View allAll Photos Tagged provocation
This artistic provocation seeks to estimate the orders of magnitude of critical ecosystem services fundamental to all planetary life processes. It is common to use economic metaphors, which entail specific understandings of value, to describe our relationships with society, the world, and the biosphere. Today’s prevailing economic conventions are unable to recognize the intrinsic value of the ecosystems on which all life depends. In cultures overdetermined by concepts from economics, we are left without adequate discursive instruments to socially or politically address the importance of ecosystem contribution to life on Earth. This experiment consists of 1 square meter of wheat, cultivated in a closed environment. Critical inputs such as water, light, heat, and nutrients are measured, monitored, and displayed for the public. This procedure makes palpable the immense scale of ecosystem contributions and provides a speculative reference for a reckoning of the undervalued and over exploited “work of the biosphere.”
Philipp Gartlehner of the Ars Electronica Center planted barley with the heilp of the Life Support system and after three months, the harvest was ready to be brought in. The cost for growing one square meter of barley indoors accounted for the massive amount of 430 Euro. Another reason why we really have to take care for our ecosystem.
Photo: Ars Electronica - Robert Bauernhansl
Street art is visual art created in public locations, usually unsanctioned artwork executed outside of the context of traditional art venues. The term gained popularity during the graffiti art boom of the early 1980s and continues to be applied to subsequent incarnations. Stencil graffiti, wheatpasted poster art or sticker art, and street installation or sculpture are common forms of modern street art. Video projection, yarn bombing and Lock On sculpture became popularized at the turn of the 21st century.
The terms "urban art", "guerrilla art", "post-graffiti" and "neo-graffiti" are also sometimes used when referring to artwork created in these contexts.[1] Traditional spray-painted graffiti artwork itself is often included in this category, excluding territorial graffiti or pure vandalism.
Street art is often motivated by a preference on the part of the artist to communicate directly with the public at large, free from perceived confines of the formal art world.[2] Street artists sometimes present socially relevant content infused with esthetic value, to attract attention to a cause or as a form of "art provocation".[3]
Street artists often travel between countries to spread their designs. Some artists have gained cult-followings, media and art world attention, and have gone on to work commercially in the styles which made their work known on the streets.
: www.pbase.com/kilkenny_photo_society/edward_dullard
All rights reserved.
In the language of flowers, the thistle (like the burr) is an ancient Celtic symbol of nobility of character as well as of birth, for the wounding or provocation of a thistle yields punishment.[citation needed]
The thistle has been the national emblem of Scotland since the reign of Alexander III (1249–1286) and was used on silver coins issued by James III in 1470. It is the symbol of the Order of the Thistle, a high chivalric order of Scotland. It is found in many Scottish symbols and as the name of several Scottish football clubs. The thistle, crowned with the Scottish crown, is the symbol of seven of the eight Scottish Police Forces (the exception being the Northern Constabulary). The thistle is also the emblem of Encyclopædia Britannica, which originated in Edinburgh, Scotland. Carnegie Mellon University features the thistle in its crest.
Origin as a symbol of Scotland
According to a legend, an invading Norse army was attempting to sneak up at night upon a Scottish army's encampment. During this operation one barefoot Norseman had the misfortune to step upon a thistle, causing him to cry out in pain, thus alerting Scots to the presence of the Norse invaders. Some sources suggest the specific occasion was the Battle of Largs, which marked the beginning of the departure of King Haakon IV (Haakon the Elder) of Norway who, having control of the Northern Isles and Hebrides, had harried the coast of the Kingdom of Scotland for some years Which species of thistle is referred to in the original legend is disputed. Popular modern usage favours Cotton Thistle Onopordum acanthium, perhaps because of its more imposing appearance, though it is unlikely to have occurred in Scotland in mediaeval times; the Spear Thistle Cirsium vulgare, an abundant native species in Scotland, is a more likely candidate.[4][5] Other species, including Dwarf Thistle Cirsium acaule, Musk Thistle Carduus nutans, and Melancholy Thistle Cirsium heterophyllum have also been suggested.
This artistic provocation seeks to estimate the orders of magnitude of critical ecosystem services fundamental to all planetary life processes. It is common to use economic metaphors, which entail specific understandings of value, to describe our relationships with society, the world, and the biosphere. Today’s prevailing economic conventions are unable to recognize the intrinsic value of the ecosystems on which all life depends. In cultures overdetermined by concepts from economics, we are left without adequate discursive instruments to socially or politically address the importance of ecosystem contribution to life on Earth. This experiment consists of 1 square meter of wheat, cultivated in a closed environment. Critical inputs such as water, light, heat, and nutrients are measured, monitored, and displayed for the public. This procedure makes palpable the immense scale of ecosystem contributions and provides a speculative reference for a reckoning of the undervalued and over exploited “work of the biosphere.”
Philipp Gartlehner of the Ars Electronica Center planted barley with the heilp of the Life Support system and after three months, the harvest was ready to be brought in. The cost for growing one square meter of barley indoors accounted for the massive amount of 430 Euro. Another reason why we really have to take care for our ecosystem.
Photo: Ars Electronica - Martin Hieslmair
Anacortes.
"On September 7, 1899, Alfred Hamilton (1872-1902) shoots and kills prominent attorney David. M. Woodbury (1849-1899) without provocation. Hamilton, a notorious miscreant, has been wandering around Anacortes intoxicated, threatening the citizenry with a revolver, and efforts by the city marshal to arrest him without bloodshed have been unsuccessful. Woodbury lingers in great pain for three days before dying on September 10, 1899. A Skagit County jury will find Hamilton guilty of first-degree murder with the mandatory sentence of death. On appeal the Washington State Supreme Court will grant him a new trial based on judicial error. To assure a fair and impartial jury, Hamilton's retrial will be held at the Whatcom County Courthouse in Bellingham. Once again, he will be found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to hang. Hamilton's attorneys will appeal the subsequent conviction to the state Supreme Court, where the judgment of the lower court will be affirmed. On May 23, 1902, Hamilton will be hanged in the courtyard outside the Whatcom County Courthouse. This will be the last legal execution to occur in Washington outside the confines of the state penitentiary at Walla Walla."
An artist that doesn't provoke will be invisible. Art that doesn't cause strong emotions has no meaning. - Marylin Manson on Gottfried Helnwein (source)
Even though this is my concept, I can't take all of the credit for it. After sending her 3-4 rather poor concepts sketched and scanned, she rejected all of them. Then she inspired me to come up with this one, which we debated for hours until we found a point of agreement. If there is one thing friendship could be measured by, I put my money on honesty. A good friend will tell you to fuck off when you deserve it. So thank you Tina for working with me on this one.
Facebook profile with behind the scenes material.
This artistic provocation seeks to estimate the orders of magnitude of critical ecosystem services fundamental to all planetary life processes. It is common to use economic metaphors, which entail specific understandings of value, to describe our relationships with society, the world, and the biosphere. Today’s prevailing economic conventions are unable to recognize the intrinsic value of the ecosystems on which all life depends. In cultures overdetermined by concepts from economics, we are left without adequate discursive instruments to socially or politically address the importance of ecosystem contribution to life on Earth. This experiment consists of 1 square meter of wheat, cultivated in a closed environment. Critical inputs such as water, light, heat, and nutrients are measured, monitored, and displayed for the public. This procedure makes palpable the immense scale of ecosystem contributions and provides a speculative reference for a reckoning of the undervalued and over exploited “work of the biosphere.”
Philipp Gartlehner of the Ars Electronica Center planted barley with the heilp of the Life Support system and after three months, the harvest was ready to be brought in. The cost for growing one square meter of barley indoors accounted for the massive amount of 430 Euro. Another reason why we really have to take care for our ecosystem.
Photo: Ars Electronica - Martin Hieslmair
Call me Snake offers an optimistic provocation – ‘imagine what could be here’ by Judy Millar. On a walk into the city October 3, 2015 Christchurch New Zealand.
The work is comprised of vibrant graphics of Millar’s looped paintings, which are adhered to five intersecting flat planes, and draws inspiration from the forms found in pop-up books. The colourful piece will add a dramatic and rhythmic counterpoint to the city’s current urban landscape — a mix of flattened sites, construction zones and defiant buildings that have stood through the quakes. The work employs theatricality, playfulness and visual trickery, whereby the viewer is unsure about the work’s flatness or three-dimensionality; and it has been designed to offer a different perspective from each angle. The bright colours interrupt the grey of the work’s surrounds, and as buildings pop up around it,
SCAPE 8, New Intimacies curated by Rob Garrett was a contemporary art event which mixed new artworks with existing legacy pieces, an education programme, and a public programme of events. The SCAPE 8 artworks were located around central Christchurch and linked via a public art walkway. All aspects of SCAPE 8 were free-to-view.
The title for the 2015 Biennial – New Intimacies – came from the idea that visually striking and emotionally engaging public art works can create new connections between people and places. Under the main theme of New Intimacies there are three other themes that artists responded to: Sight-Lines, Inner Depths and Shared Strengths.
For more Info: www.scapepublicart.org.nz/scape-8-judy-millar
Meenakshi Amman Temple (also called: Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple, Tiru-aalavaai and Meenakshi Amman Kovil) is a historic Hindu temple located on the southern bank of the Vaigai River in the temple city of Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India. It is dedicated to Parvati, known as Meenakshi, and her consort, Shiva, here named Sundareswarar. The temple forms the heart and lifeline of the 2,500 year old city of Madurai and is a significant symbol for the Tamil people, mentioned since antiquity in Tamil literature though the present structure was built between 1623 and 1655 CE. It houses 14 gopurams (gateway towers), ranging from 45–50m in height. The tallest is the southern tower, 51.9 metres high, and two golden sculptured vimanas, the shrines over the garbhagrihas (sanctums) of the main deities. The temple attracts 15,000 visitors a day, around 25,000 on Fridays, and receives an annual revenue of sixty million INR. There are an estimated 33,000 sculptures in the temple. It was on the list of top 30 nominees for the "New Seven Wonders of the World". The annual 10-day Meenakshi Tirukalyanam festival, celebrated during April and May, attracts 1 million visitors.
LEGEND
Meenakshi (IAST Mīnākṣī Tamil மீனாட்சி) is an avatar of the Hindu goddess Parvati - the consort of Shiva, one of the few Hindu female deities to have a major temple devoted to her. The name "Mīnachchi" means fish-eyed and is derived from the words "mīna" meaning fish and "akṣi" meaning eyes. The lady goddess Meenakshi is the principal deity of the temple, not Sundareswarar, unlike most Shiva temples in South India where Shiva is the principal deity. According to Hindu legend, in order to answer the prayers of the second Pandya king Malayadwaja Pandya and his wife Kanchanamalai, Parvati appeared out of the holy fire of the Putra Kameshti Yagna (sacrifice for childhood) performed by the king. According to another legend, the goddess herself gave notice to Kanchanamalai in one of her previous births that Kanchanamalai would have the privilege of mothering the goddess. The girl who came out of the holy fire had three breasts. A voice from the heavens told the king not to worry about the abnormality and added that the third breast would vanish as soon as the girl met her future husband. The happy king named the girl "Tadaatagai" and as the heir to the throne, Tadaatagai was trained carefully in all the 64 sastras, the fields of science.
As the time came for Tadaatagai's coronation, she had to wage war in three worlds encompassing eight directions. After conquering Brahma's Abode, Sathyaloka, Vishnu's Abode, Vaikunta, and Devas' abode Amaravati, she advanced to Shiva's Abode Kailasha. She very easily defeated the bhoota ganas (IAST: Bhūtagana, meaning Shiva's army) and Nandi, the celestial bull of Shiva, and headed to attack and conquer Shiva. The moment she looked at Shiva, she was unable to fight and bowed her head down due to shyness, and the third breast vanished immediately. Tadaatagai realized that Shiva was her destined husband. She also realized that she was the incarnation of Parvati. Both Shiva and Tadaatagai returned to Madurai and the king arranged the coronation ceremony of his daughter, followed by her marriage with Shiva.
The marriage was to be the biggest event on earth, with the whole earth gathering near Madurai. Vishnu, the brother of Meenakshi, prepared to travel from his holy abode at Vaikuntam to preside over the marriage. Due to a divine play, he was tricked by the Deva, Indra and was delayed on the way. After the marriage, the pair ruled over Madurai for a long time and then assumed divine forms as Sundareswarar and Meenakshi, the presiding deities of the temple. Following the tradition, every evening, before closing the temple, a ritual procession lead by drummers and a brass ensemble carries the image of Sundareswarar to Meenakshi's bedroom to consummate the union, to be taken back the next morning in dawn. The marriage is celebrated annually as Chithirai Thiruvizha in Madurai. During the period of Nayakar rule in Madurai, the ruler Thirumalai Nayakar linked the festival Azhakar Thiruvizha and the Meenakshi wedding ceremony.
HISTORY
The Meenatchi temple is believed to have been founded by Indra (king of Deva celestial deities) while he was on a pilgrimage to atone for his misdeeds. He felt his burden lifting as he neared the swayambu lingam (self formed lingam, a representation of Shiva used for worship in temples) of Madurai. He ascribed this miracle to the lingam and constructed the temple to enshrine it. Indra worshipped Shiva, who caused golden lotuses to appear in the nearby pool. Tamil literature speaks of the temple over the last two millennia. Thirugnanasambandar, the famous Hindu saint of Saiva philosophy, mentioned this temple as early as the 7th century, and described the deity as Aalavai Iraivan. The temple is believed to have been sacked by the infamous Muslim invader Malik Kafur in 1310 and all the ancient elements were destroyed. The initiative to rebuild the structure was taken by first Nayak king of Madurai, Viswanatha Nayak (1559–1600) under the supervision of Ariyanatha Mudaliar, the prime minister of the Nayak Dynasty and the founder of the Poligar System. The original design by Vishwanatha Nayak in 1560 was substantially expanded to the current structure during the reign of Thirumalai Nayak (1623–55). He took considerable interest in erecting many complexes inside the temple. His major contributions are the Vasantha Mandapam for celebrating vasanthorsavam (spring festival) and Kilikoondu Mandapam (corridor of parrots). The corridors of the temple tank and Meenatchi Nayakar Mandapam were built by Rani Mangammal.
Rous Peter (1786–1828), the Collector of Madurai in 1812, got nickname 'Peter Pandian’ as he respected and treated people of all faiths equally. He donated a set of golden stirrups studded with diamonds and red stones to the temple.Goddess Meenatchi is believed to have saved Rous Peter from a fatal incident. He also wished that after his death, his body be buried in a position that would enable his eyes to face the temple.
THE TEMPLE
ARCHITECTURE
The temple is the geographic and ritual center of the ancient city of Madurai and one of the largest temple complexes in Tamil Nadu. The temple complex is divided into a number of concentric quadrangular enclosures contained by high masonry walls. It is one of the few temples in Tamil Nadu to have four entrances facing four directions. Vishwantha Nayaka allegedly redesigned the city of Madurai in accordance with the principles laid down by Shilpa Shastras (Sanskrit: śilpa śāstra, also anglicized as silpa sastra meaning rules of architecture) relevant to urban planning. The city was laid out in the shape of square with a series of concentric streets culminating from the temple. These squares continue to retain their traditional names, Aadi, Chittirai, Avani-moola and Masi streets, corresponding to Tamil month names. Ancient Tamil classics mention that the temple was the center of the city and the streets happened to be radiating out like lotus and its petals. The temple prakarams (outer precincts of a temple) and streets accommodate an elobrate festival calendar in which dramatic processions circumabulate the shrines at varying distances from the centre. The vehicles used in processions are progressively more massive the further they travel from the centre. The complex is in around 180,000 m2.
GOPURAMS
The temple is surrounded by gopurams (gateway tower), - There are ten gopuram the tallest of which, the famous southern tower, rises to over 52 m and was built in 1559. The oldest gopuram is the eastern one, built by Maravarman Sundara Pandyan during 1216-1238 Each gopuram is a multi-storeyed structure, covered with thousands of stone figures of animals, gods and demons painted in bright hues. The outer gopuram presents steeply pyramidal tower encrusted with plaster figures, while the inner gopuram serves as the entrance to the inner enclosure of Sundareswarar shrine.
SHRINES
The central shrine of Meenakshi Amman temple and her consort Sundareswarar are surrounded by three enclosures and each of these are protected by four minor towers at the four points of the compass, the outer tower growing larger and reaching higher to the corresponding inner one. The Meenakshi shrine has the emerald-hued black stone image of Meenakshi. The Sundareswarar shrine lies at the centre of the complex, suggesting that the ritual dominance of the goddess developed later. Both the Meenakshi and Sundareswarar shrines have gold plated Vimanam (tower over sanctum). The golden top can be seen from a great distance in the west through the apertures of two successive towers. The area covered by the shrine of Sundareswarar is exactly one fourth of the area of the temple and that of Meenakshi is one fourth that of Sundareswarar.
The tall sculpture of Ganesh carved of single stone located outside the Sundareswarar shrine in the path from Meenashi shrine is called the Mukuruny Vinayakar. A large measure of rice measuring 3 kurini (a measure) is shaped into a big ball of sacrifice and hence the Ganesh is called Mukkurni Vinayagar (three kurinis). This deity is believed to be found during a 17th-century excavation process to dig the Mariamman temple tank.
TEMPLE TANK & SURROUNDING PORTICO
The sacred temple tank Porthamarai Kulam ("Pond with the golden lotus"), is 50 m by 37 m in size. According to legend, Shiva promised a stork that no fish or other marine life would grow here and thus no marine animals are found in the lake. In the Tamil legends, the lake is supposed to judge the worth of a new piece of literature. Authors place their works here and the poorly written works are supposed to sink and the scholastic ones are supposed to float, Tirukkural by Tiruvalluvar was one such work.
Only a fraction of 17th and 18th century paintings of Nayak period survives and one such portion is found in the small portico on the western side of the tank. It depicts the marriage of Sundareswarar and Meenkashi attended by Vijayaranga Chokkanatha and Rani Mangammal. The painting is executed on a vivid red background, with delicate black linework and large areas of white, green and ochre. The celestial couple is seated inside an architectural frame with a flowering tree in the background.
HALLS
The corridor surrounding the sanctum the Meenakshi is called kilikoondu Mandapam ("bird cage corridor"). The space was once used to keep green parrots that were trained to utter the name of Meenakshi. There are two large cages full of squawking green parrots.
The Kambatadi Mandapam ("Hall of temple tree") with its seated Nandi (sacred bull) has various manifestations of Shiva carved and also contains the famous "Marriage of Meenakshi" sculpture. Sculptures of Shiva and Kali trying to out-dance one another are pelted with balls of ghee by devotees. A golden flagstaff with 32 sections symbolizes the human backbone and is surrounded by various gods, including Durga and Siddar.
The Puthu Mandapam ("new hall") constructed by Tirumala Nayak contains large number of sculptures. It is situated opposite to the east gopuram.
