the strip in Mad magazine).[13]

 

His demo tape initially got no response from the record industry, but by pretending to be a television repair man, he got into the office of Charisma Records' A&R man Peter Jenner.[14] Jenner liked the tape, but the company was near bankruptcy and had no budget to sign new artists. Bragg got an offer to record more demos for music publisher Chappell & Co., so Jenner agreed to release them as a record. Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy (credited to Billy Bragg) was released in July 1983 by Charisma's new imprint, Utility. Hearing DJ John Peel mention on-air that he was hungry, Bragg rushed to the BBC with a mushroom biryani, so Peel played a song from Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy albeit at the wrong speed (since the 12" LP was, unconventionally, cut to play at 45rpm). Peel insisted he would have played the song even without the biryani and later played it at the correct speed.[14]

Within months Charisma had been taken over by Virgin Records and Jenner, who had been made redundant, became Bragg's manager. Stiff Records' press officer Andy Macdonald – who was setting up his own record label, Go! Discs – received a copy of Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy. He made Virgin an offer and the album was re-released on Go! Discs in November 1983, at the fixed low price of £2.99.[15] Around this time, Andy Kershaw, an early supporter at Radio Aire in Leeds, was employed by Jenner as Bragg's tour manager. (He later became a BBC DJ and TV presenter, and he and Bragg appeared in an episode of the BBC TV programme Great Journeys in 1989, in which they travelled the Silver Road from Potosí, Bolivia, to the Pacific coast at Arica, Chile.)[16]

Though never released as a Bragg single, album track and live favourite "A New England", with an additional verse, became a Top 10 hit in the UK for Kirsty MacColl in January 1985. Since MacColl's early death, Bragg always sings the extra verse live in her honour.[17]

In 1984, he released Brewing Up with Billy Bragg, a mixture of political songs (e.g. "It Says Here") and songs of unrequited love (e.g. "The Saturday Boy"). This was followed in 1985 by Between the Wars, an EP of political songs that included a cover version of Leon Rosselson's "The World Turned Upside Down". The EP made the Top 20 of the UK Singles Chart and earned Bragg an appearance on Top of the Pops, singing the title track. Bragg later collaborated with Rosselson on the song "Ballad of a Spycatcher".[18]

In the same year, he embarked on his first tour of North America, with Wiggy as tour manager, supporting Echo & the Bunnymen.[19] The tour began in Washington D.C. and ended in Los Angeles. On the same trip, in New York, Bragg unveiled his "Portastack",[20] a self-contained, mobile PA system weighing 35 lbs (designed for £500 by engineer Kenny Jones), the wearing of which became an archetypal image of the singer at that time. With it, he was able to busk outside the New Music Seminar, a record industry conference.[21]

Late 1980s and early 1990s[edit]

In 1986 Bragg released Talking with the Taxman About Poetry, which became his first Top 10 album. Its title is taken from a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky and a translated version of the poem was printed on the record's inner sleeve. Back to Basics is a 1987 collection of his first three releases: Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy, Brewing Up with Billy Bragg, and Between the Wars. He enjoyed his only Number 1 hit single in May 1988, a cover of the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home", a shared A-side with Wet Wet Wet's "With a Little Help from My Friends". Both were taken from a multi-artist re-recording of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band titled Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father coordinated by the NME in aid of the charity Childline. Wet Wet Wet's cover dominated radio airplay and its video was shown over three consecutive weeks on Top of the Pops; in week four, Bragg went on the programme to play his cover, with regular accompanist Cara Tivey on piano.[22]

Bragg released his fourth album, Workers Playtime, in September 1988. With this album, Bragg added a full backing band and accompaniment, including Tivey on piano, Danny Thompson on double bass and veteran Micky Waller on drums. Wiggy earned a co-production credit with Joe Boyd.[23]

In August 1989 Bragg took lead vocal on the ‘Levi Stubbs’ Tears’ sampling Norman Cook's UK top 40 hit "Won’t Talk About It", which was a double-A-side with "Blame It On the Bassline". The track was a bigger hit a year later with Lindy Layton replacing Bragg as lead vocal.[citation needed]

In May 1990 Bragg released the political mini-LP The Internationale on his and Jenner's own short-lived label Utility, which operated independently of Go! Discs, to which Bragg was still contracted. The songs were, in part, a return to his solo guitar style, but some featured more complicated arrangements and included a brass band. The album paid tribute to one of Bragg's influences with the song, "I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night", which is an adapted version of Earl Robinson's song, "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night", itself an adaptation of a poem by Alfred Hayes.[24] Though the album only reached Number 34 in the UK Charts, Bragg described it as "a reassertion of my rights as an individual ... and a childish two fingers [to Go! Discs boss Andy Macdonald, who'd recently signed a distribution deal with entertainment industry giant PolyGram]."[25]

His sixth studio album Don't Try This at Home was recorded in the shadow of the build-up to the Gulf War and subsequent ground war, inspiring the track "Rumours of War". Although there is social comment ("The Few", "North Sea Bubble"), it was intended as a more commercial pop album, released in September 1991. (Bragg called it "a very long-range attempt to convert the ball between the posts."[26]). The first single was the upbeat "Sexuality", which, despite an accessible video and a dance remix on the B-side, only reached Number 27 on the UK Singles Chart. Following overtures by rival label Chrysalis, Bragg and Jenner had been persuaded by Go! Discs' Andy and Juliet Macdonald to sign a four-album deal for a million pound advance; in return he would promote the album with singles and videos.[27] A more commercial sound and aggressive marketing had no appreciable effect on album sales, and after a grueling, 13-month world tour with a full band (the Red Stars, led by Wiggy), and a period of forced convalescence after appendicitis, Bragg left Go! Discs in summer 1992, paying back the remainder of his advance in return for all rights to his back catalogue.[28]

Late 1990s and 2000s[edit]

Bragg released the album William Bloke in 1996 after taking time off to help new partner Juliet Wills raise their son Jack. (There is a reference to him in the track "Brickbat": "Now you'll find me with the baby, in the bathroom.")[29] After the ambitious instrumentation of Don't Try This at Home, it was a simpler record, musically, more personal and even spiritual, lyrically (its title a pun on the name of 18th-century English poet William Blake, who is referenced in the song "Upfield").[30]

Around that time, Nora Guthrie (daughter of American folk artist Woody Guthrie) asked Bragg to set some of her father's unrecorded lyrics to music. The result was a collaboration with the band Wilco and Natalie Merchant (with whom Bragg had worked previously). They released the album Mermaid Avenue in 1998,[31] and Mermaid Avenue Vol. II in 2000.[32] The first album was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category. A third batch, Mermaid Avenue Vol III, and The Complete Sessions followed in 2012 to mark Woody Guthrie's centennial.[33] A rift with Wilco over mixing and sequencing the first album led to Bragg recruiting his own band, The Blokes, to promote the album live. The Blokes included keyboardist Ian McLagan, who had been a member of Bragg's boyhood heroes The Faces. The documentary film Man in the Sand depicts the roles of Nora Guthrie, Bragg, and Wilco in the creation of the Mermaid Avenue albums.[34]

A developing interest in English national identity, driven by the rise of the BNP and his own move from London to rural Dorset in 1999, informed his 2002 album England, Half-English (whose single, "Take Down The Union Jack" put him back on Top of the Pops in the Queen's Golden Jubilee year[35]) and his 2006 book The Progressive Patriot. The book expressed his view that English socialists can reclaim patriotism from the right wing. He draws on Victorian poet Rudyard Kipling for an inclusive sense of Englishness.[36] In 2007 Bragg moved closer to his English folk music roots by joining the WOMAD-inspired collective The Imagined Village, who recorded an album of updated versions of traditional English songs and dances and toured through that autumn.[37]

In December Bragg previewed tracks from his forthcoming album Mr. Love & Justice at a one-off evening of music and conversation to mark his 50th birthday at London's South Bank.[38] The album was released in March 2008, the second Bragg album to be named after a book by Colin MacInnes after England, Half-English.[39][40] The same year, during the NME Awards ceremony, Bragg sang a duet with British solo act Kate Nash. They mixed up two of their greatest hits, Nash playing "Foundations", and Bragg redoing "A New England".[41] Also in 2008, Bragg played a small role in Stuart Bamforth's film A13: Road Movie.[42]

In 2009, Bragg was invited by London's South Bank to write new lyrics for "Ode to Joy", the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (original libretto by Friedrich Schiller), since adopted as an international anthem of unity. The London Philharmonic Orchestra performed it at the Royal Festival Hall in front of the Queen and Bragg met her afterwards to earn "brownie points" with his mother, also in attendance.[43]

2010s[edit]

He was involved in the play Pressure Drop at the Wellcome Collection in London in April and May 2010. The production, written by Mick Gorden, and billed as "part play, part gig, part installation", featured new songs by Bragg. He performed during the play with his band, and acted as compere.[44]

Bragg was invited by Michael Eavis to curate the Leftfield stage at Glastonbury Festival in 2010,[45] which he has continued to do in subsequent years.[46] He also took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty-Six Books, where he wrote a piece based upon a book of the King James Bible.[47] Bragg performed a set of the Guthrie songs that he had set to music for Mermaid Avenue during the Hay Literary Festival in June 2012,[48] he also performed the same set on the Friday night of the 2012 Cambridge Folk Festival.[49]

On 18 March 2013, five years after Mr. Love & Justice, Bragg released the studio album Tooth & Nail. Recorded in five days at the home studio of musician/producer Joe Henry in South Pasadena it featured 11 original songs, including one written for the Bush Theatre and a Woody Guthrie cover. Stylistically, it continued to explore genres of Americana and Alternative country, a natural progression since Mermaid Avenue.[50][51] The album was a commercial success, becoming his best charting record since 1991's Don't Try This at Home.[52]

  

Bragg with Joe Henry at the Union Chapel, Islington.

In February 2014, Bragg started a series of "radio shows" on Spotify, in which he talked listeners through self-curated playlists of "his favourite tracks and artists, and uncovering some little-known musical gems."[53] On 14 April 2014, Bragg put out Live at the Union Chapel, a souvenir album and DVD of a show he played on 5 June 2013 at the Union Chapel in London, featuring songs from Tooth & Nail as well as favourites from his back catalogue.[54]

In February 2016, Bragg was given the Trailblazer Award at the inaugural Americana Music Association UK Awards in London.[55] Following that, in September he was given the Spirit of Americana Free Speech Award at the Americana Music Association US Awards in Nashville.[56]

In August 2016, Bragg released his eleventh album, a collaboration with Joe Henry, Shine a Light: Field Recordings from the Great American Railroad, recorded at various points on a journey between Chicago and Los Angeles by train in March. It reached number 28 in the UK Album Charts[57] and number one in the UK Americana album chart.[58] The pair started a dual Shine a Light tour at the Americana Music Festival in Nashville in September 2016, and taking them across the States and Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland. In April 2017, they played in Australia.

Faber published Bragg's second nonfiction book (after 2006's The Progressive Patriot), Roots, Radicals and Rockers in June 2016, a history of the British skiffle movement, tracing the form from its 1950s boom back to ragtime, blues, jazz and American folk music. On BBC Music Day 2017, he helped unveil a blue plaque marking the studio (Trident) where the late David Bowie recorded two classic albums and the single Space Oddity, in Soho; he joined album sleeve designer George Underwood and BBC Radio London’s Robert Elms.[59] In November, he released all six tracks from the mini-album Bridges Not Walls as downloads through the Billy Bragg website,[60] followed by the single Full English Brexit through Cooking Vinyl.

In April 2018, Bragg was invited to deliver a Bank of England Flagship Seminar; his presentation was titled Accountability: the Antidote to Authoritarianism. The speech was made available on the Bank of England's website.[61] At the Ivor Novello Awards (the Ivors) in May, he accepted the PRS Outstanding Contribution to British Music award.[62] Also in May, his official biography Still Suitable for Miners was published in a new, 20th anniversary updated edition.[63]

He ended 2018 touring New Zealand and Australia. In Auckland, he road-tested a new live format for 2019 (first tried out in Toronto), One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. The idea was to play three consecutive shows over three nights at each venue: the first night a current, mixed Bragg set; the second from his first three albums; the third from his second three albums. "It’s a way of keeping things interesting," he said.[64] The tour would cover the United States and the UK and Ireland throughout 2019.

In May, Faber and Faber published The Three Dimensions of Freedom, a short polemic by Bragg intended, according to the publisher's blurb, to "protect ourselves from encroaching tyranny." The author urges readers to "look beyond [the] one-dimensional notion of what it means to be free" and "by reconnecting liberty to equality and accountability, restore ... the three dimensions of freedom."[65]

Politics and activism[edit]

For all of Bragg's 30-year-plus recording career he has been involved with grassroots, broadly leftist, political movements, and this is often reflected in his lyrics. He has also recorded and performed cover versions of famous socialist anthems such as "The Internationale" and "The Red Flag". Bragg said in an interview: "I don't mind being labelled a political songwriter. The thing that troubles me is being dismissed as a political songwriter."[66] Bragg has cited the Clash as a strong influence on his politically themed material and activism:

It wasn't so much their lyrics as what they stood for and the actions they took. That became really important to me. Phil Collins might write a song about the homeless, but if he doesn't have the action to go with it he's just exploiting that for a subject. I got that from the Clash, and I try to remain true to that tradition as best I can.[67]

From 1983 to 1997[edit]

Bragg's politics were focused by the Conservative Party's 144-seat majority landslide at the 1983 general election. He told his biographer, "By 1983, the scales had fallen from my eyes."[68] His record label boss Andy Macdonald observed that "his presence onstage took on more of the avenging angel."[69] Bragg was at the forefront of music's influence on the 1984 miners' strike, and played many benefit gigs in towns close to coalfields such as Newport and Sunderland.[70] He also released an EP during this year titled "Between the Wars", which connected struggles of class solidarity to the present issue. This single was his most successful up until this point, reaching number 15 on the charts.[71] The following year, after playing a short Labour Party-sponsored Jobs For Youth tour, he joined other like-minded activists in the public eye to form the musicians' alliance Red Wedge, which promoted Labour's cause – and in turn lobbied the party on youth issues – in the run-up to the 1987 general election,[72] with a national tour in 1986 alongside The Style Council, Jerry Dammers and The Communards.

Bragg travelled twice to the Soviet Union in 1986, the year Mikhail Gorbachev started to promote the policies of perestroika and glasnost. He played a gig in Leningrad, and the Festival of Song in the Struggle for Peace in Kyiv.[73]

 

On 12 June 1987, the night after Labour lost that year's general election, Bragg appeared on a notable edition of the Channel 4 discussion programme After Dark, alongside David Selbourne, Teresa Gorman and Hilary Hook among others. The Independent wrote "A show called Is Britain Working? brought together victorious Tory MP Teresa Gorman; ...Helen from the Stonehenge Convoy; old colonialist Colonel Hilary Hook... and Adrian, one of the jobless. It was a perfect example of the chemistry you can get. There were unlikely alliances (Bragg and Hook)".[74] Later Gorman "stormed off the set, claiming she had been misled about the nature of the programme"[75] "She told...Bragg: 'You and your kind are finished. We are the future now.'"[76] Bragg said "I sing in smokey rooms every night and I can keep talking for far longer than you can Teresa".[77] Bragg explained later: "She was so smug. And because she was Essex I took it personally. Then she accused me of being a fine example of Thatcherism."[78]

From 2010 to 2014[edit]

In the 2010 general election, Bragg supported the Liberal Democrats because "they've got the best manifesto".[88]

Bragg was also very active in his hometown of Barking as part of Searchlight magazine's Hope not Hate campaign, where the BNP's leader Nick Griffin was standing for election. At one point during the campaign Bragg squared up to BNP London Assembly Member Richard Barnbrook, calling him a "Fascist racist" and saying "when you're gone from this borough, we will rebuild this community". The BNP came third on election day.[89]

In January 2011, news sources reported that 20 to 30 residents of Bragg's Dorset village, Burton Bradstock, had received anonymous letters viciously attacking him and his politics, and urging residents to oppose him in the village. He claimed that a BNP supporter was behind the letters, which argued that Bragg is a hypocrite for advocating socialism while living a wealthy lifestyle, and referred to him as anti-British and pro-immigration.[90]

In July 2011 Bragg joined the growing protests over the News of the World phone hacking affair with the release of his "Never Buy the Sun" single, which references many of the scandal's key points including the Milly Dowler case, police bribes and associated political fallout. It also draws on the 22-year Liverpool boycott of The Sun for their coverage of the Hillsborough disaster.[91]

In October 2011, Bragg joined the Occupy Movement protests in the City of London.[92]

In 2013, despite his scathing criticism of Margaret Thatcher, he urged people not to celebrate the death of the former Conservative Prime Minister:

The death of Margaret Thatcher is nothing more than a salient reminder of how Britain got into the mess that we are in today. Of why ordinary working people are no longer able to earn enough from one job to support a family; of why there is a shortage of decent affordable housing... of why cynicism and greed became the hallmarks of our society. Raising a glass to the death of an infirm old lady changes none of this. The only real antidote to cynicism is activism. Don't celebrate – organise![93]

In 2014, Bragg joined the March in March anti-government protests[94] in Sydney, Australia.

In June 2014, Bragg joined other musicians (including Radiohead's Ed O'Brien) in backing a call for the EU to intervene in a dispute between YouTube and independent labels. According to a BBC News report, the video-streaming site was offering "non-negotiable contracts" to its planned, Spotify-like music-subscription service to labels such as XL Recordings, 4AD, Cooking Vinyl and Domino "accompanied by the threat that music videos they have posted to their YouTube channels will be blocked from site altogether if they do not agree to the terms."[95]

Bragg supports both Scottish and Welsh independence.[96] In 2014, after David Bowie spoke in favour of Scotland remaining part of the UK, Bragg said, "Bowie's intervention encourages people in England to discuss the issues of the independence referendum, and I think English people should be discussing it, so I welcome his intervention."[97] Bragg was a vocal supporter of Scottish independence during the campaign prior to the referendum on 18 September 2014. Bragg wrote an article for the Guardian publication on 16 September, in which he addressed the objections he had previously received from people who conflated Scottish nationalism with the far-right ethos of the BNP. He described the independence campaign as "civic nationalism" and his opinion piece concluded:

Support for Scottish self-determination might not fit neatly into any leftwing pigeonhole, but it does chime with an older progressive tradition that runs deep in English history – a dogged determination to hold the over-mighty to account. If, during the constitutional settlement that will follow the referendum, we in England can rediscover our Roundhead tradition, we might yet counter our historic weakness for ethnic nationalism with an outpouring of civic engagement that creates a fairer society for all.[98]

2015 to present[edit]

Bragg was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas at the 2015 general election.[99] In August 2015, Bragg endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election. He said: "His [Corbyn's] success so far shows you how bland our politics have become, in the aim of winning those swing voters in middle England the Labour Party has lost touch with its roots. We live in a time of austerity and what you want from that is not more austerity, you want compassion."[100] On an edition of Question Time in October 2015, he said that Corbyn represents a political "urge for change" and that Ed Miliband had failed to win the 2015 general election because Miliband and the party followed "the old way of doing things".[101] In 2016, Bragg, along with numerous other celebrities, toured the UK to support Corbyn's bid to become Prime Minister.[102][103] He also voiced his support for Remain in the 2016 EU referendum.[104]

In August 2016, The Times reported that at the Edinburgh Book Festival, Bragg had said: "I worry about Jeremy that he's a kind of twentieth century Labour man", and that "we need to be reaching out to people". Described as a "previously loyal supporter", who has "lent his support to Mr Corbyn on numerous occasions since he became Labour leader", The Times quoted Bragg: "I don't have a simple answer. My hope is that the party does not split and that we resolve this stalemate". Corbyn at the time was campaigning in an enforced second leadership election in the summer of 2016.[105]

After The Times article appeared, the singer tweeted that he had "joined the long list of people stitched up by the Murdoch papers"[106] and accused the Times of "twisting my words to attack Corbyn", urging "don’t let Murdoch sow discord".[107] The Guardian reproduced a quote from a recording of the event absent from The Times article: "It's a challenge. Labour has fires to fight on different fronts. This would be happening even without Corbyn if any of the other candidates had won last year, these problems would still be there".[106] In August 2016, Bragg also endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election.[108]

During the general election campaign in May 2017, Bragg added his signature to a letter published in The Guardian calling for Labour to withdraw its candidates in two constituencies; Brighton Pavilion and the Isle of Wight and potentially allowing the Green Party to defeat the Tories in both, where Labour were running second. The letter was also signed by Labour MP Clive Lewis, former policy chief Jon Cruddas, former shadow children's minister Tulip Siddiq and journalists Paul Mason and Owen Jones. The initiative was shut down by Jeremy Corbyn.[109]

In June 2019, Bragg publicly criticised fellow singer-songwriter Morrissey for his recent political comments and endorsement of a far-right political party, and accused him of dragging the legacy of Johnny Marr and the Smiths "through the dirt".[110]

In November 2019, Bragg endorsed the Labour Party in the 2019 general election.[111]

 

(The following is a completely fictional history!)

 

By 1982, the deficiences of the SA-77C Wildfire program were rapidly becoming apparent, and so the FIRAF began looking at a replacement. To preserve the FIR’s self-sufficiency and desire for armament sources beyond the United States, Minister of Defense Akela Canis authorized Intelani Aeronautics to begin designing a replacement for the Wildfire in strict secrecy. Emphasis was placed on affordability and manueverability above all other aspects of the new design. Like the SA-77C, it would be a pure fighter rather than a multirole aircraft.

 

The design team decided to start from scratch, and numerous ideas were put on the table. This included a license-built, simplified F-16A (based on the unsuccessful F-16/79 proposal), resurrecting the Northrop YF-17 Cobra (which had provided the prototype for the F/A-18 Hornet), and essentially a scaled-down version of the Wildfire with variable-sweep wings. The proposal that was liked the most was to design something that would be “radical and practicable,” and centered around the research being made by Grumman Aerospace on forward-swept wing designs. The forward swept wing (FSW) would offer unparalleled (at the time) manueverability, excellent low-speed handling characteristics, and high-Alpha capability.

 

With the permission of Canis, IA contacted Grumman and offered to partner with them in the design of a testbed for the FSW design, which would become the X-29, in August 1983. The X-29 had already begun design work funded by DARPA, and Intelani Aeronautics’ involvement in the design was officially “observer only,” and the fact that much of the research funding came from IA was kept secret.

 

In the interests of speed and cost, the X-29 prototypes were adapted from existing F-5A Freedom Fighter airframes, retaining the forward fuselage and nose landing gear of the type, with main landing gear and control surface actuators of the F-16A. IA, with a better knowledge of composites than Grumman, provided the wings. The X-29 first flew in December 1984.

 

By this time, the Third World War had begun, and a crash program was started to design a military version of the X-29, designated XF-31 Stingray. The second X-29 was designed with a strengthened wing to simulate the addition of hardpoints and first flew in March 1985. By this time, the third X-29 prototype was already being reworked into the first XF-31.

 

Though the X-29 performed well in all respects, Intelani Aeronautics made some improvements to the design. The wing was made slightly larger with more area, while the forward fuselage was made slightly longer and deeper to accommodate the APG-65 radar of the F-16A. A gatling gun setup similar to that of the F/A-18 was proposed, but ultimately rejected in favor of two M39A2 20mm cannon; this was because the F-5 fuselage that the XF-31 was adapted was easily fitted with the M39s and FIRAF pilots were already more used to the cannon armament of the SA-77C and A-4ES. The analog cockpit of the X-29/F-5A was revised to include three multifunction displays, and, taking advantage of combat reports from Europe, an undernose Television Camera System (TCS), adapted from the F-14A+ Tomcat, was added underneath the nose. Because of weight distribution, the decision was made to place the TCS behind the forward landing gear rather than in front of it.

 

Wingtip and underwing fuselage hardpoints were added (the fuselage being too narrow for an underfuselage hardpoint), with the inner pylons “plumbed” for drop tanks. Though the XF-31 was cleared for unguided rocket pods and bombs, and software included for air-to-ground missions, the Stingray was meant to be a pure fighter first and foremost. For the same reason, the canopy was revised as a bubble canopy and the rear fuselage slightly cut down from the X-29, giving better all-around visibility, though not as good as the F-16’s.

 

The most radical change to the X-29 design was the rear fuselage. While it retained the long rear-leading edge extensions (RLEX) of the X-29, a forked twin-tail configuration was adapted for better handling. It was also planned to equip the XF-31 with two engines instead of one, but in the interests of speed the X-29’s single F404 powerplant was retained. The “canoe” that the X-29’s tail was mounted on was retained and used to hold a Holly Stinger ECM suite, essentially equipping the Stingray with internal ECM equivalent to the ALQ-119 pods used over wartime Europe. It was also a “no-frills” aircraft, designed to be built purely for the air superiority role in a hurry at a reasonable price; indeed, the flyaway cost of the Stingray was only $6.2 million per aircraft, half that of the F-16. Because of the speed required to get the aircraft into production, no two-seat conversion trainer F-31 was built.

 

For all the design changes, the XF-31 first flew in May 1985. Again, it was found to be generally a good design, and not as difficult to fly as first thought; the forward swept wing made it virtually impossible to stall, and it was found to be controllable even at an angle of attack of 67 degrees. The heavier nose and twin tails caused some airflow problems, and so the canards were raised a foot higher than those on the XF-31 and made fully controllable; pilots could angle the canards completely down and drop their airspeed precipitously, though this made the Stingray very difficult to control. Strakes were added to the nose (similar to that of the IAI Kfir) to improve longitudinal stability.

 

Production of the standard F-31A was already begun before testing of the XF-31 prototype was complete, and the first production aircraft was rolled out in August 1985. This was done without a formal ceremony to keep the design secret, and the first three F-31As were intended purely for research; these were flown against captured MiG-21s and MiG-23s to develop tactics. Instrumental in this development was Akela Canis Jr., the top-ranked intelani ace, who test-flew the Stingray in October 1985 and proclaimed the design “superb.” The formal announcement of the F-31A was made in November, by which time six were already in Europe with the 51st Fighter Squadron.

 

The Stingray saw its first combat in December, and pilots reported that Soviet pilots were obviously stunned by the radical design being operational. These combat trials also revealed a number of small technical problems, mainly with the guns and TCS system; it also showed the Stingray’s Achilles heel, though one that had been anticipated: the design was very short-ranged compared to other fighters, and was not truly suited for all-weather operations over Europe. Nonetheless, the design was a huge leap forward over the SA-77C and A-4ES, and was placed in full production with priority over all other weapons for the FIR armed forces.

 

Akela Canis Jr. lobbied hard for his 1st Fighter Squadron to be reequipped with Stingrays, and got his wish in February 1986. Pairing the most manueverable fighter then in existence with some of the best-trained fighter pilots in the world proved to be a deadly combination, and “Polar” would go on to score an incredible 420 aerial kills in the Stingray between February 1986 and May 1987. Canis, in his memoirs, attributed this high number to a number of factors: the Stingray’s sudden appearance caught the Soviets by surprise and did not give them enough time to develop counter-tactics; the marked decrease in Soviet pilot quality by summer 1986, which meant poorly-trained pilots were going up against hardened veterans; the Stingray’s unmatched capability in the short-range turning dogfight—up to that point one of the Soviets’ best tactics against large, less manueverable fighters like the Wildfire, F-4, and F-15. This, in Canis’ words, gave Polar the “perfect storm” they needed to achieve a murderous kill ratio, fully ten percent of all NATO kills of the war.

 

The heavy use of composites in the Stingray also made it a very resilient aircraft; Canis returned to base with an entire wingtip missing, while Matthew White, another Polar ace, collided with a flagpole on a strafing mission and managed to return home despite a huge rent in the lower fuselage.

 

The Stingray proved wildly popular, and by the end of the war, four squadrons were equipped with them. It was thought that as many as twenty squadrons might be reequipped with Stingrays, but postwar cuts and the F-31A’s shortcomings proved to limit their numbers. While the Stingray had proven to be arguably the best fighter of the Third World War, it was nonetheless hampered by a lack of range and lack of multirole capability.

 

F-31As were committed to Operation Desert Shield/Storm, using oversize ferry tanks to improve their range. Once more, put into an environment where they excelled, the Stingray reigned supreme, scoring 32 kills, nearly half of all Coalition aerial victories of the war.

 

Though outnumbered by F-15s and F-16s in FIRAF service, the F-31C Stingray remains an important part of the FIRAF and a much-sought after assignment. 72 Stingrays are in service with the FIRAF. These aircraft are slated to be replaced beginning in 2015, possibly by F-32A Mantas or F-35A Lightnings.

 

Completely made-up history aside, I got the idea of equipping my literary characters and fantasy air force with FSW fighters from my childhood, when one of my favorite toys was the GI Joe X-30 Conquest. Dad and I collaborated on the F-31 design, with Dad using the 1/48 scale Hasegawa X-29 kit. He used F-18 tails for the twin tails of the Stingray design, moved the canards to the top of the intakes, added the guns to the nose, and some assorted bumps and such for ECM. (There is a TCS taken from a F-14B kit, but it can't be seen from this angle.) Then hardpoints were added under the wings and on the wingtips, with two drop tanks, two AIM-120 AMRAAMs, and two AIM-9L Sidewinders. Most decals were taken from a F-16 sheet, with JASDF hinomarus used for the "Free Intelani Air Force" roundels; a F-15 sheet supplied both the bear and the blue/white starburst for the tail logo (the bear is from a JASDF F-15 unit, while the starburst is from the 318th FIS from McChord AFB, WA). The whole thing was painted in F-16 style camouflage.

 

The end result was a great looking kitbash, and it was our favorite collaboration. I ran the design by some aviation designers, and they said it was a viable design--though the tails should be moved down to the ends of the RLEXs, as the split tail doesn't offer any benefits to aerodynamics as placed. I was interested to see that the Iranian F-5 Shahegh variant uses a similar tail configuration...

 

Odissi, also known as Orissi (Odia: ଓଡିଶୀ Oḍiśī), is one of the eight classical dance forms of India. It originates from the state of Odisha, in eastern India. It is the oldest surviving dance form of India on the basis of archaeological evidences. The classic treatise of Indian dance, Natya Shastra, refers to it as Odra-Magadhi. 1st century BCE bas-reliefs in the hills of Udaygiri (near Bhubaneswar) testify to its antiquity. It was suppressed under the British Rule, but has been reconstructed since India gained independence. It is particularly distinguished from other classical Indian dance forms by the importance it places upon the Tribhangi (literally: three parts break), the independent movement of head, chest and pelvis and upon the basic square stance known as Chauka or Chouka that symbolises Lord Jagannath. This dance is characterised by various Bhangas (Stance), which involves stamping of the foot and striking various postures as seen in Indian sculptures. The common Bhangas are Bhanga, Abanga, Atibhanga and Tribhanga.

 

Though a very old dance form, Odissi got recognition as a classical dance from the Central government officially, after efforts by many scholars and performers in the 1950s, including a powerful lec-dem in April 1958 by Kavichandra Kalicharan Pattanayak, an Oriya poet, dramatist and researcher. Pattanayak is also credited with naming the dance form as "Odissi".