The Ashta Shakthi Mandapam ("Hall of eight goddess") is the first hall in the entrance of Meenakshi shrine tower near to East Tower. Ashta indicates eight and Shakthi refers to goddess - the hall has statues of eight goddesses. The gopurams (towers) can be viewed from this hall. The passage was named for eight forms of goddess Sakthi carved on its pillars. Other sculptures and paintings depict the Tiruvilayadal (holy games of Shiva). The sculptures of heroes of Mahabharata, the Pancha pandavas can be seen in the Pancha Pandava Mandapam (Hall of Pandavas).
The Viravasantharaya Mandapam is a large hall with huge corridors. To the south of this hall is the kalyana mandapam, to the south of the pillared hall, is where the marriage of Shiva and Parvati is celebrated every year during the Chithirai Festival in mid-April. The golden images of Meenakshi and Sundareswarar are carried into the 16th century oonjal mandapam (swing corridor) and placed on the swing every Friday at 5:30 p.m. The shrine has a 3-storied gopuram guarded by two stern dwarapalakas (guardians) and supported by golden, rectangular columns that bear lotus markings. Along the perimeter of the chamber, granite panels of the divine couple are present. The hall is situated in the western bank of the temple tank.
The Mudali Pillai Mandapam or Iruttu Mandapam (Dark hall) is a wide and long hall built by Muthu Pillai during 1613. On the pillars of the halls, there are fine sculptures depicting the story of Shiva taking the form of Bikshadanar to teach the sages a lesson.
The Mangayarkarasi mandapam is a newly built hall situated opposite to the marriage halls and bears the name of saindy queen, Mangayarkarasi who contributed to Saivism and Tamil language. To the south of Mangayarkarasi mandapam lies the Servaikarar Mandapam, a hall built by Marudu brothers in 1795. The Nagara mandapam (Hall of beating drums) lies opposite to Sundareswarar shrine was built by Achaya Rayar, the minister of Rani Mangammal in 1635. The Kolu Mandapam is a hall for displaying dolls during the Navarathri festival celebrated during September–October. This hall is situated in the second corridor of the Meenakshi shrine at the western side.
HALL OF THOUSAND PILLARS
The Meenakshi Nayakkar Mandapam ("Hall of 1000 pillars") has two rows of pillars carved with images of yali (mythological beast with body of lion and head of an elephant), commonly used as the symbol of Nayak power. It is situated to the north of Sundareswarar flag staff hall. The Thousand Pillar Hall contains 985 (instead of 1000) carved pillars. The hall was built by Ariyanatha Mudaliar in 1569 and blends engineering skill and artistic vision. Ariyanatha Mudaliar was prime minister and general of Viswanatha Nayak, the first Nayaka of Madurai (1559–1600). He was also the founder of Poligar System, the quasi-feudal organization of the country dividing it into multiple palayams or small provinces in which each palayam was ruled by a palayakkarar or a petty chief. At the entrance of the hall is the statue of Ariyanatha Mudaliar seated on a horse-back, flanking one side of the entrance to the temple. The statue is periodically garlanded by worshippers. Each pillar in the hall is a carved monument of the Dravidian sculpture. The more prominent among the carved figures are those of Rati (wife of Kama), Karthikeya, Ganesha, Shiva as a wandering mendicant and endless number of yalis (mythical figures of lions). There is a Temple Art Museum in the hall where icons, photographs, drawings, and other exhibits of the 1200 years old history of the temple are displayed. Just outside this hall, towards the west, are the Musical Pillars. Each pillar, when struck, produces a different musical note.
RELIGIOUS SIGNIFANCE OF THE TEMPLE
A distinct feature of Meenakshi in terms of iconography is the presence of parrot in her right hand. The parrot is generally associated with the Vaishnava azhwar saint Andal. "Pancha Sabhai" refers to the five royal courts of Nataraja (dancing form of Shiva) where he performed cosmic dance. The Tamil word velli means silver and ambalam means stage or altar. This massive Nataraja sculpture is enclosed in a huge silver altar and hence called "Velli Ambalam" (silver abode). This is a special figure of Natarja which usually differs from Chola bronzes; in the Chola images, Nataraja is shown dancing with his left leg raised, but this sculpture has the right leg raised. According to the Tiruvilayaadal Puranam (Shiva's sacred games), this is on the request of Rajasekara Pandya, who was a sincere devotee of Shiva. He requested the deity to change his position, as he felt that keeping the same foot raised would put enormous strain and got a graceful acquiescence from the divine master.
RITUALS
WORSHIP
There are close to 50 priests in the temple who perform the puja (rituals) during festivals and on a daily basis. Like other Shiva temples of Tamil Nadu, the priests belong to Shivaite to the Adishaivas, a Brahmin sub-caste. The priests live in a closed area north of the temple. The temple has a six time pooja calendar everyday, each comprising four rituals namely abhisheka (sacred bath), alangaram (decoration), neivethanam (food offerings) and deepa aradanai (waving of lamps) for both Meenakshi and Sundareswarar. The puja (worship) ceremonies are held amidst music with nadhaswaram (pipe instrument) and tavil (percussion instrument), religious instructions in the Vedas by priests and prostration by worshippers in front of the temple mast. The common practise is to worship Meenakshi before Sundareswarar. Margazhi (December–January) ritual is prominent one for winning a perfect, god-like husband - it is Meenakshi's ennai kappu festival. Aligned with the cardinal points, the street plans forms a giant mandala (group) whose sacred properties are believed to be activated during the mass clockwise circumambulation of the central temple.
FESTIVALS
The most important festival associated with the temple is the "Meenakshi Thirukalyanam" (the divine marriage of Meenakshi) that is celebrated in April every year. The wedding of the divine couple is regarded as a classic instance of south Indian female-dominated marriage, an arrangement referred as "Madurai marriage". The male dominated marriage is called "Chidambaram marriage", referring to Shiva's uncontested dominance, ritual and mythic, at the famous Shiva temple of Chidhambaram. The marriage brings together rural and urban people, deities and mortals, Saivas (those who worship Shiva) and Vaishnavas (those who worship Vishnu) in order to celebrate Meenakshi as the royal monarch. During the one month period, there are a number of events including the "Ther Thiruvizhah" (chariot festival) and "Theppa Thiruvizhah" (float festival). Major Hindu festivals like Navrathri and Shivrathri are celebrated in the temple. Like most Shakti temples in Tamil Nadu, the Fridays during the Tamil months of Aadi (July–August) and Thai (January–February) are celebrated in the temple by thousands of devotees. "Avani Moola Utsavam" is a 10-day festival mainly devoted to Sundareswarar describes his various Thiruvilayadal meaning Shiva's sacred games.
LITERARY MENTION
Down the centuries, the temple has been a centre of education of Tamil culture, literature, art, music and dance. All three assemblies of Tamil language, the Tamil Sangam (about the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE), were held at Madurai. Tamil poets of different epochs participated in these assemblies and their composition is called Sangam literature. During the third Tamil sangam, the comparative merit of the poets was decided by letting the works float in the lotus tank of the temple. It was believed that a divine force would cause the work of superior merit to float on the surface while the inferior literary work would sink. Tevaram, the 7th-8th century Tamil canonoical work on Shiva, are works by the three prominent Nayanars (Saivites) namely Appar, Sundarar and Thirugnanasambandar. The temple has been glorified by the hymns of Tevaram by all the three poets. Different hymns of Sambandar on the temple mention the queen of Pandya Nadu, his desire to defeat Jains in debate, the miracles performed by him curing the king's fever, the Jains' provocation of Sambandar by burning his house and challenging him to debate, and Sambandar's eventual victory over them. A poem from the Third Tirumurai by Sambandar is as under –
"Lady who has eyes that are comparable to the startled eyes of the deer!
the great chief queen of the Vaḻuti! listen to what I say. Do not feel distressed that I am such a young boy from whose mouth milk is flowing. when the god in Tiruvālavāy stands by my side as help, I can not be easily defeated by the low people who inflict many sufferings on others and who live in hills beginning with great Āṉaimalai."
There are few poets in Tamil history who sang about goddess Parvati. The notable among them is Kumaraguruparar, a 17th-century Tamil poet, who composed Meenakshi Pillaitamil on Meenakshi of this temple. King Tirumalai Nayak's patronage of Kumaraguruparar has an important place in the history of pillaitamil (a genre of Tamil literature). Kumaraguruparar visited a lot of temples and when he visited this temple, he composed Meenakshi pillaitamil on Meenakshi. Legend has it that goddess appeared in the dreams of Nayak directing him to arrange the recital of Kumaraguruparar before a learned assembly. The king made elobrate arrangements for the event. Meenakshi impersonated herself in the form of a small girl and enjoyed the recital. As Kumaraguruparar was explaining the 61st verse, the goddess appreciated by garlanding the poet with a string of pearls and disappeared.
This artistic provocation seeks to estimate the orders of magnitude of critical ecosystem services fundamental to all planetary life processes. It is common to use economic metaphors, which entail specific understandings of value, to describe our relationships with society, the world, and the biosphere. Today’s prevailing economic conventions are unable to recognize the intrinsic value of the ecosystems on which all life depends. In cultures overdetermined by concepts from economics, we are left without adequate discursive instruments to socially or politically address the importance of ecosystem contribution to life on Earth. This experiment consists of 1 square meter of wheat, cultivated in a closed environment. Critical inputs such as water, light, heat, and nutrients are measured, monitored, and displayed for the public. This procedure makes palpable the immense scale of ecosystem contributions and provides a speculative reference for a reckoning of the undervalued and over exploited “work of the biosphere.”
Philipp Gartlehner of the Ars Electronica Center planted barley with the heilp of the Life Support system and after three months, the harvest was ready to be brought in. The cost for growing one square meter of barley indoors accounted for the massive amount of 430 Euro. Another reason why we really have to take care for our ecosystem.
Photo: Ars Electronica - Martin Hieslmair
IDN1 1988, IDN2 1989 by Malga Kubiak Archives The Ego Trip 1988, 1989
attention! the ego trip collection is not for minors!
NOTHING FOR MINORS!
music Zbigniew Karkowski
vocals & texts Malga Kubiak
recorded at Chalmers
cast Malga Kubiak
camera Malga Kubiak, Tjell Zachrison
editing Malga Kubiak
cast Malga Kubiak, Peo Soderberg, Tjell Zachrison, Lola Muller, CM von Hausswolff & many others
shark photos Laurie Dammert
shot GBG, NYC, GBG
a
complete review 1995
MISS MESS COMES TO TOWN
Material on Independent Film. Part I / By Mats Olsson
MISS TROUBLE HAS moved to Stockholm. Or perhaps she hasn't. When it
comes to Miss Mess, Maggachacka, Mango Chutney, Marga, or, as sheprefers to be called, Malga Kubiak, its difficult to know what she means by home.
A fabulously romantic woman who doesn't know if she's still a girl, and if she has the right to be. Of all people I've met, no one has attempted to act the part of the total Artist quite like her. Despite the fact that she is a quite nice person, very few have succeeded to such an extent in being provocative. This is not due to more profound strategies. Provocation seems to be innate to her, and its purpose is by no means exclusively to epater les bourgeois. In practice, though, this is what happens. Her victims are not just the pilots of leather
armchair etiquette, or the suburban couch potatoes, but also colleagues, gallerists, journalists, officials, chauvinists, feminists, old friends, premeditating men and prejudiced women; all of them encounter her very
apparition as an offense to the inner calm they've spent a lifetime attaining.
The irony here is striking. The spirit of the times is divided between a longing for the good old days of public projects and an extremely individualistic artistic ethic. In the case of Malga, her means of
expression are pathetic beyond recognition. The simple fact that the word pathetic is generally thought of as negative turns our resistance to her work an auto-ethic anesthesia. By all means - she's not alone in
being a misunderstood artist. Since the ban on absinthe in Paris, very few taken social obstinacy in art to its extremes. Her artistic expression is identical with her own life. She works exclusively with
herself. If other people take part , thye are only background for the superegotism of Miss Mess. This should however be seen as a generous act, as it comes across in her books, films and objects. Problems arise
since we still expect a ritualized interaction in so-called reality. Malga is not the queen of real power. In fact , she's unexpectedly lousy at practical stuff, such as money, layout and aesthetic control. Her art /life/ is maximally charged with sex, drugs, violence, travels, experiences, emotions, and quests. Due to her unfettered techniques of presentation, she retains true pathos. Her passionate abandon creates a secret. What she wants to say is easy to repress, despite the fact that it's much clearer than, for instance, this text.
During the last years, her travels through existence have taken place in the company of a young man, Harry Hoppe, probably the best Swedish poet today. It's hard to tell how you know something like that. I've
never read any of his work. But charismatically speaking this couple seems impeccable.
I'd like to recommend you all to read her latest book Baby Trouble which makes for difficult reading, and is only available on request from the artist. An easier way of becoming acquainted with her work is to see
her latest film , Babe Trouble-Hole, which according to the artist is more of comedy than her earlier films.
It opens at the Zita Theater in Stockholm. What you'll get is a not
entirely non-pornographic reflection on two people loving each other, and some slices of real life as well. If you should happen to bump into them in a bar, I strongly suggest that you buy them drinks. I also
recommend them for the government funding, preferably public art on Riddarholmen. I would like to advice against any kind of violence or trouble-making . And stay aloof from all business involving rock bands, or any other practicalities, if Chaggamacka is in the vicinity.
REVIEW
The Ego Trip Collection
I The Ego Trip Collection ingar b la "Ego", "Super Ego", "IDN1", 2 och 3. orsaken till att jag väljer att ta upp dem tillsammans är att de stilmässigt och innehallsmässigt ligger nära varandra.
Hur ska man beskriva dessa filmer? Trots att jag har sett de här filmerna ett antal ganger är mitt intryck detsamma: ett rasande kaos. Eller som Malga själv kanske skulle uttrycka det: "films about love/ sex/ death/ hate/ life" osv. Det kan lata osammanhängande och diffust, men faktum är att det finns en mycket stark "drive" i dessa videos. detta beror till stor del pa den hetsiga klippningen och den pumpande elektroakustiska musiken av exempelvis Karkowski, kombinerat med Malgas jagade, skrikande diktuppläsning. Mörbultningseffekten är stark, särskilt om man ser filmerna i en mörklagd biograf med maximal volym. I mitt tycke fungerar The Ego Trip mer pa ett direkt fysiskt plan än pa ett intellektuellt. Det är inte lätt att vara distanserad inför denna totalanstormning. Trots den ringa mediala uppmärksamheten har det alltid uppstatt debatt kring Malga Kubiaks filmer varhelst de visats. I stort sett har invändningarna följt samma mönster: "jag har inget emot sex/ jag är inte pryd/ men detta är onödigt/ känns förnedrande. Att det är en kvinna som star bakom filmerna anses intressant nog vara extra graverande. "Hur kan hon ställa upp pa porrindustrins värderingar?".Alla som har läst den här recensionen förstar antagligen, dels pa grund av titlarna, dels pa grund av innehallsbeskrivningen, att det här rör sig om videos som ligger miltals fran det som produceras av porrbranschen, om ni inte har en bild av porrfilm som innefattar assosiativ klippning, skrikande poeter, intervjuer med Nick Cave och extremt brutal musik. Da fragar sig kanske läsaren av denna text om jag kan garantera att ingen blir kat av dessa filmer. Nej, jag kan givetvis inte utfärda nagra sadana garantier. Här förekommer manga bilder av nakenhet, onani och knullande.Men det som skiljer sig absolut mest mellan Malgas videos och vanliga porrfilmer är följande (nu ska jag försöka bli sa pedagogisk som möjligt sa att alla ska första och jag tror att de flesta som läser detta har sett atminstone brottsstycken ur vanliga porrfilmer, det underlättar om ni vill följa med i resonemanget): en porrfilm försöker göra tittaren sa kat som möjligt för att han (jag förutsätter helt dogmatiskt att alla porrkonsumenter är män) ska komma i hag sin kathet och hyra fler p-rullar. Detta gör porrfilmen genom att visa sa mycket sex som möjligt under filmens längd. Det klipps visserligen ocksa i en porrfilm, men da fran en sexbild till en annan sexbild, inte fran en sexbild till en poesiuppläsning, till en tandlös knarkare, till en sexbild, till en polisbil, till Nick Cave. Det är möjligt att en och annan porrkonsument skulle kunna luras till att köpa Malgas videos. Han kommer att bli besviken.
Jag hoppas att jag varit extremt övertydlig i detta resonemang.
Fredrik Gustavsson
Her work is egocentric, exhibitionistic, pretentious, vulgar, obscene, obstinate, banal, painful, pathetic, messy, disturbing and provoking everyone
Mats Olsson, DS Art News, October 1990
Mats Olsson earlier review on malga kubiak film
only fragments are saved
malga kubiak
effektsokeri; stravan efter verkan. hon tycks vara befriad fran dent understrom av elitism som annars ar vanlig hos utovare och konsumenter av extrem och socialt verksamhet. hennes forbluffande odmjukhet raddar henne ocksa fran att fastna i det trask av sekterism som desarmerar uttrycken hos mangen ambitios bildstormare.ett fortjust fnitter fran em hycklande medborgare som fantiserar om spanande uttflykter i mot borgarnas koncentrations-lager-variant av Disney-land gor ingen mensch glad.
tankte nar de anordnade gladiatorspel, vill forsoka forklara behovet av videovald i var tid.
stilloshet; sjalvstandighet stilistiskt ar hennes videor i langa stycken traditionellt avantgardistiska. klicheer som normalt sett ar utfyllnad far for en gangs skull en chans att visa sin potential. en delikat mojlighet ar att hon i framtiden mer kommer att utnyttja de mojligheter till sublim kontrast och sense of wonder som hennes patetik idag antyder. men det ar farligt att forsoka reducera och koncentrera enligt nagons lag mot overdrifter. verk raseras av underbelastning pa ett plagsammare satt an av overbelastning. det ovanstaende galler ocksa det kongeniala ljudarbete som pa mycket hog volym bildar en, paradoxalt nog, mjuk audiosfar att ta sin tillflykt till nar bilderna plagar just dig. musiken av zbigniew karkowski.
..................
speciellt som man tenderar att hela tiden lagga en forsvarsstratego bade for henne och min egen text.det finns ingen hysa en from forhoppning om att autentcitet anda kan existera. malga kubiak videos innehaler foljande,sa hog ljudvolym att de permanent kan skada din horsel,bilder pa skote som aven en spekulativ pornograf skulle tycka vara grova.
mats olsson on malga kubiak art
Watch this video on Vimeo. Video created by vimeo.com/user4322168.
Call me Snake offers an optimistic provocation – ‘imagine what could be here’ by Judy Millar. On a walk into the city October 3, 2015 Christchurch New Zealand.