 

ORIGIN AND HISTORY

The first clear picture of Odissi dance is found in the Manchapuri cave in Udayagiri which was carved during the time of emperor Kharavela in the first or second century BCE. Flanked by two queens, emperor Kharavela was watching a dance recital where a damsel was performing a dance in front of the court along with the company of female instrumentalists. Thus, Odissi can be traced back to its origin as secular dance. Later it was attached to the temple culture of Odisha. Starting with the rituals of Jagannath temple in Puri it was regularly performed in Shaivite, Vaishnavite and Sakta temples in Odisha. An inscription is found where it was engraved that a Devadasi Karpursri’s attachment to Buddhist monastery, where she was performing along with her mother and grandmother. It proves that Odissi originated as a court dance. Later, it was performed in all religious places of Jainism as well as Buddhist monasteries. Odissi was initially performed in the temples as a religious offering by the Maharis who dedicated their lives in the services of God. It closely resembles sculptures of the Indian temples.

 

The history of Odissi dance has been traced to early sculptures found in the Ranigumpha caves at Udaygiri (Odisha), dating to the 2nd century BCE. Odissi appears to be the oldest classical dance rooted in rituals and tradition. In fact, the Natya Shastra refers to Odra-Magadhi as one of the Vrittis and Odra refers to Odisha.

 

TEMPLE HISTORY

In Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Odisha, Udayagiri Caves, Khandagiri Caves and Jain Caves are present which date back to the 2nd century BCE, that served as a royal palace for emperor Kharavela. It is suggested by scholars that Odissi is archaeologically the oldest Indian classical dance form due to sculptural evidence found in the caves. There are several sculptures of dancers and musicians in Konark Sun Temple and Brahmeswara Temple in Bhubaneswar.

 

In the excavated ruins of the Buddhist Ratnagiri hills in Odisha, dating back to the 6th thru 9th centuries, several panels and icons of dance are found resembling present-day Odissi dance.

 

In the Tantric temples, such as the Hirapur Shrine, many of the yoginis especially are depicted in poses reminiscent of present-day Odissi. When Odisha became a big centre of worship of Lord Shiva, it is only natural that dance would be used as a form of worship, since Lord Shiva was a master dancer himself. He is also known as Nataraj, the Cosmic Lord of Dance. The Shaivite temples of Bhubaneswar display innumerable sculptures in postures of Odissi. The Vaishnavite Temples such as Jagannath Temple and Konark Sun Temple abound with an array of dancing sculptures carved into the temple walls, giving testimony that a particular school of dancing had continued from the Shaivite art tradition to the Vaishnavite art form.

 

MANUSCIPT EVIDENCE

Sage Bharata's Natya Shastra, written in the 2nd century CE, speaks of four types of Pravrittis (local usages): Avanti, Dakshinatya, Panchali, and Odra Magadhi, and the areas where each type is employed. Some scholars have interpreted that Odra Magadhi is "the earliest literary reference" to Odissi.

 

Abhinaya Chandrika written by Maheshvara Mahapatra is a detailed study of the movements of the feet, hands, the standing postures, the movement and the dance repertoire. It includes illustrations of the Karanãs mentioned in NãtyaShãstra.

 

The illustrated manuscript Shilpaprakãsha deals with Odia architecture and sculpture as well as the figures of dance. In this, one finds an elaborate analysis of the manner in which the salabhanjikãs or the feminine figures called the Alasa Kanyas are carved in the temple. The illustrations of Shilpaprakãsha reinforces the evidence of sculpture in temples.

 

A rather unexpected source, the Jain Manuscripts, especially the Kalpasutra and Kalkacharya Kathãs show traces of Odia dance style although they were being executed in Gujarat. The marginal figures of dancers show women in poses and movements similar to the distinctive style of Odissi. For example, in one of the famous illustrated Jain Manuscripts called the Devasanpada Kalpasutra (1501, Jamnagar), there is depiction of the Samapada, the Tribhangi and the Chuaka.

 

This shows that there was a great deal of mobility between east and west and many migrations took place. According to some historians, there were groups of dancers who were brought to Puri from Gujarat and Andhra.

 

MUGHAL AND BRITISH PERIOD

During the Mughal rule of India, the duties of the Maharis (the temple dancers) shifted, as they were employed to entertain the royal family and courtiers in the royal courts. They became associated with concubinage to the king and ceased to be respected solely as servants to Lord Jagannath. A decline and degradation occurred in all the Indian classical dance styles during the British period, especially when a bill was passed prohibiting temple dancing. Most of these dancers, losing their respected place in society, were forced into prostitution to survive in the changing climate of political and cultural oppression by the British.

 

TRADITION AND DANCERS

The Odissi tradition existed in three schools: Mahari, Nartaki, and Gotipua.

 

Maharis were Oriya devadasis or temple girls, their name deriving from Maha (great) and Nari or Mahri (chosen) particularly those at the temple of Jagganath at Puri. Early Maharis performed mainly Nritta (pure dance) and Abhinaya (interpretation of poetry) based on Mantras and Slokas. Later, Maharis especially performed dance sequences based on the lyrics of Jayadev's Gita Govinda. Bhitari Gauni Maharis were allowed in the inner temple while Bahari Gauni Maharis, though in the temples, were excluded from the sanctum sanctorum.

By the 6th century, the Gotipua tradition was emerging. One of the reasons given for the emergence of Gotipuas is that Vaishnavas did not approve of dancing by women. Gotipuas were boys dressed up as girls and taught the dance by the Maharis. During this period, Vaishnava poets composed innumerable lyrics in Odia dedicated to Radha and Krishna. Gotipuas danced to these compositions and gradually stepped out of the precincts of the temples.

Nartaki dance took place in the royal courts, where it was much cultivated before the British period. At that time the misuse of devadasis came under strong attack, so that Odissi dance withered in the temples and became unfashionable at court. Only the remnants of the Gotipua school remained, and the reconstruction of the style required an archaeological and anthropological effort that has tended to foster a conservative purism.

 

MAHARI TADITION

The consecration of females to the service of temple dancing began in the Shaivite temples and continued in the Jagannath temple in service of the Lord Jagannath. These attendants have been known as Maharis (great women) or Devadasis (servants of the lord), and have been considered the wives of Lord Jagannath. Odissi developed through their art.

 

The first evidence of the Mahari institution in Odisha comes from a commemorative inscription by Udyota Kesari, the last King of the dynasty. In the 10th century the King’s mother, Kolavati Devi, dedicated temple dancers to Lord Shiva in the Brahmeswara Temple.

 

Raja Anantavarma Chodagangadeva appointed dancing girls for ritual services in the Jagannatha temple in the 11th century, and these Maharis were the ones responsible for keeping the dance alive for centuries. Through the technique of unequal division of weight and firm footwork balancing a fluid upper torso, the dancer achieves a sensuality that is uncommon in other classical dance styles. Some eminent Mahari dancers are Moni Mahari, Dimmi (Domi) Mahari, Dungri Mahari (Harapriya), and Padmashri Guru Pankaj Charan Das.

 

GOTIPUA TRADITION

In the Odia language Gotipua means single boy. Gotipua dance is performed only by boys who dress up as girls. During the rule of King Prataprudra Dev, who was a follower of Sri Chaityana, renewed this dancing tradition by boys, as the Vaishnavas did not approve of dances by girls.

 

DANCE VOCABULARY AND REPERTOIRE

 

TRADITIONAL ODISSI REPERTOIRE CONSISTS OF:

MANGALACHARANA

An invocation piece. After paying homage to Lord Jagannath a shloka (hymn) in praise of some God or Goddess is sung, the meaning of which is brought out through dance. Mangalacharan also includes the Bhumi Pranam (salutation to Mother Earth) which is offered to Mother Earth as a way of begging forgiveness for stamping on her and the Trikhandi Pranam or the three-fold salutation – above the head to the Gods, in front of the face to the gurus and in front of the chest to the audience.

 

BATTU NRUTYA

Also known as Sthayee Nrutya or Batuka Bhairava (Furious Dance) it is performed in the honor of Lord Shiva- the cosmic Lord of Dance. It is one of the 64 furious-aspects of Lord Shiva known. The origin of dance is believed to be from Tantrism that had flourished in Odisha. Linga Purana and Mahanirvanatantra give an elaborate description of Batuka Bhairava in three aspects, and the results of their worship have also been explained elaborately in the texts. Battu Nrutya is an item of pure Nrutya (Dance)and remains the most difficult item of Odissi dance. The dance begins with a series of sculpturesque poses depicting such actions as the playing of a Veena (Lute), Mardala or Pakhawaj (Drum), Karatala (Cymbals) and Venu (Flute), that brings out the interrelationships between this dance and the dance sculptures adorning the temples of Odisha. These poses are stringed together with steps in different rhythms. There is no song or recitation accompanying the dance, but throughout the item a refrain of rhythmic syllables is provided. The accompanying refrain is in the form of one line of Ukuta and as this is recited in the Tala, different Jathi-patterns are improvised and are executed with the feet. Some Tala variations are introduced and each sequence of the dance terminates with a Tehdi known as Katam. The last sequence is always in Jhula Pahapata Tala and is performed with a fast tempo.

 

PallaviA pure dance item in which a raga is elaborated through eye movements, body postures & intricate footwork. Pallavi literally means "blossoming". This is applicable not only to the dance, but also to the music, which accompanies it. Pallavi starts with slow, graceful & lyrical movements of the eyes, neck, torso & feet & slowly builds in a crescendo to climax in a fast tempo at the end. Both the dance and the music evolve in complexity as the dancer traces multiple patterns in space, interpreting the music dexterously in the multilayered dimensions of taal (rhythm) and laya (speed).

 

ABHINAYA

An expressional dance which is an enactment of a song or poetry, where a story conveyed to the audience through mudras (hand gestures), bhavas (facial expression), eye movement and body movement. The dance is fluid, very graceful, and sensual. Abhinaya can be performed on verses in Sanskrit or Odia language. The verses are extremely ornate in content and suggestion. Most common are Abhinayas on Oriya songs or Sanskrit Ashthapadis or Sanskrit stutis like Dasavatar Stotram (depicting the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu) or Ardhanari Stotram. Most of the Abhinaya compositions are based on the Radha-Krishna theme. The Astapadis of the kãvya Gita Govinda written by the Saint Jayadev are an integral part of its repertoire. The beginning pieces are dedicated to Lord Jagannath – an incarnation of Lord Vishnu.

 

DANCE DRAMA

Usually longer than Abhinaya and typically performed by more than one dancers. Some of the much appreciated dance dramas composed by Guru Kelucharan Mahapatra are: Sudama Dharitra Bhanjana, Mathamani Pradhana, Balya Leela, Rutu Samhara, Krishna Sudama, Dushmanta Sakuntala, Utkala Mauda Mani, Yagnaseni, Meghadoot, Kumara Sambhava, Sapan Nayaka. Usually Hindu mythologies are chosen as themes, but experimenting with the theme and form in recent years have led to extremely unique creations. Some worth-mentioning themes in recent years are Panchakanya, Ganga Yamuna, Chitrangadaa, Shrita Kamalam, Mrutyuh, Tantra, Padapallavam, and Raavana.

 

MOKSHA

The concluding item of a recital. Moksha means “spiritual liberation”. This dance represents a spiritual culmination for the dancer who soars into the realm of pure aesthetic delight. Movement and pose merge to create ever new patterns, ever new designs in space and time. The dance moves onto a crescendo that is thrilling to both, the eye and the ear. With the cosmic sound of the “Om”, the dance dissolves into nothingness — just like Moksha or the deliverance of the soul in real life.

 

LANGUAGES

Odissi music is mainly accompanied by odia but also sometimes bengali or sanskrit verses.

 

ODISSI MUSIC

Odissi dance is accompanied by Odissi music, a synthesis of four classes of music, i.e. Dhruvapada, Chitrapada, Chitrakala and Panchal. The Dhruvapada is the first line or lines to be sung repeatedly. Chitrapada means the arrangement of words in an alliterative style. The use of art in music is called Chitrakala. Kavisurya Baladev Rath, the renowned Oriya poet wrote lyrics, which are the best examples of Chitrakala. All of these were combined to form the style that's peculiar to Odissi music.

 

Chhanda (metrical section) contains the essence of Odissi music. The Chhandas were composed by combining Bhava (theme), Kala (time), and Swara (tune). The Chaurisha represents the originality of Odissi style. All the thirty four letters of the Oriya alphabet from 'Ka' to 'Ksha' are used chronologically at the beginning of each line.

 

A special feature of Odissi music is the padi which consists of words to be sung in Druta Tala (fast beat). Odissi music can be sung to different talas: Navatala (nine beats), Dashatala (ten beats) or Egartala (eleven beats). Odissi ragas are different from the ragas of Hindustani and Karnataki classical music. The primary Odissi ragas are Kalyana, Nata, Shree Gowda, Baradi, Panchama, Dhanashri, Karnata, Bhairavee and Shokabaradi.

 

Odissi music is sung through Raganga, Bhabanga and Natyanga Dhrubapadanga followed by Champu, Chhanda, Chautisa, Pallabi, Bhajan, Janana, and Gita Govinda, which are considered to be a part of the repertoire of Odissi or an allied act form of Odissi.

 

Odissi music has codified grammars, which are presented with specific Raagas. It has also a distinctive rendition style. It is lyrical in its movement with wave-like ornamentation. The pace of singing in Odissi is not very fast nor too slow, and it maintains a proportional tempo which is very soothing.

 

COSTUME AND JEWELRY

The jewellery is made from intricate filigree silver jewellery pieces. Filigree, in French, means "thin wire", and in Oriya it is called Tarakasi. This highly skilled art form is more than 500 years old and is traditionally done by local artisans on the eastern shores of Odisha. The process of creating each piece takes the collaboration of many artisans each specialised in one step of the many that turns a lump of raw silver into a handcrafted work of art.

 

The jewellery pieces are an important part of the female Odissi dancer’s costume. The hair is drawn into an elaborate bun on which the Tahiya is placed. The Seenthi is a jewellery piece placed on the hair and forehead. The dancers face is adorned with Tikka (decorations made by hand with sandalwood paste), Mathami or Matha Patti (forehead ornament), Allaka (head piece on which the tikka hangs), unique ear covers called Kapa in intricate shapes usually depicting a peacock’s feathers, an ear chain, Jhumkas (bell shaped earrings), a short necklace, and a longer necklace with a hanging pendant.

 

The dancer wears a pair of armlets also called Bahichudi or Bajuband, that is worn on the upper arm. They wear a pair of Kankana (bangles) at the wrist. At the waist they wear an elaborate belt made of silver or similar materials that's silver plated. They wear a pair of ankle bells (numerous small bells strung together on a single string) tied around their ankles. The dancer's palms and soles are painted with red coloured dye called the Alta.

 

The crown or Mukoot or Mookut, worn by the Odissi dancer is made only in the devotional city of Puri in Eastern Odisha. It is formed from the dried reeds called Sola in a tradition called Sola Kama. The reed is carved by a series of cuts into the rod-like stem and forms various types of flowers when a string is tied in the middle of the rod and pulled tight. As the string is tightened, the flowers shape into Jasmines, Champa (one of the five flowers of Lord Krishna’s arrows), and Kadamba (the flowers of the tree under which Radha would wait for her beloved Lord Krishna).

 

The Mukoot consists of two parts i.e. Ghoba and Tahiya. The flower decorated back piece, called the Ghoba, sits around the dancer’s hair pulled into a bun at the back of the head. This piece represents the Lotus flower with a thousand petals that lies above the head in the head Chakra, or energy center. The longer piece that emerges from the center of the back piece is called the Tahiya, and this represents the temple spire of Lord Jagannath or the flute of Lord Krishna.

 

The Saree worn by Odissi dancers are generally coloured with bright shades of orange, purple, red or green. These sarees are characterised by features of traditional prints of Odisha, special borders, intricate designs and a shiny embellishment. This costume is drapped around the body in unique traditional way unlike other classical dance forms of India. Sambalpuri Saree and Bomkai Saree are preferred in Odissi dance over other type of Sarees. "Stitched costumes" are popular with the younger generation for its convenience and is composed of five pieces, that includes angrakha, blouse, pyjama, etc. These costumes are created by making use of the Sambalpuri and Bomkai saree materials.

 

The makeup of an Odissi dancer includes Bindi (red dot), applied on the forehead with a pattern made from sandalwood around it, Kajal (black eyeliner), applied around the eyes with a broad outline to give them an elongated look, among others.

 

IN GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS

Guinness World Records has acknowledged the feat of the largest congregation of Odissi dancers in a single event. 555 Odissi dancers performed at the event hosted on 23 December 2011, in the Kalinga stadium, Bhubaneswar, Orissa. The dancers performed the Mangalacharan, Battu, Pallavi, Abhinay and Mokshya dance items from the Odissi repertoire.

 

WIKIPEDIA

 

MODERATOR: Hey, good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. And let me just go ahead and introduce our speakers real quick and we’ll get it over to them. We have – first of all, this call is on background. We have [Senior Administration Official One], who’ll be Senior Administration Official One. And our second speaker is [Senior Administration Official Two], who will be Senior Administration Official Two. So I’m going to turn it right over to Senior Administration Official One for some opening remarks and then Two for some brief comments as well.

 

So go ahead, Senior Administration Official One.

 

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Thank you very much and thanks for everyone to be – for being on the call today. As many of you will have seen, yesterday we released at the State Department the annual Country Reports on Terrorism for 2012. And one of the most noteworthy conclusions when we put that report together was a marketing resurgence of terrorist activity by Iran and Hezbollah. The tempo of operational activity was something we haven’t seen since the 1990s, with attacks plotted in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Africa in 2012 alone.

 

We believe this is an alarming trend. It’s borne out by the facts and it merits closer inspection as we evaluate the landscape of terrorist activity globally. Add to this, of course, is the deepening commitment both Iran and Hezbollah have made to fight and kill on behalf of the Assad regime in Syria. That involvement, of course, is hardening the conflict and threatening to spread the violence across the region.

 

Hezbollah and the Iranian leadership share a similar world view and strategic vision and are seeking to exploit the current unrest in the region to their advantage. This approach has increased sectarian tensions and conflict and serves further as a destabilizing force during a time of great change throughout the region.

 

The activity is, as I said, alarming, but there’s also an encouraging trend at work and one I think that’s received fairly – relatively little attention in our view, and that’s the increasingly firm response among governments around the world to these actions. We’re seeing prosecutions of Hezbollah operatives in multiple jurisdictions around the world, ongoing investigations, and discussions about proscribing the group as a terrorist organization.

 

Now just to recap a couple of the notable incidents in 2012 that we also covered in our report, in February of this year the Bulgarian Government publicly implicated Hezbollah in a July 2012 bombing in Burgas that killed five Israelis and one Bulgarian citizen and injured 32 others. In March of this year, a court in Cyprus found a Hezbollah operative guilty of charges stemming from surveillance activities carried out in 2012 against Israeli tourists. Thailand is currently prosecuting a Hezbollah member for his role in helping plan a possible terrorist attack in that country. We understand that trial will begin in mid-June. The Qods Force is suspected of directing terrorist attacks in Georgia, India, Thailand, and Kenya in 2012.

 

You will also recall that the Qods Force was implicated in a 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States in Washington. Manssor Arbabsiar was sentenced yesterday to 25 years in prison for his involvement in that plot. We see no signs of this activity abating in 2013. In fact, our assessment is that Hezbollah and Iran will both continue to maintain a heightened level of terrorist activity and operations in the near future.

 

Now turning to Syria, Hezbollah has long been involved in the conflict and, of course, is making no – no longer making any effort to disguise or downplay the extent of its commitment to kill or die on behalf of the Assad regime. A large number of Hezbollah fighters are now operating in Syria, even though the Lebanese Government has sought to disassociate Lebanon from the Syrian crisis in the best interest of the Lebanese people. The group is openly undermining that policy and working closely with Iran to provide a range of support to the Assad regime, including fighters, weaponry, and training a large pro-regime militia.

 

We judge that Iran and Hezbollah have enlisted Alawite, Iraqi, Shia militant and terrorist groups to participate in counter-opposition operations in Syria. All of this support is helping the regime brutally crack down on the opposition, kill civilians, and is contributing to regional instability, notably in Lebanon. And unfortunately, it’s clear that both Hezbollah and Iran’s involvement in Syria is only deepening as they take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that their close ally survives.

 

Countering these activities continues to be a priority for the U.S. Government, but we’re also seeing other governments begin to take their own actions in response to Hezbollah’s global presence and operational activity. Governments are beginning to see Hezbollah for what it is, and there is a shift underway that we detect in the way that other governments are viewing the organization.

 

I mentioned the prosecution a minute ago of Hezbollah operatives in Cyprus and the Bulgarian Government’s finding Hezbollah responsibility for the Burgas attack. These attacks – these activities, of course, led to the most serious discussion we’ve seen within the EU to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Crucially, France and Germany have called for Hezbollah’s military wing to be added to the EU’s terrorism list, and we’re watching that discussion very, very closely.

 

Recently Bahrain designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and is proposing that the GCC take up similar action across the GCC against Hezbollah. The Arab League Chief Nabil Elaraby recently weighed in on Hezbollah, urging it to stop fighting alongside the Assad regime, urging Hezbollah to reconsider its stance and not get involved in the killing in Syria and stressing that only – the only way to protect Lebanon is to protect Lebanon’s internal unity. That was issued in an Arab League statement, and I think that reflection of Arab League view is certainly a turnaround in the way Hezbollah is being viewed across the Arab world.

 

Of course, Hezbollah’s actions have been condemned by numerous Lebanese political figures for placing Lebanon at risk and placing the country’s interest and those of – and placing Hezbollah’s interest and those of Iran and Assad above those of the Lebanese people. President Sulayman recently urged Hezbollah to withdraw from Syria.

 

Looking again at the global picture, in Southeast Asia, in mid-June, the Thai Government will begin its prosecution of a Hezbollah operative who was detained in January 2012 and who led police to a warehouse located outside of the city – outside of Bangkok, where police found several thousand kilograms of explosives and bomb-making material. We’ve also seen countries beginning to crack down on Iran’s terrorist activities with Nigeria and Kenya arresting and prosecuting Iranian operatives who were in their countries engaged in various illicit activities.

 

I think I’ll stop there, but it does give you a sense of the global scope of activity we’re seeing on both of these – both the – both Iran and Hezbollah’s part, and as was emphasized in our report released yesterday. Thank you.

 

MODERATOR: Senior Administration Official Two, do you have a few remarks before we go to Q&A?

 

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: Sure. I’m happy to make a few remarks on our – on the U.S. Government’s financial efforts with respect to Hezbollah. And I certainly will try to build upon that very comprehensive laydown of all of the illicit conduct that Hezbollah is involved in, both in Lebanon and around the world.

 

What I think it demonstrates is that Hezbollah would certainly hold itself out as a resistance organization and as a social organization, as a political organization. What it actually is is a terrorist organization, and not just a terrorist organization, but a broad organization that’s morally bankrupt to its very core.

 

As a result of all of these activities, and actually a lot of other activities, in our efforts to combat its financial support and its financial activities, we’ve adopted over the last couple of years a new approach. Traditionally, over the years, what we’ve focused on is trying to go after the terrorist financing as terrorist financing activities of Hezbollah, and we certainly continue to do that. But what I think you’ve seen over the past several years is expanding the aperture of those efforts in two ways. The first is taking a comprehensive approach to targeting all of Hezbollah’s illicit activities, and secondly, to focus more than ever before on Hezbollah’s financial activities within Lebanon and trying to make even the Lebanese financial system a hostile environment for Hezbollah to be operating in, so again, a comprehensive approach, an approach that focuses not just on the periphery, but challenging Hezbollah’s ability to conduct financial activities through the Lebanese financial system.

 

We’ve done that a number of ways. First of all, as I said, in the traditional way of focusing on Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, we’ve implemented a number of financial sanctions with respect to Hezbollah targeting their ties with the Iran Qods Force and just their general conduct within Lebanon. And I could be happy to go into some of those designations, if people are interested.

 

Secondly, we focused on Hezbollah’s activities within Syria and its alliance with the Assad regime and the violence that it’s waging upon the Syrian people and tried to highlight that through our financial and economic sanctions.

 

And then finally, and what I think is the most innovative aspect of our strategy, is focusing on Hezbollah’s illicit financial activities, to include its links with narcotics trafficking. We’ve taken a number of actions in which Hezbollah has been implicated under our drug kingpin sanctions program, and using Section 311 of the Patriot Act to target financial institutions within Lebanon that have been involved in these narcotics money-laundering activities and that have had links to Hezbollah. These include actions we’ve taken against the Lebanese Canadian Bank, and just within the past couple of months, against two exchange houses within Lebanon – the Rmeiti Exchange and the Halawi Exchange.

 

We’ve combined this with intense engagement with the Lebanese Government to try to ensure that all Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Rules and regulations and international standards are being applied throughout the Lebanese financial system to ensure the Lebanese financial system is clean and safe and integrated into the international financial system appropriately. But we’ve also made clear that if Lebanon is unable to apply Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing laws and regulations and international standards in an appropriate fashion, then it puts its access to the international financial system at risk.

 

So these are the efforts that we had. Again, I’d be happy to try to go into more detail on any of them, but let me wrap it up and open it up for questions. Thank you.

 

OPERATOR: Certainly. Ladies and gentlemen of the press, if you wish to ask a question, please press * then 1 at this time. One moment please for our first question.

 

And our first question is from the line of Mr. Michael Gordon from New York Times. Please go ahead.

 

QUESTION: All right. Thank you. I have two questions. One, is there any estimate of the – obviously Iran is making a large effort to supply Assad with arms, Qods Force personnel, advisors, and the like. Is there an estimate of what, in terms of resources, how much Iran is spending on this, how many billions, for example, per year? And two, there was a recent episode that’s come to light through Israeli and Nigerian officials, where they claim to have nabbed a Hezbollah cell in Nigeria that was planning attacks on Western targets and Israeli targets. Do you have any information on that?

 

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: On this, I’ll take the second question there. We are watching very closely those reports coming out of Nigeria. We don’t have anything further than what is – has been announced, both by the Nigerian and the Israeli Governments. But it, again, is reflective of this global scope of operational activity that we’ve been encountering over these last 18, 24 months, and it’s something that we’re very concerned about. Africa, across the continent, has been an area that Hezbollah in particular has been active. Of course, they’ve used Africa for fundraising and traditionally, but they’ve been operationally active in a number of African countries, as have the Iranians, as we saw in the case in Kenya recently.

 

So we’re watching the news very, very closely out of Nigeria, but I don’t have anything further on it for you.

 

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: Hi. I’ll try to answer the first question, although I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get into the amount of detail that I think you’re hoping for. With respect to Hezbollah financing, Iran has always been and remains the primary financial supporter of Hezbollah and Hezbollah survives on the resources that it derives from its Iranian support. That’s not to say that it doesn’t derive funds from other places. It certainly does, and I touched upon some of those in my previous remarks. But Iran still is vital to all of that. This is one of the reasons, as I said before, why we focus so heavily on ensuring that the Lebanese financial system is not a conducive environment for Hezbollah financial activities.

 

With respect to Iranian support for activities within Syria, I don’t have numbers for you. Obviously Iran is committing a significant amount of resources, both financial and otherwise, to the conflict within Syria and they’re doing it in a whole wide variety of methods and mechanisms. But I don’t have any specific details for you on that.

 

OPERATOR: Thank you. And our next question, from the line of Lourdes Meluza, Univision News. Please go ahead.

 

QUESTION: Yes. Hi. How are you? We saw the part of your report about Mexico, and it is very – you compliment the efforts of the Mexican Government. Not only that, but you say that there is no – basically no terrorism threat from Mexico or at the border coming sort of in Mexico or from Mexico. Yet Homeland Security reports last year in November was talking about the links of Hezbollah with drug traffic organizations in Mexico. Are you not concerned about that at all? At this point there is even – they even cite indictments where in the federal district of Virginia, they substantiate reports of (inaudible) between these cartels and Hezbollah.

 

Hello?

 

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Well, I’ll take that – the question. Of course, we have the Arbabsiar case, which is something that has played out in the court and there’s been the sentencing yesterday. We are quite concerned about Hezbollah and its global reach. We don’t have evidence of an operational network – Hezbollah across South America, but it’s something that we watch for very, very, very closely. We know that Hezbollah as an organization does benefit from fundraising activity or commercial activity that ultimately benefits the organization back in Lebanon. But as for an operational link to activities in South America, Central America, or Mexico, we don’t have that.

 

OPERATOR: Thank you. And our next question from the line of Mr. Ron Kampeas, Jewish Telegraphic. Please go ahead.

 

QUESTION: Yes. Thank you. I just wanted to ask you to elaborate on what you were saying about governments – “the increasingly firm response of governments” is how you put it. And I know about, yes, the intensified considerations in Europe and even in the Gulf Cooperation Council to declare Hezbollah or to – designate Hezbollah or --

 

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Yeah, is – have you finished asking the question? I --

 

QUESTION: Yes, yes. I have, sorry.

 

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure if you broke up there. Well, it is – those are – the conversation in the EU, of course, is in many ways the most significant, and I think we would all recognize that, given that this question has come up previously but has never really been taken up with the kind of seriousness we’re seeing now among governments across Europe.

 

What’s important, though, is that the conversation there is built really on the back of the investigations that have taken place in courts. As I noted, the Cyprus case and conviction, but also the investigation in Bulgaria that illuminates the evidence quite clearly of Lebanese operational activity commitment of terrorist acts on European soil, so the one builds on the other. We also, however, are seeing the prosecution in Thailand, which we believe is significant.

 

We are – the debate, of course, within the Arab League, as was noted in the GCC, is itself important, particularly when you consider where the issue and perhaps the popular image, as it were, of Hezbollah was within the Arab world just a few short years ago. That is completely reversed. Governments are onto what this organization really is, as was pointed out by my colleague. It’s a criminal organization, a terrorist organization, which really – can really no longer lay claim to its traditional self-identity or projected identity as a political organization within Lebanon.

 

OPERATOR: Thank you. And our next question from the line of Joyce Karam, Al Hayat newspaper. Please go ahead.

 

QUESTION: Yes. Hi. I was wondering if you have any estimate on the number of fighters that Hezbollah has in Syria right now. And I know you said you expect more terrorism in the next year from Hezbollah, but given their involvement in Syria, how will this shape you think Hezbollah’s military calculation going into war with Israel or other conventional things they’ve done in the last few years?

 

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: I don’t think we have an estimate on the number of fighters. I mean there are, of course, a lot of people trying to look at this question. I think it’s fair to say, however, that the organization has made an all-in commitment to defend and support the Assad regime and is throwing whatever resources are required at that, and of course as reports indicate is suffering the consequences as well in terms of fighters being killed in Syria as well. But we don’t have an estimate of the numbers.

 

With regard to what these trends indicate for what we can expect for the future and what this means for Hezbollah’s – the potential for destabilizing activity with regard to Israel, I mean I think that’s something that the organization has made a part of its identity. It is a destabilizing force within the region. It certainly is so within Lebanon and its actions in Syria and its declarations to essentially define the Syrian conflict as a sectarian conflict, which of course is sparking an intensified fight within the country of a sectarian nature. These are further indications that the organization itself plays a destabilizing role within Lebanon and then more broadly in the region if we needed further evidence of that.

 

OPERATOR: Thank you. And our next question from the line of Mr. Shaun Waterman, Washington Times. Please go ahead.

 

QUESTION: Oh, yes. Hello. Thanks for doing this, gentlemen, and – but I mean, can I just register a complaint about it being on background?

 

My question – I have two questions. Firstly, could you – do you see the danger – do you see any connection between what’s happening in Syria and the sort of surge of sectarian violence in Iraq, number one?

 

And number two, you talked about – you said we don’t have any evidence of operational networks in Central or South America or Mexico. Did you have evidence of operational networks in Thailand, Bulgaria, Cyprus, prior to the commission of these attacks last year? I guess what I’m trying to get a sense of is, I mean, were you surprised that they had this ability to launch these attacks in these places? And just sort of, can you link back to your level of confidence about your assessment with regard to the situation south of the U.S. border?

 

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Well, let me start by saying that, as I noted before, the – when we released the report, we noted that the increase in activity is something we haven’t seen since the 1990s. And the 1990s was a period, of course, where Hezbollah also was operationally active, committing attacks in multiple parts of the world, to include Europe. So the fact that Hezbollah had operational networks historically in Europe is not new to us, is not surprising. And in fact, we were already in the spring of 2012 having numerous conversations with European governments about the danger that Hezbollah was posing, and that was on the basis of information we were aware of that indicated an increased operational tempo in Europe. And those conversations coincided then with the events that played out in the summer to include the attack in Bulgaria. So we were not surprised that – when – ultimately when we started to see the evidence play out and then in the course of the court case in Cyprus.

 

OPERATOR: Thank you. And our next question from the line of Ilhan Tanir, BBC Turkish. Please go ahead.

 

QUESTION: Thanks so much. My questions, again, is Hezbollah in Syria. First question is: Two days ago, State Department and the White House condemned in strongest terms Hezbollah duties in Syria and demand immediate withdrawal. Do you have any kind of news that they are heeding your demand?

 

Second question is: As far as we can see, they are still fighting fiercely. If they are not heeding your demands, what is your Plan B?

 

And the third: The common theme now in Middle East that Russia is taking care of its allies in Middle East, but U.S. is just basically talking the talk. But when it comes to supporting its allies and Syrian rebels, forces like Syrian rebels, it’s just giving advice and watching the situation unfolding. Syrian military – head of Syrian Military Council Salim Idris has been giving interviews for the last two days and basically begging for some help. There are 30- to 40,000 people, according to different estimates, that if the town Qusayr falls to regime, they might be in danger of imminent massacre. What are you doing besides giving condemnation and talk?

 

Thank you.

 

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Well, I think I’m going to defer on the broader Syria questions to Ambassador Ford and those who are working this issue most closely. However, I will say that we do believe that we need to raise the concern about the involvement of Hezbollah in that conflict. We have done the same thing with our concerns about the involvement of other foreign parties, whether they be nationals of different countries moving in to join the al-Nusrah Front or al-Qaida in Iraq’s sponsorship of al-Nusrah Front, in Syria. We think that this kind of foreign involvement is – marks an escalation in the conflict, and we will condemn it from both sides.

 

But it’s very important that we call out Hezbollah and its activities in Syria for what they are, and I would remind that we began doing that in the fall of 2012. In fact, there were a number of sanctions and designations made by the Treasury Department in the fall of 2012, and my colleague may want to discuss those in greater detail. And that was done in – months and months ago. It’s only now, of course, that Hezbollah is owning up to the extent and level of its involvement in the conflict, which is, of course, turning the conflict into a new, more dangerous direction. And as you heard, that was described and condemned strongly by our spokesman just two days ago at the briefing.

 

OPERATOR: Thank you.

 

MODERATOR: We’ve got time for one more question, Operator.

 

OPERATOR: Certainly. And our next question from the line of Guita Mirsaeedi from Voice of America. Please go ahead.

 

QUESTION: Yes, thank you very much for the conference call. Iran announced a couple of days ago that it is extending a $4 billion line of credit to Syria. I was wondering – and they’re saying that it’s for economic purposes, for reconstruction, and development of business and things like that. Do you think something like this, given the situation on the ground in Syria, is plausible? Is it legitimate, do you think? And do you – and is it even possible, considering that Iran is heavily under sanctions, financial sanctions, and Syria to some extent as well? Thank you.

 

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: I’ll take that question. I mean, I think – and thanks for the question. I mean, I think it’s an important issue to point out that while the Iranian economy is going down the tubes as a result of its own mismanagement of its economy and as a result of comprehensive international sanctions, and while the Iranian people are suffering as a result of that, that Iran still manages to find resources to send to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and to support the Assad regime’s violence against its own people in Syria. I think it’s important to point that out.

 

The fact of the matter is, is that Iran and organizations like Hezbollah are acting irresponsibly in this regard and we have a whole wide array of sanctions that we are prepared to deploy when we see financial institutions or other types of institutions around the world that are engaged in sanction-able activity. And we’ve demonstrated that we’re prepared to use that, and we implement financial sanctions all the time with respect to entities that are involved in financial activities with Iran.

 

Iran is often big on promises. If we see financial activity that is sanction-able – and that’s an awful lot of different types of financial activity with Iran – we will certainly exercise our tools and ensure that the financial institutions involved are isolated from the international financial system.

 

OPERATOR: Thank you. And our final question from the line of Mr. Adam Aigner from CNN. Please go ahead.

 

QUESTION: Hey. Yeah, thank you for doing the call. I – this question might be more from the Treasury side, but you talk about how you’ve seen more activity from Hezbollah and Iran, I guess more from the Hezbollah side too, since the 1990s and you list a lot of these sanctions and these activities you’re taking against them. But it seems if they’re able to still expand that these haven’t been effective or as effective as you would hope. Does this recent sort of spurt of activity encourage you to take further actions or look to expand the scope of the sanctions or financial actions you’re taking against these groups?

 

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: I’m sorry. Are you asking that with respect to Hezbollah? Is that what the question’s focused on?

 

QUESTION: Yes.

 

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: Okay. I wouldn’t say that our sanctions have been ineffective. In fact, I think our sanctions have been quite effective, and again, challenging Hezbollah’s ability to conduct business as usual in the international financial system at large, and most importantly within the Lebanese financial system. We have taken one important bank offline within Lebanon that was involved in a whole wide variety of illicit types of activity. We’ve targeted the ability to access the financial system through other types of financial institutions like money exchangers. And as I said before, we’ve worked very, very closely with the Lebanese financial authorities themselves to ensure that very strict anti-money laundering requirements are being imposed on Lebanese banks and financial institutions. And we – and this is not the end of this campaign; we’re in the midst of this campaign.

 

And as – to answer your question, and it certainly will continue. We’ll continue to monitor Hezbollah’s financial activities throughout the world. We will continue to work with our colleagues throughout the United States Government, including with U.S. law enforcement to bring people to justice who were involved in supporting Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, and we will redouble our efforts, because I think they’re important efforts, and I think they are, in fact, having an impact.

 

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Can I just add to that, that what we’re seeing in this global response now – people that are – governments that are finally beginning to take their own actions against Hezbollah that might in some ways parallel the actions that we’ve been taking. This offers the opportunity for a significant impact upon Hezbollah and its ability to operate in the way that it has over these years. They will – we will – as I said, we’re watching very closely the EU discussion on designation of the organization, and what that offers is the opportunity for greater scrutiny of Hezbollah’s activities. It will offer opportunities for law enforcement and other actions to begin to reduce their scope of activity in a very significant way. So I think that this global recognition of Hezbollah’s destabilizing activities is going to be a very, very important step in this broader campaign.

 

OPERATOR: Thank you. And that does conclude our question-and-answer session at this time. I’ll turn it back to you for any closing remarks.

 

MODERATOR: I think that’s all we have. Thank you all for joining the call.

 

Vishnu (/ˈvɪʃnuː/; Sanskrit: Viṣṇu) is a popular Hindu deity, the Supreme God of Vaishnavism (one of the three principal denominations of Hinduism) and one of the three supreme deities (Trimurti) of Hinduism. He is also known as Lord Narayana and Lord Hari. As one of the five primary forms of God in the Smarta tradition, He is conceived as "the Preserver or the Protector" within the Trimurti, the Hindu Trinity of the divinity.

 

In Hindu sacred texts, Vishnu is usually described as having dark complexion of water-filled clouds and as having four arms. He is depicted as a blue being, holding a padma (lotus flower) in the lower left hand, the Kaumodaki gada (mace) in the lower right hand, the Panchajanya shankha (conch) in the upper left hand and the discus weapon Sudarshana Chakra in the upper right hand.

 

Adherents of Hinduism believe Vishnu's eternal and supreme abode beyond the material universe is called Vaikuntha, which is also known as Paramdhama, the realm of eternal bliss and happiness and the final or highest place for liberated souls who have attained Moksha. Vaikuntha is situated beyond the material universe and hence, cannot be perceived or measured by material science or logic. Vishnu's other abode within the material universe is Ksheera Sagara (the ocean of milk), where he reclines and rests on Ananta Shesha, (the king of the serpent deities, commonly shown with a thousand heads). In almost all Hindu denominations, Vishnu is either worshipped directly or in the form of his ten avatars, the most famous of whom are Rama and Krishna.

 

The Puranabharati, an ancient text, describes these as the dashavatara, or the ten avatars of Vishnu. Among the ten described, nine have occurred in the past and one will take place in the future as Lord Kalki, at the end of Kali Yuga, (the fourth and final stage in the cycle of yugas that the world goes through). These incarnations take place in all Yugas in cosmic scales; the avatars and their stories show that gods are indeed unimaginable, unthinkable and inconceivable. The Bhagavad Gita mentions their purpose as being to rejuvenate Dharma, to vanquish those negative forces of evil that threaten dharma, and also to display His divine nature in front of all souls.

 

The Trimurti (three forms) is a concept in Hinduism "in which the cosmic functions of creation, maintenance, and destruction are personified by the forms of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the maintainer, preserver or protector and Shiva the destroyer or transformer." These three deities have also been called "the Hindu triad" or the "Great Trinity", all having the same meaning of three in One. They are the different forms or manifestation of One person the Supreme Being or Narayana/Svayam Bhagavan.

 

Vishnu is also venerated as Mukunda, which means God who is the giver of mukti or moksha (liberation from the cycle of rebirths) to his devotees or the worthy ones who deserve salvation from the material world.

 

ETYMOLOGY

The traditional explanation of the name Vishnu involves the root viś, meaning "to settle" (cognate with Latin vicus, English -wich "village," Slavic: vas -ves), or also (in the Rigveda) "to enter into, to pervade," glossing the name as "the All-Pervading One". Yaska, an early commentator on the Vedas, in his Nirukta, (etymological interpretation), defines Vishnu as viṣṇur viṣvater vā vyaśnoter vā, "one who enters everywhere". He also writes, atha yad viṣito bhavati tad viṣnurbhavati, "that which is free from fetters and bondages is Vishnu".

 

Adi Shankara in his commentary on the Sahasranama states derivation from viś, with a meaning "presence everywhere" ("As he pervades everything, vevesti, he is called Vishnu"). Adi Shankara states (regarding Vishnu Purana, 3.1.45): "The Power of the Supreme Being has entered within the universe. The root viś means 'enter into'." Swami Chinmayananda, in his translation of Vishnu Sahasranama further elaborates on that verse: "The root vis means to enter. The entire world of things and beings is pervaded by Him and the Upanishad emphatically insists in its mantra 'whatever that is there is the world of change.' Hence, it means that He is not limited by space, time or substance. Chinmayananda states that, that which pervades everything is Vishnu."

 

SACRET TEXTS - SHRUTI & SMRITI

Shruti is considered to be solely of divine origin. It is preserved as a whole, instead of verse by verse. It includes the four Vedas (Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharvaveda) the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas and the Upanishads with commentaries on them.

 

Smṛti refers to all the knowledge derived and inculcated after Shruti had been received. Smrti is not 'divine' in origin, but was 'remembered' by later Rishis (sages by insight, who were the scribes) by transcendental means and passed down through their followers. It includes the Bhagavata Purana and the Vishnu Purana which are Sattva Puranas. These both declare Vishnu as Para Brahman Supreme Lord who creates unlimited universes and enters each one of them as Lord of Universe.

 

SHRUTI

 

VAISHNAVA CANON

The Vaishnava canon presents Vishnu as the supreme being, rather than another name for the Sun God, who also bore the name Suryanarayana and is considered only as a form of Vishnu.

 

VEDAS

In the Yajur Veda, Taittiriya Aranyaka (10-13-1), Narayana suktam, Lord Narayana is mentioned as the supreme being. The first verse of Narayana Suktam mentions the words "paramam padam", which literally mean "highest post" and may be understood as the "supreme abode for all souls". This is also known as Param Dhama, Paramapadam, or Vaikuntha. Rig Veda 1:22:20a also mentions the same "paramam padam". This special status is not given to any deity in the Vedas apart from Lord Vishnu/Narayana.[citation needed] Narayana is one of the thousand names of Vishnu as mentioned in the Vishnu Sahasranama. It describes Vishnu as the All-Pervading essence of all beings, the master of - and beyond - the past, present and future, one who supports, sustains and governs the Universe and originates and develops all elements within. This illustrates the omnipresent characteristic of Vishnu. Vishnu governs the aspect of preservation and sustenance of the universe, so he is called "Preserver of the universe".

 

Vishnu is the Supreme God who takes manifest forms or avatars across various ages or periods to save humanity from evil beings, demons or Asuras. According to the extant Hindu texts and traditions, Lord Vishnu is considered to be resident in the direction of the "Makara Rashi" (the "Shravana Nakshatra"), which is about coincident with the Capricorn constellation. In some of the extant Puranas, and Vaishnava traditions, Vishnu's eye is considered to be situated at the infinitely distant Southern Celestial Pole.

 

Following the defeat of Indra and his displacement as the Lord of Heaven or Swarga, Indra asks Lord Vishnu for help and thus Lord Vishnu takes his incarnations or avatars to Earth to save mankind, thus showing his position as Supreme God to all of creation.

 

In the Puranas, Indra frequently appears proud and haughty. These bad qualities are temporarily removed when Brahma and/or Shiva give boons to Asuras or Rakshasas such as Hiranyaksha, Hiranyakashipu and Ravana, who are then able to defeat Indra in wars between Devas and Asuras. The received boons often made Asuras virtually indestructible.

 

Indra has no option but to seek help from Vishnu. Indra prays before Vishnu for protection and the Supreme Lord obliges him by taking avatars and generating himself on Earth in various forms, first as a water-dweller (Matsya, fish), then as an amphibious creature (Kurma avatar or Tortoise), then as a half-man-half-animal (Varaha the pig-faced, human-bodied Lord, and Narasimha the Lord with lion's face and claws and a human body). Later, Vishnu appears as human beings (Vamana the short-heighted person), Parashurama, Rama, Krishna, Buddha and finally as Kalki for performing his task of protecting his devotees from demons and anti-religious entities.

 

Vishnu's supremacy is attested by his victories over those very powerful entities. It is further attested by the accepted iconography and sculptures of Vishnu in reclining position as producing Brahma emerging from his navel. Brahma the creator is thus created in turn by Vishnu out of his own person. Instead Vishnu takes various avatars to slay or defeat those demons. But it is to be noted that Vishnu also provided boons to Akupresura, a bear faced demon who was destroyed by Lord Shiva.

 

Vishnu's actions lowered Indra's ranking among Hindu deities and led to the ascendancy of Vishnu.

 

Few temples are dedicated to the Sun or Suryanarayana, nor indeed Indra, nor does Indra figure largely in the Hindu religion.

 

Indra is almost completely absent from the deities considered as the chief or most important deity.

 

RIGVEDA

In the Rigveda, Vishnu is mentioned 93 times. He is frequently invoked alongside other deities, especially Indra, whom he helps in killing Vritra and with whom he drinks Soma. His distinguishing characteristic in the Vedas is his association with light. Two Rigvedic hymns in Mandala 7 are dedicated to Vishnu. In 7.99, Vishnu is addressed as the god who separates heaven and earth, a characteristic he shares with Indra.

 

The Rig Veda describes Vishnu as younger brother to Indra as Vamana. In Vaishnava canon the 'Vishnu' who is younger brother to Indra is identified as Vamana, Avatar of Vishnu, hence referred to as Vishnu by Vaishnavites. Vishnu is the Supreme God who lives in the highest celestial region, contrasted against those who live in the atmospheric or terrestrial regions. Vishnu is content with mere prayer, unlike almost all of the other gods who receive sacrificial offerings such as Havis, which is given using clarified butter, or Soma. Later foreign translators have view that Vedas place Indra in a superior position to Vishnu's Avatar of Vamana but in fact Vamana helps Indra by restoring his Kingdom.

 

An alternate translation is provided by Wilson according to Sayana:

 

When Thy (younger brother) Viṣṇu (Vamana) by (his) strength stepped his three paces, then verily thy beloved horses bore thee. (Rigveda 8:12:27)

 

Wilson mentions Griffith's possible translation as a footnote. However the following verse from Rigveda renders the above translation by Wilson more probable.

 

Him whose three places that are filled with sweetness, imperishable, joy as it may list them, Who verily alone upholds the threefold, the earth, the heaven, and all living creatures. (Rig veda 1:154:4)

 

Wilson offers an alternate translation for Rigveda 10:113:2:

 

Viṣṇu offering the portion of Soma, glorifies by his own vigor that greatness of his. Indra, the lord of heaven, with the associated gods having slain Vritra, became deserving of honour. (Rigveda 10:113:2)

 

This verse sees Vishnu as one who is glorified by his own strength, while Indra became deserving of honor after having slain Vritra only in association with other gods.

 

However Vishnu's praise for other gods does not imply worship. Wilson translates:

 

Viṣṇu, the mighty giver of dwellings praises thee, and Mitra and Varuna; the company of Maruts imitates thee in exhilaration. (Rigveda 8:15:9) (page 280)

 

The following verses show categorically Vishnu as distinguished from other gods in Rigveda.

 

He who presents (offering) to Viṣṇu, the ancient, the creator, the recent, the self-born; he who celebrates the great birth of that mighty one; he verily possessed of abundance, attains (the station) that is to be sought (by all). (Rigveda 1:156:2) (page 98)

 

No being that is or that has been born, divine Viṣṇu, has attained the utmost limit of thy magnitude, by which thou hast upheld the vast and beautiful heaven, and sustained the eastern horizon of Earth.(Rigveda 7:99:2) (page 196)

 

The divine Viṣṇu, the best of the doers of good deeds, who came to the pious instituter of rite (Indra), to assist (at its celebration), knowing (the desires of the worshiper), and present at the three connected period (of worship), shows favor to the Arya, and admits the author of the ceremony to a share of the sacrifice. (Rigveda 1:156:5) (page 99)

 

Jan Gonda, the late Indologist, states that Vishnu, although remaining in the background of Indra's exploits, contributes by his presence, or is key to Indra's success. Vishnu is more than a mere companion, equal in rank or power to Indra, or sometime the one who made Indra's success possible.

 

Descriptions of Vishnu as younger to Indra are found in only the hymns to Indra, but in a kathenotheism religion like that of the Rigveda, each god, for a time, is supreme in the mind of the devotee.

 

In the Rig Vedic texts, the deity or god referred to as Vishnu is the Sun God, who also bears the name 'Suryanarayana'. By contrast, the 'Vishnu' referred to in 'Vishnu Purana', 'Vishnu Sahasranamam' and 'Purusha Sooktham' is Lord Narayana, the Consort of Lakshmi. Vaishnavites make a further distinction by extolling the qualities of Vishnu by highlighting his differences from other deities such as Shiva,[citation needed] Brahma or Surya.

 

THREE STEPS

Hymn 7.100 refers to the celebrated 'three steps' of Vishnu (as Trivikrama) by which he strode over the universe and in three places planted his step. The 'Vishnu Suktam' (RV 1.154) says that the first and second of Vishnu's strides (those encompassing the earth and air) are visible to men and the third is in the heights of heaven (sky). This last place is described as Vishnu's supreme abode in RV 1.22.20:

 

The princes evermore behold / that loftiest place where Vishnu is / Laid as it were an eye in heaven.(trans. Griffith)

 

Griffith's "princes" are the sūri, either "inciters" or lords of a sacrifice, or priests charged with pressing the Soma. The verse is quoted as expressing Vishnu's supremacy by Vaishnavites.

 

Though such solar aspects have been associated with Vishnu by tradition as well as modern-scholarship, he was not just the representation of the sun, as he moves both vertically and horizontally.

 

In hymns 1.22.17, 1.154.3, 1.154.4 he strides across the earth with three steps, in 6.49.13, 7.100.3 strides across the earth three times and in 1.154.1, 1.155.5,7.29.7 he strides vertically, with the final step in the heavens. The same Veda also says he strode wide and created space in the cosmos for Indra to fight Vritra. By his stride he made dwelling for men possible, the three forming a symbolic representation of the dwelling's all-encompassing nature. This nature and benevolence to men were Vishnu's enduring attributes. As the triple-strider he is known as Trivikrama and as Urukrama, for the strides were wide.

 

BRAHMANAS

The Brahmanas are commentaries on the Vedas and form part of the Shruti literature. They are concerned with the detail of the proper performance of rituals. In the Rigveda, Shakala Shakha: Aitareya Brahmana Verse 1 declares: agnir vai devānām ava mo viṣṇuḥ paramus, tadantareṇa sarvā anyā devatā - Agni is the lowest or youngest god and Vishnu is the greatest and the highest God.

 

The Brahmanas assert the supremacy of Lord Vishnu, addressing him as "Gajapati", the one whom all sacrifices are meant to please. Lord Vishnu accepts all sacrifices to the demigods and allots the respective fruits to the performer In one incident, a demonic person performs a sacrifice by abducting the Rishis (sages), who meditate by constantly chanting God's name. The sacrifice is meant to destroy Indra. But the rishis, who worship Indra as a demigod, alter one pronunciation of the Veda Mantra, reversing the purpose of the sacrifice. When the fruit of the sacrifice is given and the demon is on the verge of dying, he calls to Vishnu, whom he addresses as Supreme Godhead and "the father of all living entities including himself".

 

Aitareya Brahmana 1:1:1 mentions Vishnu as the Supreme God. But in the Vaishnava canon, in different ages, with Vishnu in different avatars, his relationship with the asuras or demons, was always adversarial. The asuras always caused harm, while the sages and devas or celestial beings, did penance and called to Vishnu for protection. Vishnu always obliged by taking an avatar to vanquish the asuras. In the Vaishnava canon, Vishnu never gave or granted any boons to the asuras, distinguishing him from the gods Shiva and Brahma, who did. He is the only God called upon to save good beings by defeating or killing the asuras.

 

Sayana writes that in Aitareya Brahmana 1:1:1 the declaration agnir vai devānām ava mo viṣṇuḥ paramus,tadantareṇa sarvā anyā devatā does not indicate any hierarchy among gods. Even in Rigveda Samhita, avama and parama are not applied to denote rank and dignity, but only to mark place and locality.

 

In Rigveda 1:108:9,: yadindrāghnī avamasyāṃ pṛthivyāṃ madhyamasyāṃ paramasyāmuta sthaḥ | i.e., in the lowest place, the middle (place), and the highest (place). Agni, the fire, has, among the gods, the lowest place; for he resides with man on the earth; while the other gods are either in the air, or in the sky. Vishnu occupies the highest place. The words avama and parama are understood as 'First' and 'Last' respectively. To support this claim, Sayana adduces the mantra (1,4. As'val. Sr. S. 4, 2), agnir mukham prathamo devathanam samathanam uttamo vishnur asit, i.e., Agni was the first of the deities assembled, (and) Vishnu the last.

 

In the Kausitaki Brahmana (7.1) Agni is called Aaradhya (instead of avama), and Visnu parardha(instead of parama),i.e., belonging to the lower and higher halves (or forming the lower and higher halves). The Vishnu Purana gives tremendous importance to the worship of Vishnu and mentions that sacrifices are to begin only with both the lighting of fire or 'Agni', pouring of sacrificial offerings to Vishnu in 'Agni' so that those offerings reach and are accepted by Vishnu. Worship of Vishnu through Yajnas (or Homams) and other rituals, will not achieve the desired result if Agni's role is neglected.

 

Muller says "Although the gods are sometimes distinctly invoked as the great and the small, the young and the old (Rig veda 1:27:13), this is only an attempt to find the most comprehensive expression for the divine powers, and nowhere is any of the gods represented as the subordinate to others. It would be easy to find, in the numerous hymns of the Veda, passages in which almost every single god is represented as supreme and absolute."

 

However this notion is not completely correct as per the following verses, which shows Rigveda describe one or more gods as subject to other god(s).

 

Him whose high law not Varuna nor Indra, not Mitra, Aryaman, nor Rudra breaketh, Nor evil-hearted fiends, here for my welfare him I invoke, God Savitar, with worship. (Rigveda 2.038.09)

 

I invite to this place, with reverential salutations, for my good, that divine Savita, whose functions neither Indra, nor Varun.a, nor Mitra nor Aryaman nor Rudra nor the enemies (of the gods), impede. (Rigveda 2.038.09)

 

SMRITI

 

VISHNU SMRITI

The Vishnu Smṛti, is one of the later books of the Dharmashastra tradition of Hinduism and the only one that focuses on the bhakti tradition and the required daily puja to Vishnu, rather than the means of knowing dharma. It is also known for its handling of the controversial subject of the practice of sati (self-immolation of a widow on her husband's funeral pyre). The text was composed by an individual or group. The author(s) created a collection of the commonly known legal maxims that were attributed to Vishnu into one book, as Indian oral culture began to be recorded more formally.

 

BHAGAVATA PURANA

Vishnu is the only Bhagavan as declared in the Bhagavata 1:2:11 in the verse: vadanti tat tattva-vidas tattvam yaj jnanam advayam brahmeti paramatmeti bhagavan iti sabdyate, translated as "Learned transcendentalists who know the Absolute Truth call this non-dual substance as Brahman, Paramātma and Bhagavan."

 

VISHNU PURANA

In the Vishnu Purana (6:5:79) the personality named Parashara Rishi defines six bhagas:

 

aiśvaryasya samagrasya vīryasya yaśasaḥ śriyaḥ

jñāna-vairāgyayoś caiva ṣannāḥ bhaga itīṇganā

 

Jiva Gosvami explains the verse in Gopala Champu (Pūrva 15:73) and Bhagavata Sandarbha 46:10:

 

jñāna-śakti-balaiśvarya-vīrya-tejām.sy aśeṣataḥ

bhagavac-chabda-vācyāni vinā heyair guṇādibhiḥ

 

"The substantives of the word bhagavat (bhagavat-śabda-vācyāni) are unlimited (aśeṣataḥ) knowledge (jñāna), energies (śakti), strength (bala), opulence (aiśvarya), heroism (vīrya), splendor (tejas), without (vinā) objectionable (heyair) qualities (guṇādibhiḥ)."

 

SANGAM LITERATURE

Tamil Sangam literature (300BCE to 500CE) mentions mAyOn, or the dark one, as the supreme deity who creates, sustains and destroys the universe. Paripadal 3 describes the glory of Thirumal in the most superlative terms.

 

Paripadal by kaduvan iLaveyinanAr:

 

"thIyinuL theRal nI poovinuL naaRRa nI kallinuL maNiyu nI sollinuL vaaymai aRaththinuL anbu nI maRaththinuL mainthu nI vEthaththu maRai nI boothaththu madhalu nI vencudar oLiyu nI thingaLuL aLiyu nI anaiththu nI anaiththinut poruLu nI"

 

The last line states that Lord Vishnu is the supreme deity who is the inner controller (Antaryamin) of the entire universe. This is one of the Lord's glories, which is first mentioned in Vedas and later propounded by Alwars in Prabhandams and Sri Vaishnavaite Acharyas in various commentaries

 

The Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple and Vishnu, Lakshmi is mentioned in Tamil works of literature of the Sangam era, including the epic Silapadikaram (book 11, lines 35–40):

 

āyiram viritteḻu talaiyuṭai aruntiṟaṟ

 

pāyaṟ paḷḷip palartoḻu tētta viritiraik kāviri viyaṉperu turuttit tiruvamar mārpaṉ kiṭanta vaṇṇamum

 

On a magnificent cot having a thousand heads spread out, worshipped and praised by many, in an islet surrounded by Kaveri with bellowing waves, is the lying posture of the one who has Lakshmi sitting in his chest.

 

THEOLOGICAL ATTRIBUTES

The actual number of Vishnu's auspicious qualities is countless, although his six most-important "divine glories" are:

 

Jnana (Omniscience); defined as the power to know about all beings simultaneously;

Aishvarya (Sovereignty), derived from the word Ishvara which means unchallenged rule over all;

Shakti (Power or Energy), the capacity to make the impossible possible;

Bala (Strength), the capacity to support everything by will and without any fatigue;

Virya (Vigour), the power to retain immateriality as the Supreme Spirit or Being in spite of being the material cause of mutable creations;

Tejas (Splendor), which expresses self-sufficiency and the capacity to overpower everything by spiritual effulgence.

 

Other important qualities attributed to Vishnu are Gambhirya (inestimatable grandeur), Audarya (generosity), and Karunya (compassion). Natya Shastra lists Vishnu as the presiding deity of the Sṛngara rasa.

 

The Rigveda says: Vishnu can travel in three strides. The first stride is the Earth. The second stride is the visible sky. The third stride cannot be seen by men and is the heaven where the gods and the righteous dead live. (This feature of three strides also appears in the story of his avatar Vamana/Trivikrama.) The Sanskrit for "to stride" is the root kram; its reduplicated perfect is chakram (guņa grade) or chakra (zero-grade), and in the Rigveda he is called by epithets such as vi-chakra-māņas = "he who has made 3 strides". The Sanskrit word chakra also means "wheel". That may have suggested the idea of Vishnu carrying a chakra.

 

FIVE FORMS

In Shree Vaishnavism, another school dating from around the 10th century AD, Vishnu assumes five forms:

 

In the Para Form, Para is the highest form of Vishnu found only in Sri Vaikunta also called Moksha, along with his consort Lakshmi, (and Bhumi Devi and Nila devi, avatars of Lakshmi) and surrounded by liberated souls like Ananta, Garuda, and a host of Muktas (liberated souls).

In the Vyuha form, Vishnu assumes four forms, which exercise different cosmic functions and controls activities of living beings.

In the Vibhava form, Vishnu assumes various manifestations, called Vibhavas, more popularly known as Avataras from time to time, to protect the virtuous, punish evil-doers and re-establish righteousness.