The work is comprised of vibrant graphics of Millar’s looped paintings, which are adhered to five intersecting flat planes, and draws inspiration from the forms found in pop-up books. The colourful piece will add a dramatic and rhythmic counterpoint to the city’s current urban landscape — a mix of flattened sites, construction zones and defiant buildings that have stood through the quakes. The work employs theatricality, playfulness and visual trickery, whereby the viewer is unsure about the work’s flatness or three-dimensionality; and it has been designed to offer a different perspective from each angle. The bright colours interrupt the grey of the work’s surrounds, and as buildings pop up around it,
SCAPE 8, New Intimacies curated by Rob Garrett was a contemporary art event which mixed new artworks with existing legacy pieces, an education programme, and a public programme of events. The SCAPE 8 artworks were located around central Christchurch and linked via a public art walkway. All aspects of SCAPE 8 were free-to-view.
The title for the 2015 Biennial – New Intimacies – came from the idea that visually striking and emotionally engaging public art works can create new connections between people and places. Under the main theme of New Intimacies there are three other themes that artists responded to: Sight-Lines, Inner Depths and Shared Strengths.
For more Info: www.scapepublicart.org.nz/scape-8-judy-millar
Kent State May 4 Shooting Site, Kent State University, Kent, Portage County, Ohio
THE MAY 4 SHOOTINGS AT KENT STATE UNIVERSITY: THE SEARCH FOR HISTORICAL ACCURACY
BY JERRY M. LEWIS and THOMAS R. HENSLEY
On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine Kent State students. The impact of the shootings was dramatic. The event triggered a nationwide student strike that forced hundreds of colleges and universities to close. H. R. Haldeman, a top aide to President Richard Nixon, suggests the shootings had a direct impact on national politics. In The Ends of Power, Haldeman (1978) states that the shootings at Kent State began the slide into Watergate, eventually destroying the Nixon administration. Beyond the direct effects of the May 4, the shootings have certainly come to symbolize the deep political and social divisions that so sharply divided the country during the Vietnam War era.
In the nearly three decades since May 4, l970, a voluminous literature has developed analyzing the events of May 4 and their aftermath. Some books were published quickly, providing a fresh but frequently superficial or inaccurate analysis of the shootings (e.g., Eszterhas and Roberts, 1970; Warren, 1970; Casale and Paskoff, 1971; Michener, 1971; Stone, 1971; Taylor et al., 1971; and Tompkins and Anderson, 1971). Numerous additional books have been published in subsequent years (e.g., Davies, 1973; Hare, 1973; Hensley and Lewis, 1978; Kelner and Munves, 1980; Hensley, 1981; Payne, 1981; Bills, 1988; and Gordon, 1997). These books have the advantage of a broader historical perspective than the earlier books, but no single book can be considered the definitive account of the events and aftermath of May 4, l970, at Kent State University.(1)
Despite the substantial literature which exists on the Kent State shootings, misinformation and misunderstanding continue to surround the events of May 4. For example, a prominent college-level United States history book by Mary Beth Norton et al. (1994), which is also used in high school advanced placement courses.(2) contains a picture of the shootings of May 4 accompanied by the following summary of events: "In May 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, National Guardsmen confronted student antiwar protestors with a tear gas barrage. Soon afterward, with no provocation, soldiers opened fire into a group of fleeing students. Four young people were killed, shot in the back, including two women who had been walking to class." (Norton et al., 1994, p. 732) Unfortunately, this short description contains four factual errors: (1) some degree of provocation did exist; (2) the students were not fleeing when the Guard initially opened fire; (3) only one of the four students who died, William Schroeder, was shot in the back; and (4) one female student, Sandy Schreuer, had been walking to class, but the other female, Allison Krause, had been part of the demonstration.
This article is an attempt to deal with the historical inaccuracies that surround the May 4 shootings at Kent State University by providing high school social studies teachers with a resource to which they can turn if they wish to teach about the subject or to involve students in research on the issue. Our approach is to raise and provide answers to twelve of the most frequently asked questions about May 4 at Kent State. We will also offer a list of the most important questions involving the shootings which have not yet been answered satisfactorily. Finally, we will conclude with a brief annotated bibliography for those wishing to explore the subject further.
WHY WAS THE OHIO NATIONAL GUARD CALLED TO KENT?
The decision to bring the Ohio National Guard onto the Kent State University campus was directly related to decisions regarding American involvement in the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon was elected president of the United States in 1968 based in part on his promise to bring an end to the war in Vietnam. During the first year of Nixon's presidency, America's involvement in the war appeared to be winding down. In late April of 1970, however, the United States invaded Cambodia and widened the Vietnam War. This decision was announced on national television and radio on April 30, l970, by President Nixon, who stated that the invasion of Cambodia was designed to attack the headquarters of the Viet Cong, which had been using Cambodian territory as a sanctuary.
Protests occurred the next day, Friday, May 1, across United States college campuses where anti-war sentiment ran high. At Kent State University, an anti-war rally was held at noon on the Commons, a large, grassy area in the middle of campus which had traditionally been the site for various types of rallies and demonstrations. Fiery speeches against the war and the Nixon administration were given, a copy of the Constitution was buried to symbolize the murder of the Constitution because Congress had never declared war, and another rally was called for noon on Monday, May 4.
Friday evening in downtown Kent began peacefully with the usual socializing in the bars, but events quickly escalated into a violent confrontation between protestors and local police. The exact causes of the disturbance are still the subject of debate, but bonfires were built in the streets of downtown Kent, cars were stopped, police cars were hit with bottles, and some store windows were broken. The entire Kent police force was called to duty as well as officers from the county and surrounding communities. Kent Mayor Leroy Satrom declared a state of emergency, called Governor James Rhodes' office to seek assistance, and ordered all of the bars closed. The decision to close the bars early increased the size of the angry crowd. Police eventually succeeded in using tear gas to disperse the crowd from downtown, forcing them to move several blocks back to the campus.
The next day, Saturday, May 2, Mayor Satrom met with other city officials and a representative of the Ohio National Guard who had been dispatched to Kent. Mayor Satrom then made the decision to ask Governor Rhodes to send the Ohio National Guard to Kent. The mayor feared further disturbances in Kent based upon the events of the previous evening, but more disturbing to the mayor were threats that had been made to downtown businesses and city officials as well as rumors that radical revolutionaries were in Kent to destroy the city and the university. Satrom was fearful that local forces would be inadequate to meet the potential disturbances, and thus about 5 p.m. he called the Governor's office to make an official request for assistance from the Ohio National Guard.
WHAT HAPPENED ON THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY CAMPUS ON SATURDAY MAY 2 AND SUNDAY MAY 3 AFTER THE GUARDS ARRIVED ON CAMPUS?
Members of the Ohio National Guard were already on duty in Northeast Ohio, and thus they were able to be mobilized quickly to move to Kent. As the Guard arrived in Kent at about 10 p.m., they encountered a tumultuous scene. The wooden ROTC building adjacent to the Commons was ablaze and would eventually burn to the ground that evening, with well over 1,000 demonstrators surrounding the building. Controversy continues to exist regarding who was responsible for setting fire to the ROTC building, but radical protestors were assumed to be responsible because of their actions in interfering with the efforts of firemen to extinguish the fire as well as cheering the burning of the building. Confrontations between Guardsmen and demonstrators continued into the night, with tear gas filling the campus and numerous arrests being made.
Sunday, May 3 was a day filled with contrasts. Nearly 1,000 Ohio National Guardsmen occupied the campus, making it appear like a military war zone. The day was warm and sunny, however, and students frequently talked amicably with Guardsmen. Ohio Governor James Rhodes flew to Kent on Sunday morning, and his mood was anything but calm. At a press conference, he issued a provocative statement calling campus protestors the worst type of people in America and stating that every force of law would be used to deal with them. Rhodes also indicated that he would seek a court order declaring a state of emergency. This was never done, but the widespread assumption among both Guard and University officials was that a state of martial law was being declared in which control of the campus resided with the Guard rather than University leaders and all rallies were banned. Further confrontations between protesters and guardsmen occurred Sunday evening, and once again rocks, tear gas, and arrests characterized a tense campus.
WHAT TYPE OF RALLY WAS HELD AT NOON ON MAY 4?
At the conclusion of the anti-war rally on Friday, May 1, student protest leaders had called for another rally to be held on the Commons at noon on Monday, May 4. Although University officials had attempted on the morning of May 4 to inform the campus that the rally was prohibited, a crowd began to gather beginning as early as 11 a.m. By noon, the entire Commons area contained approximately 3,000 people. Although estimates are inexact, probably about 500 core demonstrators were gathered around the Victory Bell at one end of the Commons, another 1,000 people were "cheerleaders" supporting the active demonstrators, and an additional 1,500 people were spectators standing around the perimeter of the Commons. Across the Commons at the burned-out ROTC building stood about 100 Ohio National Guardsmen carrying lethal M-1 military rifles.
Substantial consensus exists that the active participants in the rally were primarily protesting the presence of the Guard on campus, although a strong anti-war sentiment was also present. Little evidence exists as to who were the leaders of the rally and what activities were planned, but initially the rally was peaceful.
WHO MADE THE DECISION TO BAN THE RALLY OF MAY 4?
Conflicting evidence exists regarding who was responsible for the decision to ban the noon rally of May 4. At the 1975 federal civil trial, General Robert Canterbury, the highest official of the Guard, testified that widespread consensus existed that the rally should be prohibited because of the tensions that existed and the possibility that violence would again occur. Canterbury further testified that Kent State President Robert White had explicitly told Canterbury that any demonstration would be highly dangerous. In contrast, White testified that he could recall no conversation with Canterbury regarding banning the rally.
The decision to ban the rally can most accurately be traced to Governor Rhodes' statements on Sunday, May 3 when he stated that he would be seeking a state of emergency declaration from the courts. Although he never did this, all officials -- Guard, University, Kent -- assumed that the Guard was now in charge of the campus and that all rallies were illegal. Thus, University leaders printed and distributed on Monday morning 12,000 leaflets indicating that all rallies, including the May 4 rally scheduled for noon, were prohibited as long as the Guard was in control of the campus.
WHAT EVENTS LED DIRECTLY TO THE SHOOTINGS?
Shortly before noon, General Canterbury made the decision to order the demonstrators to disperse. A Kent State police officer standing by the Guard made an announcement using a bullhorn. When this had no effect, the officer was placed in a jeep along with several Guardsmen and driven across the Commons to tell the protestors that the rally was banned and that they must disperse. This was met with angry shouting and rocks, and the jeep retreated. Canterbury then ordered his men to load and lock their weapons, tear gas canisters were fired into the crowd around the Victory Bell, and the Guard began to march across the Commons to disperse the rally. The protestors moved up a steep hill, known as Blanket Hill, and then down the other side of the hill onto the Prentice Hall parking lot as well as an adjoining practice football field. Most of the Guardsmen followed the students directly and soon found themselves somewhat trapped on the practice football field because it was surrounded by a fence. Yelling and rock throwing reached a peak as the Guard remained on the field for about 10 minutes. Several Guardsmen could be seen huddling together, and some Guardsmen knelt and pointed their guns, but no weapons were shot at this time. The Guard then began retracing their steps from the practice football field back up Blanket Hill. As they arrived at the top of the hill, 28 of the more than 70 Guardsmen turned suddenly and fired their rifles and pistols. Many guardsmen fired into the air or the ground. However, a small portion fired directly into the crowd. Altogether between 61 and 67 shots were fired in a 13-second period.
HOW MANY DEATHS AND INJURIES OCCURRED?
Four Kent State students died as a result of the firing by the Guard. The closest student was Jeffrey Miller, who was shot in the mouth while standing in an access road leading into the Prentice Hall parking lot, a distance of approximately 270 feet from the Guard. Allison Krause was in the Prentice Hall parking lot; she was 330 feet from the Guardsmen and was shot in the left side of her body. William Schroeder was 390 feet from the Guard in the Prentice Hall parking lot when he was shot in the left side of his back. Sandra Scheuer was also about 390 feet from the Guard in the Prentice Hall parking lot when a bullet pierced the left front side of her neck.
Nine Kent State students were wounded in the 13-second fusillade. Most of the students were in the Prentice Hall parking lot, but a few were on the Blanket Hill area. Joseph Lewis was the student closest to the Guard at a distance of about 60 feet; he was standing still with Four men sit staring at a candle-lit stage, on which there are portraits of the four Kent State students who died as a result of the firing by the Guard.his middle finger extended when bullets struck him in the right abdomen and left lower leg. Thomas Grace was also approximately 60 feet from the Guardsmen and was wounded in the left ankle. John Cleary was over 100 feet from the Guardsmen when he was hit in the upper left chest. Alan Canfora was 225 feet from the Guard and was struck in the right wrist. Dean Kahler was the most seriously wounded of the nine students. He was struck in the small of his back from approximately 300 feet and was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Douglas Wrentmore was wounded in the right knee from a distance of 330 feet. James Russell was struck in the right thigh and right forehead at a distance of 375 feet. Robert Stamps was almost 500 feet from the line of fire when he was wounded in the right buttock. Donald Mackenzie was the student the farthest from the Guardsmen at a distance of almost 750 feet when he was hit in the neck.
WHY DID THE GUARDSMEN FIRE?
The most important question associated with the events of May 4 is why did members of the Guard fire into a crowd of unarmed students? Two quite different answers have been advanced to this question: (1) the Guardsmen fired in self-defense, and the shootings were therefore justified and (2) the Guardsmen were not in immediate danger, and therefore the shootings were unjustified.
The answer offered by the Guardsmen is that they fired because they were in fear of their lives. Guardsmen testified before numerous investigating commissions as well as in federal court that they felt the demonstrators were advancing on them in such a way as to pose a serious and immediate threat to the safety of the Guardsmen, and they therefore had to fire in self-defense. Some authors (e.g., Michener, 1971 and Grant and Hill, 1974) agree with this assessment. Much more importantly, federal criminal and civil trials have accepted the position of the Guardsmen. In a 1974 federal criminal trial, District Judge Frank Battisti dismissed the case against eight Guardsmen indicted by a federal grand jury, ruling at mid-trial that the government's case against the Guardsmen was so weak that the defense did not have to present its case. In the much longer and more complex federal civil trial of 1975, a jury voted 9-3 that none of the Guardsmen were legally responsible for the shootings. This decision was appealed, however, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a new trial had to be held because of the improper handling of a threat to a jury member.
The legal aftermath of the May 4 shootings ended in January of 1979 with an out-of-court settlement involving a statement signed by 28 defendants(3) as well as a monetary settlement, and the Guardsmen and their supporters view this as a final vindication of their position. The financial settlement provided $675,000 to the wounded students and the parents of the students who had been killed. This money was paid by the State of Ohio rather than by any Guardsmen, and the amount equaled what the State estimated it would cost to go to trial again. Perhaps most importantly, the statement signed by members of the Ohio National Guard was viewed by them to be a declaration of regret, not an apology or an admission of wrongdoing:
In retrospect, the tragedy of May 4, 1970 should not have occurred. The students may have believed that they were right in continuing their mass protest in response to the Cambodian invasion, even though this protest followed the posting and reading by the university of an order to ban rallies and an order to disperse. These orders have since been determined by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to have been lawful.
Some of the Guardsmen on Blanket Hill, fearful and anxious from prior events, may have believed in their own minds that their lives were in danger. Hindsight suggests that another method would have resolved the confrontation. Better ways must be found to deal with such a confrontation.
We devoutly wish that a means had been found to avoid the May 4th events culminating in the Guard shootings and the irreversible deaths and injuries. We deeply regret those events and are profoundly saddened by the deaths of four students and the wounding of nine others which resulted. We hope that the agreement to end the litigation will help to assuage the tragic memories regarding that sad day.
A starkly different interpretation to that of the Guards' has been offered in numerous other studies of the shootings, with all of these analyses sharing the common viewpoint that primary responsibility for the shootings lies with the Guardsmen. Some authors (e.g., Stone, 1971; Davies, 1973; and Kelner and Munves, 1980) argue that the Guardsmen's lives were not in danger. Instead, these authors argue that the evidence shows that certain members of the Guard conspired on the practice football field to fire when they reached the top of Blanket Hill. Other authors (e.g., Best, 1981 and Payne, 1981) do not find sufficient evidence to accept the conspiracy theory, but they also do not find the Guard self-defense theory to be plausible. Experts who find the Guard primarily responsible find themselves in agreement with the conclusion of the Scranton Commission (Report , 1970, p. 87): "The indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable."
WHAT HAPPENED IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE SHOOTINGS?
While debate still remains about the extent to which the Guardsmen's lives were in danger at the moment they opened fire, little doubt can exist that their lives were indeed at stake in the immediate aftermath of the shootings. The 13-second shooting that resulted in four deaths and nine wounded could have been followed by an even more tragic and bloody confrontation. The nervous and fearful Guardsmen retreated back to the Commons, facing a large and hostile crowd which realized that the Guard had live ammunition and had used it to kill and wound a large number of people. In their intense anger, many demonstrators were willing to risk their own lives to attack the Guardsmen, and there can be little doubt that the Guard would have opened fire again, this time killing a much larger number of students.
A man and young boy stare up at a May 4th Memorial.Further tragedy was prevented by the actions of a number of Kent State University faculty marshals, who had organized hastily when trouble began several days earlier. Led by Professor Glenn Frank, the faculty members pleaded with National Guard leaders to allow them to talk with the demonstrators, and then they begged the students not to risk their lives by confronting the Guardsmen. After about 20 minutes of emotional pleading, the marshals convinced the students to leave the Commons.
Back at the site of the shootings, ambulances had arrived and emergency medical attention had been given to the students who had not died immediately. The ambulances formed a screaming procession as they rushed the victims of the shootings to the local hospital.
The University was ordered closed immediately, first by President Robert White and then indefinitely by Portage County Prosecutor Ronald Kane under an injunction from Common Pleas Judge Albert Caris. Classes did not resume until the Summer of 1970, and faculty members engaged in a wide variety of activities through the mail and off-campus meetings that enabled Kent State students to finish the semester.
WHAT IS THE STORY BEHIND THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING PHOTO OF THE YOUNG WOMAN CRYING OUT IN HORROR OVER THE DYING BODY OF ONE OF THE STUDENTS?
A photograph of Mary Vecchio, a 14-year-old runaway, screaming over the body of Jeffery Miller appeared on the front pages of newspapers and magazines throughout the country, and the photographer, John Filo, was to win a Pulitzer Prize for the picture. The photo has taken on a life and importance of its own. This analysis looks at the photo, the photographer, and the impact of the photo.
The Mary Vecchio picture shows her on one knee screaming over Jeffrey Miller's body. Mary told one of us that she was calling for help because she felt she could do nothing (Personal Interview, 4/4/94). Miller is lying on the tarmac of the Prentice Hall parking lot. One student is standing near the Miller body closer than Vecchio. Four students are seen in the immediate background.
John Filo, a Kent State photography major in 1970, continues to works as a professional newspaper photographer and editor. He was near the Prentice Hall parking lot when the Guard fired. He saw bullets hitting the ground, but he did not take cover because he thought the bullets were blanks. Of course, blanks cannot hit the ground.