In the Antaryami; "Dwelling within" or "Suksma Vasudeva" form, Vishnu exists within the souls of all living beings and in every substance.

In the Arcavatara or Image manifestation, Vishnu is visible and therefore easily approachable by devotees since Para, Vyuha, Vibhava and Antaryami forms can only be imagined or meditated upon because they are beyond our reach. Such images can be

Revealed by Vishnu, for example, a self-manifested (Swayambhu) icon (murti), e.g. The Mahavishnu Temple at Tirunelli, The Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple at Srirangam, The Tirumala Venkateshwara Temple, etc.; or

Installed by Devas or celestial beings such as such as Guruvayur Temple installed by Vayu; or

Installed by humans, and consecrated according to Vaishnava Agama shastras or scriptures such as Lord Jagannatha of Jagannath Temple (Puri) at Puri.

 

RELATIONS WITH OTHER DEITIES

 

SHIVA

The three gods of the Trimurti clan are inseparable and in harmony in view of their common vision and universal good. They are perfectly ideal in all respects.

 

Both Asuras and Devas played supportive roles in this story by keeping company with Vishnu in his incarnated forms. Hanuman is a vanara who is completely dedicated to Rama. He gives Vishnu company and obeys his command, while playing an important part in Rama's life. He is regarded in Vaishnava canon because it is through blessings that Hanuman is born. Thus, Hanuman, Vishnu's constant companion, with his idol appearing temples of Rama, Krishna and Narasimha, i.e. all of Vishnu's avatars, is considered by Vaishnavas.

 

Syncretic forces produced stories in which the two deities were shown in cooperative relationships and combined forms. Harihara is the name of a combined deity form of both Vishnu (Hari) and Shiva (Hara). This dual form, which is also called Harirudra, is mentioned in the Mahabharata.

 

LAKSHMI

Vishnu's consort is Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth (also known as Maya). The Samvit (the primary intelligence/dark matter) of the universe is Vishnu, while the other five attributes emerge from this samvit and hence Maya or dark energy of the universe is Lakshmee is his ahamata, activity, or Vishnu's Power. This power of God, Maya or Shakti, is personified and has multiple names: Shree, Lakshmi, Maya, Vishnumaya or Mahamaya. She is said to manifest as Kriyashakti, (Creative Activity) and Bhutishakti (Creation). This world requires Vishnu's creativity. He therefore needs Lakshmi to always be with Him. Her various avatars as Lord Vishnu's consorts are Varahavatar (Bhoodevi) or Bhoomi, Ramavatar Seeta, Krishnavatar Rukmini)

 

SARASWATI & GANGA

According to Brahma Vaivarta Purana, Lord Vishnu had three wives Lakshmi, Saraswati and Ganga. Due to their constant quarrelsome nature among them. Once Ganga tried to be close with Vishnu, this rebuked Saraswati but Lakshmi tried to pacify them but faced a curse rather. As per the curse, Lakshmi to appear as Tulasi. Sarawati cursed Ganga to run as a river in the world and Saraswati was cursed to run as a river in the netherworld. After this, Lord Vishnu transformed and became Brahma and Shiva to pacify Saraswati and Ganga.

 

GARUDA

Vishnu's mount (Vahana) is Garuda, the eagle. Vishnu is commonly depicted as riding on his shoulders.

 

ICONOGRAPHY

According to various Puranas, Vishnu is the ultimate omnipresent reality and is shapeless and omnipresent. However, a strict iconography governs his representation, whether in pictures, icons, or idols:

 

He has four arms and is male: The four arms indicate his all-powerful and all-pervasive nature. His physical existence is represented by the two arms in the front, while the two arms at the back represent his presence in the spiritual world. The Upanishad Gopal Uttartapani describes the four arms.

The Shreevatsa mark is on his chest, symbolizing his consort Lakshmi.

He wears the auspicious "Kaustubha" jewel around his neck and a garland of vaijayanti flowers (Vanamala). Lakshmi dwells in this jewel, on Vishnu's chest.

A crown adorns his head: The crown symbolizes his supreme authority. This crown sometimes includes a peacock feather, borrowing from his Krishna-avatar.

He wears two earrings: The earrings represent inherent opposites in creation — knowledge and ignorance; happiness and unhappiness; pleasure and pain.

He rests on Ananta, the immortal and infinite snake.

 

Vishnu is always to be depicted holding four attributes:

 

A conch shell or Shankha, named Panchajanya, is held by the upper left hand. It represents Vishnu's power to create and maintain the universe. Panchajanya represents the five elements or Panchabhoota – water, fire, air, earth and sky or space. It also represents the five airs or Pranas that are within the body and mind. The conch symbolizes that Vishnu is the primeval Divine sound of creation and continuity. It also represented as Om. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna avatara states that of sound vibrations, 'He is Om'.

The Chakra, a sharp, spinning, discus-like weapon, named "Sudarshana", is held by the upper right hand. It symbolizes the purified spiritualized mind. The name Sudarshana is derived from two words – Su, which means good, superior, and Darshana, which means vision or sight; together. The Chakra represents destruction of ego in the awakening and realization of the soul's original nature and god, burning away spiritual ignorance and illusion, and developing higher spiritual vision and insight to realize god.

A mace or Gada, named "Kaumodaki", is held by the lower right hand. It symbolizes that Vishnu's divine power is the source of all spiritual, mental and physical strength. It also signifies Vishnu's power to destroy materialistic or demonic tendencies (Anarthas) that prevent people from reaching god. Vishnu's mace is the power of the Divine within us to spiritually purify and uplift us from our materialistic bonds.

A lotus flower or Padma is held by the lower left hand. It represents spiritual liberation, Divine perfection, purity and the unfolding of Spiritual consciousness within the individual. The lotus opening its petals in the light of the Sun is indicative of the expansion and awakening of our long dormant, original spiritual consciousness in the light of god. The lotus symbolizes that god is the power and source from which the universe and the individual soul emerges. It also represents Divine Truth or Satya, the originator of the rules of conduct or Dharma, and Divine Vedic knowledge or Jnana. The lotus also symbolizes that Vishnu is the embodiment of spiritual perfection and purity and that He is the wellspring of these qualities and that the individual soul must seek to awaken these intrinsic Divine qualities from Vishnu by surrendering to and linking with Him.

 

To this may be added, conventionally, the vanamaala flower garland, Vishnu's bow (Shaarnga/Kodand) and his sword Nandaka. A verse of the Vishnu Sahasranama stotram states;vanamālī gadhī shārngī shanki chakri cha nandaki / shrīmān nārāyaņo vişņo vāsudevo abhirakşatu//; translation: Protect us Oh Lord Narayana who wears the forest garland,who has the mace, conch, sword and the wheel. And who is called Vishnu and the Vasudeva.

 

In general, Vishnu's body is depicted in one of the following three ways:

 

Standing on a lotus flower, often with Lakshmi, his consort, beside him on a similar pedestal.

Reclining on the coiled-up thousand-hooded Shesha Naga, with Lakshmi seated at his feet; the assemblage rests on the "Kshira Sagar" (ocean of milk). In this representation, Brahma is depicted as sitting on a lotus that grows out of Vishnu's navel.

Riding on the back of his eagle mount, known as Garuda. Another name for Garuda is "Veda atma"; Soul of the Vedas. The flapping of his wings symbolizes the power of the Divine Truth of Vedic wisdom. Also the eagle represents the soul. Garuda carrying Vishnu symbolizes the soul or jiva atma carrying the Super soul or Param atma within it.

 

AVATARS

Ten avatars (dashavatara) of Vishnu are the most prominent: Apart from the most prominent incarnations there are believed to more.

 

The most commonly believed incarnations of Vishnu are:

 

Matsya, the fish that kills Damanaka to save the vedas and also saves Manu from a great flood that submerges the entire Earth.

Kurma, the turtle that helps the Devas and Asuras churn the ocean for the nectar of immortality.

Varaha, the boar that rescues the Earth and kills Hiranyaksha.

Narasimha, the half-lion half human, who defeats the demon Hiranyakashipu.

Vamana, the dwarf that grows into a giant to save the world from King Bali.

Parashurama, "Rama of the battle axe", a sage who appeared in the Treta Yuga. He killed Kartavirya Arjuna's army and clan and then killed all the kshatriyas 21 times.

Rama, the prince and king of Ayodhya who killed the Demon King Raavan.

Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu, who takes part in the Mahabharata epic. Krishna is worshipped as the Supreme Avatar of Vishnu (Supreme Personality of Godhead) in Gaudiya-Vaishnava philosophy.

Buddha, the ninth avatar of Vishnu.

Kalki, the tenth Avatar of Vishnu and said to be the harbinger of the end Kali Yuga. This avatar of Vishnu is yet to come.

 

Some versions of the above list include Hayagreeva among the Dashavataras while some include Buddha as ninth avatar of Vishnu. Another 22 avatars are given in Chapter 3, Canto 1 of the Bhagavata Purana, although it states that "the incarnations of the Lord are innumerable, like rivulets flowing from inexhaustible sources of water".

 

BEYOND HINDUISM

 

SIKHISM

Guru Granth Sahib of Sikhism mentions Vishnu, one verse goes:

 

The true Vaishnaav, the devotee of Vishnu, is the one with whom God is thoroughly pleased. He dwells apart from Maya. Performing good deeds, he does not seek rewards. Spotlessly pure is the religion of such a Vaishnaav; he has no desire for the fruits of his labors. He is absorbed in devotional worship and the singing of Kirtan, the songs of the Lords Glory. Within his mind and body, he meditates in remembrance on the Lord of the Universe. He is kind to all creatures. He holds fast to the Naam, and inspires others to chant it. O Nanak, such a Vaishnaav obtains the supreme status.

 

BUDDHISM

While some Hindus consider Buddha as an incarnation of Vishnu, Buddhists in Sri Lanka venerate Vishnu as the custodian deity of Sri Lanka and protector of Buddhism. Lord Vishnu is also known as upulvan, or uthpala varna, meaning "Blue Lotus coloured". Some postulates that Uthpala varna was a local deity who later merged with Vishnu while another belief is that Uthpala Varna was an early form of Vishnu before he became a supreme deity in Puranic Hinduism. According to Chronicles "Mahawamsa", "Chulawamsa" and folklore in Sri Lanka, Buddha himself handed over the custodianship to Vishnu. Others believe that Buddha entrusted this task to Sakra(Indra) and Sakra delegated this task of custodianship to god Vishnu. In contrary to vedic Hinduism, in assimilation of Hindu god Vishnu into Sinhalese Buddhism, Vishnu becomes a mortal being and a Bodhisattva aspiring Buddhahood. Additionally, Vishnu is considered as the god of home and hearth representing mercy, goodness, order and stability. Many Buddhist and Hindu shrines are dedicated to Vishnu in Sri Lanka. In addition to specific Vishnu "Kovils" or "devalayas", all Buddhist temples necessarily house shrine rooms (Devalayas) closer to the main Buddhist shrine dedicated to Vishnu. John Holt in his groundbreaking study examines the assimilation, transformation, and subordination of the Hindu deity Vishnu within the contexts of Sri Lankan history and Sinhala Buddhist religious culture. He then explores the role and rationale of medieval Sinhala kings in assimilating Visnu into Sinhala Buddhism. According to Holt the veneration of Vishnu in Sri Lanka is evidence of a remarkable ability, over many centuries, to reiterate and reinvent culture as other ethnicities have been absorbed into their own. Though the Vishnu cult in Ceylon was formally endorsed by Kandyan kings in early 1700s, Holt states that vishnu images and shrines are among conspicuous ruins in the medieval capital Polonnaruwa. In Buddhist mythology, when Vishnu failed to traverse the universe in three steps, he was given the title "Ardha Vishnu (Half-Vishnu)" and when Vishnu banished demons from the Vaishali (Vishala)in India, he became "Mulu Vishnu or Whole Vishnu". The extreme significance of god Vishnu in Sinhala society is reflected in recitals of the traditional "Offerings to dwarfs and crossing the door frame (bahirwayanta dola pideem saha uluwahu peneema)" that starts with Sri Vishnu invocation.In the recitals,mentioning of the aspiring Buddhahood of Vishnu which is of prime importance to Buddhists and wishes for him to live five thousand and more years highlight the central role of Vishnu in the psyche of Sri Lankan Buddhists.

 

OTHERS

James Freeman Clarke, Richard Leviton, James Cowles Prichard, and others have noted the similarities between Vishnu and Ancient Egyptian God Horus.

 

During an excavation in an abandoned village of Russia in the Volga region, archaeologist Alexander Kozhevin excavated an ancient idol of Vishnu. The idol dates from between the 7th and 10th centuries. In the interview Kozhevin, stated that, "We may consider it incredible, but we have ground to assert that Middle-Volga region was the original land of Ancient Rus. This is a hypothesis, but a hypothesis, which requires thorough research"

 

THOUSAND NAMES OF VISHNU

Vishnu's many names and followers are collected in the Vishnu Sahasranama, (Vishnu's thousand names) from within the larger work Mahabharata. The character Bheeshma recites the names before Krishna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, praising him (Vishnu) as the supreme god. These Sahasranama are regarded as the essence of all Vedas by followers of Vaishnavism, who believe sincere chanting of Vishnu Sahasranama results in spiritual well-being and a greater awareness of God.

 

The names are generally derived from the Anantakalyanagunas (meaning: infinite auspicious attributes).

 

According to the Siddhartha-samhita there are twenty-four forms of Lord Vishnu. The twenty-four forms are

 

Vasudeva

Sankarshana

Pradyumna

Anirudha

Keshava

Narayana

Madhava

Govinda

Vishnu

Madhusudana

Trivikrama

Vamana

Sridhara

Hrishikesha

Padmanabha

Damodara

Purushottama

Achyuta

Narasimha

Janardana

Hari

Krishna

Adhokshaja

 

Upulvan, Uthpala Varna - In Sri Lanka, Vishnu is also referred to as Upulvan ( Blue Lotus Coloured)

 

WIKIPEDIA

Despite my involvement, this movie is a tender, comic gem. An amazing cast to work alongside in Martin Landau, Bill Murray, et al., but, of course, with Tim, there exists an almost brotherly sensibility, which made the whole experience a joy. Ultimately, I feel, with the artistic freedom we had, TB produced an American classic. A love letter to a filmmaker that didn't receive many.-- Johnny Depp

 

After his death in 1978, Ed Wood became best known as the world's worst film director and a cult following was born. Among his biggest fans were Tim Burton and Johnny Depp.

 

"This is Edward D. Wood, Jr."

Ed Wood's most famous features are the autobiographical Glen or Glenda, which explores a transvestite's struggle for a normal life, and Plan 9 from Outer Space, a science fiction/horror movie that was funded by local Baptist churches and completed in 5 days. Unlike your typical director, who may take all day to shoot one scene and finish a film in months, Ed Wood might have shot 30 scenes in a single day. Usually without permits, he had to steal shots whenever and as quickly as possible. His films weren't your typical Hollywood blockbusters; they were Ed Wood opuses. As scriptwriter Larry Karaszewski explained, "There's a personality to Ed Wood films that you don't necessarily get in a lot of other people's films. A lot of bad films are simply bad movies or incompetently put together. With Ed, you get a real sense of the filmmaker behind the camera. You see an Ed Wood movie, and you know it's an Ed Wood movie because of the obsessions and the fetishes. The stuff he's throwing up on the screen is clearly his way of working something out inside of him."

 

In Ed Wood's eyes, every film he made would be the one to make it big. Scriptwriter Scott Alexander noted, "Where Ed's movies are distinctive is that there's such passion there. The passion is oftentimes misguided, but it's there." That's where Tim Burton's film takes flight.

 

Ed Wood focuses on the director's friendship with aging Bela Lugosi, who had fallen from stardom after portraying Dracula during the Silent Era and was now battling drug addiction and poverty. After a chance meeting, Ed wanted to help Bela--one of his childhood heroes--by giving him parts in his films. The friendship lasted until Bela's death 5 years later.

 

"Let's Shoot This F#*%@r!"

When Tim Burton received this bio-pic's script, co-written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, he dropped his other projects and got to work, hardly changing anything on the page. He remembered, "It's probably the first time ever that I got a script and said, 'Yeah, let's shoot this.'"

 

Studying Ed Wood's original letters, Tim and Johnny got a sense of an unwavering upbeat optimism about his work. Because of that, Johnny's performance is hilariously over-enthusiastic and joyful. His other ingredients for the character of Ed Wood included the heart of The Wizard of Oz's Tin Man, the blind optimism of Ronald Reagan, and the distinctive voice of Casey Kasem. Working with Tim again on a project that became a labor of love for all involved was just what Johnny needed to break out of the, let's say, dark place he was stuck in while filming What's Eating Gilbert Grape? "Ed was the rocket ship that took me away from that horrible, black, bleak time," he said. "This guy needed to be the ultimate optimist, dreamer, idealist. It was like being in a completely different suit or skin. It felt very good." His friend, Director Jim Jarmusch can attest: "I was staying at his house for a while when he was shooting Ed Wood, and sometimes I would pick him up from the set and we'd get dinner. It would take him three hours to stop being Ed Wood. I just wanted to slap him to get that stupid smile off his face. We'd be in this Thai restaurant and Johnny is going, 'Hey, this Pad Thai is fabulous!'"

 

Johnny's performance fits perfectly into Tim Burton's version of an Ed Wood film--beautifully stylized in black-and-white with all the perceived normalcy of the 1950s. "You're mixing different elements," Tim explained. "You want to get the flavor of an Ed Wood movie without being an Ed Wood exactly."

 

"This is perfect!"

Tim Burton's Ed Wood is one of his best. It's one of Johnny's best. It's one of the world's best! They made a movie that struck a bittersweet balance between Ed Wood's rosy vision and reality. It is at once hilarious, heartwarming, heartbreaking, and joyful.

 

This movie is about the love of filmmaking. In his review, Roger Ebert proclaimed that every film school in the country should show this film to their students to instill the devotion to and joy of the work. No matter what happens, everything is perfect in Ed's eyes. His love of producing and directing--getting the film in the can--was all that mattered.

 

The writers noted that there were several more scenes reflecting Ed's insecurities and self-doubt, but they didn't make it into the film. Larry Karaszewski explained, "Johnny and Tim grew to love Ed so much that it made them uncomfortable to give Ed those moments."

 

At the heart of this movie is friendship and acceptance. No one in Ed Wood's circle is "normal," yet by the end of the film you are cheering for all of them. Aside from Bela Lugosi and himself, Ed Wood's cast often included Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson (George "The Animal" Steele), ghoulish TV hostess Vampira (Lisa Marie), self-proclaimed psychic Criswell (Jeffrey Jones), and drag queen Bunny Breckenridge (Bill Murray). The "bad guys" in this movie were those embarrassed by Ed's love for cross-dressing or confused by his films' lack of continuity or retakes. But this troupe of misfits stuck together like family. And that was no clearer than in the relationship between Ed Wood and Bela Lugosi.

 

Brilliantly played by Martin Landau, becoming Bela Lugosi was a challenge: "What you've got here is a 74-year-old Hungarian morphine addict/alcoholic who has mood swings," Martin explained. "That would be hard enough, but it had to be Bela Lugosi, who everyone knows!" Paying homage to the actor, Martin considered this film a male love story, one between two guys who really needed and depended on each other. "You could tell that between Martin and Johnny there was a real respect and a kind of bonding that went on with them because they were both good at a certain level," Tim said. "It was exciting to see that."

 

"We have to go see Ed Wood!"

I had no idea who Ed Wood was at the time I saw this movie, and I don't remember how or where my family and I went to see the film. But I do remember two things: 1) There was no question that we were going to see it this time--no convincing, plotting, or pleading necessary, and 2) While watching the movie for the first time, I was worried about what my parents thought while Johnny strutted around in drag doing a strip tease among his friends in a meat packing plant. On the other hand, I was thrilled by Johnny's fearlessness to do whatever--and for Johnny, "whatever" usually guarantees the unexpected. It's a trait that remains in full force today, and one of the reasons I will always see his movies. Tim agrees, as he discussed being able to work with Johnny again on this project: "Edward Scissorhands was a character who didn't speak, and now we're dealing with a character that won't shut up. It's great to see an actor go from one thing to something completely different. There's a great energy to seeing something like that. He's just so willing to do anything that way. In fact, he usually wants to go farther than you want him to go. It's nice for other actors to see." The reviews everywhere for Tim Burton's little film were positive, even those from my own family.

 

Ed Wood was nominated for too many awards to list here. Among them were Johnny's third Golden Globe nomination and his win for Actor of the Year from the London Film Critics. Ed Wood earned two Oscars--one for Martin Landau's amazing performance and one for the makeup team who transformed him into Bela Lugosi.

 

Because of this movie, I sought out Ed Wood's own films, which I so much wanted to love as much as Tim, Johnny, and company did. But I just couldn't do it. They actually made me sad. I felt better once I found out that the writers are aware of this phenomenon: "What's interesting is that when you watch our movie, and then watch Ed Wood's films, our movie affects the Ed Wood films themselves," writer Larry Karaszewski said. "It's much harder to laugh at Ed Wood films, particularly Glen or Glenda. It feels like a piece of personal filmmaking where you feel like this guy is putting his soul onto film." It's true: Watching the real Ed Wood movies, I was excited to see all the real people who were portrayed in Tim's Ed Wood, and I was still rooting for them to do well. I probably always will.

 

Check it out: Once you see Ed Wood--and you should all see it--it'll happen to you too. This labor of love is contagious.

 

The Kitties will do anything to get this one made!

The Kitties were all for the Ed Wood homage in black and white. We had to choose a filming scene because that's what Ed loved best. Here is one of his great moments: He's dragged the crew (including Norman, Simon, and Comet) out at 3 a.m. to steal an octopus prop from a nearby studio. Now, he's plopping Bela (B.J.) in the middle of it all to stage a big fight. This will match up perfectly with the big underwater finish Ed has planned for his latest movie. Who cares that they forgot to get the octopus motor, or that Bela isn't quite underwater? This is perfect! (And only 25 more scenes to go tonight....)

 

What's next?

Johnny trades in his angora sweater for a mask. Next month, we'll meet the world's greatest lover, Don Juan DeMarco.

 

For more images from Ed Wood and Johnny Kitties, visit Melissa's Kitties' blog: melissaconnolly.blogspot.com.

IID 435811 Islands Barrier Reef IM0169 Misc Dept No.A4110

 

Image source: Queensland State Archives Item ID ITM435811 Islands - Barrier Reef

 

Google is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence,[9] and consumer electronics. It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world"[10] and one of the world's most valuable brands due to its market dominance, data collection, and technological advantages in the area of artificial intelligence.[11][12][13] Its parent company Alphabet is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.

Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at Stanford University in California. Together they own about 14% of its publicly listed shares and control 56% of the stockholder voting power through super-voting stock. The company went public via an initial public offering (IPO) in 2004. In 2015, Google was reorganized as a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Google is Alphabet's largest subsidiary and is a holding company for Alphabet's Internet properties and interests. Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO of Google on October 24, 2015, replacing Larry Page, who became the CEO of Alphabet. On December 3, 2019, Pichai also became the CEO of Alphabet.[14]

The company has since rapidly grown to offer a multitude of products and services beyond Google Search, many of which hold dominant market positions. These products address a wide range of use cases, including email (Gmail), navigation (Waze & Maps), cloud computing (Cloud), web browsing (Chrome), video sharing (YouTube), productivity (Workspace), operating systems (Android), cloud storage (Drive), language translation (Translate), photo storage (Photos), video calling (Meet), smart home (Nest), smartphones (Pixel), wearable technology (Pixel Watch & Fitbit), music streaming (YouTube Music), video on demand (YouTube TV), artificial intelligence (Google Assistant), machine learning APIs (TensorFlow), AI chips (TPU), and more. Discontinued Google products include gaming (Stadia), Glass,[citation needed] Google+, Reader, Play Music, Nexus, Hangouts, and Inbox by Gmail.[15][16]

Google's other ventures outside of Internet services and consumer electronics include quantum computing (Sycamore), self-driving cars (Waymo, formerly the Google Self-Driving Car Project), smart cities (Sidewalk Labs), and transformer models (Google Brain).[17]

Google and YouTube are the two most visited websites worldwide followed by Facebook and Twitter. Google is also the largest search engine, mapping and navigation application, email provider, office suite, video sharing platform, photo and cloud storage provider, mobile operating system, web browser, ML framework, and AI virtual assistant provider in the world as measured by market share. On the list of most valuable brands, Google is ranked second by Forbes[18] and fourth by Interbrand.[19] It has received significant criticism involving issues such as privacy concerns, tax avoidance, censorship, search neutrality, antitrust and abuse of its monopoly position.

In March 1999, the company moved its offices to Palo Alto, California,[52] which is home to several prominent Silicon Valley technology start-ups.[53] The next year, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords against Page and Brin's initial opposition toward an advertising-funded search engine.[54][22] To maintain an uncluttered page design, advertisements were solely text-based.[55] In June 2000, it was announced that Google would become the default search engine provider for Yahoo!, one of the most popular websites at the time, replacing Inktomi.

 

In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased an office complex from Silicon Graphics, at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California.[59] The complex became known as the Googleplex, a play on the word googolplex, the number one followed by a googol zeroes. Three years later, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million.[60] By that time, the name "Google" had found its way into everyday language, causing the verb "google" to be added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, denoted as: "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet".[61][62] The first use of the verb on television appeared in an October 2002 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.[63]

Additionally, in 2001 Google's investors felt the need to have a strong internal management, and they agreed to hire Eric Schmidt as the chairman and CEO of Google.[49] Eric was proposed by John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins. He had been trying to find a CEO that Sergey and Larry would accept for several months, but they rejected several candidates because they wanted to retain control over the company. Michael Moritz from Sequoia Capital at one point even menaced requesting Google to immediately pay back Sequoia's $12.5m investment if they did not fulfill their promise to hire a chief executive office, which had been made verbally during investment negotiations. Eric wasn't initially enthusiastic about joining Google either, as the company's full potential hadn't yet been widely recognized at the time, and as he was occupied with his responsibilities at Novell where he was CEO. As part of him joining, Eric agreed to buy $1 million of Google preferred stocks as a way to show his commitment and to provide funds Google needed.

Google generates most of its revenues from advertising. This includes sales of apps, purchases made in-app, digital content products on Google and YouTube, Android and licensing and service fees, including fees received for Google Cloud offerings. Forty-six percent of this profit was from clicks (cost per clicks), amounting to US$109,652 million in 2017. This includes three principal methods, namely AdMob, AdSense (such as AdSense for Content, AdSense for Search, etc.) and DoubleClick AdExchange.

In addition to its own algorithms for understanding search requests, Google uses technology its acquisition of DoubleClick, to project user interest and target advertising to the search context and the user history.

In 2007, Google launched "AdSense for Mobile", taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market.

Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page. Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google Ads allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, through a cost-per-click scheme.[138] The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website and earn money every time ads are clicked.[139] One of the criticisms of this program is the possibility of click fraud, which occurs when a person or automated script clicks on advertisements without being interested in the product, causing the advertiser to pay money to Google unduly. Industry reports in 2006 claimed that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were fraudulent or invalid.[140] Google Search Console (rebranded from Google Webmaster Tools in May 2015) allows webmasters to check the sitemap, crawl rate, and for security issues of their websites, as well as optimize their website's visibility.

Consumer services

Web-based services

Google offers Gmail for email, Google Calendar for time-management and scheduling, Google Maps for mapping, navigation and satellite imagery, Google Drive for cloud storage of files, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides for productivity, Google Photos for photo storage and sharing, Google Keep for note-taking, Google Translate for language translation, YouTube for video viewing and sharing, Google My Business for managing public business information, and Duo for social interaction. In March 2019, Google unveiled a cloud gaming service named Stadia. A job search product has also existed since before 2017, Google for Jobs is an enhanced search feature that aggregates listings from job boards and career sites.

Some Google services are not web-based. Google Earth, launched in 2005, allowed users to see high-definition satellite pictures from all over the world for free through a client software downloaded to their computers.

Software

Google develops the Android mobile operating system, as well as its smartwatch, television, car, and Internet of things-enabled smart devices variations.

It also develops the Google Chrome web browser, and Chrome OS, an operating system based on Chrome.

 

Hardware

 

In January 2010, Google released Nexus One, the first Android phone under its own brand. It spawned a number of phones and tablets under the "Nexus" branding until its eventual discontinuation in 2016, replaced by a new brand called Pixel.

In 2011, the Chromebook was introduced, which runs on Chrome OS.

In July 2013, Google introduced the Chromecast dongle, which allows users to stream content from their smartphones to televisions.

In June 2014, Google announced Google Cardboard, a simple cardboard viewer that lets user place their smartphone in a special front compartment to view virtual reality (VR) media.

Other hardware products include:

•Nest, a series of voice assistant smart speakers that can answer voice queries, play music, find information from apps (calendar, weather etc.), and control third-party smart home appliances (users can tell it to turn on the lights, for example). The Google Nest line includes the original Google Home (later succeeded by the Nest Audio), the Google Home Mini (later succeeded by the Nest Mini, the Google Home Max, the Google Home Hub (later rebranded as the Nest Hub), and the Nest Hub Max.

•Nest Wifi (originally Google Wifi), a connected set of Wi-Fi routers to simplify and extend coverage of home Wi-Fi.

 

Enterprise services

Google Workspace (formerly G Suite until October 2020) is a monthly subscription offering for organizations and businesses to get access to a collection of Google's services, including Gmail, Google Drive and Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides, with additional administrative tools, unique domain names, and 24/7 support.

On September 24, 2012, Google launched Google for Entrepreneurs, a largely not-for-profit business incubator providing startups with co-working spaces known as Campuses, with assistance to startup founders that may include workshops, conferences, and mentorships. Presently, there are seven Campus locations: Berlin, London, Madrid, Seoul, São Paulo, Tel Aviv, and Warsaw.

On March 15, 2016, Google announced the introduction of Google Analytics 360 Suite, "a set of integrated data and marketing analytics products, designed specifically for the needs of enterprise-class marketers" which can be integrated with BigQuery on the Google Cloud Platform. Among other things, the suite is designed to help "enterprise class marketers" "see the complete customer journey", generate "useful insights", and "deliver engaging experiences to the right people". Jack Marshall of The Wall Street Journal wrote that the suite competes with existing marketing cloud offerings by companies including Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce, and IBM.

 

Internet services

In February 2010, Google announced the Google Fiber project, with experimental plans to build an ultra-high-speed broadband network for 50,000 to 500,000 customers in one or more American cities.[178][179] Following Google's corporate restructure to make Alphabet Inc. its parent company, Google Fiber was moved to Alphabet's Access division.[180][181]

In April 2015, Google announced Project Fi, a mobile virtual network operator, that combines Wi-Fi and cellular networks from different telecommunication providers in an effort to enable seamless connectivity and fast Internet signal.