WHAT WAS THE LONG-TERM FACULTY RESPONSE TO THE SHOOTINGS?
Three hours after the shootings Kent State closed and was not to open for six weeks as a viable university. When it resumed classes in the Summer of 1970, its faculty was charged with three new responsibilities, their residues remaining today.
A student holds a candle at night to remember the victims of the May 4th shootings.First, we as a University faculty had to bring aid and comfort to our own. This began earlier on with faculty trying to finish the academic quarter with a reasonable amount of academic integrity. It had ended about at mid-term examinations. However, the faculty voted before the week was out to help students complete the quarter in any way possible. Students were advised to study independently until they were contacted by individual professors. Most of the professors organized their completion of courses around papers, but many gave lectures in churches and in homes in the community of Kent and surrounding communities. For example, Norman Duffy, an award-winning teacher, gave off-campus chemistry lectures and tutorial sessions in Kent and Cleveland. His graduate students made films of laboratory sessions and mailed them to students.
Beyond helping thousands of students finish their courses, there were 1,900 students as well who needed help with gradation. Talking to students about courses allowed the faculty to do some counseling about the shootings, which helped the faculty as much in healing as it did students.
Second, the University faculty was called upon to conduct research about May 4 communicating the results of this research through teaching and traditional writing about the tragedy. Many responded and created a solid body of scholarship as well as an extremely useful archive contributing to a wide range of activities in Summer of 1970 including press interviews and the Scranton Commission.
Third, many saw as one of the faculty's challenges to develop alternative forms of protest and conflict resolution to help prevent tragedies such as the May 4 shootings and the killings at Jackson State 10 days after Kent State.
WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE MAY 4 SHOOTINGS?
Although we have attempted in this article to answer many of the most important and frequently asked questions about the May 4 shootings, our responses have sometimes been tentative because many important questions remain unanswered. It thus seems important to ask what are the most significant questions which yet remain unanswered about the May 4 events. These questions could serve as the basis for research projects by students who are interested in studying the shootings in greater detail.
(1) Who was responsible for the violence in downtown Kent and on the Kent State campus in the three days prior to May 4? As an important part of this question, were "outside agitators" primarily responsible? Who was responsible for setting fire to the ROTC building?
(2) Should the Guard have been called to Kent and Kent State University? Could local law enforcement personnel have handled any situations? Were the Guard properly trained for this type of assignment?
(3) Did the Kent State University administration respond appropriately in their reactions to the demonstrations and with Ohio political officials and Guard officials?
(4) Would the shootings have been avoided if the rally had not been banned? Did the banning of the rally violate First Amendment rights?
(5) Did the Guardsmen conspire to shoot students when they huddled on the practice football field? If not, why did they fire? Were they justified in firing?
(6) Who was ultimately responsible for the events of May 4, l970?
WHY SHOULD WE STILL BE CONCERNED ABOUT MAY 4, 1970 AT KENT STATE?
In Robert McNamara's (1995) book, "In Retrospect:The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" is a way to begin is an illustration of the this process. In it he says that United States policy towards Vietnam was "... terribly wrong and we owe it to future generations to explain why."
The May 4 shootings at Kent State need to be remembered for several reasons. First, the shootings have come to symbolize a great American tragedy which occurred at the height of the Vietnam War era, a period in which the nation found itself deeply divided both politically and culturally. The poignant picture of Mary Vecchio kneeling in agony over Jeffrey Miller's body, for example, will remain forever Students gather in a circle, holding hands around a May 4th memorial to remember the victims of the Guard shootings.as a reminder of the day when the Vietnam War came home to America. If the Kent State shootings will continue to be such a powerful symbol, then it is certainly important that Americans have a realistic view of the facts associated with this event. Second, May 4 at Kent State and the Vietnam War era remain controversial even today, and the need for healing continues to exist. Healing will not occur if events are either forgotten or distorted, and hence it is important to continue to search for the truth behind the events of May 4 at Kent State. Third, and most importantly, May 4 at Kent State should be remembered in order that we can learn from the mistakes of the past. The Guardsmen in their signed statement at the end of the civil trials recognized that better ways have to be found to deal with these types of confrontations. This has probably already occurred in numerous situations where law enforcement officials have issued a caution to their troops to be careful because "we don't want another Kent State." Insofar as this has happened, lessons have been learned, and the deaths of four young Kent State students have not been in vain.
Kent State May 4 Shooting Site, Kent State University, Kent, Portage County, Ohio
THE MAY 4 SHOOTINGS AT KENT STATE UNIVERSITY: THE SEARCH FOR HISTORICAL ACCURACY
BY JERRY M. LEWIS and THOMAS R. HENSLEY
On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine Kent State students. The impact of the shootings was dramatic. The event triggered a nationwide student strike that forced hundreds of colleges and universities to close. H. R. Haldeman, a top aide to President Richard Nixon, suggests the shootings had a direct impact on national politics. In The Ends of Power, Haldeman (1978) states that the shootings at Kent State began the slide into Watergate, eventually destroying the Nixon administration. Beyond the direct effects of the May 4, the shootings have certainly come to symbolize the deep political and social divisions that so sharply divided the country during the Vietnam War era.
In the nearly three decades since May 4, l970, a voluminous literature has developed analyzing the events of May 4 and their aftermath. Some books were published quickly, providing a fresh but frequently superficial or inaccurate analysis of the shootings (e.g., Eszterhas and Roberts, 1970; Warren, 1970; Casale and Paskoff, 1971; Michener, 1971; Stone, 1971; Taylor et al., 1971; and Tompkins and Anderson, 1971). Numerous additional books have been published in subsequent years (e.g., Davies, 1973; Hare, 1973; Hensley and Lewis, 1978; Kelner and Munves, 1980; Hensley, 1981; Payne, 1981; Bills, 1988; and Gordon, 1997). These books have the advantage of a broader historical perspective than the earlier books, but no single book can be considered the definitive account of the events and aftermath of May 4, l970, at Kent State University.(1)
Despite the substantial literature which exists on the Kent State shootings, misinformation and misunderstanding continue to surround the events of May 4. For example, a prominent college-level United States history book by Mary Beth Norton et al. (1994), which is also used in high school advanced placement courses.(2) contains a picture of the shootings of May 4 accompanied by the following summary of events: "In May 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, National Guardsmen confronted student antiwar protestors with a tear gas barrage. Soon afterward, with no provocation, soldiers opened fire into a group of fleeing students. Four young people were killed, shot in the back, including two women who had been walking to class." (Norton et al., 1994, p. 732) Unfortunately, this short description contains four factual errors: (1) some degree of provocation did exist; (2) the students were not fleeing when the Guard initially opened fire; (3) only one of the four students who died, William Schroeder, was shot in the back; and (4) one female student, Sandy Schreuer, had been walking to class, but the other female, Allison Krause, had been part of the demonstration.
This article is an attempt to deal with the historical inaccuracies that surround the May 4 shootings at Kent State University by providing high school social studies teachers with a resource to which they can turn if they wish to teach about the subject or to involve students in research on the issue. Our approach is to raise and provide answers to twelve of the most frequently asked questions about May 4 at Kent State. We will also offer a list of the most important questions involving the shootings which have not yet been answered satisfactorily. Finally, we will conclude with a brief annotated bibliography for those wishing to explore the subject further.
WHY WAS THE OHIO NATIONAL GUARD CALLED TO KENT?
The decision to bring the Ohio National Guard onto the Kent State University campus was directly related to decisions regarding American involvement in the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon was elected president of the United States in 1968 based in part on his promise to bring an end to the war in Vietnam. During the first year of Nixon's presidency, America's involvement in the war appeared to be winding down. In late April of 1970, however, the United States invaded Cambodia and widened the Vietnam War. This decision was announced on national television and radio on April 30, l970, by President Nixon, who stated that the invasion of Cambodia was designed to attack the headquarters of the Viet Cong, which had been using Cambodian territory as a sanctuary.
Protests occurred the next day, Friday, May 1, across United States college campuses where anti-war sentiment ran high. At Kent State University, an anti-war rally was held at noon on the Commons, a large, grassy area in the middle of campus which had traditionally been the site for various types of rallies and demonstrations. Fiery speeches against the war and the Nixon administration were given, a copy of the Constitution was buried to symbolize the murder of the Constitution because Congress had never declared war, and another rally was called for noon on Monday, May 4.
Friday evening in downtown Kent began peacefully with the usual socializing in the bars, but events quickly escalated into a violent confrontation between protestors and local police. The exact causes of the disturbance are still the subject of debate, but bonfires were built in the streets of downtown Kent, cars were stopped, police cars were hit with bottles, and some store windows were broken. The entire Kent police force was called to duty as well as officers from the county and surrounding communities. Kent Mayor Leroy Satrom declared a state of emergency, called Governor James Rhodes' office to seek assistance, and ordered all of the bars closed. The decision to close the bars early increased the size of the angry crowd. Police eventually succeeded in using tear gas to disperse the crowd from downtown, forcing them to move several blocks back to the campus.
The next day, Saturday, May 2, Mayor Satrom met with other city officials and a representative of the Ohio National Guard who had been dispatched to Kent. Mayor Satrom then made the decision to ask Governor Rhodes to send the Ohio National Guard to Kent. The mayor feared further disturbances in Kent based upon the events of the previous evening, but more disturbing to the mayor were threats that had been made to downtown businesses and city officials as well as rumors that radical revolutionaries were in Kent to destroy the city and the university. Satrom was fearful that local forces would be inadequate to meet the potential disturbances, and thus about 5 p.m. he called the Governor's office to make an official request for assistance from the Ohio National Guard.
WHAT HAPPENED ON THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY CAMPUS ON SATURDAY MAY 2 AND SUNDAY MAY 3 AFTER THE GUARDS ARRIVED ON CAMPUS?
Members of the Ohio National Guard were already on duty in Northeast Ohio, and thus they were able to be mobilized quickly to move to Kent. As the Guard arrived in Kent at about 10 p.m., they encountered a tumultuous scene. The wooden ROTC building adjacent to the Commons was ablaze and would eventually burn to the ground that evening, with well over 1,000 demonstrators surrounding the building. Controversy continues to exist regarding who was responsible for setting fire to the ROTC building, but radical protestors were assumed to be responsible because of their actions in interfering with the efforts of firemen to extinguish the fire as well as cheering the burning of the building. Confrontations between Guardsmen and demonstrators continued into the night, with tear gas filling the campus and numerous arrests being made.
Sunday, May 3 was a day filled with contrasts. Nearly 1,000 Ohio National Guardsmen occupied the campus, making it appear like a military war zone. The day was warm and sunny, however, and students frequently talked amicably with Guardsmen. Ohio Governor James Rhodes flew to Kent on Sunday morning, and his mood was anything but calm. At a press conference, he issued a provocative statement calling campus protestors the worst type of people in America and stating that every force of law would be used to deal with them. Rhodes also indicated that he would seek a court order declaring a state of emergency. This was never done, but the widespread assumption among both Guard and University officials was that a state of martial law was being declared in which control of the campus resided with the Guard rather than University leaders and all rallies were banned. Further confrontations between protesters and guardsmen occurred Sunday evening, and once again rocks, tear gas, and arrests characterized a tense campus.
WHAT TYPE OF RALLY WAS HELD AT NOON ON MAY 4?
At the conclusion of the anti-war rally on Friday, May 1, student protest leaders had called for another rally to be held on the Commons at noon on Monday, May 4. Although University officials had attempted on the morning of May 4 to inform the campus that the rally was prohibited, a crowd began to gather beginning as early as 11 a.m. By noon, the entire Commons area contained approximately 3,000 people. Although estimates are inexact, probably about 500 core demonstrators were gathered around the Victory Bell at one end of the Commons, another 1,000 people were "cheerleaders" supporting the active demonstrators, and an additional 1,500 people were spectators standing around the perimeter of the Commons. Across the Commons at the burned-out ROTC building stood about 100 Ohio National Guardsmen carrying lethal M-1 military rifles.
Substantial consensus exists that the active participants in the rally were primarily protesting the presence of the Guard on campus, although a strong anti-war sentiment was also present. Little evidence exists as to who were the leaders of the rally and what activities were planned, but initially the rally was peaceful.
WHO MADE THE DECISION TO BAN THE RALLY OF MAY 4?
Conflicting evidence exists regarding who was responsible for the decision to ban the noon rally of May 4. At the 1975 federal civil trial, General Robert Canterbury, the highest official of the Guard, testified that widespread consensus existed that the rally should be prohibited because of the tensions that existed and the possibility that violence would again occur. Canterbury further testified that Kent State President Robert White had explicitly told Canterbury that any demonstration would be highly dangerous. In contrast, White testified that he could recall no conversation with Canterbury regarding banning the rally.
The decision to ban the rally can most accurately be traced to Governor Rhodes' statements on Sunday, May 3 when he stated that he would be seeking a state of emergency declaration from the courts. Although he never did this, all officials -- Guard, University, Kent -- assumed that the Guard was now in charge of the campus and that all rallies were illegal. Thus, University leaders printed and distributed on Monday morning 12,000 leaflets indicating that all rallies, including the May 4 rally scheduled for noon, were prohibited as long as the Guard was in control of the campus.
WHAT EVENTS LED DIRECTLY TO THE SHOOTINGS?
Shortly before noon, General Canterbury made the decision to order the demonstrators to disperse. A Kent State police officer standing by the Guard made an announcement using a bullhorn. When this had no effect, the officer was placed in a jeep along with several Guardsmen and driven across the Commons to tell the protestors that the rally was banned and that they must disperse. This was met with angry shouting and rocks, and the jeep retreated. Canterbury then ordered his men to load and lock their weapons, tear gas canisters were fired into the crowd around the Victory Bell, and the Guard began to march across the Commons to disperse the rally. The protestors moved up a steep hill, known as Blanket Hill, and then down the other side of the hill onto the Prentice Hall parking lot as well as an adjoining practice football field. Most of the Guardsmen followed the students directly and soon found themselves somewhat trapped on the practice football field because it was surrounded by a fence. Yelling and rock throwing reached a peak as the Guard remained on the field for about 10 minutes. Several Guardsmen could be seen huddling together, and some Guardsmen knelt and pointed their guns, but no weapons were shot at this time. The Guard then began retracing their steps from the practice football field back up Blanket Hill. As they arrived at the top of the hill, 28 of the more than 70 Guardsmen turned suddenly and fired their rifles and pistols. Many guardsmen fired into the air or the ground. However, a small portion fired directly into the crowd. Altogether between 61 and 67 shots were fired in a 13-second period.
HOW MANY DEATHS AND INJURIES OCCURRED?
Four Kent State students died as a result of the firing by the Guard. The closest student was Jeffrey Miller, who was shot in the mouth while standing in an access road leading into the Prentice Hall parking lot, a distance of approximately 270 feet from the Guard. Allison Krause was in the Prentice Hall parking lot; she was 330 feet from the Guardsmen and was shot in the left side of her body. William Schroeder was 390 feet from the Guard in the Prentice Hall parking lot when he was shot in the left side of his back. Sandra Scheuer was also about 390 feet from the Guard in the Prentice Hall parking lot when a bullet pierced the left front side of her neck.
Nine Kent State students were wounded in the 13-second fusillade. Most of the students were in the Prentice Hall parking lot, but a few were on the Blanket Hill area. Joseph Lewis was the student closest to the Guard at a distance of about 60 feet; he was standing still with Four men sit staring at a candle-lit stage, on which there are portraits of the four Kent State students who died as a result of the firing by the Guard.his middle finger extended when bullets struck him in the right abdomen and left lower leg. Thomas Grace was also approximately 60 feet from the Guardsmen and was wounded in the left ankle. John Cleary was over 100 feet from the Guardsmen when he was hit in the upper left chest. Alan Canfora was 225 feet from the Guard and was struck in the right wrist. Dean Kahler was the most seriously wounded of the nine students. He was struck in the small of his back from approximately 300 feet and was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Douglas Wrentmore was wounded in the right knee from a distance of 330 feet. James Russell was struck in the right thigh and right forehead at a distance of 375 feet. Robert Stamps was almost 500 feet from the line of fire when he was wounded in the right buttock. Donald Mackenzie was the student the farthest from the Guardsmen at a distance of almost 750 feet when he was hit in the neck.
WHY DID THE GUARDSMEN FIRE?
The most important question associated with the events of May 4 is why did members of the Guard fire into a crowd of unarmed students? Two quite different answers have been advanced to this question: (1) the Guardsmen fired in self-defense, and the shootings were therefore justified and (2) the Guardsmen were not in immediate danger, and therefore the shootings were unjustified.
The answer offered by the Guardsmen is that they fired because they were in fear of their lives. Guardsmen testified before numerous investigating commissions as well as in federal court that they felt the demonstrators were advancing on them in such a way as to pose a serious and immediate threat to the safety of the Guardsmen, and they therefore had to fire in self-defense. Some authors (e.g., Michener, 1971 and Grant and Hill, 1974) agree with this assessment. Much more importantly, federal criminal and civil trials have accepted the position of the Guardsmen. In a 1974 federal criminal trial, District Judge Frank Battisti dismissed the case against eight Guardsmen indicted by a federal grand jury, ruling at mid-trial that the government's case against the Guardsmen was so weak that the defense did not have to present its case. In the much longer and more complex federal civil trial of 1975, a jury voted 9-3 that none of the Guardsmen were legally responsible for the shootings. This decision was appealed, however, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a new trial had to be held because of the improper handling of a threat to a jury member.
The legal aftermath of the May 4 shootings ended in January of 1979 with an out-of-court settlement involving a statement signed by 28 defendants(3) as well as a monetary settlement, and the Guardsmen and their supporters view this as a final vindication of their position. The financial settlement provided $675,000 to the wounded students and the parents of the students who had been killed. This money was paid by the State of Ohio rather than by any Guardsmen, and the amount equaled what the State estimated it would cost to go to trial again. Perhaps most importantly, the statement signed by members of the Ohio National Guard was viewed by them to be a declaration of regret, not an apology or an admission of wrongdoing:
In retrospect, the tragedy of May 4, 1970 should not have occurred. The students may have believed that they were right in continuing their mass protest in response to the Cambodian invasion, even though this protest followed the posting and reading by the university of an order to ban rallies and an order to disperse. These orders have since been determined by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to have been lawful.
Some of the Guardsmen on Blanket Hill, fearful and anxious from prior events, may have believed in their own minds that their lives were in danger. Hindsight suggests that another method would have resolved the confrontation. Better ways must be found to deal with such a confrontation.
We devoutly wish that a means had been found to avoid the May 4th events culminating in the Guard shootings and the irreversible deaths and injuries. We deeply regret those events and are profoundly saddened by the deaths of four students and the wounding of nine others which resulted. We hope that the agreement to end the litigation will help to assuage the tragic memories regarding that sad day.
A starkly different interpretation to that of the Guards' has been offered in numerous other studies of the shootings, with all of these analyses sharing the common viewpoint that primary responsibility for the shootings lies with the Guardsmen. Some authors (e.g., Stone, 1971; Davies, 1973; and Kelner and Munves, 1980) argue that the Guardsmen's lives were not in danger. Instead, these authors argue that the evidence shows that certain members of the Guard conspired on the practice football field to fire when they reached the top of Blanket Hill. Other authors (e.g., Best, 1981 and Payne, 1981) do not find sufficient evidence to accept the conspiracy theory, but they also do not find the Guard self-defense theory to be plausible. Experts who find the Guard primarily responsible find themselves in agreement with the conclusion of the Scranton Commission (Report , 1970, p. 87): "The indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable."
WHAT HAPPENED IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE SHOOTINGS?
While debate still remains about the extent to which the Guardsmen's lives were in danger at the moment they opened fire, little doubt can exist that their lives were indeed at stake in the immediate aftermath of the shootings. The 13-second shooting that resulted in four deaths and nine wounded could have been followed by an even more tragic and bloody confrontation. The nervous and fearful Guardsmen retreated back to the Commons, facing a large and hostile crowd which realized that the Guard had live ammunition and had used it to kill and wound a large number of people. In their intense anger, many demonstrators were willing to risk their own lives to attack the Guardsmen, and there can be little doubt that the Guard would have opened fire again, this time killing a much larger number of students.
A man and young boy stare up at a May 4th Memorial.Further tragedy was prevented by the actions of a number of Kent State University faculty marshals, who had organized hastily when trouble began several days earlier. Led by Professor Glenn Frank, the faculty members pleaded with National Guard leaders to allow them to talk with the demonstrators, and then they begged the students not to risk their lives by confronting the Guardsmen. After about 20 minutes of emotional pleading, the marshals convinced the students to leave the Commons.
Back at the site of the shootings, ambulances had arrived and emergency medical attention had been given to the students who had not died immediately. The ambulances formed a screaming procession as they rushed the victims of the shootings to the local hospital.
The University was ordered closed immediately, first by President Robert White and then indefinitely by Portage County Prosecutor Ronald Kane under an injunction from Common Pleas Judge Albert Caris. Classes did not resume until the Summer of 1970, and faculty members engaged in a wide variety of activities through the mail and off-campus meetings that enabled Kent State students to finish the semester.
WHAT IS THE STORY BEHIND THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING PHOTO OF THE YOUNG WOMAN CRYING OUT IN HORROR OVER THE DYING BODY OF ONE OF THE STUDENTS?
A photograph of Mary Vecchio, a 14-year-old runaway, screaming over the body of Jeffery Miller appeared on the front pages of newspapers and magazines throughout the country, and the photographer, John Filo, was to win a Pulitzer Prize for the picture. The photo has taken on a life and importance of its own. This analysis looks at the photo, the photographer, and the impact of the photo.
The Mary Vecchio picture shows her on one knee screaming over Jeffrey Miller's body. Mary told one of us that she was calling for help because she felt she could do nothing (Personal Interview, 4/4/94). Miller is lying on the tarmac of the Prentice Hall parking lot. One student is standing near the Miller body closer than Vecchio. Four students are seen in the immediate background.
John Filo, a Kent State photography major in 1970, continues to works as a professional newspaper photographer and editor. He was near the Prentice Hall parking lot when the Guard fired. He saw bullets hitting the ground, but he did not take cover because he thought the bullets were blanks. Of course, blanks cannot hit the ground.
WHAT WAS THE LONG-TERM FACULTY RESPONSE TO THE SHOOTINGS?
Three hours after the shootings Kent State closed and was not to open for six weeks as a viable university. When it resumed classes in the Summer of 1970, its faculty was charged with three new responsibilities, their residues remaining today.
A student holds a candle at night to remember the victims of the May 4th shootings.First, we as a University faculty had to bring aid and comfort to our own. This began earlier on with faculty trying to finish the academic quarter with a reasonable amount of academic integrity. It had ended about at mid-term examinations. However, the faculty voted before the week was out to help students complete the quarter in any way possible. Students were advised to study independently until they were contacted by individual professors. Most of the professors organized their completion of courses around papers, but many gave lectures in churches and in homes in the community of Kent and surrounding communities. For example, Norman Duffy, an award-winning teacher, gave off-campus chemistry lectures and tutorial sessions in Kent and Cleveland. His graduate students made films of laboratory sessions and mailed them to students.
Beyond helping thousands of students finish their courses, there were 1,900 students as well who needed help with gradation. Talking to students about courses allowed the faculty to do some counseling about the shootings, which helped the faculty as much in healing as it did students.
Second, the University faculty was called upon to conduct research about May 4 communicating the results of this research through teaching and traditional writing about the tragedy. Many responded and created a solid body of scholarship as well as an extremely useful archive contributing to a wide range of activities in Summer of 1970 including press interviews and the Scranton Commission.
Third, many saw as one of the faculty's challenges to develop alternative forms of protest and conflict resolution to help prevent tragedies such as the May 4 shootings and the killings at Jackson State 10 days after Kent State.
WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE MAY 4 SHOOTINGS?
Although we have attempted in this article to answer many of the most important and frequently asked questions about the May 4 shootings, our responses have sometimes been tentative because many important questions remain unanswered. It thus seems important to ask what are the most significant questions which yet remain unanswered about the May 4 events. These questions could serve as the basis for research projects by students who are interested in studying the shootings in greater detail.
(1) Who was responsible for the violence in downtown Kent and on the Kent State campus in the three days prior to May 4? As an important part of this question, were "outside agitators" primarily responsible? Who was responsible for setting fire to the ROTC building?
(2) Should the Guard have been called to Kent and Kent State University? Could local law enforcement personnel have handled any situations? Were the Guard properly trained for this type of assignment?
(3) Did the Kent State University administration respond appropriately in their reactions to the demonstrations and with Ohio political officials and Guard officials?
(4) Would the shootings have been avoided if the rally had not been banned? Did the banning of the rally violate First Amendment rights?
(5) Did the Guardsmen conspire to shoot students when they huddled on the practice football field? If not, why did they fire? Were they justified in firing?
(6) Who was ultimately responsible for the events of May 4, l970?
WHY SHOULD WE STILL BE CONCERNED ABOUT MAY 4, 1970 AT KENT STATE?
In Robert McNamara's (1995) book, "In Retrospect:The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" is a way to begin is an illustration of the this process. In it he says that United States policy towards Vietnam was "... terribly wrong and we owe it to future generations to explain why."
The May 4 shootings at Kent State need to be remembered for several reasons. First, the shootings have come to symbolize a great American tragedy which occurred at the height of the Vietnam War era, a period in which the nation found itself deeply divided both politically and culturally. The poignant picture of Mary Vecchio kneeling in agony over Jeffrey Miller's body, for example, will remain forever Students gather in a circle, holding hands around a May 4th memorial to remember the victims of the Guard shootings.as a reminder of the day when the Vietnam War came home to America. If the Kent State shootings will continue to be such a powerful symbol, then it is certainly important that Americans have a realistic view of the facts associated with this event. Second, May 4 at Kent State and the Vietnam War era remain controversial even today, and the need for healing continues to exist. Healing will not occur if events are either forgotten or distorted, and hence it is important to continue to search for the truth behind the events of May 4 at Kent State. Third, and most importantly, May 4 at Kent State should be remembered in order that we can learn from the mistakes of the past. The Guardsmen in their signed statement at the end of the civil trials recognized that better ways have to be found to deal with these types of confrontations. This has probably already occurred in numerous situations where law enforcement officials have issued a caution to their troops to be careful because "we don't want another Kent State." Insofar as this has happened, lessons have been learned, and the deaths of four young Kent State students have not been in vain.
Provocation, scuffle and arrest at Israeli Embassy protest. London, 15.05.2011
The pro-Palestine protest celebrating the Nakba today outside the Israeli Embassy in London was a bad-tempered affair, with rival groups of Arabs and Israelis penned up close to each other, frequently trading insults with each other. The much smaller Israeli section of the protest was infiltrated early on by the EDL (English defense League - an extreme Right-Wing Ultra-Nationalist organisation), though the Israelis seemed quite happy to have them as bed-partners, provoking the tension all afternoon.
The EDF were also gathered across the road all afternoon, and at various points during the protest several of them carried out overtly provocative actions, never completely crossing the line, but clearly hoping maybe to goad the often hot-headed and wound-up younger Arab men into some kind of physical reaction, which, to their great credit didn't happen.
As the pavement at the end of Kensington Court got more and more crowded, a heated argument broke out when a female Palestinian journalist objected angrily to being photographed repeatedly and intentionally by a needlessly antagonistic young Israeli photographer - wearing a blue and white rolled-up scarf around his head with an obvious Star of David motif - who had been aggressively shoving his camera right in her face, taunting and mocking her.
As people started gathering around the photographer, starting to grab his arm and attempting to remove him, a man wearing a red top tried to prevent the manhandling of the by-now isolated photographer, who was actually in no danger as there were several policemen standing and watching less than fifteen feet away, still being screamed at by the Palestinian woman.
A couple of agitated Arabs - no doubt cranked up on adrenaline after all the tribal brinkmanship and general cock-waving - unfortunately mistook the Good Samaritan for an accomplice of the Israeli and they started shoving him, right into a policeman. He tried to back away but got shoved back into the policeman by a girl. Again he tried getting out of the way but another person shoved him again and started to scuffle with him. By now he was shoved into the policeman's chest with nowhere else to go. Next I knew the police swarmed around him, handcuffed him and carried him rapidly over the road to a police van.
Needless to say the antagonistic Israeli photographer, having all the anger of the crowd misdirected towards the Good Samaritan did nothing whatsoever to help him, but he did take the time to photograph him being dragged across the road in handcuffs. Nice. There's a deep moral in there somewhere. What a shithead.
All Photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not copy, reproduce or alter any images without my permission
Provocation, scuffle and arrest at Israeli Embassy protest. London, 15.05.2011
The pro-Palestine protest celebrating the Nakba today outside the Israeli Embassy in London was a bad-tempered affair, with rival groups of Arabs and Israelis penned up close to each other, frequently trading insults with each other. The much smaller Israeli section of the protest was infiltrated early on by the EDL (English defense League - an extreme Right-Wing Ultra-Nationalist organisation), though the Israelis seemed quite happy to have them as bed-partners, provoking the tension all afternoon.
The EDF were also gathered across the road all afternoon, and at various points during the protest several of them carried out overtly provocative actions, never completely crossing the line, but clearly hoping maybe to goad the often hot-headed and wound-up younger Arab men into some kind of physical reaction, which, to their great credit didn't happen.
As the pavement at the end of Kensington Court got more and more crowded, a heated argument broke out when a female Palestinian journalist objected angrily to being photographed repeatedly and intentionally by a needlessly antagonistic young Israeli photographer - wearing a blue and white rolled-up scarf around his head with an obvious Star of David motif - who had been aggressively shoving his camera right in her face, taunting and mocking her.
As people started gathering around the photographer, starting to grab his arm and attempting to remove him, a man wearing a red top tried to prevent the manhandling of the by-now isolated photographer, who was actually in no danger as there were several policemen standing and watching less than fifteen feet away, still being screamed at by the Palestinian woman.
A couple of agitated Arabs - no doubt cranked up on adrenaline after all the tribal brinkmanship and general cock-waving - unfortunately mistook the Good Samaritan for an accomplice of the Israeli and they started shoving him, right into a policeman. He tried to back away but got shoved back into the policeman by a girl. Again he tried getting out of the way but another person shoved him again and started to scuffle with him. By now he was shoved into the policeman's chest with nowhere else to go. Next I knew the police swarmed around him, handcuffed him and carried him rapidly over the road to a police van.
Needless to say the antagonistic Israeli photographer, having all the anger of the crowd misdirected towards the Good Samaritan did nothing whatsoever to help him, but he did take the time to photograph him being dragged across the road in handcuffs. Nice. There's a deep moral in there somewhere. What a shithead.
All Photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not copy, reproduce or alter any images without my permission
All rights reserved.
I created this photo montage using three separate and unrelated found images.
SEE THIS IMAGE LARGE!
Yes, it can happen here too....frighteningly sooner than later....
Also a must see video: www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111607J.shtml
"The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot,"
Wednesday 21 November 2007
An interview with author Naomi Wolf, whose new book, "The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot," may confirm your worries about democracy in America.
If you think we are living in scary times, your worst fears may be confirmed by reading Naomi Wolf's newest book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. In it, Wolf proves the old axiom that history does repeat itself. Or more accurately, history occurs in patterns, and in order to understand where our country is today and where it is headed, we need to read the history books.
Wolf began by diving into the early years leading up to fascist regimes, like the ones led by Hitler and Mussolini. And the patterns that she found in those, and others all over the world, made her hair stand on end. In "The End of America," she lays out the 10 steps that dictators (or aspiring dictators) take in order to shut down an open society. "Each of those ten steps is now under way in the United States today," she writes.
If we want an open society, she warns, we must pay attention and we must fight to protect democracy.
I met with Wolf to discuss what she learned while researching this book, how the American public has received her warnings, and what we can do to squelch the fascist narratives we are fed in this country each day.
Don Hazen: Let's take up a big question first - your fears about the upcoming U.S. presidential election and what the historical blue print about fascist takeovers shows in terms of elections.
Naomi Wolf: We would be naive given the historical patterns to have hope that there's going to be a transparent, accountable election in 2008. There are various ways the blueprint indicates how events are much more likely to play out. Historically, the months leading up to the national election are likely to be unstable.
What classically happens is either there will be a period of provocation, and we have a history of this in the United States - agitators who are dressed as or act like activist voter registration workers, anti-war marchers ... but who engage in actual violence, torch property, assault police officers. And that scares people. People are much less likely to vote for change when they're scared, and it gives them the excuse to crack down.
In addition, I'm concerned about the 2007 Defense Authorization Act, which makes it much easier for the president to declare martial law.
DH: Are you saying that they keep on adding coercive laws for no apparent reason?
NW: Yes. Why amend the law so systematically? Why do you need to make martial law easier? Another thing historical blueprints underscore is the hyped threat; intelligence will be spun or exaggerated, and sometimes there are faked documents like Plan Z with Pinochet in Chile.
DH: Plan Z?
NW:Yes, Plan Z. Pinochet, when he was overthrowing the Democratic government of Chile, told Chilean citizens that there was going to be a terrible terrorist attack, with armed insurgents. Now there were real insurgents, there was a real threat, but then he produces what he called Plan Z, which were fake papers claiming that these terrorists were going to assassinate all these military leaders at once.
And this petrified Chileans so much that they didn't stand up to fight for their democracy. So it's common to take a real threat and hype it. And close to an election it's very common to invoke a hype threat and scare people so much that they will not want to have a transparent election.
Americans have this very wrong idea about what a closed society looks like. Many despots make it a point to try to hold the elections, but they're corrupted elections. Corrupted elections take place all over the world in closed societies. Ninety-nine percent of Austrians voted yes for the annexation by Germany, because the SA were standing outside the voting booths, intimidating the voters and people counting the vote. So you can mess with the process.
One current warning sign is the e-mails that the White House is not yielding about the attorney general scandal. The emails are likely to show that there were plans afoot to purge all of the attorneys at once, like overnight. And then to let the country deal with the shock.
Now that's something that Goebbels did in 1933 in April, overnight. He fired everyone, focusing on lawyers and judges who were not a supporter of the regime. So you can still have elections ... in an outcome like that. If that had happened, if the bloggers and others actually hadn't helped to identify the U.S. attorney scandal, and they had been successful and fired them all, our election situation would be different.
Basically we'd still have an election, but it is possible the outcome would be predetermined because it's the U.S. attorneys that monitor what voting rights groups do, what is legal and who can decide the outcome of elections.
DH: Well there's a lot of activity currently in terms of the Justice Department aimed at purging voters ... reducing voter rolls ... that's an ongoing battle to try to keep voters eligible. Conservatives are always trying to reduce the electorate. By the way, are you familiar with Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism?
NW: Yes, and it all makes a lot of sense. And its certainly historically true. We're in this post-9/11 period when there is a lot of potential for these kind of "shock therapy" things to happen, but virtually everything ... has happened previously in history in patterns. It's just the blueprint. It's not rocket science.
I could tell last fall when a law was passed expanding the definition of terrorists to include animal rights activists, that people who look more like you and me would start to be called terrorists, which is a classic tactic in what I call a fascist expansion.
DH: Don't look at me - I'm not a vegetarian. Just kidding.
NW: (Laughs) Right. It's also predictive ... according to the blueprint, that the state starts to torture people that most of us don't identity with, because they're brown, Muslim, people on an island. They're called an enemy.
That there will be a progressive blurring of the line, and six months, two years later, you're going to see it spread to others. ... According to the blueprint, we're right on schedule that this kid recently got tasered in Florida, I gather, for asking questions.
There was a study by people who pioneered tasers, and the state legislature supported it; a Republican legislator put pressure on the provost, who put pressure on the university, and then the police at this university implemented the taser use. So unfortunately, it's likely that we're going to see more demonstrators, typical society leaders, in a call to restore "public order," leading up to the election. You put all those cases together ...
DH: I want to shift gears a bit and ask you to talk about what the response to the book, what kind of people have heard you speak, and what kind of reactions have they had?
NW: I'm really gratified by the response to the book. I have found, with the book's publication, though I'm not following everything that's been written about it, that most of America gets it - people across the political spectrum.
All kinds of people, including very mainstream people. Republican people. Progressive. Libertarian. Very moderate people. Very conservative people. They are basically saying to me, "Thank you for confirming our fears and showing us how these things fit together, and what we can do about them."
DH: I'm also interested in your process of deciding that you were comfortable in using words like "fascism," "Nazism," "Hitler," "Mussolini." Michael Ratner talks about it in the jacket of your book, when he writes: "Most Americans reject outright any comparisons of post-9/11 America with the fascism and totalitarianism of Nazi Germany or Pinochet's Chile. Sadly, what Wolf calls the echoes between those societies and America today are too compelling." At some point you must have come to this turning point in terms of the language - how far am I going to go, how am I going to talk about this? Was it a difficult decision?
NW: It was hard emotionally but it was unavoidable intellectually. The book actually got started with the influence of a holocaust survivor - a dear friend, who's the daughter of two holocaust survivors from Germany. She basically forced me to start reading history.
Not the end or outcome. She was talking about the early years and the effects on rights groups, gay rights groups, and sexuality forums and architecture, At first I didn't even want to draw conclusions, but my hair was just standing on edge.
When I saw that, then I went and read other history books, and looked at Stalin and Hitler, a real "innovator." I thought, if people want an open society, they need to pay attention.
You see the same things happening again and again and again. And historically people were really mislead and just reading kind of teaches us the blueprint. People use the same approach all over the world because it works. This is what they do.