 

Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name comes from the face book directories often given to American university students. Membership was initially limited to Harvard students, gradually expanding to other North American universities and, since 2006, anyone over 13 years old. As of July 2022, Facebook claimed 2.93 billion monthly active users,[6] and ranked third worldwide among the most visited websites as of July 2022.[7] It was the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s.[8]

Facebook can be accessed from devices with Internet connectivity, such as personal computers, tablets and smartphones. After registering, users can create a profile revealing information about themselves. They can post text, photos and multimedia which are shared with any other users who have agreed to be their "friend" or, with different privacy settings, publicly. Users can also communicate directly with each other with Facebook Messenger, join common-interest groups, and receive notifications on the activities of their Facebook friends and the pages they follow.

The subject of numerous controversies, Facebook has often been criticized over issues such as user privacy (as with the Cambridge Analytica data scandal), political manipulation (as with the 2016 U.S. elections) and mass surveillance.[9] Posts originating from the Facebook page of Breitbart News, a media organization previously affiliated with Cambridge Analytica,[10] are currently among the most widely shared political content on Facebook.[11][12][13][14][15] Facebook has also been subject to criticism over psychological effects such as addiction and low self-esteem, and various controversies over content such as fake news, conspiracy theories, copyright infringement, and hate speech.

 

Zuckerberg built a website called "Facemash" in 2003 while attending Harvard University. The site was comparable to Hot or Not and used "photos compiled from the online face books of nine Houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the "hotter" person". Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours. The site was sent to several campus group listservs, but was shut down a few days later by Harvard administration. Zuckerberg faced expulsion and was charged with breaching security, violating copyrights and violating individual privacy. Ultimately, the charges were dropped. Zuckerberg expanded on this project that semester by creating a social study tool. He uploaded art images, each accompanied by a comments section, to a website he shared with his classmates.

A "face book" is a student directory featuring photos and personal information. In 2003, Harvard had only a paper version[ along with private online directories. Zuckerberg told The Harvard Crimson, "Everyone's been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard. ... I think it's kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week."[29] In January 2004, Zuckerberg coded a new website, known as "TheFacebook", inspired by a Crimson editorial about Facemash, stating, "It is clear that the technology needed to create a centralized Website is readily available ... the benefits are many." Zuckerberg met with Harvard student Eduardo Saverin, and each of them agreed to invest $1,000 ($1,435 in 2021 dollars[30]) in the site.[31] On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "TheFacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.

Six days after the site launched, Harvard seniors Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing that he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com. They claimed that he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product. The three complained to the Crimson and the newspaper began an investigation. They later sued Zuckerberg, settling in 2008 for 1.2 million shares (worth $300 million ($354 million in 2021 dollars[30]) at Facebook's IPO).

Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College. Within a month, more than half the undergraduates had registered.[36] Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes joined Zuckerberg to help manage the growth of the website.[37] In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Columbia, Stanford and Yale.[38] It then became available to all Ivy League colleges, Boston University, NYU, MIT, and successively most universities in the United States and Canada.

In mid-2004, Napster co-founder and entrepreneur Sean Parker—an informal advisor to Zuckerberg—became company president.[41] In June 2004, the company moved to Palo Alto, California.[42] It received its first investment later that month from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. In 2005, the company dropped "the" from its name after purchasing the domain name Facebook.com for US$200,000 ($277,492 in 2021 dollars). The domain had belonged to AboutFace Corporation.

In May 2005, Accel Partners invested $12.7 million ($17.6 million in 2021 dollars) in Facebook, and Jim Breyer added $1 million ($1.39 million in 2021 dollars) of his own money. A high-school version of the site launched in September 2005. Eligibility expanded to include employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft.

 

Facebook was sued by the Federal Trade Commission as well as a coalition of several states for illegal monopolization and antitrust. The FTC and states sought the courts to force Facebook to sell its subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram.[183][184] The suits were dismissed by a federal judge on June 28, 2021, who stated that there was not enough evidence brought in the suit to determine Facebook to be a monopoly at this point, though allowed the FTC to amend its case to include additional evidence. In its amended filings in August 2021, the FTC asserted that Facebook had been a monopoly in the area of personal social networks since 2011, distinguishing Facebook's activities from social media services like TikTok that broadcast content without necessarily limiting that message to intended recipients.

In response to the proposed bill in the Australian Parliament for a News Media Bargaining Code, on February 17, 2021, Facebook blocked Australian users from sharing or viewing news content on its platform, as well as pages of some government, community, union, charity, political, and emergency services.[187] The Australian government strongly criticised the move, saying it demonstrated the "immense market power of these digital social giants".

On February 22, Facebook said it reached an agreement with the Australian government that would see news returning to Australian users in the coming days. As part of this agreement, Facebook and Google can avoid the News Media Bargaining Code adopted on February 25 if they "reach a commercial bargain with a news business outside the Code".

Facebook has been accused of removing and shadow banning content that spoke either in favor of protesting Indian farmers or against Narendra Modi's government. India-based employees of Facebook are at risk of arrest.

On February 27, 2021, Facebook announced Facebook BARS app for rappers.

On June 29, 2021, Facebook announced Bulletin, a platform for independent writers.[197][198] Unlike competitors such as Substack, Facebook would not take a cut of subscription fees of writers using that platform upon its launch, like Malcolm Gladwell and Mitch Albom. According to The Washington Post technology writer Will Oremus, the move was criticized by those who viewed it as an tactic intended by Facebook to force those competitors out of business.

In October 2021, owner Facebook, Inc. changed its company name to Meta Platforms, Inc., or simply "Meta", as it shifts its focus to building the "metaverse". This change does not affect the name of the Facebook social networking service itself, instead being similar to the creation of Alphabet as Google's parent company in 2015.

In November 2021, Facebook stated it would stop targeting ads based on data related to health, race, ethnicity, political beliefs, religion and sexual orientation. The change will occur in January and will affect all apps owned by Meta Platforms.

In February 2022, Facebook's daily active users dropped for the first time in its 18-year history. According to Facebook's parent Meta, DAUs dropped to 1.929 billion in the three months ending in December, down from 1.930 billion the previous quarter. Furthermore, the company warned that revenue growth would slow due to competition from TikTok and YouTube, as well as advertisers cutting back on spending.

Analysts predict a "death spiral" for facebook stock as users leave while ad impressions increase, as the company chases revenue.

On March 10, 2022, Facebook announced that it will temporarily ease rules to allow violent speech against 'Russian invaders'. Russia then banned all Meta services, including Instagram.

 

White Castle

Harold and Kumar aren't the only loyal customers who keep coming back to White Castle for some of those iconic sliders, and now, there is even an Impossible Slider on the menu.

Boston Market

From the rotisserie chickens to the delectable mac and cheese, Boston Market is always a great stop for a hearty meal. Here are The Best & Worst Menu Items at Boston Market.

Papa John's

Papa John's is always boasting about its better ingredients, and it seems like there are plenty of customers who continue to order these pizzas.

Little Caesars

"Pizza, pizza" has plenty of loyal fans, thanks to the "cheap and fast" vibe of the food. Speaking of pizza, do you know what the most popular pizza topping is in your state?

Starbucks

Starbucks has gathered a reputation for being the go-to place when you're in the mood for a pumpkin coffee drink once fall rolls around. And with their decadent Frappuccinos, there are plenty of sweet treats for non-coffee drinkers, too.

Quizno's

Quizno's offers up classic sandwiches, and who can resist the fresh pepper bar?

Five Guys

While Five Guys has some top-notch burgers and fries, this is a spot for peanut lovers, too. You can munch on peanuts that are available all over the restaurants while you order your meal.

Cold Stone Creamery

This ice cream shop serves up cold customized treats for whatever your heart desires, so it's basically a dream come true, right?

Sonic

Sometimes, you just want one of Sonic's frozen drinks and a burger to go along with it. Yum!

Burger King

While it may not be the most popular dining brand in the country, the King is still a top choice for many. Those Whoppers are still as tasty as ever, especially if you go for the Impossible Whopper.

Want to chow down on more juicy hamburgers? Here's where you can get The Absolute Best Burger in Every State.

KFC

The Colonel is still going strong! Who doesn't want to eat their chicken right out of a bucket?

A&W Restaurants

Yes, the root beer chain sells food! Here are The Best & Worst Menu Items at A&W.

Mrs. Fields

Those giant chocolate chip cookies that just call your name as you're walking by? They are a staple of all Mrs. Fields locations, so we don't blame you for having one now and then.

Subway

People surveyed described this sandwich shop as a "good value for money." If you're a Subway fan, you're not alone! Headed to Subway? Here's Every Subway Sandwich—Ranked for Nutrition!

McDonald's

Are you still McLovin' it? You might've expected Mickey D's to claim a spot closer to the top, but those golden fries and Big Macs seem to have some more competition.

Domino's

Domino's is hailed by fans for being well-made and a good value. With wings and yummy chocolate lava cakes to go alongside a pizza, Domino's is simply beloved.

Popeyes

Plenty of loyal Popeyes fans eat there on the reg, and we know the chicken sandwich was truly worth all the hype.

Panera

From its house-made lemonade to that tasty mac and cheese to those fresh-baked bagels, Panera has it all. No wonder it ranked so highly on YouGov's list!

Taco Bell

This taco joint rings its loyal customers' bells for being "everywhere and good quality." By the way, You'll Never Guess What Taco Bell Uses to Season Its Beef.

Chick-fil-A

Although loyal customers can't satisfy their fried chicken cravings on Sunday, Chick-fil-A still is a top spot to go when you're in the mood for a chicken sandwich and some waffle fries.

Pizza Hut

With a plethora of crusts, cheesy toppings, and grilled veggies to choose from, it's no surprise pizza lovers keep coming back to the Hut.

Arby's

For all the meat-lovers out there, Arby's is your place, especially if you're a fan of their staple, roast beef sandwiches.

Dunkin'

America actually does run on Dunkin', doesn't it? Those Munchkins are rather irresistible.

 

Cinnabon

No mall trip is ever done without a pit stop at Cinnabon for a warm, gooey, perfectly sticky cinnamon bun.

Wendy's

Ranking higher than McDonald's and Burger King is the beloved redhead! The real question is, which flavor Frosty do you get: chocolate or vanilla?

Krispy Kreme

From the affordably priced cups of caffeine to the hot-out-the-oven classic glazed doughnuts, it's easy to see why Krispy Kreme has such a devoted following.

Baskin-Robbins

Craving ice cream? Baskin Robbins comes in the first-place spot. And they have so many delicious scoop flavors!

Dairy Queen

Majority rules! Customers raved that the fast-food chain is "good quality," "never gets old," and is a "good value for money." That sounds like a winning combo to us! DQ even sold more than 175 million Blizzards the first year they introduced them in 1985—who knew?

  

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam

 

Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. Constructed between 1931 and 1936, during the Great Depression, it was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over 100 lives. In bills passed by Congress during its construction, it was referred to as the Hoover Dam, after President Herbert Hoover, but was named Boulder Dam by the Roosevelt administration. In 1947, the name Hoover Dam was restored by Congress.

 

Since about 1900, the Black Canyon and nearby Boulder Canyon had been investigated for their potential to support a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water, and produce hydroelectric power. In 1928, Congress authorized the project. The winning bid to build the dam was submitted by a consortium named Six Companies, Inc., which began construction in early 1931. Such a large concrete structure had never been built before, and some of the techniques used were unproven. The torrid summer weather and lack of facilities near the site also presented difficulties. Nevertheless, Six Companies turned the dam over to the federal government on March 1, 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule.

 

Hoover Dam impounds Lake Mead and is located near Boulder City, Nevada, a municipality originally constructed for workers on the construction project, about 30 mi (48 km) southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. The dam's generators provide power for public and private utilities in Nevada, Arizona, and California. Hoover Dam is a major tourist attraction, with 7 million tourists a year. The heavily traveled U.S. Route 93 (US 93) ran along the dam's crest until October 2010, when the Hoover Dam Bypass opened.

 

Source: hoover.archives.gov/hoovers/hoover-dam

 

85 years after its completion, Hoover dam is still considered an engineering marvel. It is named in honor of President Herbert Hoover, who played a crucial role in its creation.

 

For many years, residents of the American southwest sought to tame the unpredictable Colorado River. Disastrous floods during the early 1900’s led residents of the area to look to the federal government for aid, and experiments with irrigation on a limited scale had shown that this arid region could be transformed into fertile cropland, if only the river could be controlled. The greatest obstacle to the construction of such a dam was the allocation of water rights among the seven states comprising the Colorado River drainage basin. Meetings were held in 1918, 1919 and 1920, but the states could not reach a consensus.

 

Herbert Hoover had visited the Lower Colorado region in the years before World War I and was familiar with its problems and the potential for development. Upon becoming Secretary of Commerce in 1921, Hoover proposed the construction of a dam on the Colorado River. In addition to flood control and irrigation, it would provide a dependable supply of water for Los Angeles and Southern California. The project would be self-supporting, recovering its cost through the sale of hydroelectric power generated by the dam.

 

In 1921, the state legislatures of the Colorado River basin authorized commissioners to negotiate an interstate agreement. Congress authorized President Harding to appoint a representative for the federal government to serve as chair of the Colorado River Commission and on December 17, 1921, Harding appointed Hoover to that role.

 

When the commission assembled in Santa Fe in November 1922, the seven states still disagreed over the fair distribution of water. The upstream states feared that the downstream states, with their rapidly developing agricultural and power demands, would quickly preempt rights to the water by the “first in time, first in right” doctrine. Hoover suggested a compromise that the water be divided between the upper and lower basins without individual state quotas. The resulting Colorado River Compact was signed on November 24, 1922. It split the river basin into upper and lower halves with the states within each region deciding amongst themselves how the water would be allocated.

 

A series of bills calling for Federal funding to build the dam were introduced by Congressman Phil D. Swing and Senator Hiram W. Johnson between 1922 and 1928, all of which were rejected. The last Swing-Johnson bill, titled the Boulder Canyon Project Act, was largely written by Hoover and Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work. Congress finally agreed, and the bill was signed into law on December 21, 1928 by President Coolidge. The dream was about to become reality.

 

On June 25, 1929, less than four months after his inauguration, President Herbert Hoover signed a proclamation declaring the Colorado River Compact effective at last. Appropriations were approved and construction began in 1930. The dam was dedicated in 1935 and the hydroelectric generators went online in 1937. In 1947, Congress officially "restored" Hoover's name to the dam, after FDR's Secretary of the Interior tried to remove it. Hoover Dam was built for a cost of $49 million (approximately $1 billion adjusted for inflation). The power plant and generators cost an additional $71 million, more than the cost of the dam itself. The sale of electrical power generated by the dam paid back its construction cost, with interest, by 1987.

 

Today the Hoover Dam controls the flooding of the Colorado River, irrigates more than 1.5 million acres of land, and provides water to more than 16 million people. Lake Mead supports recreational activities and provides habitats to fish and wildlife. Power generated by the dam provides energy to power over 500,000 homes. The Hoover Compromise still governs how the water is shared.

 

Additional Foreign Language Tags:

 

(United States) "الولايات المتحدة" "Vereinigte Staaten" "アメリカ" "美国" "미국" "Estados Unidos" "États-Unis"

 

(Nevada) "نيفادا" "内华达州" "नेवादा" "ネバダ" "네바다" "Невада"

 

(Arizona) "أريزونا" "亚利桑那州" "एरिजोना" "アリゾナ州" "애리조나" "Аризона"

 

(Hoover Dam) "سد هوفر" "胡佛水坝" "हूवर बांध" "フーバーダム" "후버 댐" "Гувера" "Presa Hoover"

M6 Gailey 03/07/2023

The Los Angeles Fire Department responded in automatic aid on August 27, 2011 to assist the Los Angeles County Fire Department and Los Angeles County Lifeguards in handling a collision involving a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department vehicle. © Photo by John Conkle

Hornet Rally 083116

Involvement Expo on the quad Wednesday, August 28, 2019.

The Student Involvement Fair, inside and outside of Social Hall, showcased the many opportunities for extra curricular enrichment both inside and outside of the NMH community.

The Postcard

 

A postcard bearing no publisher's name that was posted using a 2d. stamp in Weymouth, Dorset on Thursday the 4th. July 1957 to:

 

Miss Doswell,

77 Ryedale,

East Dulwich,

London SE.

 

The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:

 

"Dear Miss Doswell,

We are having a nice

holiday. We had a bad

storm on Tuesday night -

thunder and lightning

all night.

Nice yesterday and

today again.

We hope you are keeping

well.

We have just had a boat

trip around Portland

Harbour.

Best wishes,

Mr. & Mrs. Voak."

 

Weymouth

 

Weymouth is a seaside town in Dorset, England, situated on a sheltered bay at the mouth of the River Wey on the English Channel coast. The town is 11 kilometres (7 mi) south of Dorchester and 8 kilometres (5 mi) north of the Isle of Portland. The town's population in 2011 was 52,300.

 

Weymouth is a tourist resort, and its economy depends on its harbour and visitor attractions; the town is a gateway situated halfway along the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site on the Dorset and east Devon coast, important for its geology and landforms.

 

Weymouth Harbour has provided a berth for cross-channel ferries, and is home to pleasure boats and private yachts, and nearby Portland Harbour is home to the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy, where the sailing events of the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games were held.

 

The history of the borough stretches back to the 12th century; including involvement in the spread of the Black Death, the settlement of the Americas, the development of Georgian architecture, and a major departure point for the Normandy Landings.

 

Greenhill Gardens

 

Greenhill Gardens in the Greenhill suburb of Weymouth is a public garden positioned at the edge of the town centre, sloping up from the beach and promenade.

 

The Gardens were originally part of the Wilton Estate and were handed over as a gift to the local council in 1902 for 'the benefit of the inhabitants of Weymouth.'

 

Bennett's Shelter

 

Within the gardens, Bennett's Shelter, a benevolent donation made by Mayor V. H. Bennett, was constructed in 1919. The original shelter had lower wooden sections that have since been replaced by Portland stone walling, whilst the upper timber structure and tiled roof are essentially in their original form. The shelter continues to provide shelter to today's visitors.

 

The Schneider Trophy Weathervane

 

The Schneider Trophy weathervane is a memorial to the former Weymouth College student, Lieutenant George Stainforth, who set a world record air speed in a Schneider Supermarine S6B seaplane in 1931. The weather vane was originally presented to Weymouth College in 1932 as a memorial to Stainforth. Made of hardwood and covered in a copper sheath, the vane was erected above Weymouth College chapel in 1932, but moved for safety at the start of World War II.

 

The weathervane was later presented to the Borough Council and placed in the gardens in May 1952. In 1996, the vane had to be taken down after the effects of years of sea spray and coastal winds had taken their toll; however it was restored in 1999 by a local marine engineer.

 

The Floral Clock

 

In 1936, a floral clock with a cuckoo type chime was built by Ritchie & Sons of Edinburgh. The Company also designed the famous floral clock in Princes Street Garden in Edinburgh.

 

It features an adjacent clock house, holding the original mechanism that keeps the clock ticking. The clock house has two holes in the side where the noise of a cuckoo comes out.

 

Since its creation, it has become one of the most popular features of the gardens.

 

The Wishing Well

 

In the late 1980's, a wishing well, donated by Melcombe Regis Rotary Club, was introduced into the lower gardens, and any monies thrown into the well are collected and presented to a local charity.

 

The Tennis Courts

 

In 2006, the council were considering plans to erect a large restaurant on the tennis courts in the Gardens. This plan was received with almost universal dismay, and was subsequently shelved.

 

The Floral Bedding Design

 

Each year a large crescent shaped bed is given over to a charity or organisation which is celebrating a significant anniversary. The Gardeners painstakingly plant out thousands of tiny bedding plants, and where necessary, use coloured gravel to replicate the selected organisation's logo.

 

Eleanor Boucher

 

The gardens were highlighted on national news in the summer of 2009 when pensioner Eleanor Boucher from Glastonbury, Somerset, found a postcard from Weymouth on her doormat of the gardens.

 

After looking at it for a few moments she realised she was there - sunning herself in the picture taken 17 years before as a photographer snapped the shot for the postcard as Boucher and her two daughters enjoyed a family day trip to Weymouth in 1992.

 

Seventeen years later, her brother-in-law and his wife, who were visiting the resort, picked out the postcard by chance without noticing her in the picture.

 

Jenny Seagrove

 

So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?

 

Well, the 4th. July 1957 marked the birth of the English actress Jenny Seagrove.

 

She trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, and first came to attention in the film Local Hero (1983), as well as playing the lead in a television dramatisation of Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance (1984).

 

Jenny starred in the thriller Appointment with Death (1988) and William Friedkin's horror film The Guardian (1990). She later played Louisa Gould in Another Mother's Son (2017).

 

Jenny is known for her role as the character of Jo Mills in the long-running BBC drama series Judge John Deed (2001–07). Her credits as a voiceover artist include a series of Waitrose television advertisements.

 

-- Jenny Seagrove - The Early Years

 

Jenny was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya (now Malaysia) to British parents, Pauline and Derek Seagrove. Her father ran an import-export firm, which afforded the family a privileged lifestyle.

 

When Seagrove was less than a year old, her mother suffered a stroke, and was unable to care for her. Seagrove attended St. Hilary's School in Godalming, Surrey, from the age of nine.

 

After leaving school, Seagrove attended the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, in spite of her parents' wishes for her to have a career as a professional cook.

 

Seagrove developed bulimia in her early adulthood, but recovered:

 

"I could feel myself tearing my stomach,

and I kind of pulled out of it. It was a

very slow process."

 

-- Jenny Seagrove's Career

 

(a) Theatre

 

Seagrove's theatre work includes the title role in Jane Eyre at the Chichester Festival Theatre (1986); Ilona in The Guardsman at Theatr Clwyd (1992); and Bett in King Lear in New York, again at Chichester (1992).

 

Jenny played opposite Tom Conti in Present Laughter at the Globe Theatre (1993); Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker at the Comedy Theatre (1994); and Dead Guilty with Hayley Mills at the Apollo Theatre (1995).

 

She played in Hurlyburly for the Peter Hall Company when the production transferred from the London Old Vic to the Queen's Theatre (1997); co-starred with Martin Shaw in the Parisian thriller Vertigo (Theatre Royal Windsor October 1998) and then with Anthony Andrews (also Windsor, 1998).

 

In 2000 she appeared in Brief Encounter at the Lyric Theatre; followed by Neil Simon's The Female Odd Couple at the Apollo (2001). Again at the Lyric Theatre in 2002 she played the title role in Somerset Maugham's The Constant Wife, followed by a revival of David Hare's The Secret Rapture in 2003, and The Night of the Iguana two years later in 2005.

 

Coming to the West End from a UK tour, she played Leslie Crosbie in Maugham's The Letter at Wyndham's Theatre (2007), co-starring with Anthony Andrews.

 

In December 2007, Jenny played Marion Brewster-Wright in the Garrick Theatre revival of Alan Ayckbourn's dark, three-act comedy Absurd Person Singular.

 

In 2008, she and Martin Shaw starred in Murder on Air, at the Theatre Royal, Windsor.

 

In 2011, Jenny once again starred alongside Martin Shaw in The Country Girl at the Apollo Theatre, playing the part of Georgie Elgin.

 

In early 2014, she appeared as Julia in a revival of Noël Coward's Fallen Angels. The production was produced by her partner Bill Kenwright, and also starred Sara Crowe.

 

In 2015, she and Martin Shaw starred in an adaptation of Brief Encounter, using an original radio script from 1947 and staged as "A live broadcast from a BBC radio studio", at the Theatre Royal Windsor.

 

Returning to the West End in October 2017, Seagrove played Chris MacNeil in The Exorcist at the Phoenix Theatre.

 

(b) Film

 

Jenny Seagrove starred alongside Rupert Everett in the Academy Award-winning short film A Shocking Accident (1982), directed by James Scott. Her first major film appearance was in Local Hero (1983) in which she played a mysterious environmentalist with webbed feet.

 

Roles in a number of films including Savage Islands (1983) opposite Tommy Lee Jones, and Appointment with Death (1988) followed.

 

One of her lead starring roles was in The Guardian (1990), directed by William Friedkin, in which she played an evil babysitter.

 

In 2017, she played the lead role in Another Mother's Son, starring as Louisa Gould, a member of the Channel Islands resistance movement during World War II, who famously sheltered an escaped Russian slave worker in Jersey and was later gassed to death in 1945 at Ravensbrück concentration camp.

 

(c) Television

 

Seagrove first came to mass public attention in the 10-episode series of the BBC production Diana (1984) adapted from an R. F. Delderfield novel, in which she played the title role as the adult Diana Gaylord-Sutton (the child having been played in the first two episodes by Patsy Kensit).

 

Seagrove starred in two American-produced television miniseries based upon the first novels of Barbara Taylor Bradford: as Emma Harte in A Woman of Substance (1984) and Paula Fairley in Hold the Dream (1986).

 

Jenny portrayed stage actress Lillie Langtry in Incident at Victoria Falls (1992), a UK made-for-television film. As the female lead, Melanie James in the film Magic Moments (1989), she starred with John Shea, who played the magician Troy Gardner with whom she falls in love.

 

Seagrove, along with Simon Cowell, presented Wildlife SOS (1997), a documentary series about the work of dedicated animal lovers who save injured and orphaned wild animals brought into their sanctuary.

 

Most of Seagrove's filmed work since 1990 has been for television. Between 2001 and 2007, she appeared as QC Jo Mills in the series Judge John Deed. She was the subject of This Is Your Life in 2003 when she was surprised by Michael Aspel.

 

With John Thaw she guest starred in the episode "The Sign of Four" (1987) of the series Sherlock Holmes. She also guest starred in episodes of Lewis ("The Point of Vanishing", 2009) and Identity ("Somewhere They Can't Find Me", 2010).

 

A few years later, she appeared in the series Endeavour (the prequel to the Inspector Morse series), in the episode "Rocket" (2013).

 

-- Jenny Seagrove's Personal Life

 

Seagrove is an animal rights activist and an advocate for deregulation of the herbal remedy industry in the United Kingdom, and promotes a vegetarian diet.

 

Since 1994, her partner has been the theatrical producer Bill Kenwright, chairman of Everton F.C. The couple appeared together as contestants on a charity edition of ITV1's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, winning £1,000. They also appeared together on a celebrity edition of the BBC's Pointless which aired on 3 January 2014.

 

Seagrove was previously married to British and Indian actor Madhav Sharma from 1984 to 1988​, and then dated film director Michael Winner from 1989 until 1993.

 

-- Mane Chance Sanctuary

 

Mane Chance Sanctuary is a registered charity that provides care for rescued horses, based in Compton, Guildford. The charity aims:

 

"To provide sanctuary and relief from suffering

for horses, while promoting humane behaviour

to all animals and mutually beneficial relationships

with people who need them".

 

Mane Chance Sanctuary was established in 2011 by Seagrove, who stepped in to support a friend facing financial difficulties. Seagrove was able to secure land on Monkshatch Garden Farm, and has since grown the charity which today cares for over 30 horses using a unique system of equine welfare.

 

The charity's trustees include the actor Sir Timothy Ackroyd and the philanthropist Simrin Choudhrie. The chairman is James McCarthy.

 

In 2014, she performed a duet alongside singer Peter Howarth called The Main Chance, as part of a promotion for the Mane Chance Sanctuary.

 

Lonnie Donegan

 

Also on that day, the Number One chart hit record in the UK was 'Gambling Man' by Lonnie Donegan.

 

Lonnie Donegan

 

Also on that day, the Number One chart hit record in the UK was 'Gambling Man' by Lonnie Donegan.

 

Anthony James Donegan MBE, who was born in Bridgeton, Glasgow, on the 29th. April 1931, was known as Lonnie Donegan. He was a British skiffle singer, songwriter and musician, referred to as the "King of Skiffle", who influenced 1960's British pop and rock musicians.

 

Born in Scotland and brought up in England, Donegan began his career in the British trad jazz revival, but transitioned to skiffle in the mid-1950's, rising to prominence with a hit recording of the American folk song "Rock Island Line" which helped spur the broader UK skiffle movement.

 

Donegan had 31 UK top 30 hit singles, 24 were successive hits and three were number one. He was the first British male singer with two US top 10 hits.

 

Donegan received an Ivor Novello lifetime achievement award in 1995, and in 2000 he was awarded an MBE. Donegan was a pivotal figure in the British Invasion due to his influence in the US in the late 1950's.

 

-- Lonnie Donegan and Traditional Jazz

 

As a child growing up in the early 1940's, Donegan listened mostly to swing jazz and vocal acts, and became interested in the guitar.

 

Country & western and blues records, particularly by Frank Crumit and Josh White, attracted his interest, and he bought his first guitar at 14 in 1945.

 

He learned songs such as "Frankie and Johnny", "Puttin' on the Style", and "The House of the Rising Sun" by listening to BBC radio broadcasts. By the end of the 1940's he was playing guitar around London and visiting small jazz clubs.

 

Donegan first played in a major band after Chris Barber heard that he was a good banjo player and, on a train, asked him to audition. Donegan had never played the banjo, but he bought one for the audition, and succeeded more on personality than talent.

 

Lonnie's stint with Barber's trad jazz band was interrupted when he was called up for National Service in 1949, but while in the army at Southampton, he was the drummer in Ken Grinyer's Wolverines Jazz Band at a local pub.

 

A posting to Vienna brought him into contact with American troops, and access to US records and the American Forces Network radio station.

 

In 1952, he formed the Tony Donegan Jazzband, which played around London. On the 28th. June 1952 at the Royal Festival Hall they opened for the blues musician Lonnie Johnson.

 

Donegan adopted Lonnie's first name as a tribute. He used the name at a concert at the Royal Albert Hall on the 2nd. June 1952.

 

In 1953, after cornetist Ken Colyer was imprisoned in New Orleans over a visa problem, he returned to Great Britain and joined Chris Barber's band. The band's name was changed to Ken Colyer's Jazzmen before making their first public appearance on the 11th. April 1953 in Copenhagen.

 

The following day, Chris Albertson recorded Ken Colyer's Jazzmen and the Monty Sunshine Trio—Sunshine, Barber, and Donegan—for Storyville Records. These were amongst Donegan's first commercial recordings.

 

-- Lonnie Donegan and Skiffle

 

While in Ken Colyer's Jazzmen with Chris Barber, Donegan sang and played guitar and banjo in their Dixieland set.

 

He began playing with two other band members during the intervals, to provide what posters called a "skiffle" break, a name suggested by Ken Colyer's brother, Bill, after the Dan Burley Skiffle Group of the 1930's. In 1954 Colyer left, and the band became Chris Barber's Jazz Band.

 

With a washboard, tea-chest bass, and a cheap Spanish guitar, Donegan played folk and blues songs by artists such as Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie.

 

This proved popular, and in July 1954 he recorded a fast version of Lead Belly's "Rock Island Line", featuring a washboard but not a tea-chest bass, with "John Henry" on the B-side.

 

The record was a hit in 1956, but because it was a band recording, Donegan made no money beyond his session fee. It was the first debut record to go gold in the UK, and it reached the Top Ten in the United States. It also later inspired the creation of a full album, An Englishman Sings American Folk Songs, released in America on the Mercury label in the early 1960's.