Now we've just seen it in Burma. It is like clock work: monks in the street ... and because I know the blueprint, how long before they start curtailing free assembly, shooting monks, and cutting off that communication? And two days later ... you know what happened.
So intellectually I couldn't avoid using the language. Now in terms of the word "fascist," it's a very conservative usage in the book. I used the dictionary definition. There are many definitions of fascism. And even fascists disagree with other fascists. It's kind of like the Germans thought the Italian fascists weren't butch enough.
DH: So the Italians were wussier fascists than the Germans?
NW: Exactly. It gets better. The definition is pretty straightforward: "When the state uses violence against the individual to oppose democratic society." And that's what we're seeing.
And then looking back at Italy and Germany, which were the two great examples of modern constitutional democracies that were illegally closed by people that were elected ... duly elected ... most Americans don't remember. Mussolini, a National Socialist, came to power entirely legally. And they used the law to shut down the law. So that's what I call a fascist shift.
DH: So let's talk about what could happen here. Is America in denial? Or is avoidance an attitude that seemed to be present in all historical examples? That people assume it's not going to happen to them. Does the Americans' denial at this point run parallel with the denial of Germans and Italians? Or do we have our own version of denial here?
NW: That's a really great question; both are true. It's really instructive to read memoirs and journals from Germany. People writing, "This can't last ... we surely will come to our senses"; "they can't gain any ground in the next election ... you know, we're a civilized country"; "this is ridiculous, they're a bunch of thugs; no one takes them seriously."
History is particularly instructive in the early days of the fascist shifts in Germany and Italy, when things were really pretty normal. People go about their business, just like we're doing now. It's not like goose stepping columns of soldiers are everywhere. It looks like ordinary life. Celebrities, gossip columns, fashion, before getting caught up in a snare. People kept going to movies, worrying about feeding the cat. (laughs) Even while you watch the sort of inevitable unfold.
DH: And now in America?
NW: Right. So in some ways it is human nature to be in denial ... but Americans have our own special version, which is profoundly dangerous. Europeans know democracies are fragile, and they could close. They had closed. Bismarckian Germany was not a democracy.
But here we're walking around ... we usually have that sense that somehow our air will sustain us, even when no one else's air does. And we don't have to do anything about it. We have this like bubble, that somehow democracy will just take care of us, and we don't have to fight to protect democracy.
They can mow down democracies all over the world, but somehow we'll be just fine. But what's so ironic about that is that the Founding Fathers drafted the Bill of Rights in fear. They knew that you had to have checks and balances, because it's human nature to abuse power, no matter who you are. They knew the damage that the army could do breaking into your home. ... they knew that democracy is fragile, and the default is tyranny. They knew that. And that's why they created the system of checks and balances.
DH: In your book, on page 36, you write in terms of the political environment we are in: "But we are not wracked by rioting in the streets or a major depression here in America. That is why the success that the Bush administration has had in invoking Islamofascism is so insidious. We have been willing to trade our key freedoms for a promised state of security in spite of our living conditions of overwhelming stability, security, affluence and social order."
How and why has it been so easy here in the U.S. in terms of taking away liberties?
NW: I assume you mean how did it succeed even though we don't have Bolsheviks rioting in the street? Yes. I mean it is incredible looking back, but in a way it's not. I mean 9/11 was a complete left brain shock. If we had had wars at home, experienced the kind of violence at home that other countries have, we would not have gone into shock ... not have been willing to trade in our heritage in exchange for a manipulated false sense of security.
DH: Most people were not affected directly by 9/11 except traumatically by seeing it on the screen.
NW: Yes, but you can't undercredit the incredible sophistication of the way the Bush administration manipulates fear. For example, the sleeper cells narrative, which is Stalin's narrative, was totally made up.
And I give lots of examples in the book of alleged sleeper cells that never turned out to be the creepy, scary, nightmare scenario that the White House claimed they would be.
DH: In the book you say that fascists have great skills at changing public opinion.
NW: That's correct. That's exactly right. They've been very skillful at creating extremely terrifying narratives. And this is why looking at Goebbels is so instructive. Our leaders have been busy creating footage and sound bites that can be petrifying, and as a result, some of us live in a state of existential fear.
In contrast, in England and Spain, where they were hit by the same bad guys we're fighting, they're going after terrorists, but the population isn't walking around in a state of existential anxiety.
Gordon Brown said it, "Fighting terror ... well, terror's a crime." You can't underplay how sophisticated the Bush team has been about manipulating our fears. And one reason we really can't ignore is our home-grown ignorance. We now have two generations of young people who don't know about civics. A study came out that showed that even Harvard freshmen really don't understand how our government works.
And so we really don't know what democracy is anymore. I had to do a lot of learning to write this book - I'm not a constitutional scholar. I'm just a citizen. And we've been kind of divorced from our democracy. We've let a pundit class take it over. Where the Founders wanted us to know what the First Amendment was and what the Second Amendment does for us.
So as a consequence we don't feel the kind of warning bell of "Oh, my God, arbitrary search and seizure! That's when they come into your house and take your stuff and scare your children! We can't have that!"
Because there's this class of politicians, scholars and pundits who do the Constitution for us, so we don't bother educating ourselves. It's hard to educate yourself now these days.
All of that plays into how easily we can be manipulated. We really don't read history in America, so we don't notice warning signals. We tend not to pay attention to the rest of the world or the past, so we don't know what the classic scenarios are.
DH: In terms of your personal narrative, the kinds of books you've written about feminism and gender like the Beauty Myth, Fire With Fire and Promiscuities ... this book seems pretty far a field. It seems like it would have to be a wrenching realization to lead you to read everything and produce the book. Was it traumatic?
NW: Well, I would say that it's been traumatic.
DH: Is it because you are out there on the front lines now?
NW: That's not the trauma. I feel like I'm living inside a consciousness of urgency and potential horrific consequences. And that is much more uncomfortable than living inside my prior being where I generally thought, "We're living in a democracy where there are some annoying people doing the wrong things" kind of mindset.
But I know that there's a "true consciousness" that we need to overcome the false consciousness. I know it's the right consciousness to get the facts. And I guess what's heartening is that a bunch of other people seem to be collectively entering this consciousness. They are saying: "My gosh, there is a real emergency here with very devastating stakes." That is traumatic but necessary.
It is a loss of innocence to see how easy it is to degrade democracy. I certainly walk around with kind of hyperawareness tuned into, for example, the toll in Guantanamo and those children in Iraq. It doesn't get covered well.
There's basically a concentration camp being established in Iraq with children in it. And no one appears to be digging in to it ...
DH: As we are coming to an end here, there are a couple of concepts I found particularly interesting in the book. One is when you talked about the "10 steps," or the "blueprint" that fascists have used time and time again to close down democracies. You say that that these factors, ingredients, are more than the sum of their parts, which suggests a kind of synergy, "each magnifies the power of the others and the whole," as you write.
You also write about the pendulum cliché, that we have this illusion through our history that the pendulum always swings back. But because of the permanent war on terrorism, that may not be true anymore. Can you say a little bit more about those two things, and how that might fit together?
NW: Well part of the illusion is created because it seems we are in two different countries, operating at home and abroad. For example, they can come at you, anyone and claim you're an enemy combatant. They rendered people in Italy ... they can render people all over the world. And they can put people like Jose Padilla in solitary confinement for three years, literally drive sane healthy people insane.
If the president can say, Well, "Don is an enemy combatant," there is nothing you can do. It's like "Tag, you're it!" To that extent we can not be innocent. And then someone is in jail for three years without being able to see their families or have easy access to a phone.
If they can do that, the pendulum can't swing, because after the first arrest, it generally goes in one direction, and according to the blueprint, the time has come for those first arrests. We're having this conversation now, before these arrests. But if tomorrow you read in the New York Times or the Washington Post that New York Times editor Bill Keller has been arrested, the staff will all be scared, others will get scared. And people don't understand that that's how democracy closes down. And when that happens first, it's the tipping point at which we think it's still a democracy.
DH: That is when the rules have changed?
NW: Yes, and people need to believe and realize that that kind of negotiation is pretty much over. And there's just the lag time, which is so dangerous, when people still think it's a democracy, even while the martial law steps have begun. And that's where we are at, unless we get it.
Because you know, Congress keeps saying, "Hello, we're Congress." You have to answer us when we ask for information. The president's like, "Sorry, I'm ignoring you!" It starts becoming thinking like an abused woman, like: "Surely he's going to do it right this time, surely he's not going to do it again." And
If you are new to this series, please be sure to read these segments and chapters in the proper order, as they appear in the Set "Chicago Cop: Tales from the Street." You might also want to read the introduction that accompanies the Set's front-page.
* * * * * * * * *
Alonzo is the polar opposite of Mitch: moody, brooding, and paranoid, with evil black eyes. He reminds me of a cobra, coiled and ready to strike at the slightest provocation.
He comes into the store all the time, buying one or two items, but his favorite hangout is Valois, where he'll usually eat two meals a day. During the winter months, he'll camp out there all day long, usually hogging a table by the windows that look out on 53rd Street, the busiest thoroughfare in the area.
He has his own little clique of bums and losers, who laugh at all of his jokes. Whatever his problem may be, I read his danger signals loud and clear, and always give him a wide berth.
August 12, 1983:
The call that puts them on a collision course comes into the University dispatch-center from a faculty-member. He reports a suspicious man, lurking about the south-east corner of 56th & Harper. The dispatcher assigns Mitch to investigate, and a second officer to back him up.
When they arrive on the scene, they don't see anyone who is remotely suspicious, just a neat little row of well-kept townhouses. Mitch rings the doorbell of the corner unit, which corresponds to the address given out by the dispatcher. Meanwhile, the back-up officer, a CPD Captain who works for the University on his day-off, covers the back-door. Neither officer realizes that the man who answers the front door of the corner townhouse, is in fact the suspect they are looking for: Alonzo Turner, and the townhouse in question belongs to his mother.
I can picture him standing there, gaunt and crazy-eyed as usual, but I don't know if he looks that way to Mitch. Perhaps Alonzo somehow manages to mask the danger signals he usually gives out, to draw his prey in closer to him.
When Mitch asks him if he has seen anyone suspicious lurking around in the area, Alonzo replies that he has not, all the while clutching a large knife behind his back.
No one knows exactly why, but at some point Mitch turns his back to Alonzo, who then grabs him from behind, holding Mitch in a choke-hold, as he plunges the knife deep into Mitch's chest. The back-up officer hears Mitch scream out in agony, and runs around to to the front. There he encounters Alonzo, who is now also armed with Mitch's service revolver. There is a brief but ferocious exchange of gunfire, at nearly point-bland range, and both men are hit multiple times, leaving both critically injured.
In a matter of seconds, dozens of UCPD and CPD units converge on the scene. Alonzo, now out of ammunition, continues to resist, but is eventually subdued.
Mitch is still alive on his way to the hospital, only a few blocks away. He is still conscious, clutching the hand of the UCPD officer who accompanies him in the ambulance, pleading with him not to let him die, not now that he has so much to live for.
Nitch does die that night, and the officer who accompanied him on that final ambulance ride, quits the job the following day. Alonzo and the CPD Captain both survive their injuries, the former to stand trial for murder, the latter to rise rapidly through the ranks to the upper echelon of the Command Staff. Ultimately, however, he falls from grace for attempting to shield some of his officers from disciplinary action over some bullshit rule that just happens to be the pet-peeve of the idiot-in-charge at the time.
Mitch's funeral will be the first of many police funerals I will attend over the years. It is a beautiful morning and Rockefeller Chapel has never looked more magnificent, as hundreds of police officers from all over the state come to pay their respects.
He is the first University of Chicago police officer who is killed in-the-line-of-duty, and many of his fellow oficers can't hold back their tears. Neither can I.
It is then and there that I vow to pursue a law enforcement career. Not that the thought had never crosses my mind, but Mitch's death steels my resolve, turning a maybe into a certainty.
* * * * * * * * *
Back in '83, the University of Chicago hospital was a Level One trauma center, something they subsequently decided was not profitable enough, given the large numbers of uninsured people who flocked to their ER.
Right now, in the middle of a gang war on the South Side that has claimed hundreds of lives over the past few years, the University stubbornly refuses to re-open its Level One trauma center. Thus, while the University spends hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade and expand its highly profitable Advanced medical facilities, dozens of ambulances carrying critically injured gun-shot victims from the South Side battlefield, are forced to bypass the U of C and travel the extra 10 miles or so, to Mount Sinai, Northwestern, or Stroger Hospital.
Needless to say, this doesn't just affect the survival chances of critically injured gangbangers, but anyone else who is seriously injured on the South Side, whether they be innocent bystanders, car accident victims, or police officers...
The CPE law has been promulgated on 2 April, but President Jacques Chirac pledged that it would be amended and the government asked employers not to apply it immediately. Meanwhile, the anti-CPE movement hasn't backed down: a national strike was called and massive rallies were held throughout France on April 4th, drawing as many participants as on March 28th (1 to 3 millions nation-wide). Riots erupted again at the end of the demonstration, Place d'Italie.
The attitude of the photographers was reaching a climax of surrealism that day. Some of them threw bottles back at the trouble-makers and even provoked. Here, a photographer who had a narrow escape from the black guy in the middle is daring them again a few seconds later !
Part of Demonstrations
Provocation, scuffle and arrest at Israeli Embassy protest. London, 15.05.2011
The pro-Palestine protest celebrating the Nakba today outside the Israeli Embassy in London was a bad-tempered affair, with rival groups of Arabs and Israelis penned up close to each other, frequently trading insults with each other. The much smaller Israeli section of the protest was infiltrated early on by the EDL (English defense League - an extreme Right-Wing Ultra-Nationalist organisation), though the Israelis seemed quite happy to have them as bed-partners, provoking the tension all afternoon.
The EDF were also gathered across the road all afternoon, and at various points during the protest several of them carried out overtly provocative actions, never completely crossing the line, but clearly hoping maybe to goad the often hot-headed and wound-up younger Arab men into some kind of physical reaction, which, to their great credit didn't happen.
As the pavement at the end of Kensington Court got more and more crowded, a heated argument broke out when a female Palestinian journalist objected angrily to being photographed repeatedly and intentionally by a needlessly antagonistic young Israeli photographer - wearing a blue and white rolled-up scarf around his head with an obvious Star of David motif - who had been aggressively shoving his camera right in her face, taunting and mocking her.
As people started gathering around the photographer, starting to grab his arm and attempting to remove him, a man wearing a red top tried to prevent the manhandling of the by-now isolated photographer, who was actually in no danger as there were several policemen standing and watching less than fifteen feet away, still being screamed at by the Palestinian woman.
A couple of agitated Arabs - no doubt cranked up on adrenaline after all the tribal brinkmanship and general cock-waving - unfortunately mistook the Good Samaritan for an accomplice of the Israeli and they started shoving him, right into a policeman. He tried to back away but got shoved back into the policeman by a girl. Again he tried getting out of the way but another person shoved him again and started to scuffle with him. By now he was shoved into the policeman's chest with nowhere else to go. Next I knew the police swarmed around him, handcuffed him and carried him rapidly over the road to a police van.
Needless to say the antagonistic Israeli photographer, having all the anger of the crowd misdirected towards the Good Samaritan did nothing whatsoever to help him, but he did take the time to photograph him being dragged across the road in handcuffs. Nice. There's a deep moral in there somewhere. What a shithead.
All Photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not copy, reproduce or alter any images without my permission
by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek
Defense Media Activity
5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.
The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.
On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.
"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).
"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."
Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.
Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.
"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."
Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.
"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."
Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.
The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.
Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.
"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."
The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.
As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.
When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.
"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.
"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.
It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.
Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.
"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."
For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.
"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."
Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.
Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.
"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.
While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.
"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."
The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org
Charles Bradlaugh (/ˈbrædlɔː/; 26 September 1833 – 30 January 1891) was an English political activist, atheist and British republican. He founded the National Secular Society in 1866.
In 1880, Bradlaugh was elected as the Liberal MP for Northampton. His attempt to affirm as an atheist, rather than take a parliamentary Oath of Allegiance which assumed a new MP was a Christian (and a Monarchist), ultimately led to his temporary imprisonment, fines for voting in the Commons illegally, and a number of by-elections at which Bradlaugh regained his seat on each occasion. He was finally allowed to take an oath in 1886. Eventually, a parliamentary bill which he proposed became law in 1888 which allowed members of both Houses of Parliament to affirm, if they so wished, when being sworn in. The new law also resolved the issue for witnesses in civil and criminal court cases.
Born in Hoxton (an area in the East End of London), Bradlaugh was the son of a solicitor's clerk. He left school at the age of eleven and then worked as an office errand-boy and later as a clerk to a coal merchant. After a brief spell as a Sunday school teacher, he became disturbed by discrepancies between the Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church and the Bible. When he expressed his concerns, the local vicar, John Graham Packer, accused him of atheism and suspended him from teaching. He was thrown out of the family home and was taken in by Eliza Sharples Carlile, the widow of Richard Carlile, who had been imprisoned for printing Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason. Soon Bradlaugh was introduced to George Holyoake, who organised Bradlaugh's first public lecture as an atheist.
At the age of 17, he published his first pamphlet, A Few Words on the Christian Creed. However, refusing financial support from fellow freethinkers, he enlisted as a soldier with the Seventh Dragoon Guards hoping to serve in India and make his fortune. Instead he was stationed in Dublin. In 1853, he was left a legacy by a great-aunt and used it to purchase his discharge from the army.
Bradlaugh returned to London in 1853 and took a post as a solicitor's clerk. By this time he was a convinced freethinker and in his free time he became a pamphleteer and writer about "secularist" ideas, adopting the pseudonym "Iconoclast" to protect his employer's reputation. He gradually attained prominence in a number of liberal or radical political groups or societies, including the Reform League, Land Law Reformers, and Secularists.
He was President of the London Secular Society from 1858. In 1860 he became editor of the secularist newspaper, the National Reformer, and in 1866 co-founded the National Secular Society, in which Annie Besant became his close associate. In 1868, the Reformer was prosecuted by the British Government for blasphemy and sedition. Bradlaugh was eventually acquitted on all charges, but fierce controversy continued both in the courts and in the press.
A decade later (1876), Bradlaugh and Besant decided to republish the American Charles Knowlton's pamphlet advocating birth control, The Fruits of Philosophy, or the Private Companion of Young Married People, whose previous British publisher had already been successfully prosecuted for obscenity. The two activists were both tried in 1877, and Charles Darwin refused to give evidence in their defence, pleading ill-health, but at the time writing to Bradlaugh that his testimony would have been of little use to them because he opposed birth control. They were sentenced to heavy fines and six months' imprisonment, but their conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal on the basis that the prosecution had not set out the precise words which were alleged to be obscene in the indictment. The Malthusian League was founded as a result of the trial to promote birth control. He was a member of a Masonic lodge in Bolton, although he was later to resign due to the nomination of the Prince of Wales as Grand Master.