 

The Acoustic Music organisation made this comment about Donegan's "Rock Island Line":

 

"It flew up the English charts. Donegan had

synthesized American southern blues with simple

acoustic instruments: acoustic guitar, washtub bass,

and washboard rhythm. The new style was called

'Skiffle'.... and referred to music from people with

little money for instruments. The new style captivated

an entire generation of post-war youth in England."

 

Lonnie's next single for Decca, "Diggin' My Potatoes", was recorded at a concert at the Royal Festival Hall on the 30th. October 1954.

 

Decca dropped Donegan thereafter, but within a month he was at the Abbey Road Studios in London recording for EMI's Columbia label. He had left the Barber band, and by the spring of 1955, had signed a recording contract with Pye.

 

Lonnie's next single "Lost John" reached No. 2 in the UK Singles Chart.

 

He appeared on television in the United States on the Perry Como Show and the Paul Winchell Show.

 

Returning to the UK, he recorded his debut album, Lonnie Donegan Showcase, in summer 1956, with songs by Lead Belly and Leroy Carr, plus "Ramblin' Man" and "Wabash Cannonball". The LP sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

 

The skiffle style encouraged amateurs, and one of many groups that followed was the Quarrymen, formed in March 1957 by John Lennon. Donegan's "Gamblin' Man"/"Puttin' On the Style" single was number one in the UK in July 1957, when Lennon first met Paul McCartney.

 

Lonnie's Skiffle rendition of Hank Snow's Country song "Nobody's Child" was also the inspiration for Tony Sheridan's blues version which he recorded with the Beatles as his backing band.

 

Donegan went on to successes such as "Cumberland Gap" and "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour on the Bedpost Overnight?", which was his biggest hit in the US.

 

Lonnie turned to music hall style with "My Old Man's a Dustman" in 1960. This was not well received by skiffle fans, and unsuccessful in America, but it reached number one in the UK.

 

Donegan's group had a flexible line-up, but was generally Denny Wright or Les Bennetts playing lead guitar and singing harmony, Micky Ashman or Pete Huggett—later Steve Jones—on upright bass, Nick Nichols—later Pete Appleby, Mark Goodwin, and Ken Rodway on drums or percussion, and Donegan playing acoustic guitar or banjo and singing the lead.

 

His last hit single on the UK chart was his cover version of "Pick a Bale of Cotton." Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, his fall from the chart coincided with the rise of The Beatles and the other beat music performers whom he inspired.

 

-- Lonnie Donegan's Later Career

 

Donegan recorded sporadically throughout the 1960's, including sessions at Hickory Records in Nashville with Charlie McCoy, Floyd Cramer, and the Jordanaires. After 1964 he was a record producer at Pye Records. Justin Hayward was one of the artists with whom he worked.

 

Donegan was not popular through the late 1960's and 1970's (although his "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" was recorded by Tom Jones in 1967 and Elvis Presley in 1976), and he began to play the American cabaret circuit.

 

A departure from his normal style was a cappella recording of "The Party's Over". Capella means a purely vocal recording with no musical backing.

 

Donegan reunited with the original Chris Barber band for a concert in Croydon in June 1975. A bomb scare meant that the recording had to be finished in the studio, after an impromptu concert in the car park. The release was titled The Great Re-Union Album.

 

He collaborated with Rory Gallagher on several songs, notably "Rock Island Line" with Gallagher performing most of the elaborate guitar work.

 

Lonnie had his first heart attack in 1976 while in the United States, necessitating quadruple bypass surgery. He returned to prominence in 1978 when he recorded his early songs with Rory Gallagher, Ringo Starr, Elton John, and Brian May. The album was called Putting on the Style.

 

A follow-up featuring Albert Lee saw Donegan in less familiar country and western vein.

 

By 1980, he was making regular concert appearances again, and another album with Barber followed. In 1983, Donegan toured with Billie Jo Spears, and in 1984 he made his theatrical debut in a revival of the 1920 musical Mr Cinders.

 

More concert tours followed, with a move from Florida to Spain. In 1992 Lonnie had further bypass surgery following another heart attack.

 

In 1994, the Chris Barber band celebrated 40 years with a tour with both bands. Pat Halcox was still on trumpet (a position he retained until July 2008).

 

Donegan had a late renaissance when in 2000 he appeared on Van Morrison's album The Skiffle Sessions – Live in Belfast 1998, an acclaimed album featuring him singing with Morrison and Chris Barber, with a guest appearance by Dr John.

 

Donegan also played at the Glastonbury Festival in 1999, and was made an MBE in 2000.

 

Donegan also appeared at Fairport Convention's annual music festival on the 9th. August 2001. His final CD was This Yere de Story.

 

-- Peter Donegan

 

Peter Donegan started touring as his father's pianist when he was aged 18. In 2019, Peter appeared on the show The Voice as a contestant, and dueted with Tom Jones with a song Lonnie had written for Tom, "I'll Never Fall in Love Again". Anthony Donegan also performs under the name, Lonnie Donegan Jr.

 

-- Lonnie Donegan's Private Life and Death

 

Donegan was the son of an Irish mother (Mary Josephine Deighan) and a Scots father (Peter John Donegan), a professional violinist who had played with the Scottish National Orchestra.

 

In 1933, when Donegan was aged 2, the family moved to East Ham in Essex. Donegan was evacuated to Cheshire to escape the Blitz in the Second World War, and attended St. Ambrose College in Hale Barns. He lived for a while on Chiswick Mall in Middlesex.

 

Donegan married three times. He had two daughters (Fiona and Corrina) with his first wife, Maureen Tyler (divorced 1962), a son and a daughter (Anthony and Juanita) with his second wife, Jill Westlake (divorced 1971), and three sons (Peter, David and Andrew) with his third wife, Sharon whom he married in 1977.

 

Lonnie Donegan died on the 3rd. November 2002, aged 71, after having a heart attack in Market Deeping, Lincolnshire mid-way through a UK tour. He died before he was due to perform at a memorial concert for George Harrison with the Rolling Stones.

 

-- The Legacy of Lonnie Donegan

 

Mark Knopfler released a tribute to Lonnie Donegan titled "Donegan's Gone" on his 2004 album, Shangri-La, and said that Lonnie was one of his greatest influences.

 

Donegan's music formed a musical starring his two sons. It was called Lonnie D – the musical took its name from the Chas & Dave tribute song which started the show.

 

Subsequently, Peter Donegan formed a band to perform his father's material, and has since linked with his father's band from the last 30 years with newcomer Eddie Masters on bass.

 

They made an album together in 2009 titled Here We Go Again. Lonnie Donegan's eldest son, Anthony, also formed his own band, as Lonnie Donegan Junior, who also performed "World Cup Willie" for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

 

On his album A Beach Full of Shells, Al Stewart paid tribute to Donegan in the song "Katherine of Oregon". In "Class of '58" he describes a British entertainer who is either Donegan or a composite including him.

 

In a 2023 video interview with Steve Houk, Al Stewart stated:

 

"'Rock Island Line' is a record that completely

changed the complexion of English society,

and changed my life and everybody else's".

 

Peter Sellers recorded Puttin' on the Smile featuring "Lenny Goonagain", who travels to the "Deep South" of Brighton and finds an "obscure folk song hidden at the top of the American hit parade", re-records it and reaches number one in the UK.

 

David Letterman pretended to try to remember Jimmy Fallon's name during the Tonight Show conflict between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien, calling Fallon "Lonnie Donegan."

 

In the 2019 movie Judy, the actor John Dagleish portrays Lonnie Donegan, who replaces an ill Judy Garland. He is shown in the (entirely fictional) final scene generously allowing her to make one last appearance on stage.

 

-- Quotations Relating to Lonnie Donegan

 

"He was the first person we had heard of from

Britain to get to the coveted No. 1 in the charts,

and we studied his records avidly. We all bought

guitars to be in a skiffle group. He was the man."

– Paul McCartney

 

"He really was at the very cornerstone of English

blues and rock."

– Brian May.

 

"I wanted to be Elvis Presley when I grew up,

I knew that. But the man who really made me

feel like I could actually go out and do it was

a chap by the name of Lonnie Donegan."

– Roger Daltrey

 

"Remember, Lonnie Donegan started it

for you."

– Jack White's acceptance speech at

the Brit Awards.

 

-- Final Thoughts From Lonnie Donegan

 

"I'm trying to sing acceptable folk music. I want to

widen the audience beyond the artsy-craftsy crowd

and the pseudo intellectuals–but without distorting

the music itself." NME – June 1956

 

"You know in my little span of life I've come across

such a sea of bigotries and prejudices. I get so fed

up with it now. I feel I have to do something about it."

- BBC Panorama

 

"In Britain, we were separated from our folk music

tradition centuries ago, and were imbued with the

idea that music was for the upper classes. You had

to be very clever to play music. When I came along

with the old three chords, people began to think

that if I could do it, so could they. It was the

reintroduction of the folk music bridge which did

that." – Interview, 2002.

©AVucha 2014

On March 3rd at 6:21pm, Woodstock Fire/Rescue was dispatched for a motor vehicle accident involving a Woodstock Police Officer at Route 14 and Dean St. The officer was extracted from his squad car and was transported via OSF Life Flight to St. Anthony Medical Center in Rockford.

Woodstock, Illinois

 

News obtained from the Northwest Herald:

WOODSTOCK – A Woodstock police officer had to be extricated from an unmarked squad car and flown to a hospital Monday after a three-vehicle accident.

At 6:24 p.m., a 15-year-old male motorist from Woodstock, driving on a learner's permit, was waiting to turn left from westbound Route 14 onto Dean Street. When he turned left, he struck an unmarked Woodstock squad car, which was traveling eastbound on Route 14. The squad car then hit a vehicle facing north waiting on Dean Street.

Officer Eric Schmidtke was driving a Ford Interceptor and had to be extricated from the vehicle. He was transported to Woodstock Hospital, and subsequently flown to St. Anthony’s Hospital in Rockford, according to a press release from the McHenry County Sheriff's office.

He was released from the hospital late last night, according to McHenry County Sheriff's Deputy Aimee Knop.

The traffic signal for eastbound and westbound Rt. 14 was green at the time of crash, the release said.

Because of the extra equipment in the squad car, such as the computer, radio and weapons, it took longer to conduct the extrication, Ryan said.

The juvenile driver and his adult passenger were taken to Centegra Hospital – Woodstock, where they were treated and released, Knop said.

The names of the juvenile and others involved in the crash were not released.

Eastbound Route 14 was shut down for about two hours after the accident, Ryan said.

The sheriff's office is investigating the crash because a Woodstock officer was involved.

Knop said the juvenile was cited for failure to yield when turning left at an intersection. She said everyone involved was wearing a seat belt, and alcohol and drugs do not appear to be a factor.

The officer was believed to be performing normal driving, Knop said.

Vishnu (/ˈvɪʃnuː/; Sanskrit: Viṣṇu) is a popular Hindu deity, the Supreme God of Vaishnavism (one of the three principal denominations of Hinduism) and one of the three supreme deities (Trimurti) of Hinduism. He is also known as Lord Narayana and Lord Hari. As one of the five primary forms of God in the Smarta tradition, He is conceived as "the Preserver or the Protector" within the Trimurti, the Hindu Trinity of the divinity.

 

In Hindu sacred texts, Vishnu is usually described as having dark complexion of water-filled clouds and as having four arms. He is depicted as a blue being, holding a padma (lotus flower) in the lower left hand, the Kaumodaki gada (mace) in the lower right hand, the Panchajanya shankha (conch) in the upper left hand and the discus weapon Sudarshana Chakra in the upper right hand.

 

Adherents of Hinduism believe Vishnu's eternal and supreme abode beyond the material universe is called Vaikuntha, which is also known as Paramdhama, the realm of eternal bliss and happiness and the final or highest place for liberated souls who have attained Moksha. Vaikuntha is situated beyond the material universe and hence, cannot be perceived or measured by material science or logic. Vishnu's other abode within the material universe is Ksheera Sagara (the ocean of milk), where he reclines and rests on Ananta Shesha, (the king of the serpent deities, commonly shown with a thousand heads). In almost all Hindu denominations, Vishnu is either worshipped directly or in the form of his ten avatars, the most famous of whom are Rama and Krishna.

 

The Puranabharati, an ancient text, describes these as the dashavatara, or the ten avatars of Vishnu. Among the ten described, nine have occurred in the past and one will take place in the future as Lord Kalki, at the end of Kali Yuga, (the fourth and final stage in the cycle of yugas that the world goes through). These incarnations take place in all Yugas in cosmic scales; the avatars and their stories show that gods are indeed unimaginable, unthinkable and inconceivable. The Bhagavad Gita mentions their purpose as being to rejuvenate Dharma, to vanquish those negative forces of evil that threaten dharma, and also to display His divine nature in front of all souls.

 

The Trimurti (three forms) is a concept in Hinduism "in which the cosmic functions of creation, maintenance, and destruction are personified by the forms of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the maintainer, preserver or protector and Shiva the destroyer or transformer." These three deities have also been called "the Hindu triad" or the "Great Trinity", all having the same meaning of three in One. They are the different forms or manifestation of One person the Supreme Being or Narayana/Svayam Bhagavan.

 

Vishnu is also venerated as Mukunda, which means God who is the giver of mukti or moksha (liberation from the cycle of rebirths) to his devotees or the worthy ones who deserve salvation from the material world.

 

ETYMOLOGY

The traditional explanation of the name Vishnu involves the root viś, meaning "to settle" (cognate with Latin vicus, English -wich "village," Slavic: vas -ves), or also (in the Rigveda) "to enter into, to pervade," glossing the name as "the All-Pervading One". Yaska, an early commentator on the Vedas, in his Nirukta, (etymological interpretation), defines Vishnu as viṣṇur viṣvater vā vyaśnoter vā, "one who enters everywhere". He also writes, atha yad viṣito bhavati tad viṣnurbhavati, "that which is free from fetters and bondages is Vishnu".

 

Adi Shankara in his commentary on the Sahasranama states derivation from viś, with a meaning "presence everywhere" ("As he pervades everything, vevesti, he is called Vishnu"). Adi Shankara states (regarding Vishnu Purana, 3.1.45): "The Power of the Supreme Being has entered within the universe. The root viś means 'enter into'." Swami Chinmayananda, in his translation of Vishnu Sahasranama further elaborates on that verse: "The root vis means to enter. The entire world of things and beings is pervaded by Him and the Upanishad emphatically insists in its mantra 'whatever that is there is the world of change.' Hence, it means that He is not limited by space, time or substance. Chinmayananda states that, that which pervades everything is Vishnu."

 

SACRET TEXTS - SHRUTI & SMRITI

Shruti is considered to be solely of divine origin. It is preserved as a whole, instead of verse by verse. It includes the four Vedas (Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharvaveda) the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas and the Upanishads with commentaries on them.

 

Smṛti refers to all the knowledge derived and inculcated after Shruti had been received. Smrti is not 'divine' in origin, but was 'remembered' by later Rishis (sages by insight, who were the scribes) by transcendental means and passed down through their followers. It includes the Bhagavata Purana and the Vishnu Purana which are Sattva Puranas. These both declare Vishnu as Para Brahman Supreme Lord who creates unlimited universes and enters each one of them as Lord of Universe.

 

SHRUTI

 

VAISHNAVA CANON

The Vaishnava canon presents Vishnu as the supreme being, rather than another name for the Sun God, who also bore the name Suryanarayana and is considered only as a form of Vishnu.

 

VEDAS

In the Yajur Veda, Taittiriya Aranyaka (10-13-1), Narayana suktam, Lord Narayana is mentioned as the supreme being. The first verse of Narayana Suktam mentions the words "paramam padam", which literally mean "highest post" and may be understood as the "supreme abode for all souls". This is also known as Param Dhama, Paramapadam, or Vaikuntha. Rig Veda 1:22:20a also mentions the same "paramam padam". This special status is not given to any deity in the Vedas apart from Lord Vishnu/Narayana.[citation needed] Narayana is one of the thousand names of Vishnu as mentioned in the Vishnu Sahasranama. It describes Vishnu as the All-Pervading essence of all beings, the master of - and beyond - the past, present and future, one who supports, sustains and governs the Universe and originates and develops all elements within. This illustrates the omnipresent characteristic of Vishnu. Vishnu governs the aspect of preservation and sustenance of the universe, so he is called "Preserver of the universe".

 

Vishnu is the Supreme God who takes manifest forms or avatars across various ages or periods to save humanity from evil beings, demons or Asuras. According to the extant Hindu texts and traditions, Lord Vishnu is considered to be resident in the direction of the "Makara Rashi" (the "Shravana Nakshatra"), which is about coincident with the Capricorn constellation. In some of the extant Puranas, and Vaishnava traditions, Vishnu's eye is considered to be situated at the infinitely distant Southern Celestial Pole.

 

Following the defeat of Indra and his displacement as the Lord of Heaven or Swarga, Indra asks Lord Vishnu for help and thus Lord Vishnu takes his incarnations or avatars to Earth to save mankind, thus showing his position as Supreme God to all of creation.

 

In the Puranas, Indra frequently appears proud and haughty. These bad qualities are temporarily removed when Brahma and/or Shiva give boons to Asuras or Rakshasas such as Hiranyaksha, Hiranyakashipu and Ravana, who are then able to defeat Indra in wars between Devas and Asuras. The received boons often made Asuras virtually indestructible.

 

Indra has no option but to seek help from Vishnu. Indra prays before Vishnu for protection and the Supreme Lord obliges him by taking avatars and generating himself on Earth in various forms, first as a water-dweller (Matsya, fish), then as an amphibious creature (Kurma avatar or Tortoise), then as a half-man-half-animal (Varaha the pig-faced, human-bodied Lord, and Narasimha the Lord with lion's face and claws and a human body). Later, Vishnu appears as human beings (Vamana the short-heighted person), Parashurama, Rama, Krishna, Buddha and finally as Kalki for performing his task of protecting his devotees from demons and anti-religious entities.

 

Vishnu's supremacy is attested by his victories over those very powerful entities. It is further attested by the accepted iconography and sculptures of Vishnu in reclining position as producing Brahma emerging from his navel. Brahma the creator is thus created in turn by Vishnu out of his own person. Instead Vishnu takes various avatars to slay or defeat those demons. But it is to be noted that Vishnu also provided boons to Akupresura, a bear faced demon who was destroyed by Lord Shiva.

 

Vishnu's actions lowered Indra's ranking among Hindu deities and led to the ascendancy of Vishnu.

 

Few temples are dedicated to the Sun or Suryanarayana, nor indeed Indra, nor does Indra figure largely in the Hindu religion.

 

Indra is almost completely absent from the deities considered as the chief or most important deity.

 

RIGVEDA

In the Rigveda, Vishnu is mentioned 93 times. He is frequently invoked alongside other deities, especially Indra, whom he helps in killing Vritra and with whom he drinks Soma. His distinguishing characteristic in the Vedas is his association with light. Two Rigvedic hymns in Mandala 7 are dedicated to Vishnu. In 7.99, Vishnu is addressed as the god who separates heaven and earth, a characteristic he shares with Indra.

 

The Rig Veda describes Vishnu as younger brother to Indra as Vamana. In Vaishnava canon the 'Vishnu' who is younger brother to Indra is identified as Vamana, Avatar of Vishnu, hence referred to as Vishnu by Vaishnavites. Vishnu is the Supreme God who lives in the highest celestial region, contrasted against those who live in the atmospheric or terrestrial regions. Vishnu is content with mere prayer, unlike almost all of the other gods who receive sacrificial offerings such as Havis, which is given using clarified butter, or Soma. Later foreign translators have view that Vedas place Indra in a superior position to Vishnu's Avatar of Vamana but in fact Vamana helps Indra by restoring his Kingdom.

 

An alternate translation is provided by Wilson according to Sayana:

 

When Thy (younger brother) Viṣṇu (Vamana) by (his) strength stepped his three paces, then verily thy beloved horses bore thee. (Rigveda 8:12:27)

 

Wilson mentions Griffith's possible translation as a footnote. However the following verse from Rigveda renders the above translation by Wilson more probable.

 

Him whose three places that are filled with sweetness, imperishable, joy as it may list them, Who verily alone upholds the threefold, the earth, the heaven, and all living creatures. (Rig veda 1:154:4)

 

Wilson offers an alternate translation for Rigveda 10:113:2:

 

Viṣṇu offering the portion of Soma, glorifies by his own vigor that greatness of his. Indra, the lord of heaven, with the associated gods having slain Vritra, became deserving of honour. (Rigveda 10:113:2)

 

This verse sees Vishnu as one who is glorified by his own strength, while Indra became deserving of honor after having slain Vritra only in association with other gods.

 

However Vishnu's praise for other gods does not imply worship. Wilson translates:

 

Viṣṇu, the mighty giver of dwellings praises thee, and Mitra and Varuna; the company of Maruts imitates thee in exhilaration. (Rigveda 8:15:9) (page 280)

 

The following verses show categorically Vishnu as distinguished from other gods in Rigveda.

 

He who presents (offering) to Viṣṇu, the ancient, the creator, the recent, the self-born; he who celebrates the great birth of that mighty one; he verily possessed of abundance, attains (the station) that is to be sought (by all). (Rigveda 1:156:2) (page 98)

 

No being that is or that has been born, divine Viṣṇu, has attained the utmost limit of thy magnitude, by which thou hast upheld the vast and beautiful heaven, and sustained the eastern horizon of Earth.(Rigveda 7:99:2) (page 196)

 

The divine Viṣṇu, the best of the doers of good deeds, who came to the pious instituter of rite (Indra), to assist (at its celebration), knowing (the desires of the worshiper), and present at the three connected period (of worship), shows favor to the Arya, and admits the author of the ceremony to a share of the sacrifice. (Rigveda 1:156:5) (page 99)

 

Jan Gonda, the late Indologist, states that Vishnu, although remaining in the background of Indra's exploits, contributes by his presence, or is key to Indra's success. Vishnu is more than a mere companion, equal in rank or power to Indra, or sometime the one who made Indra's success possible.

 

Descriptions of Vishnu as younger to Indra are found in only the hymns to Indra, but in a kathenotheism religion like that of the Rigveda, each god, for a time, is supreme in the mind of the devotee.

 

In the Rig Vedic texts, the deity or god referred to as Vishnu is the Sun God, who also bears the name 'Suryanarayana'. By contrast, the 'Vishnu' referred to in 'Vishnu Purana', 'Vishnu Sahasranamam' and 'Purusha Sooktham' is Lord Narayana, the Consort of Lakshmi. Vaishnavites make a further distinction by extolling the qualities of Vishnu by highlighting his differences from other deities such as Shiva,[citation needed] Brahma or Surya.

 

THREE STEPS

Hymn 7.100 refers to the celebrated 'three steps' of Vishnu (as Trivikrama) by which he strode over the universe and in three places planted his step. The 'Vishnu Suktam' (RV 1.154) says that the first and second of Vishnu's strides (those encompassing the earth and air) are visible to men and the third is in the heights of heaven (sky). This last place is described as Vishnu's supreme abode in RV 1.22.20:

 

The princes evermore behold / that loftiest place where Vishnu is / Laid as it were an eye in heaven.(trans. Griffith)

 

Griffith's "princes" are the sūri, either "inciters" or lords of a sacrifice, or priests charged with pressing the Soma. The verse is quoted as expressing Vishnu's supremacy by Vaishnavites.

 

Though such solar aspects have been associated with Vishnu by tradition as well as modern-scholarship, he was not just the representation of the sun, as he moves both vertically and horizontally.

 

In hymns 1.22.17, 1.154.3, 1.154.4 he strides across the earth with three steps, in 6.49.13, 7.100.3 strides across the earth three times and in 1.154.1, 1.155.5,7.29.7 he strides vertically, with the final step in the heavens. The same Veda also says he strode wide and created space in the cosmos for Indra to fight Vritra. By his stride he made dwelling for men possible, the three forming a symbolic representation of the dwelling's all-encompassing nature. This nature and benevolence to men were Vishnu's enduring attributes. As the triple-strider he is known as Trivikrama and as Urukrama, for the strides were wide.

 

BRAHMANAS

The Brahmanas are commentaries on the Vedas and form part of the Shruti literature. They are concerned with the detail of the proper performance of rituals. In the Rigveda, Shakala Shakha: Aitareya Brahmana Verse 1 declares: agnir vai devānām ava mo viṣṇuḥ paramus, tadantareṇa sarvā anyā devatā - Agni is the lowest or youngest god and Vishnu is the greatest and the highest God.

 

The Brahmanas assert the supremacy of Lord Vishnu, addressing him as "Gajapati", the one whom all sacrifices are meant to please. Lord Vishnu accepts all sacrifices to the demigods and allots the respective fruits to the performer In one incident, a demonic person performs a sacrifice by abducting the Rishis (sages), who meditate by constantly chanting God's name. The sacrifice is meant to destroy Indra. But the rishis, who worship Indra as a demigod, alter one pronunciation of the Veda Mantra, reversing the purpose of the sacrifice. When the fruit of the sacrifice is given and the demon is on the verge of dying, he calls to Vishnu, whom he addresses as Supreme Godhead and "the father of all living entities including himself".

 

Aitareya Brahmana 1:1:1 mentions Vishnu as the Supreme God. But in the Vaishnava canon, in different ages, with Vishnu in different avatars, his relationship with the asuras or demons, was always adversarial. The asuras always caused harm, while the sages and devas or celestial beings, did penance and called to Vishnu for protection. Vishnu always obliged by taking an avatar to vanquish the asuras. In the Vaishnava canon, Vishnu never gave or granted any boons to the asuras, distinguishing him from the gods Shiva and Brahma, who did. He is the only God called upon to save good beings by defeating or killing the asuras.

 

Sayana writes that in Aitareya Brahmana 1:1:1 the declaration agnir vai devānām ava mo viṣṇuḥ paramus,tadantareṇa sarvā anyā devatā does not indicate any hierarchy among gods. Even in Rigveda Samhita, avama and parama are not applied to denote rank and dignity, but only to mark place and locality.

 

In Rigveda 1:108:9,: yadindrāghnī avamasyāṃ pṛthivyāṃ madhyamasyāṃ paramasyāmuta sthaḥ | i.e., in the lowest place, the middle (place), and the highest (place). Agni, the fire, has, among the gods, the lowest place; for he resides with man on the earth; while the other gods are either in the air, or in the sky. Vishnu occupies the highest place. The words avama and parama are understood as 'First' and 'Last' respectively. To support this claim, Sayana adduces the mantra (1,4. As'val. Sr. S. 4, 2), agnir mukham prathamo devathanam samathanam uttamo vishnur asit, i.e., Agni was the first of the deities assembled, (and) Vishnu the last.

 

In the Kausitaki Brahmana (7.1) Agni is called Aaradhya (instead of avama), and Visnu parardha(instead of parama),i.e., belonging to the lower and higher halves (or forming the lower and higher halves). The Vishnu Purana gives tremendous importance to the worship of Vishnu and mentions that sacrifices are to begin only with both the lighting of fire or 'Agni', pouring of sacrificial offerings to Vishnu in 'Agni' so that those offerings reach and are accepted by Vishnu. Worship of Vishnu through Yajnas (or Homams) and other rituals, will not achieve the desired result if Agni's role is neglected.

 

Muller says "Although the gods are sometimes distinctly invoked as the great and the small, the young and the old (Rig veda 1:27:13), this is only an attempt to find the most comprehensive expression for the divine powers, and nowhere is any of the gods represented as the subordinate to others. It would be easy to find, in the numerous hymns of the Veda, passages in which almost every single god is represented as supreme and absolute."

 

However this notion is not completely correct as per the following verses, which shows Rigveda describe one or more gods as subject to other god(s).

 

Him whose high law not Varuna nor Indra, not Mitra, Aryaman, nor Rudra breaketh, Nor evil-hearted fiends, here for my welfare him I invoke, God Savitar, with worship. (Rigveda 2.038.09)

 

I invite to this place, with reverential salutations, for my good, that divine Savita, whose functions neither Indra, nor Varun.a, nor Mitra nor Aryaman nor Rudra nor the enemies (of the gods), impede. (Rigveda 2.038.09)

 

SMRITI

 

VISHNU SMRITI

The Vishnu Smṛti, is one of the later books of the Dharmashastra tradition of Hinduism and the only one that focuses on the bhakti tradition and the required daily puja to Vishnu, rather than the means of knowing dharma. It is also known for its handling of the controversial subject of the practice of sati (self-immolation of a widow on her husband's funeral pyre). The text was composed by an individual or group. The author(s) created a collection of the commonly known legal maxims that were attributed to Vishnu into one book, as Indian oral culture began to be recorded more formally.

 

BHAGAVATA PURANA

Vishnu is the only Bhagavan as declared in the Bhagavata 1:2:11 in the verse: vadanti tat tattva-vidas tattvam yaj jnanam advayam brahmeti paramatmeti bhagavan iti sabdyate, translated as "Learned transcendentalists who know the Absolute Truth call this non-dual substance as Brahman, Paramātma and Bhagavan."

 

VISHNU PURANA

In the Vishnu Purana (6:5:79) the personality named Parashara Rishi defines six bhagas:

 

aiśvaryasya samagrasya vīryasya yaśasaḥ śriyaḥ

jñāna-vairāgyayoś caiva ṣannāḥ bhaga itīṇganā

 

Jiva Gosvami explains the verse in Gopala Champu (Pūrva 15:73) and Bhagavata Sandarbha 46:10:

 

jñāna-śakti-balaiśvarya-vīrya-tejām.sy aśeṣataḥ

bhagavac-chabda-vācyāni vinā heyair guṇādibhiḥ

 

"The substantives of the word bhagavat (bhagavat-śabda-vācyāni) are unlimited (aśeṣataḥ) knowledge (jñāna), energies (śakti), strength (bala), opulence (aiśvarya), heroism (vīrya), splendor (tejas), without (vinā) objectionable (heyair) qualities (guṇādibhiḥ)."

 

SANGAM LITERATURE

Tamil Sangam literature (300BCE to 500CE) mentions mAyOn, or the dark one, as the supreme deity who creates, sustains and destroys the universe. Paripadal 3 describes the glory of Thirumal in the most superlative terms.

 

Paripadal by kaduvan iLaveyinanAr:

 

"thIyinuL theRal nI poovinuL naaRRa nI kallinuL maNiyu nI sollinuL vaaymai aRaththinuL anbu nI maRaththinuL mainthu nI vEthaththu maRai nI boothaththu madhalu nI vencudar oLiyu nI thingaLuL aLiyu nI anaiththu nI anaiththinut poruLu nI"

 

The last line states that Lord Vishnu is the supreme deity who is the inner controller (Antaryamin) of the entire universe. This is one of the Lord's glories, which is first mentioned in Vedas and later propounded by Alwars in Prabhandams and Sri Vaishnavaite Acharyas in various commentaries

 

The Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple and Vishnu, Lakshmi is mentioned in Tamil works of literature of the Sangam era, including the epic Silapadikaram (book 11, lines 35–40):

 

āyiram viritteḻu talaiyuṭai aruntiṟaṟ

 

pāyaṟ paḷḷip palartoḻu tētta viritiraik kāviri viyaṉperu turuttit tiruvamar mārpaṉ kiṭanta vaṇṇamum

 

On a magnificent cot having a thousand heads spread out, worshipped and praised by many, in an islet surrounded by Kaveri with bellowing waves, is the lying posture of the one who has Lakshmi sitting in his chest.

 

THEOLOGICAL ATTRIBUTES

The actual number of Vishnu's auspicious qualities is countless, although his six most-important "divine glories" are:

 

Jnana (Omniscience); defined as the power to know about all beings simultaneously;

Aishvarya (Sovereignty), derived from the word Ishvara which means unchallenged rule over all;

Shakti (Power or Energy), the capacity to make the impossible possible;

Bala (Strength), the capacity to support everything by will and without any fatigue;

Virya (Vigour), the power to retain immateriality as the Supreme Spirit or Being in spite of being the material cause of mutable creations;

Tejas (Splendor), which expresses self-sufficiency and the capacity to overpower everything by spiritual effulgence.

 

Other important qualities attributed to Vishnu are Gambhirya (inestimatable grandeur), Audarya (generosity), and Karunya (compassion). Natya Shastra lists Vishnu as the presiding deity of the Sṛngara rasa.

 

The Rigveda says: Vishnu can travel in three strides. The first stride is the Earth. The second stride is the visible sky. The third stride cannot be seen by men and is the heaven where the gods and the righteous dead live. (This feature of three strides also appears in the story of his avatar Vamana/Trivikrama.) The Sanskrit for "to stride" is the root kram; its reduplicated perfect is chakram (guņa grade) or chakra (zero-grade), and in the Rigveda he is called by epithets such as vi-chakra-māņas = "he who has made 3 strides". The Sanskrit word chakra also means "wheel". That may have suggested the idea of Vishnu carrying a chakra.

 

FIVE FORMS

In Shree Vaishnavism, another school dating from around the 10th century AD, Vishnu assumes five forms:

 

In the Para Form, Para is the highest form of Vishnu found only in Sri Vaikunta also called Moksha, along with his consort Lakshmi, (and Bhumi Devi and Nila devi, avatars of Lakshmi) and surrounded by liberated souls like Ananta, Garuda, and a host of Muktas (liberated souls).

In the Vyuha form, Vishnu assumes four forms, which exercise different cosmic functions and controls activities of living beings.

In the Vibhava form, Vishnu assumes various manifestations, called Vibhavas, more popularly known as Avataras from time to time, to protect the virtuous, punish evil-doers and re-establish righteousness.

In the Antaryami; "Dwelling within" or "Suksma Vasudeva" form, Vishnu exists within the souls of all living beings and in every substance.

In the Arcavatara or Image manifestation, Vishnu is visible and therefore easily approachable by devotees since Para, Vyuha, Vibhava and Antaryami forms can only be imagined or meditated upon because they are beyond our reach. Such images can be

Revealed by Vishnu, for example, a self-manifested (Swayambhu) icon (murti), e.g. The Mahavishnu Temple at Tirunelli, The Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple at Srirangam, The Tirumala Venkateshwara Temple, etc.; or

Installed by Devas or celestial beings such as such as Guruvayur Temple installed by Vayu; or

Installed by humans, and consecrated according to Vaishnava Agama shastras or scriptures such as Lord Jagannatha of Jagannath Temple (Puri) at Puri.

 

RELATIONS WITH OTHER DEITIES

 

SHIVA

The three gods of the Trimurti clan are inseparable and in harmony in view of their common vision and universal good. They are perfectly ideal in all respects.

 

Both Asuras and Devas played supportive roles in this story by keeping company with Vishnu in his incarnated forms. Hanuman is a vanara who is completely dedicated to Rama. He gives Vishnu company and obeys his command, while playing an important part in Rama's life. He is regarded in Vaishnava canon because it is through blessings that Hanuman is born. Thus, Hanuman, Vishnu's constant companion, with his idol appearing temples of Rama, Krishna and Narasimha, i.e. all of Vishnu's avatars, is considered by Vaishnavas.

 

Syncretic forces produced stories in which the two deities were shown in cooperative relationships and combined forms. Harihara is the name of a combined deity form of both Vishnu (Hari) and Shiva (Hara). This dual form, which is also called Harirudra, is mentioned in the Mahabharata.

 

LAKSHMI

Vishnu's consort is Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth (also known as Maya). The Samvit (the primary intelligence/dark matter) of the universe is Vishnu, while the other five attributes emerge from this samvit and hence Maya or dark energy of the universe is Lakshmee is his ahamata, activity, or Vishnu's Power. This power of God, Maya or Shakti, is personified and has multiple names: Shree, Lakshmi, Maya, Vishnumaya or Mahamaya. She is said to manifest as Kriyashakti, (Creative Activity) and Bhutishakti (Creation). This world requires Vishnu's creativity. He therefore needs Lakshmi to always be with Him. Her various avatars as Lord Vishnu's consorts are Varahavatar (Bhoodevi) or Bhoomi, Ramavatar Seeta, Krishnavatar Rukmini)

 

SARASWATI & GANGA

According to Brahma Vaivarta Purana, Lord Vishnu had three wives Lakshmi, Saraswati and Ganga. Due to their constant quarrelsome nature among them. Once Ganga tried to be close with Vishnu, this rebuked Saraswati but Lakshmi tried to pacify them but faced a curse rather. As per the curse, Lakshmi to appear as Tulasi. Sarawati cursed Ganga to run as a river in the world and Saraswati was cursed to run as a river in the netherworld. After this, Lord Vishnu transformed and became Brahma and Shiva to pacify Saraswati and Ganga.

 

GARUDA

Vishnu's mount (Vahana) is Garuda, the eagle. Vishnu is commonly depicted as riding on his shoulders.

 

ICONOGRAPHY

According to various Puranas, Vishnu is the ultimate omnipresent reality and is shapeless and omnipresent. However, a strict iconography governs his representation, whether in pictures, icons, or idols:

 

He has four arms and is male: The four arms indicate his all-powerful and all-pervasive nature. His physical existence is represented by the two arms in the front, while the two arms at the back represent his presence in the spiritual world. The Upanishad Gopal Uttartapani describes the four arms.

The Shreevatsa mark is on his chest, symbolizing his consort Lakshmi.

He wears the auspicious "Kaustubha" jewel around his neck and a garland of vaijayanti flowers (Vanamala). Lakshmi dwells in this jewel, on Vishnu's chest.

A crown adorns his head: The crown symbolizes his supreme authority. This crown sometimes includes a peacock feather, borrowing from his Krishna-avatar.

He wears two earrings: The earrings represent inherent opposites in creation — knowledge and ignorance; happiness and unhappiness; pleasure and pain.

He rests on Ananta, the immortal and infinite snake.

 

Vishnu is always to be depicted holding four attributes:

 

A conch shell or Shankha, named Panchajanya, is held by the upper left hand. It represents Vishnu's power to create and maintain the universe. Panchajanya represents the five elements or Panchabhoota – water, fire, air, earth and sky or space. It also represents the five airs or Pranas that are within the body and mind. The conch symbolizes that Vishnu is the primeval Divine sound of creation and continuity. It also represented as Om. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna avatara states that of sound vibrations, 'He is Om'.

The Chakra, a sharp, spinning, discus-like weapon, named "Sudarshana", is held by the upper right hand. It symbolizes the purified spiritualized mind. The name Sudarshana is derived from two words – Su, which means good, superior, and Darshana, which means vision or sight; together. The Chakra represents destruction of ego in the awakening and realization of the soul's original nature and god, burning away spiritual ignorance and illusion, and developing higher spiritual vision and insight to realize god.

A mace or Gada, named "Kaumodaki", is held by the lower right hand. It symbolizes that Vishnu's divine power is the source of all spiritual, mental and physical strength. It also signifies Vishnu's power to destroy materialistic or demonic tendencies (Anarthas) that prevent people from reaching god. Vishnu's mace is the power of the Divine within us to spiritually purify and uplift us from our materialistic bonds.

A lotus flower or Padma is held by the lower left hand. It represents spiritual liberation, Divine perfection, purity and the unfolding of Spiritual consciousness within the individual. The lotus opening its petals in the light of the Sun is indicative of the expansion and awakening of our long dormant, original spiritual consciousness in the light of god. The lotus symbolizes that god is the power and source from which the universe and the individual soul emerges. It also represents Divine Truth or Satya, the originator of the rules of conduct or Dharma, and Divine Vedic knowledge or Jnana. The lotus also symbolizes that Vishnu is the embodiment of spiritual perfection and purity and that He is the wellspring of these qualities and that the individual soul must seek to awaken these intrinsic Divine qualities from Vishnu by surrendering to and linking with Him.

 

To this may be added, conventionally, the vanamaala flower garland, Vishnu's bow (Shaarnga/Kodand) and his sword Nandaka. A verse of the Vishnu Sahasranama stotram states;vanamālī gadhī shārngī shanki chakri cha nandaki / shrīmān nārāyaņo vişņo vāsudevo abhirakşatu//; translation: Protect us Oh Lord Narayana who wears the forest garland,who has the mace, conch, sword and the wheel. And who is called Vishnu and the Vasudeva.

 

In general, Vishnu's body is depicted in one of the following three ways:

 

Standing on a lotus flower, often with Lakshmi, his consort, beside him on a similar pedestal.

Reclining on the coiled-up thousand-hooded Shesha Naga, with Lakshmi seated at his feet; the assemblage rests on the "Kshira Sagar" (ocean of milk). In this representation, Brahma is depicted as sitting on a lotus that grows out of Vishnu's navel.

Riding on the back of his eagle mount, known as Garuda. Another name for Garuda is "Veda atma"; Soul of the Vedas. The flapping of his wings symbolizes the power of the Divine Truth of Vedic wisdom. Also the eagle represents the soul. Garuda carrying Vishnu symbolizes the soul or jiva atma carrying the Super soul or Param atma within it.

 

AVATARS

Ten avatars (dashavatara) of Vishnu are the most prominent: Apart from the most prominent incarnations there are believed to more.

 

The most commonly believed incarnations of Vishnu are:

 

Matsya, the fish that kills Damanaka to save the vedas and also saves Manu from a great flood that submerges the entire Earth.

Kurma, the turtle that helps the Devas and Asuras churn the ocean for the nectar of immortality.

Varaha, the boar that rescues the Earth and kills Hiranyaksha.

Narasimha, the half-lion half human, who defeats the demon Hiranyakashipu.

Vamana, the dwarf that grows into a giant to save the world from King Bali.

Parashurama, "Rama of the battle axe", a sage who appeared in the Treta Yuga. He killed Kartavirya Arjuna's army and clan and then killed all the kshatriyas 21 times.

Rama, the prince and king of Ayodhya who killed the Demon King Raavan.

Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu, who takes part in the Mahabharata epic. Krishna is worshipped as the Supreme Avatar of Vishnu (Supreme Personality of Godhead) in Gaudiya-Vaishnava philosophy.

Buddha, the ninth avatar of Vishnu.

Kalki, the tenth Avatar of Vishnu and said to be the harbinger of the end Kali Yuga. This avatar of Vishnu is yet to come.

 

Some versions of the above list include Hayagreeva among the Dashavataras while some include Buddha as ninth avatar of Vishnu. Another 22 avatars are given in Chapter 3, Canto 1 of the Bhagavata Purana, although it states that "the incarnations of the Lord are innumerable, like rivulets flowing from inexhaustible sources of water".

 

BEYOND HINDUISM

 

SIKHISM

Guru Granth Sahib of Sikhism mentions Vishnu, one verse goes:

 

The true Vaishnaav, the devotee of Vishnu, is the one with whom God is thoroughly pleased. He dwells apart from Maya. Performing good deeds, he does not seek rewards. Spotlessly pure is the religion of such a Vaishnaav; he has no desire for the fruits of his labors. He is absorbed in devotional worship and the singing of Kirtan, the songs of the Lords Glory. Within his mind and body, he meditates in remembrance on the Lord of the Universe. He is kind to all creatures. He holds fast to the Naam, and inspires others to chant it. O Nanak, such a Vaishnaav obtains the supreme status.

 

BUDDHISM

While some Hindus consider Buddha as an incarnation of Vishnu, Buddhists in Sri Lanka venerate Vishnu as the custodian deity of Sri Lanka and protector of Buddhism. Lord Vishnu is also known as upulvan, or uthpala varna, meaning "Blue Lotus coloured". Some postulates that Uthpala varna was a local deity who later merged with Vishnu while another belief is that Uthpala Varna was an early form of Vishnu before he became a supreme deity in Puranic Hinduism. According to Chronicles "Mahawamsa", "Chulawamsa" and folklore in Sri Lanka, Buddha himself handed over the custodianship to Vishnu. Others believe that Buddha entrusted this task to Sakra(Indra) and Sakra delegated this task of custodianship to god Vishnu. In contrary to vedic Hinduism, in assimilation of Hindu god Vishnu into Sinhalese Buddhism, Vishnu becomes a mortal being and a Bodhisattva aspiring Buddhahood. Additionally, Vishnu is considered as the god of home and hearth representing mercy, goodness, order and stability. Many Buddhist and Hindu shrines are dedicated to Vishnu in Sri Lanka. In addition to specific Vishnu "Kovils" or "devalayas", all Buddhist temples necessarily house shrine rooms (Devalayas) closer to the main Buddhist shrine dedicated to Vishnu. John Holt in his groundbreaking study examines the assimilation, transformation, and subordination of the Hindu deity Vishnu within the contexts of Sri Lankan history and Sinhala Buddhist religious culture. He then explores the role and rationale of medieval Sinhala kings in assimilating Visnu into Sinhala Buddhism. According to Holt the veneration of Vishnu in Sri Lanka is evidence of a remarkable ability, over many centuries, to reiterate and reinvent culture as other ethnicities have been absorbed into their own. Though the Vishnu cult in Ceylon was formally endorsed by Kandyan kings in early 1700s, Holt states that vishnu images and shrines are among conspicuous ruins in the medieval capital Polonnaruwa. In Buddhist mythology, when Vishnu failed to traverse the universe in three steps, he was given the title "Ardha Vishnu (Half-Vishnu)" and when Vishnu banished demons from the Vaishali (Vishala)in India, he became "Mulu Vishnu or Whole Vishnu". The extreme significance of god Vishnu in Sinhala society is reflected in recitals of the traditional "Offerings to dwarfs and crossing the door frame (bahirwayanta dola pideem saha uluwahu peneema)" that starts with Sri Vishnu invocation.In the recitals,mentioning of the aspiring Buddhahood of Vishnu which is of prime importance to Buddhists and wishes for him to live five thousand and more years highlight the central role of Vishnu in the psyche of Sri Lankan Buddhists.

 

OTHERS

James Freeman Clarke, Richard Leviton, James Cowles Prichard, and others have noted the similarities between Vishnu and Ancient Egyptian God Horus.

 

During an excavation in an abandoned village of Russia in the Volga region, archaeologist Alexander Kozhevin excavated an ancient idol of Vishnu. The idol dates from between the 7th and 10th centuries. In the interview Kozhevin, stated that, "We may consider it incredible, but we have ground to assert that Middle-Volga region was the original land of Ancient Rus. This is a hypothesis, but a hypothesis, which requires thorough research"

 

THOUSAND NAMES OF VISHNU

Vishnu's many names and followers are collected in the Vishnu Sahasranama, (Vishnu's thousand names) from within the larger work Mahabharata. The character Bheeshma recites the names before Krishna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, praising him (Vishnu) as the supreme god. These Sahasranama are regarded as the essence of all Vedas by followers of Vaishnavism, who believe sincere chanting of Vishnu Sahasranama results in spiritual well-being and a greater awareness of God.

 

The names are generally derived from the Anantakalyanagunas (meaning: infinite auspicious attributes).

 

According to the Siddhartha-samhita there are twenty-four forms of Lord Vishnu. The twenty-four forms are

 

Vasudeva

Sankarshana

Pradyumna

Anirudha

Keshava

Narayana

Madhava

Govinda

Vishnu

Madhusudana

Trivikrama

Vamana

Sridhara

Hrishikesha

Padmanabha

Damodara

Purushottama

Achyuta

Narasimha

Janardana

Hari

Krishna

Adhokshaja

 

Upulvan, Uthpala Varna - In Sri Lanka, Vishnu is also referred to as Upulvan ( Blue Lotus Coloured)

 

WIKIPEDIA

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.

The sad, unfortunate chapter that involves Dear Paddington and cured pork belly.

 

Dearest readers. If you don’t have a tissue handy, please fetch one. This sad tale could bring tears to a glass eye.

 

Earlier this evening, Paddington asked me if he could borrow my car so he could go up to the grocer’s and get himself a jar of orange marmalade. I threw him the keys and reminded him, “You’re going to have to move the seat forward or your legs won’t reach the peddles.” As he was heading into the garage, I asked him, “Can you pick me up some bacon please? I haven’t had any forever.” [Note: I wanted American bacon made from pork belly. Not the overcooked sliced ham they eat in Canada, Oh Canada!]

 

Now, I had ASSuMEd that Paddington would grab me a standard 14oz (~400 g) package from the meat cooler. This did not happen. I now know that Paddington went up to the butcher counter and asked him for some hickory wood smoked, extremely thick hand-sliced bacon.

 

However, and most unfortunately, Paddington brought home 6 pounds (~2.72 kg) of extremely thick-sliced, hickory smoked American bacon. He had opened the butcher wrap and set up a nice presentation of it all upon my chopping block. He even asked Alamo Basement Fighting Texas A&M “Aggie” Ring to bring his riding spurs and pose upon the monstrously large pile of American bacon like a Greek God.

 

The three bear “Brain Trust” were all in attendance to witness my reaction — Darkest Peruvian Paddington, Little Texas A&M Aggie Trumpet Case Bear, and the only real English bear, Pooh Bear from the Hundred Acre Woods.

 

I was speechless. I was going to shout at Paddington for bringing ~2.72 kg of delicious, hickory-smoked, very thick sliced American bacon home. However, I took a deep, deep breath and remembered to myself that one should never shout at a little bear and that I should have been more specific in my instructions to Paddington about the weight I needed for him to procure and “bring home the bacon.” After all, English isn’t Paddington’s first, or even second, language (Bear language, Spanish, and finally English). This embarrassment of bacon riches was totally and absolutely my fault for not being clear in Paddington’s third language.

 

When it comes to extremely thick sliced, hickory-smoked American bacon, I won’t be approaching the Board of Governors in the East End of London and saying, “Please Sir, may I have more?” Like Oliver Twist at the workhouse.

 

I did however, tell Paddington that he was going to have to prep the bacon for cooking. Pooh Bear, of the Hundred Acre Woods said, “Sir, Christoper Robin told me that once a package of bacon is opened it must be cooked and consumed within a couple of days.” Pooh, a bear of little brain, was correct. Cooked bacon is only really good for up to three days of being stored in the refrigerator.

 

Now, like any sane person who can cook and understands the physics of bacon, I only cook bacon in the oven unless there are zombies coming to get me and I have to use a pan in an emergency.

 

“Please prep the bacon for the oven.” I told Alamo Basement Texas Aggie Ring, Paddington Bear of Darkest Peru, Little Texas Aggie Trumpet Case Bear, and Pooh Bear of the Hundred Acre Woods. “I need a drink.”

 

About half an hour later, I returned to see what the three-bear “Brain Trust” had done. They had taken two 1/2 sheet cake pans, lined them with Al-LU-Minimum foil, and placed strips of the bacon on baking racks within the two pans.

 

They had taken one tray, covered the hickory-smoked, extra thick sliced bacon with Mexican three-cheese blend. Then they placed sliced, pickled jalapeños on each slice. “Excellent!” I told the three little bears. This is what the defenders of the Alamo ate every morning before they went out to play golf and tennis every day.

 

The second 1/2 sheet cake pan surprised even myself. The “Three Little Bears” had taken shredded white cheese, spread it around all that delicious bacon, and placed two pineapple wedges upon each slice. “That’s odd…” I thought to myself. “I’d normally only do that with Spam™.”

 

I placed the two trays of all of that bacon into the oven and poured myself a drink. When it was ready, I removed the trays from the oven and showed them to the bears. I really must say, both variants of the bacon turned out quite well. The white cheese pineapple roasted bacon was incredible and probably my favourite.

 

Now… This is my dilemma. I pulled one slice of the delicious bacon out during baking it to make sure it was time to pull. I also saved three slices of each for my own, personal consumption. I wasn’t born yesterday, so I know that this pile of delicious bacon must not remain in my home! I’d just eat it all.

 

Unlike all the beef jerky I make, I shan’t give any free bacon away. Can you, my dearest readers, imagine someone (even someone you knew) coming up to you and giving you bacon? NO!!! That’s the sign of a serial killer or a lunatic. People don’t want delicious craft, roasted bacon. Never, ever, ever…

 

My town picks up my dustbin tomorrow, so I could throw it all away. However that would be wasting delicious bacon. We have had an explosion of the possum population where I reside this year. The majestic possum will eat anything. Anything. I might start placing a few pieces upon the lawn each evening to feel the possums and save the planet.

 

FIN

Students learn about services, clubs, and volunteer opportunities from both on-campus and community organizations at the 2017 Involvement Expo on the UIS Quad Wednesday, August 30, 2017

The PantherPalooza Student Involvement Fair was held on the Library Quad on August 30, 2022. (Dominic Baima)

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.

Students got a chance to explore some of Lafayette’s organizations, clubs, and programs during the Involvement Fair on the Quad. The College boasts more than 200 opportunities for students to become involved in campus life, including academic honor societies, cultural and social organizations, community outreach, arts programs, sports clubs, and living groups. The fair is sponsored by Student Government and the Office of Student Leadership and Involvement.

 

Photos by Zachary Hartzell

Sept. 8, 2015

 

Rathfarnham Castle on a sunnier day.

 

Origins:

 

The earlier Anglo-Norman castle which was replaced by the present building was built on lands which were confiscated from the Eustace family of Baltinglass because of their involvement in the Second Desmond Rebellion. It defended the Pale from the Irish clans in the nearby Wicklow Mountains. It is believed the present castle was built around 1583 for Yorkshireman, Adam Loftus, then Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Protestant Archbishop of Dublin. Originally a semi-fortified and battlemented structure, extensive alterations in the 18th century give it the appearance of a Georgian house.

 

The castle consisted of a square building four stories high with a projecting tower at each corner, the walls of which were an average of 5 feet (1.5 m) thick. On the ground level are two vaulted apartments divided by a wall nearly 10 feet (3.0 m) thick which rises to the full height of the castle. On a level with the entrance hall are the 18th century reception rooms and above this floor the former ballroom, later converted into a chapel.

 

Rathfarnham was described as a "waste village" when Loftus bought it. His new castle was not long built when in 1600 it had to withstand an attack by the Wicklow clans during the Nine Years War (Ireland).

 

Civil war:

 

Archbishop Loftus left the castle to his son, Dudley and it then passed to his son Adam in 1616. During Adam's ownership, the castle came under siege in the 1641 rebellion. It was able to hold out against the Confederate army when the surrounding country was overrun. Adam Loftus opposed the treaty of cessation in order the stop the fighting between the Irish Confederates and the English Royalists. Consequently, he was imprisoned in Dublin Castle.

 

During the subsequent Irish Confederate Wars (1641-53), the castle changed hands several times. From 1641 to 1647, it was garrisoned by English Royalist troops. In 1647, Ormonde, commander of the Royalists in Ireland, surrendered Dublin to the English Parliament and Parliamentary troops were stationed at the castle until 1649 when a few days before the Battle of Rathmines, the castle was stormed and taken without a fight by the Royalists. However, the Roundheads re-occupied it after their victory at the Battle of Rathmines. It has also been reported that Oliver Cromwell held council there during his campaign in Ireland before going south to besiege Wexford. Adam Loftus, who recovered his castle and lands under Cromwell, sided with the Parliamentarians and was killed at the Siege of Limerick in 1651.

 

After the English Civil War, the Loftus family retained ownership of the castle. In 1659, Dr. Dudley Loftus, great grandson of Archbishop Loftus, took over the castle. During his lifetime, Dudley held the posts of Commissioner of Revenue, Judge Admiralty, Master in Chancery, MP for Kildare and Wicklow and MP for Bannow and Fethard. His body is interred at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

 

The eighteenth century:

 

The property then passed by marriage to Philip Wharton. The young man lost his money in the South Sea Bubble and in 1723 the castle was sold to the Right Hon. William Connolly, speaker of the Irish House of Commons for £62,000. In 1742, the castle was sold to Dr. Hoadly, Archbishop of Armagh, and on his death four years later it passed to his son-in-law Bellingham Boyle. In 1767, he sold the property to Nicholas Hume-Loftus, second Earl of Ely, a descendant of Adam Loftus, the original builder of the castle.

The castle in 1774

 

Nicholas died within a few years, probably as an indirect result of great hardships which he had suffered in his youth, and the estate passed to his uncle, Hon. Henry Loftus, who was created Earl of Ely in 1771. In commemoration of regaining ownership, the Loftus family constructed another entrance for the castle in the form of a Roman Triumphal Arch. The arch can still be viewed from nearby Dodder Park Road. Henry Loftus, Earl of Ely was responsible for much of the conversion of the medieval fortress into a Georgian mansion and employed renowned architects Sir William Chambers and James 'Athenian' Stuart to carry out these works. The mullioned windows were enlarged and the battlements replaced by a coping with ornamental urns. A semi-circular extension was added to the east side and an entrance porch approached by steps, on the north. The interior was decorated in accordance with the tastes of the period and leading artists, including Angelica Kauffmann were employed in the work. Writers of the period who visited the house have left extravagant descriptions of its splendour.

 

Henry died in 1783 and was succeeded by his nephew Charles Tottenham. He subsequently became Marquess of Ely as a reward for his vote at the time of the Union.

 

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries:

 

In 1812, the family leased the estate to the Ropers and removed their valuable possessions to Loftus Hall in Wexford. The lands and castle were then used for dairy farming and fell into disrepair. To quote a contemporary account from 1838: "Crossing the Dodder by a ford, and proceeding along its southern bank towards Rathfarnham, a splendid gateway at left, accounted among the best productions of that species of architecture in Ireland, invites the tourist to explore the once beautiful grounds of Rathfarnham Castle, but they are now all eloquently waste, the undulating hills covered with rank herbage, the rivulet stagnant and sedgy, the walks scarce traceable, the ice-houses open to the prying sun, the fish-pond clogged with weeds, while the mouldering architecture of the castle, and the crumbling, unsightly offices in its immediate vicinity,…The castle, so long the residence of the Loftus family, and still the property of the Marquis of Ely, subject, however, to a small chief rent to Mr. Conolly, is an extensive fabric,.....The great hall is entered from a terrace, by a portico of eight Doric columns, which support a dome, painted in fresco with the signs of the Zodiac and other devices. This room was ornamented with antique and modern busts, placed on pedestals of variegated marble, and has three windows of stained gloss, in one of which is an escutcheon of the Loftus arms, with quarterings finely executed. Several other apartments exhibited considerable splendour of arrangement, and contained, until lately, numerous family portraits, and a valuable collection of paintings by ancient masters. But, when it is mentioned, that this structure has been for years a public dairy, and the grounds to the extent of 300 acres (1.2 km2) converted to its uses, some notion may be formed of their altered condition.

 

In 1852 it was bought by the Lord Chancellor, Francis Blackburne whose family resided there for three generations. The property developers Bailey & Gibson acquired the castle in 1912 and divided up the estate. The eastern part became the Castle Golf Club, the castle and the southwestern portion were bought in 1913 by the Jesuit Order and the northwestern part was devoted to housing.

 

The Jesuits are an order renowned for their education and one of them; Father O'Leary S.J. constructed a seismograph. This machine could detect earth tremors and earthquakes from anywhere in the world and for a time, Rathfarnham Castle became a source of earthquake information for the national media.

 

To the north of the castle was a long vaulted chamber formerly known as Cromwell’s Court or Fort. This was apparently a barn or storehouse erected as part of the castle farm and had narrow loopholes in its 5-foot (1.5 m) thick walls. In 1922, it was incorporated into the new retreat house, to which it formed the ground story and its character concealed from the outside by a uniform covering of cement plaster.

 

Not far from the Golf Club House was an attractive little temple built of stone and brick, another relic of Lord Ely’s occupation of Rathfarnham. Although rather out of repair, if restored, it would have added much to the charm of this part of the links. Unfortunately, by decision of the committee, it was demolished in 1979.

 

In 1986, the Jesuits sold Rathfarnham Castle but before leaving, they removed the stained glass windows, made in the famous Harry Clarke studios, from the chapel and donated them to Tullamore Catholic Church which had been destroyed by fire in 1983. The other windows were donated to Our Lady's Hospice, Harold's Cross and Temple Street Children's Hospital, Dublin.

 

Preservation:

 

The castle was sold to Delaware Properties in 1985 and it was feared that it was facing demolition. After immense public pressure to save the building, it was purchased by the state in 1987 and was declared a National Monument. Currently, by the Office of Public Works, there is an extensive refurbishment going through the castle but it is still open to the public during the summer months (5th May - 12th October). The Castle is presented as a castle undergoing active conservation, where visitors can see, at first hand, tantalising glimpses of layers of its earlier existence uncovered during research.

Night at the Museum - Came with a wildlife trainer and a presentation involving wild animals like this bird of prey.

 

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Camera: Sony A7S | Lens: Zeiss Vario-Tessar T* FE 24-70mm F4 ZA OSS

 

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The museum started having sleepovers for children and their parents around a decade ago. But it wasn't until last week that the museum decided to host its first ever "sleepover for grownups".

 

The allure of an adults-only sleepover was strong, of course. The sleepover's tickets sold out within the first three hours that they were up for sale.

 

I was fortunate enough to be one of the 150 adults who got to attend the sleepover. It was a fascinating night.

 

It was also the first night that I used the Sony A7S. I knew that the low-light capabilities would be exceptional but it was so strange to be able to crank the ISO all the way up without dealing with tons of noise. In fact, in retrospect, I held back a little too much at times!

 

If you are curious about the night, I have a written post about it along with a photo-set over at my blog:

 

Museum of Natural History - First Ever Sleepover for Adults

  

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View my New York City photography at my website NY Through The Lens.

 

Interested in my work and have questions about PR and media? Check out my:

 

About Page | PR Page | Media Page

  

To use any of my photos commercially, feel free to contact me via email at photos@nythroughthelens.com

The involvement of both organs is the result of trans-diaphragmatic extension of the liver cyst into the lower lobe of the right lung.

 

Image contributed by Dr. Yale Rosen - @yro854

On Scene of a Injury Accident Involving a Olathe Police Department Vehicle at Harrison Street and Dennis Avenue in Olathe on January 31, 2015 at 2050 hours.