On 6 March 1881 he spoke at the opening of Leicester Secular Society's new Secular Hall in Humberstone Gate, Leicester. The other speakers were George Jacob Holyoake, Annie Besant and Harriet Law.
Bradlaugh was an advocate of trade unionism, republicanism, and women's suffrage, and he opposed socialism. His anti-socialism was divisive, and many secularists who became socialists left the secularist movement because of its identification with Bradlaugh's liberal individualism. He was a supporter of Irish Home Rule, and backed France during the Franco-Prussian War. He took a strong interest in India.
In 1880 Bradlaugh was elected Member of Parliament for Northampton. To take his seat and become an active Parliamentarian, he needed to signify his allegiance to the Crown and on 3 May Bradlaugh came to the Table of the House of Commons, bearing a letter to the Speaker "begging respectfully to claim to be allowed to affirm" instead of taking the religious Oath of Allegiance, citing the Evidence Amendment Acts of 1869 and 1870. Speaker Brand declared that he had "grave doubts" and asked the House for its judgment. Lord Frederick Cavendish, for the Government, moved that a Select Committee be set up to decide whether persons entitled to make a solemn affirmation in court were also allowed to affirm instead of taking the Parliamentary oath.
This Select Committee held only one brief meeting on 12 May 1880. The Attorney General, Sir Henry James, moved that anyone entitled to affirm to give evidence in court was also entitled to affirm instead of taking the Oath in Parliament. Sir John Holker, Conservative MP for Preston, moved an amendment to reverse this finding, and the committee split down the middle with eight members (seven Conservatives and Charles Henry Hopwood, Liberal MP for Stockport) supporting the amendment and eight (all Liberals) opposing it; on the casting vote of the chairman Spencer Horatio Walpole the amendment was carried. Bradlaugh was not surprised that the Committee had gone against him, and notified the Speaker that he would attend to take the Oath on 21 May.
To explain his actions, Bradlaugh wrote an open letter to The Times which was published on the morning of 21 May. He said it would have been hypocritical to voluntarily take the oath "including words of idle and meaningless character" without protest when another form of words was available, but now that the Select Committee had ruled he must, he would do so and "regard myself as bound not by the letter of its words, but by the spirit which the affirmation would have conveyed had I been permitted to use it." Bradlaugh's letter was regarded as a direct provocation by his opponents, and when he came to the table, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff rose to object to the administration of the Oath to Bradlaugh. Speaker Brand allowed him to object, and Wolff argued that the Evidence Amendment Acts referred to by Bradlaugh only allowed an affirmation to one who regarded the oath as meaningless, so the House should not allow Bradlaugh to take it. Prime Minister William Gladstone, alerted to the fact that a protest was possible, moved to set up a second Select Committee to examine whether it was possible to interfere with a Member wishing to take the oath. Gladstone's amendment was carried by 289 to 214.
The Select Committee began deliberating on 1 June 1880, when it considered a paper put in by Sir Thomas Erskine May, the Clerk of the House. Sir Thomas found several precedents for Members disabled to sit for refusing to take the Oath, together with Quaker MP Joseph Pease who was permitted to affirm, and Jewish MPs Baron Lionel de Rothschild and David Salomons who were eventually allowed to take the Oath while omitting the words "on the true faith of a Christian." On the following day, Erskine May and Bradlaugh himself were questioned by the Committee, with Bradlaugh arguing that, should the Committee decide he had no right to affirm, he would take the oath and regard it as binding on his conscience. When the Committee decided its report, it agreed by one vote an amendment declaring that the House could "and, in the opinion of your Committee, ought to" prevent Bradlaugh taking the Oath. It also added (by 12 votes to 9) that it would be possible for an action in the High Court of Justice to test whether an affirmation was genuinely legal, and therefore recommended that if Bradlaugh sought to affirm, he should be allowed to do so in order that such an action be brought to clarify the law. The second Select Committee had effectively reversed the outcome of the first.
When it was known that this was the likely outcome of the Select Committee, Bradlaugh's fellow Northampton MP Henry Labouchère initiated a debate on a motion to allow Bradlaugh to affirm. Sir Hardinge Giffard moved an amendment that Bradlaugh be not permitted to take either the Oath or make an affirmation. After two days of debate,[ Giffard's amendment was carried by 275 to 230, a defeat which surprised Gladstone. The majority comprised 210 Conservatives, 34 Liberals and 31 Irish Home Rulers; supporting Bradlaugh were 218 Liberals, 10 Home Rulers and 2 Conservatives. On the next day, Bradlaugh came to the Table claiming to take the Oath; in consequence of the previous night's vote the Speaker ordered him to withdraw. Bradlaugh was permitted to address the House from behind the Bar (which was technically outside the Chamber), and treated the occasion as his maiden speech. He based his argument on law, contending that he was not legally disqualified, and asking "as one man against six hundred" for the same justice he would receive in the Courts. Although well received, the speech was too late to reverse the decision, and Henry Labouchère was forced to withdraw a motion to rescind it.
At that point Bradlaugh was summoned back to the table to be told the outcome of the debate; having relayed it, the Speaker then ordered him to withdraw. Bradlaugh "respectfully refused" to obey an order of the House which was "against the law." The Conservative leader Sir Stafford Northcote successfully moved a motion that Bradlaugh be required to withdraw (agreed on a division by 326 to 38, Liberal MPs being unwilling to challenge a motion which sustained the House's legal authority) but Bradlaugh "positively refused to obey." The Serjeant-at-Arms was sent for and led Bradlaugh out to the Bar of the House, but Bradlaugh then immediately returned to the table claiming to take the Oath. At this Sir Stafford Northcote moved that Bradlaugh be taken into custody. The House agreed, on a division by 274 votes to 7 and Bradlaugh was taken to the small prison cell located under Big Ben in the Clock Tower.
Lord Randolph Churchill roused the Conservatives by leading resistance to Bradlaugh.
Because Members had to take the oath before being allowed to take their seats, he effectively forfeited his seat in Parliament. His seat fell vacant and a by-election was declared. Bradlaugh was re-elected by Northampton four times in succession as the dispute continued. Supporting Bradlaugh were William Ewart Gladstone, T. P. O'Connor and George Bernard Shaw as well as hundreds of thousands of people who signed a public petition. Opposing his right to sit were the Conservative Party, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and other leading figures in the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church.
On at least one occasion, Bradlaugh was escorted from the House by police officers. In 1883 he took his seat and voted three times before being fined £1,500 for voting illegally. A bill allowing him to affirm was defeated in Parliament.
In 1886 Bradlaugh was finally allowed to take the oath, and did so at the risk of prosecution under the Parliamentary Oaths Act. Two years later, in 1888, he secured passage of a new Oaths Act,which enshrined into law the right of affirmation for members of both Houses, as well as extending and clarifying the law as it related to witnesses in civil and criminal trials (the Evidence Amendment Acts of 1869 and 1870 had proved unsatisfactory, though they had given relief to many who would otherwise have been disadvantaged). Bradlaugh spoke in Parliament about the London matchgirls strike of 1888.
The Biography of Charles Bradlaugh by Adolphe Headingle (1880) states (p. 64) "In 1854, Bradlaugh married the daughter of Mr. Hooper, a working plasterer who had attended the meetings at Bonner's Fields, where he was among the foremost to applaud his future son-in-law, the boy orator, whose eloquence delighted so many Chartists and Freethinkers." ("BONNER'S FIELDS. An open space on the banks of the Regent's Canal, near one of the entrances to Victoria Park, and so called from the House of Bishop Bonner at Bethnal Green, lately taken down. These fields were one of the places of assemblage of the Chartist Rioters of 1848. – Peter Cunningham, Hand-Book of London, 1850. Quoted from the online The Dictionary of Victorian London.)
His daughter Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner (1858–1935) was a peace activist, author, atheist and freethinker. He named her after Hypatia, the Ancient Greek pagan philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and teacher, who was murdered by a mob of Coptic monks devoted to the Christian archbishop Cyril of Alexandria.
Bradlaugh died on 30 January 1891. His funeral was attended by 3,000 mourners, including a 21-year-old Mohandas Gandhi.
In 1898, Bradlaugh's daughter Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner wrote a pamphlet in answer to the question that was often addressed to her: whether her father "changed his opinions and became a Christian" before he died. Bonner laid out all the evidence and concluded that her father gave no indication that his opinions had changed in the "smallest" way.
A statue of Bradlaugh is located on a traffic island at Abington Square, Northampton. The statue points west towards the centre of Northampton, the accusing finger periodically missing due to vandalism]. In 2014 the statue was cleaned and returned to the stonework. New signs are to be installed in 2015 on the roundabout reading "Charles Bradlaugh MP".
Since 2002, an "Annual Commemoration" has taken place beneath the statue at 3 pm on the Sunday closest to his birthday, organised by the Charles Bradlaugh Society. Attendees are invited to speak about Charles Bradlaugh. 2014 saw the addition of the inaugural Bradlaugh Talk with speakers on issues relevant to Bradlaugh. The first speaker was Graham Smith, CEO of Republic.
Bradlaugh Fields, a community wildlife park situated to the north of Northampton, was named after Charles Bradlaugh when it opened in 1998.[29] Other landmarks bearing his name include The Charles Bradlaugh pub, and Charles Bradlaugh Hall at the University of Northampton.
Brookwood Cemetery, Remembrance Sunday, Brookwood, Surrey.
by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek
Defense Media Activity
5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.
The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.
On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.
"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).
"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."
Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.
Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.
"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."
Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.
"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."
Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.
The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.
Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.
"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."
The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.
As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.
When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.
"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.
"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.
It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.
Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.
"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."
For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.
"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."
Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.
Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.
"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.
While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.
"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."
The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org
Provocation, scuffle and arrest at Israeli Embassy protest. London, 15.05.2011
The pro-Palestine protest celebrating the Nakba today outside the Israeli Embassy in London was a bad-tempered affair, with rival groups of Arabs and Israelis penned up close to each other, frequently trading insults with each other. The much smaller Israeli section of the protest was infiltrated early on by the EDL (English defense League - an extreme Right-Wing Ultra-Nationalist organisation), though the Israelis seemed quite happy to have them as bed-partners, provoking the tension all afternoon.
The EDF were also gathered across the road all afternoon, and at various points during the protest several of them carried out overtly provocative actions, never completely crossing the line, but clearly hoping maybe to goad the often hot-headed and wound-up younger Arab men into some kind of physical reaction, which, to their great credit didn't happen.
As the pavement at the end of Kensington Court got more and more crowded, a heated argument broke out when a female Palestinian journalist objected angrily to being photographed repeatedly and intentionally by a needlessly antagonistic young Israeli photographer - wearing a blue and white rolled-up scarf around his head with an obvious Star of David motif - who had been aggressively shoving his camera right in her face, taunting and mocking her.
As people started gathering around the photographer, starting to grab his arm and attempting to remove him, a man wearing a red top tried to prevent the manhandling of the by-now isolated photographer, who was actually in no danger as there were several policemen standing and watching less than fifteen feet away, still being screamed at by the Palestinian woman.
A couple of agitated Arabs - no doubt cranked up on adrenaline after all the tribal brinkmanship and general cock-waving - unfortunately mistook the Good Samaritan for an accomplice of the Israeli and they started shoving him, right into a policeman. He tried to back away but got shoved back into the policeman by a girl. Again he tried getting out of the way but another person shoved him again and started to scuffle with him. By now he was shoved into the policeman's chest with nowhere else to go. Next I knew the police swarmed around him, handcuffed him and carried him rapidly over the road to a police van.
Needless to say the antagonistic Israeli photographer, having all the anger of the crowd misdirected towards the Good Samaritan did nothing whatsoever to help him, but he did take the time to photograph him being dragged across the road in handcuffs. Nice. There's a deep moral in there somewhere. What a shithead.
All Photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not copy, reproduce or alter any images without my permission
Provocation, scuffle and arrest at Israeli Embassy protest. London, 15.05.2011
The pro-Palestine protest celebrating the Nakba today outside the Israeli Embassy in London was a bad-tempered affair, with rival groups of Arabs and Israelis penned up close to each other, frequently trading insults with each other. The much smaller Israeli section of the protest was infiltrated early on by the EDL (English defense League - an extreme Right-Wing Ultra-Nationalist organisation), though the Israelis seemed quite happy to have them as bed-partners, provoking the tension all afternoon.
The EDF were also gathered across the road all afternoon, and at various points during the protest several of them carried out overtly provocative actions, never completely crossing the line, but clearly hoping maybe to goad the often hot-headed and wound-up younger Arab men into some kind of physical reaction, which, to their great credit didn't happen.
As the pavement at the end of Kensington Court got more and more crowded, a heated argument broke out when a female Palestinian journalist objected angrily to being photographed repeatedly and intentionally by a needlessly antagonistic young Israeli photographer - wearing a blue and white rolled-up scarf around his head with an obvious Star of David motif - who had been aggressively shoving his camera right in her face, taunting and mocking her.
As people started gathering around the photographer, starting to grab his arm and attempting to remove him, a man wearing a red top tried to prevent the manhandling of the by-now isolated photographer, who was actually in no danger as there were several policemen standing and watching less than fifteen feet away, still being screamed at by the Palestinian woman.
A couple of agitated Arabs - no doubt cranked up on adrenaline after all the tribal brinkmanship and general cock-waving - unfortunately mistook the Good Samaritan for an accomplice of the Israeli and they started shoving him, right into a policeman. He tried to back away but got shoved back into the policeman by a girl. Again he tried getting out of the way but another person shoved him again and started to scuffle with him. By now he was shoved into the policeman's chest with nowhere else to go. Next I knew the police swarmed around him, handcuffed him and carried him rapidly over the road to a police van.
Needless to say the antagonistic Israeli photographer, having all the anger of the crowd misdirected towards the Good Samaritan did nothing whatsoever to help him, but he did take the time to photograph him being dragged across the road in handcuffs. Nice. There's a deep moral in there somewhere. What a shithead.
All Photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not copy, reproduce or alter any images without my permission
by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek
Defense Media Activity
5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.
The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.
On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.
"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).
"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."
Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.
Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.
"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."
Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.
"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."
Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.
The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.
Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.
"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."
The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.
As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.
When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.
"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.
"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.
It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.
Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.
"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."
For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.
"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."
Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.
Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.
"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.
While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.
"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."
The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org
by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek
Defense Media Activity
5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.
The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.
On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.
"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).
"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."
Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.
Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.
"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."
Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.
"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."
Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.
The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.
Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.
"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."
The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.
As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.
When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.
"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.
"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.
It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.
Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.
"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."
For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.
"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."
Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.
Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.
"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.
While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.
"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."
The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org
History of the University Hospital in Krakow
General Hospital St. Lazarus was established in 1788. After all, to understand its origins one has to go back in the rich history of the number of hospitals in Krakow to mention at least two. The longest and najnobliwszą story has a hospital of St. Spirit, begun the thirteenth century. This hospital which is under the care of the monks called Duchakami, was intended for the sick and for foundlings. The Order, however, had the centuries old beautiful traditions, so declined in the late eighteenth century, in 1783, was abolished. The hospital, however, for some time still remained.
And a few words about the other hospitals . In 1714, the Bishop Michael Szembek brought from Warsaw to Krakow "Miss peculiar to works of mercy with God's provocation", thus called the Daughters of Charity or, in French, Szarytkami. It was a small hospital at St. John, originally designed for patients (men and women in half) in the time-honored hospital number 12, and for orphans. In the eyes of a critical inspector, which on behalf of the Bishop of AS Zaluski was Mr A. Łopacki, but the priest and doctor of medicine, the hospital did not raise any objections, and therefore did not make the usual in such cases, claims and commands "what could be used to good governance, as those in which there are excellent", on the contrary praised " incessant zeal and diligence " nuns.
The work of the National Education Commission (established in 1773 ) was a fundamental reform of the University of Cracow Its activities also referred to the Faculty of Medicine. Thanks to the active attitude of Andrew Badurskiego (1740-1789) was the first in Poland teaching hospital in pojezuickim building at St. Barbara in the Small Square. He had indeed only eight beds (four for men and four for women), but it gave an opportunity to teach "at the bedside." The activity was supported Badurskiego activity Czerwiakowski Raphael Joseph (1743-1816), professor of anatomy, surgery and obstetrics. Came more patients, increased level of assistance provided, however, decreased "usable area " because it is decorated room, anatomical, a pharmacy, a separate room occupied surgical and maternity patients .
To ensure proper patient care and nursing, was the idea, at first it seemed reasonable to bring to the hospital Sisters of Mercy, which are relatively new so beautifully wrote in his report, I Łopacki. And so it happened. How will the future was not a fortunate move .
Meanwhile, at once keenly felt the need to bring in Krakow General Hospital, where did the municipal authorities and the clergy were aware. Problem solved referring to the old General Hospital St . Lazarus. In 1787, he was bought for a price of 20 000 Polish zlotys, which introduced the primate Michal Poniatowski, the impoverished former monastery of the Carmelites. In April 1788 the academic hospital of St. Barbara has been transferred to that hospital for Merry. Since then, the fate of the university of medicine will bind to this district and its main street, which in the early nineteenth century will take the name of Nicolaus Copernicus, and the history of the hospital of St . Lazarus from the right side.
The clinic was isolated little space. The hospital was calculated on the 200-bed hospital had only 24 beds: 12 for internal medicine clinic, 8 to surgical clinic, 4 on the maternity clinic. The rest of the hospital subject to the physician-in-chief title physics, so named was fizykatem. It had a common ward for patients with internal diseases and surgery, a division of maternal and premium, infants and foundlings branch and a branch of cripples. Infants with suckler, older children with a babysitter, the midwife and the service was moved here from the hospital of St. Spirit.
Chief doctor of the hospital was a physicist Professor A. Badurski, and next to him acted as a surgeon and obstetrician Professor RJ Czerwiakowski. They also were managers conducted clinics and clinical teaching.
The combination of the Sisters of Charity of hospital clinics was about to be a very unfortunate move. The dispute over jurisdiction, especially in view of the legal shortcomings (the end it was not known whether the sisters are at the service of clinics and clinics reside in the hospital sisters) , was born and it is very fast, the need to find another room, so that the supremacy clinics should clearly and exclusively to the authorities university. The solution to the problem "lokalowego" we had to wait several years. This created favorable circumstances: an energetic attitude, having political influence Prof. MJ Brodowicza (1790-1885), an outbreak of cholera, which was to have its source in a crowded hospital, and finally, and most importantly the generosity of members of the Masonic Lodge " Superstition Loser " that solving a box, sent his building at ul . Copernicus for clinical purposes. To it also in 1827 moved all three clinics. Professors: M.J.Brodowicz, L.Bierkowski, J. Kwasniewski ceased to be so far promariuszami branches. In the future do not have to be that way . After entering the patients 'clinical' hospital has gained a new room. By creating a singular surgical ward, there was a division of patients. Full autonomy, with a separate branch of the physicist received only in 1832.