 

Picture ID# 6546

Saturday, January 21, 2023: QEW EB @ Victoria Avenue

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"A white van crashed into the back of a tractor trailer just after 7 a.m. Saturday in the Niagara bound lanes of the QEW, killing one driver.

 

The driver of the van was a 32-year-old person from Beamsville who was taken to hospital but later died. Police do not specify whether it was a man or woman.

 

A total of four vehicles were involved in the incident, all with only a driver in them, no passengers.

 

Motorists were forced off the highway at Ontario St. as the OPP closed the Niagara bound lanes of the QEW in Beamsville for most of the day.

 

Police say the transport truck had collided with an initial crash involving two vehicles before the white van then ran into the back of the transport truck.

 

The three other people involved in the collision were not hurt.

 

Officers say it was possibly debris on the road way that lead to the vehicle losing control and then hitting the rear of the tractor trailer.

 

The QEW reopened just before 3 p.m."

 

www.chch.com/crash-on-qew-in-beamsville-kills-one/

A mock battle was staged, involving the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines. The rounded church dome right of centre is Saint Peter & Paul's Catholic church in New Brighton, known to returning sailors for decades as "The Dome of Home"

Design by Jaroslava Růžičková

 

PRECIOSA ORNELA introduces a seed bead speciality with a neon lining to the bead world. This involves selected seed bead shapes made from crystal glass decorated with a lining in four possible neon colors. Pink, yellow, green and orange "neon colors" lighten up their appearance perfectly.

 

We offer Neon Linings in the following seed bead shapes:

PRECIOSA Rocailles, PRECIOSA Drops, PRECIOSA Farfalle™ and PRECIOSA Twin™.

 

Visit our website for more information about the PRECIOSA Neon Linings

 

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2016 Involvement Fair

Sandia technologist Kevin Brenner and another volunteer worked together to plant tomatoes on a beautiful spring day in Corrales.

 

Photo by Bret Latter.

Well, that was a fun weekend at UPfest! Despite an inauspicious start involving a lack of accommodation and a tendon severing washing up accident which effectively left the team a man down we still somehow managed to get the job done. Giving ourselves a complicated 3 in 1 mural was probably not the best idea but ‘best idea’ sometimes isn’t our forte.

 

Given we were short handed we thought it best to take our time and use both days to complete ‘Lovestruck’. Day 1 was mural 1. Three repeated heads with a white, greyscale and skin tone colour scheme and a colourful freestyle background. Day 2 started with the laborious task of applying tape to half the mural then repainting it entirely with red, yellow and blue hued faces and a new background. Mural 2 complete. Then comes the fun part and it’s time for the dramatic tape removal ceremony and for frankenmural 3 to be revealed. Hugo’s graceful rendition of this time honoured performance even garnered a spontaneous round of applause from the crowd of onlookers. I’d like to know if any other artists got a round of applause this weekend? Do we win UPfest?

 

Many thanks to Lindsay and her family for putting us up for the night and even cooking us a bacon sandwich in the morning. It was very much appreciated. As was the excitable Corgi puppy.

 

Cheers

 

id-iom

As cars pulled up to the Roadrunner Food Bank’s mobile food pantry, Sandia managers Haiqing Schwarz, left, and Samantha Darling loaded boxes into the back of their vehicles.

 

Photo by Craig Fritz.

Maybach has historic roots through the involvement of Wilhelm Maybach, who was the technical director of the Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG) until he left in 1907. On 23 March 1909 he founded the new company, Luftfahrzeug-Motorenbau GmbH (literally "Aircraft Engine Building Company"), with his son Karl Maybach as director. In 1912 they renamed it to Maybach-Motorenbau GmbH ("Maybach Engine Construction Company"). The company originally developed and manufactured diesel and petrol engines for Zeppelins, and then rail cars. The Maybach Mb.IVa was used in aircraft and airships of World War I.

Captured Maybach T3 Assault Gun (Sturmgeschütz III), made on the basis of medium tank Maybach T3 (Panzer III). National Museum of Military History (Bulgaria)

 

The company first built an experimental car in 1919, with the first production model introduced two years later at the Berlin Motor Show. Between 1921 and 1940, the company produced various classic opulent vehicles. The company also continued to build heavy duty diesel engines for marine and rail purposes. During the second world war, Maybach produced the engines for Nazi Germany's medium and heavy tanks.

 

After WW II the factory performed some repair work, but automotive production was never restarted, and some 20 years later, the company was renamed MTU Friedrichshafen. Daimler-Benz purchased the company in 1960.

 

Pre-war Models

 

1919 Maybach W1: Test car based on a BMW chassis

1921 Maybach W3: First Maybach, shown at Berlin Motor Show. Featured a 70 hp (52 kW) 5.7L inline six.

1926 Maybach W5: 7L inline six, 120 hp (89 kW)

1929 Maybach 12: V12 precursor to DS7/8

1930 Maybach DSH: Doppel-Sechs-Halbe ("half a twelve cylinder") 1930-37

1930 Maybach DS7 Zeppelin: 7L V12, 150 hp (112 kW)

1931 Maybach W6: Same engine as W5, longer wheelbase. 1931-33

1931 Maybach DS8 Zeppelin: 8L V12, 200 hp (150 kW)

1934 Maybach W6 DSG: Featuring a twin overdrive transmission system.

1935 Maybach SW35: 3.5L 140 hp (104 kW) I6

1936 Maybach SW38: 3.8L 140 hp (104 kW) I6

1939 Maybach SW42: 4.2L 140 hp (104 kW) I6

1945 Maybach JW61: 3.8L 145 hp (108 kW) I6

 

(Wikipedia)

 

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Der erste Maybach von 1919 war ein Prototyp, der „Wagen“ W 1, aufgebaut auf ein angekauftes Daimler-Chassis. Er trug schon die charakteristische Kühlermaske. W 2 war ein Motor. Der W 3 war 1921 der erste Serienwagen, mit Sechszylinder-Reihenmotor und angeblocktem Planetengetriebe, im Angebot als Typ 22/70 PS. Die erste Zahl bezeichnet die früheren „Steuer-PS“, eine vom Fiskus seit 1909 aus Leistung und Hubraum errechnete Kennzahl; die zweite die Motorenleistung.

 

1926 folgte W 5 als Typ 27/120 PS, der 1928 ein Schnellgang-Getriebe erhielt und daher W 5 SG hieß. 1930 kam, parallel zum „Zeppelin“, der W 6, den es ab 1934 auch mit Doppel-Schnellgang-Getriebe gab und so als W 6 DSG in den Annalen steht. Die Weiterentwicklung von 1934 war ein DSH, ein „Doppel-Sechs-Halbe“, was auf den 130 PS starken 5,2-Liter-Reihensechszylinder hinwies, eine vom „DS“-Zwölfzylinder abgeleitete, einfachere Konstruktion.

 

Die Zeppelin-DS-Modelle, von Karl Maybach 1930 erstmals offeriert und ab 1931 geliefert, gab es als Typen DS 7 und DS 8. Es waren die ersten Modelle von Maybach mit einem V-12-Motor. DS 7 bedeutet Doppel-Sechs-7-Liter. DS 8 bedeutet Doppel-Sechs-8-Liter. Der DS 7 leistete 150 PS. Der DS 8 leistete 200 PS. Er war mit einem 7922 Kubikzentimeter großen Motor ausgerüstet. Die Aufbauten lieferten Spohn und Erdmann & Rossi. Im Vergleich zum 1931 gebauten Bugatti Royale Typ 41 mit einem Preis von 100.300 Reichsmark war die Karosserie vom Zeppelin DS 8 geradezu günstig: 33.200 Reichsmark.

 

Maybach W 1, Versuchswagen, um 1919

Maybach W 3, 5,7 l Hubraum, 70 PS, ab 1921

Maybach W 5, 7 l Hubraum, 120 PS, 1926–1929

Maybach W 6, ab 1929

Maybach SW 35 (SW = Schwingachsenwagen), 3,5 l Hubraum, ab 1935 nur 50 Exemplare gebaut

Maybach SW 38, 3,8 l Hubraum, um 1936–1939

Maybach SW 42, 4,2 l Hubraum, um 1939–1941

Maybach „Zeppelin“ Sport, um 1938

Maybach „Zeppelin“ DS 8 Cabriolet, 1930–1937, sechs- bis siebensitzig

 

(Wikipedia)

 

In contrast to the chilly reception at West Peckham, Hadlow was a delight. Though it did involve a bit of a wait, as there was a wedding on. The poor couple we met outside had been invited to the wedding, but that week's updated advice meant guests inside the church had been cut from 30 to 15, so they lost out.

 

We talked as they waited, and told me some of the history of the town, the church and the castle next door. And of the Hop-picker's Memorial in the churchyard, which I went out to photograph.

 

There was no guarantee that we would be let in once the wedding was over, and once they did troop out, and the photographs taken, I thought that the west door would be locked and the hours wait wasted.

 

But it swung open, and the poor vicar was getting the chairs ready for the next day's service, and mentioned several years in seminary all to be a furniture mover.

 

I explained the project, and asked if I could take shots, explaining I would be quick and when he was done I would leave. But he was fine, let me take my time and showed me detail I would have otherwise missed.

 

It was hard to miss the wooden "throne" in the chancel, it looks very impressive, and I asked expecting it to be a Bishop's throne or chair, but it turns out to be not all what it seems. It is named Coverdale Chair, supposedly once owned by the Bishop who created the first translation of the Bible.

 

So far so good.

 

It was donated to Rochester Cathedral at one point, but returned, unwanted, when it became clear that some parts of the chair, especially the side panels, are younger than others.

 

Still, impressive from the front.

 

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The first record of a church in Hadlow was in 975.[2] This church would probably have been a wooden building. In 1018, the early church was replaced by a building of stone. In the 12th century, the church was rebuilt and extended by Richard de Clare, then lord of the Manor of Hadlow. De Clare granted the church to the Knights Hospitallers in 1166. The Knights Hospitallers later had a preceptory at nearby West Peckham, which was their local administrative base. From the Norman Conquest until the 18th century, Hadlow did not have a resident Lord of the Manor, being held under Tonbridge Castle.[3] It is thought that the tower was raised and the spire added in the 15th century.[4] Little money was spent on the maintenance of the church, although some 15th- and 16th-century bequests are recorded. Thomas Walter, Yeoman bequeathed 20s in 1448 "To make a window on the north side of the church by the altar of Our Lady". John Tatlyngbery bequeathed 10 marks "For repair of the great door of the church". In 1456, Richard Bealde bequeathed 13s 4d "For repair of the tower of Hadlow church".[5] In 1461, Dionysia Ippenbury left 3d for masses to be said each year for 12 years.[6] In 1465, William Palle, yeoman left a cow to the church. It was to be sold and "the profits therefrom to be devoted to the maintenance of a lamp in the chancel".[5] In 1509, Thomas Fisher, yeoman bequeathed £20 "for making a new rood loft". The rood screen may not have been in existence long, although it was mentioned in bequests dated 1510 and 1513.[7] The church remained under the ownership of the Knights Hospitallers until 1540, when the order was dissolved by Henry VIII.[3] In 1533, Henry Fane left two chalices valued at £4.[6]

 

The west door is inscribed "WB 1637 ES". The tower and steeple were repaired in that year. The churchwardens were Walter Barton and Essau Simmons.[7] In 1791, the clock was installed in the tower. It was made by John Thwaites of Clerkenwell.[8] At the beginning of the 19th century, the church was in disrepair. In 1847, the chancel was rebuilt and the vestry added. In 1853, the south porch was blocked up. The north aisle was added in this year at a cost of £470, which was raised by public subscription. A private gallery was erected by Walter Barton May, owner of Hadlow Castle. This had its own private access and was located at the west end of the nave. In 1885, an altar reredos was erected to the memory of Sir William Yardley and his wife Amelia. Yardley was a former judge in the High Court of Bombay, India. In 1936, the gallery was removed.[5] Work on the doorway at the west of the church in 1936 exposed some small crosses carved in the stonework. These are attributed to Nicholas de Hadloe and his son, who lived at Hadlow Place. They were carved to commemorate their safe return from the Third Crusade in 1189.[4] St Mary's was listed on 20 October 1954. It is currently Grade II* listed.

 

St Mary's is mostly constructed from ragstone, with some ashlar detail and quoins of Tunbridge Wells sandstone. The church is built in the Early English and Decorated style. The chancel roof is of slate, while the nave and aisle roofs are tiled. The spire is covered in shingles. The stained glass windows date from the 19th and 20th centuries,[9] the most recent of which is "The Visitation" created by Francis Skeat in 1956.

 

In 1919, the Coverdale Chair was presented to St Mary's by T E Foster MacGeagh of Hadlow Castle. The chair is so-named because it was owned by Miles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, who made the first translation of the Bible into English. In 1954, the chair was transferred to Rochester Cathedral, but it was returned to St Mary's in 1967.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary%27s_Church,_Hadlow

 

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

 

The lowy of Tunbridge: Hadlow

 

HADLOW.

THE BOROUGH OF HARDLOW, within the lowy of Tunbridge, contains the parish of Hadlow, with the church, except a small district of the northern part of it, which is in the hundred of Littlefield.

 

THE PARISH of Hadlow is of large extent, joining to West Peckham northward, and to the river Medway, its boundary southward; to the west it extends to the Northfrith woods and the parish of Tunbridge. It is far from being a pleasant situation, being a flat low country, much covered with large and spreading oaks, and broad hedge rows; the soil is in general a stiff clay, much of which is very swampy and wet; towards the upper part of the parish it is but poor, being very panny, and in some places inclining to gravel; lower down it is much more fertile, and bears good corn, and is kindly for hops, of which there are many plantations, which have much increased of late years. Near the river the grass lands are very rich, and capable of fatting beasts of a large size. The rivulet called the Sheet, which flows from Plaxtool by Oxenhoath, crosses this parish, joining the river Medway, a little above Brandt bridge, near which at Hartlake bridge, at the east end of this parish, is what is here called a flowing bolt, being an ingenious contrivance to pen up the water to a certain height, by which means it is capable of being let out in dry seasons, to flow over and moisten the adjoining meadows, which is at that time of the greatest advantage to them. The high road from Maidstone through Mereworth to Tunbridge, crosses this parish over Hadlow common, at the northern boundary of it, whence it goes through the town or village of Hadlow, between which and the river is Fish-hall and Hadlow-place, and more eastward the small hamlets of Goldwell-green, Barnes, and Mill-street.

 

On the bank of the Medway, at the west end of the parish, is a wharf and landing place, called Hadlow-stairs, for the lading and unlading of timber, coals and other merechandize.

 

A fair is yearly held in Hadlow town on WhitMonday.

 

IT APPEARS from the survey of Domesday, that this place was part of those vast possessions with which William the Conqueror enriched his half-brother Odo, bishop of Baieux, whom he afterwards made earl of Kent, under the title of whose lands it is thus entered there.

 

Richard de Tonebridge holds of the bishop (of Baieux) Hastow. It was taxed at six sulings. The arable land is twelve carucates. In demesne there are three, and forty-seven villeins, with fifteen borderers, having fifteen carucates. There is a church and ten servants, and two mills of eleven shillings, and twelve fisheries of seven shillings and six-pence, and twelve acres of meadow, Wood for the pannage of sixty hogs. In the time of king Edward the Consessor, and afterwards, and now, it was and is worth thirty pounds. Eddeva held it of king Edward.

 

In the reign of king Henry III. the seignory of this manor was claimed by the archbishop of Canter dury, and an agreement was entered into in the 42d year of it, between archbishop Boniface and Richard de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, concerning the customs and services which the archbishop required of the earl, on account of the tenements which the latter held of him in Tunebregge, Hanlo, &c. that is, the manors of Tunebregge and Hanlo, together with the whole lowy of Tonebregge, whence the archbishop required of the earl that he should do him homage, the service of four knights fees, and suit to his court at Canterbury, and that he should be the high steward of him and his successors, at their great feast, whenever it should happen that the archbishop should be inthroned.

 

The above-mentioned Richard de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, dying at Eschemerfield, in this county, in the 46th year of the reign of king Henry III. anno 1261. Gilbert, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, his son, succeeded him in this manor, and whose son of the same name, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, dying in the 7th year of Edward II. anno 1313, without surviving issue, his three sisters became his coheirs. (fn. 1) Upon which the manor of Hadlow, with the adjoining manor and castle of Tunbridge, and others in these parts, seem to have been allotted to the share of Margaret, the second sister, wife of Hugh de Audley, who in her right became possessed of this manor, and in the 11th year of king Edward III. was, in respect of this marriage, in parliament created earl of Gloucester.

 

Margaret, countess of Cornwall and Gloucester, died in the 16th year of that reign, and her husband, earl Hugh, outliving her about five years, died then possessed of this manor by courtesy of the realm, and leaving by her an only daughter and heir Margaret, then the wife of Ralph Stafford, lord Stafford. He before the end of that year obtained a special possession of all the lands of her inheritance, and among them of this manor, and in his descendants, earls of Stafford, and afterwards, by creation, dukes of Buckingham, of high estimation for the great offices of state which they held in the different reigns in which they lived. This manor continued down to Edward, duke of Buckingham, who in the 13th year of Henry VIII. being accused of conspiring the king's death, was found guilty, and beheaded that year; and although there was an act passed for his attainder, yet another act passed likewise for the restitution in blood of Henry his eldest son, but not to his honors and lands, which remained forfeited to the crown, and the king in his 16th year, granted the manors of Hadlow and Northfrith, aud several messuages, tenements, parks, &c. in the parishes of Hadlow, Shipborne, and Tunbridge, late belonging to Edward, duke of Buckingham, attainted, to Sir Henry Guildford, comptroller of his household, to hold by knight's service.

 

Sir Henry Guildford had greatly signalized himself by his valour against the Moors in Spain, and being first knighted, afterwards created a knight banneret, and made master of the horse. In the 17th year of king Henry VIII. he was made one of the chamberlains of the exchequer, and next year was elected a knight of the garter, being only thirty-nine years of age at the time of his election. (fn. 2)

 

On his death in the 23d year of king Henry VIII. this manor seems to have reverted to the crown, where it remained till king Edward VI. in his 4th year, granted the manor and park of Hadlow to John Dudley, earl of Warwick, who was afterwards created duke of Northumberland, and he by indenture, in the 7th year of that reign, inrolled in the Augmentation-office, sold this manor, among other premises, to the king, in exchange for lands in several other counties. (fn. 3)

 

The manor of Hadlow remained in the crown till the accession of queen Elizabeth, who in her 1st year granted it, together with the park called Northfryth, to her kinsman, Henry Carey, lord Hunsdon, to hold in capite; and he seems to have given it before his death to his eldest son, Sir George Carey, who possessed it.

 

in the 25th year of that reign, and on his father's death in the 38th year of it, succeeded to the title of lord Hunsdon. He died in the 1st year of king James I. without male issue, upon which this manor came to his next brother John, who succeeded him likewise as lord Hunsdon, and died in the 15th year of James I. and his eldest son Henry, lord Hunsdon, soon afterwards conveyed this manor by sale to James Faircloth, M. D. of London, who alienated it to George Rivers, esq. of this parish, second son of Sir George Rivers, of Chafford, in this county, whose son Edward Rivers, esq. was of Fishall, in this parish, and dying possessed of this manor in 1660, was buried near his father in this church. His successor alienated it in the reign of king Charles II. to Jeffry Amherst, gent. and he in the year 1699 sold it to Mr. John France, who dying without male issue, his two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, became his coheirs; the eldest of whom married Walter Barton, gent. and the youngest George Swayne, gent. On his death, the former by settlement succeeded to this manor, as did his son Mr. John Barton, (by the entail in the same settlement, on his father's decease) and his son Walter who has since taken the name of May, is the present proprietor of it.

 

This manor holds a court leet and court baron, which seems to be entirely independent of the court leet of the manor of Tunbridge, for in 1759 a constable of Tunbridge was chosen at the court leet of that manor, and as such claimed jurisdiction over the parish of Hadlow; but on a trial had on a suit concerning it, at the Lent assizes for this county in 1761, it was proved, that the courts leet of Tunbridge and Hadlow had no connection with each other, and a verdict was found accordingly.

 

HADLOW-PLACE is a seat and estate in this parish, which, in all probability, gave both name and residence to a family of no small note in antient time.

 

John de Hadloe, a descendant of Nicholas de Hadloe, was among those gentlemen of this county, who attended king Edward I. in his expedition into Scotland, in the 28th year of his reign, and for his remarkable service there, at the siege of Carlaverock, was made knight banneret by that prince. The Hadlows bore for their arms, three crescents, to which was afterwards added, seven cross-croslets, in token of some exploit or expedition against the Saracens in the holly land; a usual mark of honor in those times. This addition was most likely granted to Nicholas de Hadloe, who is in the list of those Kentish gentlemen, who were with king Richard I. at the siege of Acon, in Palestine.

 

How long Hadlow-place remained in the above mentioned family I do not find; but most likely till it was alienated to that of Vane, aliasFane. Henry Fane, the eldest son of John Fane, esq. of Tunbridge, was possessed of it in the reign of king Henry VII. and was sheriff in the 23d year of it. (fn. 4) He died in the 30th year of king Henry VIII. anno 1538, leaving no issue by Alice his wife, sister of John Fisher, gent. of this parish. By his will he gave this manor-place, in which he then dwelt, with all his lands in Hadloe and Capel, to his kinsman Ralph Fane, son of Henry, his father's youngest brother, in tail male, remainder to each of the sons of his youngest brother, John Fane, successively in like tail. (fn. 5)

 

¶Ralph Fane was afterwards knighted at the siege of Bulleyn in 1544, and for his gallant behaviour at the battle of Musselborough, in the 1st year of king Edward VI. was made a knight banneret; but in the 6th year of that reign, being found guilty of high treason, he was executed. He died without issue, and Hadlow-place, with the adjoining lands, by virtue of the above entail, came to Henry Fane, the eldest son of John Fane, deceased, the youngest brother of Henry, of Hadlow, before-mentioned, who was of Hadlow-place; being concerned in Sir Thomas Wyatt's insurrection, he was attainted, but the queen pardoned him on account of his youth, and his estates were restored to him; his son Henry, wrote himself, as his ancestors had formerly done, Vane, which his posterity have continued to do ever since. He removed his residence to Raby-castle, in the bishopric of Durham, and was afterwards knighted, from which time he acted a conspicuous part in public affairs, and was greatly favored by king Charles I. (fn. 6) But in the year 1642, the king being offended at his forwardness in the prosecution of the earl of Strafford, he was removed from his place of secretary of state, and from the privy council, and became one of the most malicious of the king's enemies, soon after whose death he alienated this seat, with the estate belonging to it in this parish, to Mr. Thomas Petley, of Filston, in Shoreham, who at his death gave it to his son, Ralph Petley, by his second wife Elizabeth, daughter of Ralph Cam, of London, and he removed from Shoreham to Riverhead, in Sevenoke, where he afterwards resided, and in his descendants resident there this estate continued down in like manner with that seat to Ralph Robert Carter Petley, esq. who died in 1788, leaving his wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Petley surviving, who is the present possessor of this estate. (fn. 7)

  

HADLOW is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester, and deanry of Malling.

 

The church, which stands on the east side of the town, in Hadlow borough, is dedicated to St. Mary. It is a small building with a low pointed steeple at the west end. There is a monument in it for Sir John Rivers and his lady. It was part of the possessions of the knights of St. John of Jerusalem, commonly called the knights hospitallers, so early as the reign of king John; for in the last year of it, anno 1216, Benedict, bishop of Rochester, at the presentation of the prior and brethren of that hospital, admitted and instituted Adam de Fontibus to this church, saving to the prior and brethren the antient pension of two shillings yearly paid to them from it; and the right likewise of the church of Rochester in all matters, and the right of those who were accustomed to take tithes in this parish, separated from the mother church.

 

Thomas de Inglethorpe, bishop of Rochester, in 1287, appropriated this church, then vacant, and of the patronage of the prior and brethren, to them and their house, for ever; reserving a competent vicarage in it, which he decreed should consist of all the small tithes, oblations, obventions, and all other matters belonging to the altarage, excepting the tithe of the hay of the parish; and he decreed, that the vicar should have one acre of land, where he might conveniently build a house, and two acres of meadow, fit to be mowed, of the demesne of the church; and that he should sustain the ordinary burthens of the church, viz. the procurations of the archdeacon, and should pay yearly to the rector of the church of Adintone, eighteen pence, which the rector of the church of Hadlo used to pay to it, time out of mind; and that the prior and brethren should pay to the prior and convent of Rochester five shillings yearly, as had been accustomed to be paid to them from this church from antient time.

 

On the establishment of the preceptory in the adjoining parish of West Peckham by those knights, this church was allotted as an appendage to it; in which state it continued till the general dissolution of their hospital in the 32d year of king Henry VIII. when that order was suppressed by an act specially passed for the purpose, and all their lands and revenues given by it to the king. At which time the parsonage or rectory of Hadlow, appears to have been esteemed a manor.

 

King Edward VI. July 16, in his first year, granted the rectory and advowson of Hadlow, to Sir Ralph Fane, and lady Elizabeth Fane his wife, to hold in capite by knights service. (fn. 10) On Sir Ralph Fane's death, lady Elizabeth Fane, his widow, became possessed of it, and soon afterwards alienated one part of it, by the description of the manor of the rectory of Hadlow, together with all houses, glebes, tithes, and other appurtenances, lying in Hadlow-ward in this parish, to Thomas Roydon, esq. of East Peckham, whose daughter and coheir Elizabeth, married William Twysden, of Chelmington, who became in her right possessed of this manor and rectory; and his descendant, Sir William Jarvis Twysden, bart. lately sold it to Mr. Walter Barton, who is the present pos sessor of this tithery, with the manor and appurtenances belonging to it.

 

¶The other two parts of the rectory of Hadlow, consisting of the tithes of this parish, in the tithe wards of Goldwell, alias Coldweld and Stair, as well as the advowson, remained (after the above-mentioned alienation to Roydon) in the possession of lady Eliz. Fane, who in the 1st and 2nd year of king Philip and queen Mary, alienated the remainder of the parsonage of Hadlow to Henry Fisher, and he, in the first year of queen Elizabeth passed it away to Richard Smithe, who next year alienated it to John Rivers; his son, Sir George Rivers, possessed this parsonage, as well as the advowson of the church, which seems to have passed with it from lady Fane, and his eldest son, John Rivers, esq. was created a baronet, and in the 21st year of king James I. procured an act of parliament to disgavel as well his lands as those of Sir George Rivers, his father, and to settle the inheritance of them upon himself and his heirs by dame Dorothy his wife, daughter of Thomas Potter, esq. of Westerham. His grandson and heir, Sir Thomas Rivers, bart. son of James Rivers, esq. who died in his life time, in 1657 conveyed that part of this parsonage, which consisted of the tithes arising within the ward of Stayer, to Edward Rivers, esq. son of George Rivers, esq. of this parish, next brother to Sir John Rivers, created a baronet as above-mentioned, and he died possessed of it in 1660, and was buried in this church. His son, George Rivers, esq. possessed it near seventy years, and then dying, by will gave it to his god-son, George Rivers, esq. of the Inner Temple, who in 1737, reserving to himself a life estate in this tithery, sold the reversion of it to Stephen Hervey, esq. of London, and he soon after Mr. Rivers's death, in 1777, conveyed the fee of it to Mr. Robert Simmons, of Hadlow, who gave it by will to his nephew Mr. William Simmons, the present possessor of this part of the parsonage of Hadlow.

 

The remaining part of the parsonage of Hadlow, consisting of the tithe within Goldwell, commonly called Colweld-ward, passed afterwards into the possession of Wm. Lea, gent. of Hadlow, whose granddaughter, Mrs. Eliz. Leavens, of Hadlow, in 1701, conveyed it to Mr. John Weekley, of Town Malling, who in 1738 gave it by will to his brother, Mr. George Weekley, late of Ware, in Hertfordshire, on whose death in 1777 it descended to his only daughter and heir, Miss Jane Weekley, since whose death this tithery has been sold by her devisees to Mr. Thomas Swayne, of Tunbridge, the present possessor of it.

 

THE ADVOWSON of the vicarage of Hadlow seems to have continued in the Rivers family, till the death of Sir George Rivers, in 1734, when, on disputes arising concerning the devise of his estates, they were put into chancery, and after several decrees and process at law, this advowson, among his other estates, was in 1743 ordered by the court to be sold, (fn. 11) and it was accordingly conveyed to the Rev. Arthur Spender, vicar of this parish, who died in 1750, and his son Arthur, dying unmarried, it came to his brother, Mr. John Spender, of Northamptonshire, who sold it not long since to Mr. Monypenny, who is the present patron of it.

 

It is valued in the king's books at 13l. and the yearly tenths at 1l. 6s.

 

The income of this vicarage greatly depends on the hop-plantations in this parish, which have been some years so advantageous as to increase the income of it to 240l. per annum.

 

In 1608 the communicants in this parish were in number three hundred and seventy-six.

 

www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol5/pp177-193

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.

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.

©AVucha 2014

On March 3rd at 6:21pm, Woodstock Fire/Rescue was dispatched for a motor vehicle accident involving a Woodstock Police Officer at Route 14 and Dean St. The officer was extracted from his squad car and was transported via OSF Life Flight to St. Anthony Medical Center in Rockford.

Woodstock, Illinois

 

News obtained from the Northwest Herald:

WOODSTOCK – A Woodstock police officer had to be extricated from an unmarked squad car and flown to a hospital Monday after a three-vehicle accident.

At 6:24 p.m., a 15-year-old male motorist from Woodstock, driving on a learner's permit, was waiting to turn left from westbound Route 14 onto Dean Street. When he turned left, he struck an unmarked Woodstock squad car, which was traveling eastbound on Route 14. The squad car then hit a vehicle facing north waiting on Dean Street.

Officer Eric Schmidtke was driving a Ford Interceptor and had to be extricated from the vehicle. He was transported to Woodstock Hospital, and subsequently flown to St. Anthony’s Hospital in Rockford, according to a press release from the McHenry County Sheriff's office.

He was released from the hospital late last night, according to McHenry County Sheriff's Deputy Aimee Knop.

The traffic signal for eastbound and westbound Rt. 14 was green at the time of crash, the release said.

Because of the extra equipment in the squad car, such as the computer, radio and weapons, it took longer to conduct the extrication, Ryan said.

The juvenile driver and his adult passenger were taken to Centegra Hospital – Woodstock, where they were treated and released, Knop said.

The names of the juvenile and others involved in the crash were not released.

Eastbound Route 14 was shut down for about two hours after the accident, Ryan said.

The sheriff's office is investigating the crash because a Woodstock officer was involved.

Knop said the juvenile was cited for failure to yield when turning left at an intersection. She said everyone involved was wearing a seat belt, and alcohol and drugs do not appear to be a factor.

The officer was believed to be performing normal driving, Knop said.

Gondoroba village - Omo Valley (Ethiopia)