New facilities for clinics Street. Copernicus 7 at first seemed to be sufficiently extensive, but not for long. Overcrowding gave up soon felt. It must be remembered that at this time the size of the building does not meet current but was only a part of the center in a square. Hurdle became especially screams emerging maternal and infant crying. Therefore, in 1836 it was decided to return to the hospital maternity hospital of St . Lazarus. Clinic has survived there until 1869. Then came back section .
Science Museum. Spirit, after the abolition of the law, had lost its previous function and became a refuge. Since 1821, Krakow was liquidated two hospitals, namely: Hospital of St . Sebastian and Roch (St Sebastiana meadows) for patients with venereal disease and a hospital for the mentally ill, or "mad house" or "pacarellów" (Street Hospital), patients were moved to a hospital room St. Spirit, forming two branches there. Later, ie after the fall of the Republic and the incarnation of Cracow in Galicia, in 1855, hospitals St. Lazarus and St. Spirit, have come under single management, so remember them here together.
In 1862 Anthony Rosner (1831-1896) was in Krakow the first associated professor of Dermatology and Venereology, and began teaching the subject. Since then, venereal disease ward for patients became basically Clinic skin-GUM departments, although the cathedral was formally approved in 1871 .
In October 1866 for gynecological maternity-clinic - Maternity Madurowicz - came Maurice (1831-1893). Thanks to his strenuous efforts, led by the clinic, was in 1869 moved to a house of Prof. Brodowicza (near the inner and surgical clinics), which sold to the University 's goal. Branch gynecological-obstetric hospital of St . Lazarus - however, still remained in place, and the Madurowicz the responsibilities prymariusza (primarius).
In the second half of the nineteenth century, especially after the Galician autonomy had positive changes occured in the development of the hospital of St . Lazarus, particularly in terms of its structure. There has been a development of the old building as well as an excellent operator and a great organizer which Alfred Obaliński (1843-1898), prymariusz surgical ward, has led to the superstructure of the second floor in the main hospital building . There, surgical patients were transferred and held (until now) the operating room. This took place in 1878.
At that time, intensive work on the construction of the new building of the hospital. Scheduled back to the time of the Cracow Republic was not completed due to economic difficulties. Returning to the issue repeatedly, yet to finalize had to wait a long time. It was not until January 1, 1879 was opened the main building of the hospital board (17 Copernicus Street) and two parallel pavilions in which patients placed internally (a division IA and IB) .
Empty space in the old hospital was occupied by the clinic, skin-GUM departments, transferred here from the hospital of St. Spirit (year 1879). In the same year , the mentally ill were placed in the new building, which was built in the gardens of the Hospital of St . Lazarus (Hospital St . Spirit henceforth ceased to exist, and a few years later it was demolished).
Beyond any doubt, the greatest organizational achievement of Prof. Obalińskiego was to build "pavilion" (as it was then called the hospital buildings standing loosely) surgery. According to his own design at the architectural support Professor K. Zaremba, no small expense, he stood in 1893 at. Copernicus, vis a vis the surgical clinic, red brick building, hereinafter called the " red surgery ." Since then, it housed the hospital surgery ward of St . Lazarus. The room on the second floor of an old building, it will take from now on and until now, the branch and clinic skin-venereologist . Also spreads division obstetrics-gynecology .
In the coming years the cathedral professor of gynecology and obstetrics Madurowicz (year 1863), habilitation of pediatric Leon Maciej Jakubowski and a year later started lecturing. The result is a cathedral pediatrics, and 1873, when professor Jakubowski was appointed professor, a division became converted into a clinic. Three years later, the clinic moved to a new building of the hospital of St. Louis, along with a detachment at Arms. The maternity ward in 1895 comes to the division of the ward and branch training for midwives .
In the nineteenth century one dit not feel the need to isolate patients with infectious disease, so "fever" patients have been placed on the internal medicine wards. An exception in epidemic periods when a large number of patients were forced to seek periodically rooms at hospitals. The impetus for the establishment of a separate branch of Asiatic cholera was the case in 1892, the domestic unit, which became the cause of the descent of some sick women. Thus, efforts to establish a new branch in a separate building met with understanding. Was given for this purpose storey building near the surgical pavilion. Wretched condition of the building and the constant threat of new epidemics, overriding factors led to the construction of a hospital in a garden at a sufficient distance from other branches, a separate building, at first storey, which from then on was a branch of infectious diseases. This took place in 1905.
The second half of the nineteenth century was characterized by the formation of what it once the new specialty. In the hospital of St . Lazarus was reflected in the establishment of additional branches. So in 1880 in the lower areas of the branch IB there is a branch of eye diseases led by prof. L. Rydel. A few years later ( year 1893) he will find extensive facilities in the main administrative building on the first floor of the hospital.
The underground "Red surgery" while tied S. Pieniążek ENT department (hereinafter assigned the patients had surgical ward). In 1899, a branch of laryngological transformed into the clinic. A few years later acquired the miserable room in budyneczku the infectious ward, which was given to it to survive two world wars .
At the end of the nineteenth century, ul. Copernicus 15 near the main hospital building St . Lazarus or the administration building on the west side, which is closer to the city, a new internal medicine clinic to which patients were transferred from the former Masonic lodge .
In this state, he finds the hospital of St . Lazarus World War. With the intended redevelopment pavilions internal medicine IA and IB had to be abandoned. One of the two barracks for the temporary stay of patients allocated internally for the purposes of division of infectious diseases ("typhoid"). For the same purpose was given a second hut in 192.
The interwar period is not enrolled in the larger transformation. In the years 1924-1927 the pavilion of infectious diseases, a new observation building in 1938 comes to extensions and additions, the main building of the same branch. On the basis of the hospital of St . Lazarus arise university clinics. In the year of 1926 internal medicine IA pavilion is converted to Department of Internal Medicine. Department snuggled in the street 15 Copernicus II henceforth is called the name of Department of Internal Medicine . The Department of Surgery at a certain time (1929-1933) becomes the Second Surgical Department. Permanently maintain this position after the war.
www.su.krakow.pl/historia-szpitala-uniwersyteckiego-w-kra...
Provocation, scuffle and arrest at Israeli Embassy protest. London, 15.05.2011
The pro-Palestine protest celebrating the Nakba today outside the Israeli Embassy in London was a bad-tempered affair, with rival groups of Arabs and Israelis penned up close to each other, frequently trading insults with each other. The much smaller Israeli section of the protest was infiltrated early on by the EDL (English defense League - an extreme Right-Wing Ultra-Nationalist organisation), though the Israelis seemed quite happy to have them as bed-partners, provoking the tension all afternoon.
The EDF were also gathered across the road all afternoon, and at various points during the protest several of them carried out overtly provocative actions, never completely crossing the line, but clearly hoping maybe to goad the often hot-headed and wound-up younger Arab men into some kind of physical reaction, which, to their great credit didn't happen.
As the pavement at the end of Kensington Court got more and more crowded, a heated argument broke out when a female Palestinian journalist objected angrily to being photographed repeatedly and intentionally by a needlessly antagonistic young Israeli photographer - wearing a blue and white rolled-up scarf around his head with an obvious Star of David motif - who had been aggressively shoving his camera right in her face, taunting and mocking her.
As people started gathering around the photographer, starting to grab his arm and attempting to remove him, a man wearing a red top tried to prevent the manhandling of the by-now isolated photographer, who was actually in no danger as there were several policemen standing and watching less than fifteen feet away, still being screamed at by the Palestinian woman.
A couple of agitated Arabs - no doubt cranked up on adrenaline after all the tribal brinkmanship and general cock-waving - unfortunately mistook the Good Samaritan for an accomplice of the Israeli and they started shoving him, right into a policeman. He tried to back away but got shoved back into the policeman by a girl. Again he tried getting out of the way but another person shoved him again and started to scuffle with him. By now he was shoved into the policeman's chest with nowhere else to go. Next I knew the police swarmed around him, handcuffed him and carried him rapidly over the road to a police van.
Needless to say the antagonistic Israeli photographer, having all the anger of the crowd misdirected towards the Good Samaritan did nothing whatsoever to help him, but he did take the time to photograph him being dragged across the road in handcuffs. Nice. There's a deep moral in there somewhere. What a shithead.
All Photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not copy, reproduce or alter any images without my permission
Provocation, scuffle and arrest at Israeli Embassy protest. London, 15.05.2011
The pro-Palestine protest celebrating the Nakba today outside the Israeli Embassy in London was a bad-tempered affair, with rival groups of Arabs and Israelis penned up close to each other, frequently trading insults with each other. The much smaller Israeli section of the protest was infiltrated early on by the EDL (English defense League - an extreme Right-Wing Ultra-Nationalist organisation), though the Israelis seemed quite happy to have them as bed-partners, provoking the tension all afternoon.
The EDF were also gathered across the road all afternoon, and at various points during the protest several of them carried out overtly provocative actions, never completely crossing the line, but clearly hoping maybe to goad the often hot-headed and wound-up younger Arab men into some kind of physical reaction, which, to their great credit didn't happen.
As the pavement at the end of Kensington Court got more and more crowded, a heated argument broke out when a female Palestinian journalist objected angrily to being photographed repeatedly and intentionally by a needlessly antagonistic young Israeli photographer - wearing a blue and white rolled-up scarf around his head with an obvious Star of David motif - who had been aggressively shoving his camera right in her face, taunting and mocking her.
As people started gathering around the photographer, starting to grab his arm and attempting to remove him, a man wearing a red top tried to prevent the manhandling of the by-now isolated photographer, who was actually in no danger as there were several policemen standing and watching less than fifteen feet away, still being screamed at by the Palestinian woman.
A couple of agitated Arabs - no doubt cranked up on adrenaline after all the tribal brinkmanship and general cock-waving - unfortunately mistook the Good Samaritan for an accomplice of the Israeli and they started shoving him, right into a policeman. He tried to back away but got shoved back into the policeman by a girl. Again he tried getting out of the way but another person shoved him again and started to scuffle with him. By now he was shoved into the policeman's chest with nowhere else to go. Next I knew the police swarmed around him, handcuffed him and carried him rapidly over the road to a police van.
Needless to say the antagonistic Israeli photographer, having all the anger of the crowd misdirected towards the Good Samaritan did nothing whatsoever to help him, but he did take the time to photograph him being dragged across the road in handcuffs. Nice. There's a deep moral in there somewhere. What a shithead.
All Photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not copy, reproduce or alter any images without my permission
Provocation, scuffle and arrest at Israeli Embassy protest. London, 15.05.2011
The pro-Palestine protest celebrating the Nakba today outside the Israeli Embassy in London was a bad-tempered affair, with rival groups of Arabs and Israelis penned up close to each other, frequently trading insults with each other. The much smaller Israeli section of the protest was infiltrated early on by the EDL (English defense League - an extreme Right-Wing Ultra-Nationalist organisation), though the Israelis seemed quite happy to have them as bed-partners, provoking the tension all afternoon.
The EDF were also gathered across the road all afternoon, and at various points during the protest several of them carried out overtly provocative actions, never completely crossing the line, but clearly hoping maybe to goad the often hot-headed and wound-up younger Arab men into some kind of physical reaction, which, to their great credit didn't happen.
As the pavement at the end of Kensington Court got more and more crowded, a heated argument broke out when a female Palestinian journalist objected angrily to being photographed repeatedly and intentionally by a needlessly antagonistic young Israeli photographer - wearing a blue and white rolled-up scarf around his head with an obvious Star of David motif - who had been aggressively shoving his camera right in her face, taunting and mocking her.
As people started gathering around the photographer, starting to grab his arm and attempting to remove him, a man wearing a red top tried to prevent the manhandling of the by-now isolated photographer, who was actually in no danger as there were several policemen standing and watching less than fifteen feet away, still being screamed at by the Palestinian woman.
A couple of agitated Arabs - no doubt cranked up on adrenaline after all the tribal brinkmanship and general cock-waving - unfortunately mistook the Good Samaritan for an accomplice of the Israeli and they started shoving him, right into a policeman. He tried to back away but got shoved back into the policeman by a girl. Again he tried getting out of the way but another person shoved him again and started to scuffle with him. By now he was shoved into the policeman's chest with nowhere else to go. Next I knew the police swarmed around him, handcuffed him and carried him rapidly over the road to a police van.
Needless to say the antagonistic Israeli photographer, having all the anger of the crowd misdirected towards the Good Samaritan did nothing whatsoever to help him, but he did take the time to photograph him being dragged across the road in handcuffs. Nice. There's a deep moral in there somewhere. What a shithead.
All Photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not copy, reproduce or alter any images without my permission
Provocation, scuffle and arrest at Israeli Embassy protest. London, 15.05.2011
The pro-Palestine protest celebrating the Nakba today outside the Israeli Embassy in London was a bad-tempered affair, with rival groups of Arabs and Israelis penned up close to each other, frequently trading insults with each other. The much smaller Israeli section of the protest was infiltrated early on by the EDL (English defense League - an extreme Right-Wing Ultra-Nationalist organisation), though the Israelis seemed quite happy to have them as bed-partners, provoking the tension all afternoon.
The EDF were also gathered across the road all afternoon, and at various points during the protest several of them carried out overtly provocative actions, never completely crossing the line, but clearly hoping maybe to goad the often hot-headed and wound-up younger Arab men into some kind of physical reaction, which, to their great credit didn't happen.
As the pavement at the end of Kensington Court got more and more crowded, a heated argument broke out when a female Palestinian journalist objected angrily to being photographed repeatedly and intentionally by a needlessly antagonistic young Israeli photographer - wearing a blue and white rolled-up scarf around his head with an obvious Star of David motif - who had been aggressively shoving his camera right in her face, taunting and mocking her.
As people started gathering around the photographer, starting to grab his arm and attempting to remove him, a man wearing a red top tried to prevent the manhandling of the by-now isolated photographer, who was actually in no danger as there were several policemen standing and watching less than fifteen feet away, still being screamed at by the Palestinian woman.
A couple of agitated Arabs - no doubt cranked up on adrenaline after all the tribal brinkmanship and general cock-waving - unfortunately mistook the Good Samaritan for an accomplice of the Israeli and they started shoving him, right into a policeman. He tried to back away but got shoved back into the policeman by a girl. Again he tried getting out of the way but another person shoved him again and started to scuffle with him. By now he was shoved into the policeman's chest with nowhere else to go. Next I knew the police swarmed around him, handcuffed him and carried him rapidly over the road to a police van.
Needless to say the antagonistic Israeli photographer, having all the anger of the crowd misdirected towards the Good Samaritan did nothing whatsoever to help him, but he did take the time to photograph him being dragged across the road in handcuffs. Nice. There's a deep moral in there somewhere. What a shithead.
All Photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not copy, reproduce or alter any images without my permission
Provocation, scuffle and arrest at Israeli Embassy protest. London, 15.05.2011
The pro-Palestine protest celebrating the Nakba today outside the Israeli Embassy in London was a bad-tempered affair, with rival groups of Arabs and Israelis penned up close to each other, frequently trading insults with each other. The much smaller Israeli section of the protest was infiltrated early on by the EDL (English defense League - an extreme Right-Wing Ultra-Nationalist organisation), though the Israelis seemed quite happy to have them as bed-partners, provoking the tension all afternoon.
The EDF were also gathered across the road all afternoon, and at various points during the protest several of them carried out overtly provocative actions, never completely crossing the line, but clearly hoping maybe to goad the often hot-headed and wound-up younger Arab men into some kind of physical reaction, which, to their great credit didn't happen.
As the pavement at the end of Kensington Court got more and more crowded, a heated argument broke out when a female Palestinian journalist objected angrily to being photographed repeatedly and intentionally by a needlessly antagonistic young Israeli photographer - wearing a blue and white rolled-up scarf around his head with an obvious Star of David motif - who had been aggressively shoving his camera right in her face, taunting and mocking her.
As people started gathering around the photographer, starting to grab his arm and attempting to remove him, a man wearing a red top tried to prevent the manhandling of the by-now isolated photographer, who was actually in no danger as there were several policemen standing and watching less than fifteen feet away, still being screamed at by the Palestinian woman.
A couple of agitated Arabs - no doubt cranked up on adrenaline after all the tribal brinkmanship and general cock-waving - unfortunately mistook the Good Samaritan for an accomplice of the Israeli and they started shoving him, right into a policeman. He tried to back away but got shoved back into the policeman by a girl. Again he tried getting out of the way but another person shoved him again and started to scuffle with him. By now he was shoved into the policeman's chest with nowhere else to go. Next I knew the police swarmed around him, handcuffed him and carried him rapidly over the road to a police van.
Needless to say the antagonistic Israeli photographer, having all the anger of the crowd misdirected towards the Good Samaritan did nothing whatsoever to help him, but he did take the time to photograph him being dragged across the road in handcuffs. Nice. There's a deep moral in there somewhere. What a shithead.
All Photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not copy, reproduce or alter any images without my permission
Provocation, scuffle and arrest at Israeli Embassy protest. London, 15.05.2011
The pro-Palestine protest celebrating the Nakba today outside the Israeli Embassy in London was a bad-tempered affair, with rival groups of Arabs and Israelis penned up close to each other, frequently trading insults with each other. The much smaller Israeli section of the protest was infiltrated early on by the EDL (English defense League - an extreme Right-Wing Ultra-Nationalist organisation), though the Israelis seemed quite happy to have them as bed-partners, provoking the tension all afternoon.
The EDF were also gathered across the road all afternoon, and at various points during the protest several of them carried out overtly provocative actions, never completely crossing the line, but clearly hoping maybe to goad the often hot-headed and wound-up younger Arab men into some kind of physical reaction, which, to their great credit didn't happen.
As the pavement at the end of Kensington Court got more and more crowded, a heated argument broke out when a female Palestinian journalist objected angrily to being photographed repeatedly and intentionally by a needlessly antagonistic young Israeli photographer - wearing a blue and white rolled-up scarf around his head with an obvious Star of David motif - who had been aggressively shoving his camera right in her face, taunting and mocking her.
As people started gathering around the photographer, starting to grab his arm and attempting to remove him, a man wearing a red top tried to prevent the manhandling of the by-now isolated photographer, who was actually in no danger as there were several policemen standing and watching less than fifteen feet away, still being screamed at by the Palestinian woman.
A couple of agitated Arabs - no doubt cranked up on adrenaline after all the tribal brinkmanship and general cock-waving - unfortunately mistook the Good Samaritan for an accomplice of the Israeli and they started shoving him, right into a policeman. He tried to back away but got shoved back into the policeman by a girl. Again he tried getting out of the way but another person shoved him again and started to scuffle with him. By now he was shoved into the policeman's chest with nowhere else to go. Next I knew the police swarmed around him, handcuffed him and carried him rapidly over the road to a police van.
Needless to say the antagonistic Israeli photographer, having all the anger of the crowd misdirected towards the Good Samaritan did nothing whatsoever to help him, but he did take the time to photograph him being dragged across the road in handcuffs. Nice. There's a deep moral in there somewhere. What a shithead.
All Photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not copy, reproduce or alter any images without my permission