The strange haunting song of Bad Canary; or how not to spend your summer vacation

June 2, 2015, 12:55 pm

≫ Next: Vachel Lindsay: The Little Turtle: A Recitation for Martha Wakefield, Three Years Old; together with a Humane Consideration of the Hazards of Turtle Intervention

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Canary in a Coal Mine. "Canaries were once used in coal mining as an early warning system. Toxic gases such as carbon monoxide and methane in the mine would kill the bird bfore affecting the miners. Because canaries tended to sing much of the time, they would stop singing prior to sucumbing to he gas therefore alerting miners to the danger." Around the former coal mine "Zollverein" in Essen there are 10 or 12 larger-than-life canaries to remind of this miner's practivce: photo by Michael Sonnabend, 31 October 2011 

 

"Naming and Shaming": Bad Canary's Busy Work in the Hasbara Mines

"@canarymission" (see abc7news: website targeting politically active students infringes on free speech) is advancing a tactic long advocated for by various pro-Israel groups : image via Ben White @benabyad, 28 May 2015

Tap dancing for Bad Canary

@SenTedCruz: Universities that boycott #Israel should lose federal funding #BDSFail: image via Canary Mission @canarymission, 30 May 2015

Is @canarymission a spec project chasing Adelson & friends $$$? Looks like attacking BDS students will be lucrative: tweet via Eli Clifton @Eli Clifton, 30 May 2015

Sheldon Adelson To Host Secret Anti-BDS Summit for Jewish Donors: Nathan Guttman, The Forward, June 1, 2015

Washington – Leading Jewish mega-donors have summoned pro-Israel activists for a closed-door meeting in Las Vegas to establish, and fund, successful strategies for countering the wave of anti-Israel activity on college campuses.

The meeting, taking place this weekend, will be hosted by casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson and was organized by several other top Jewish funders, including Hollywood entertainment mogul Haim Saban, Israeli-born real-estate developer Adam Milstein and Canadian businesswoman Heather Reisman.

Organizers have sought to keep the gathering secret and have declined to respond to inquiries from the Forward that would confirm the upcoming meeting with two separate informed sources.

The planned Vegas summit marks a shift in approach on the issue of anti-Israel activity on college campuses, whose growth in recent years has captured a top spot on the Jewish communal agenda. The initiative, in this case, did not come from students on the ground, nor did it emerge from work of the many organizations involved in pro-Israel activism on campus. Instead, it is an idea coming from wealthy Jewish philanthropists who have decided to take action. Their communiqués to Jewish groups invite them to come and brainstorm with them during a weekend gathering at the Venetian, Adelson’s luxury hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

Saban, a Los Angeles billionaire who is also a major Democratic donor with close ties to the Clintons, has been discussing the idea for more than a year, one source with firsthand information of the initiative said. Saban has spoken to Israeli officials, including the former ambassador to Washington Michael Oren and top officials in the Israeli foreign ministry, about setting up a special task force to deal with increased calls on campuses to adopt measures of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, measures commonly referred to as BDS.

According to an official in the Jewish community, it was another California philanthropist of Israeli background, Milstein, who put together the initiative. He got mega-donor Adelson and Reisman, who in recent years has been increasingly involved in initiatives to support Israel, on board.

The donors’ invitation came as somewhat of a surprise to at least some of the invitees. An official with one major group said leaders of the organizations were not aware of the initiative before receiving the last-minute invite and had not been consulted as it was crystallized. The official added that leaders of these groups were not quite certain what the goal of the Vegas summit is. Another Jewish organization official made clear that while his group intends to participate, it will not dispatch a top-level leader to the event.

All Jewish organizations contacted by the Forward declined to speak on record, citing the request of organizers to keep the gathering away from the public eye.

According to several prospective participants, Jewish groups planning to attend the meeting include the Israel on Campus Coalition, Hillel, StandWithUs, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Federations of North America. The Israel Action Network, a communal body created specifically to counter BDS and delegitimization of Israel, will not attend, although it will be represented by one of its parent organizations, JFNA.

J Street U, which is the student arm of the dovish Israel lobby, has a presence on most campuses and opposes BDS, was not invited.

The purpose, an official with one of the groups invited said, was to “find the best strategies” for countering campus anti-Israel campaigns and to “make sure there is funding” for those programs. However, groups were not asked to prepare a pitch to present to the panel of Jewish mega-donors.

Another official explained that the request for secrecy was “reasonable” because “it makes sense not to have the public in the room when you sit with funders to set priorities.”

Campus activity has been among the fastest-growing fields in Jewish organizations. Most major groups, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the ADL and the American Jewish Committee, have set up operations geared at students, alongside groups whose main focus has always been campus activity, such as Hillel and ICC. Yet despite the growth in pro-Israel activism, pro-Palestinian-driven protests and resolutions have been on the rise. The past year has seen a record number of 15 universities adopt resolutions demanding divestiture of college funds from Israel.

Chirp! Bad Canary Website Seeks to Discourage Hiring of Pro-Palestinians

Not Only Is The #Canary Bird A Great Pet, But It Has An Incredible Life-Span: photo by Lynn Newman @BirdCagesNow, 27 May 2015

@democracynow spoke this morning of @canarymission and its attack on free speech: image via StlGal @StlGal, 1 June 2015

So... uh... who is Bad Canary, anyway?

@UN_Spokesperson Islamophobic website @canarymissionis tweeting that they are associated with the @un: image via PAl @MEastQyagmire, 31 May 2015

Q. Why isn't Bad Canary in his very pretty cage, then? A. Because he has flown the coop, again, and now claims to be chilling on a new perch at 46th and First!

Coal Miner's Birdcage Complete (1). The nearly complete Coal Miner's Birdcage (reproduction of vintage models) as was used to carry a live canary into coal mine's to warn the miners of bad air quality. If the canary remained alive and well, the air was acceptable. But if the canary was dead, the air contained either methane or carbon monoxide, and the miners would have to evacuate the mine until the air quality improved: photo by ficusdesk, 24 September 2010

Breaking: Ever-so-brave Bad Canary assaults unexceptionable young free speech user Hadeel Salameh from falseflag headquarters

United Nations Secretariat from Uptown. Like a sheet of glass in the sky: photo by Jeffrey Zeldman, 8 September 2013

Featured Radical - Hadeel Salameh! #SJPPitt She's had a lot to say! #Israelbasher #BDSthug: image via Canary Mission @canarymission, 31 May 2015

Nobody ever said constructing a blacklist wasn't sometimes sticky work for Bad Canary, who stoops to spatter his ruff as he welcomes unsuspecting young Marium Navid into the shadows beyond the zio hate campfire

水浴びすると髪が濡れて河童感が増す五助さん。何だか細くなってワイルド！#bird #canary #canarybird #gloster #glostercanary: image via zangiri_cut, 21 May 2015

Today's NEW radical! UCsenator campaigning for #BDS - welcome Marium Navid!: image via Canary Mission @canarymission, 31 May 2015

Bold Bad Canary celebrates another famous soft-target hasbara victory

@LisaCanary RT lol ...just wonder who was this #canary who took off his shirt ???? #NCFC: image via Worstead Canary @poppygirl2014, 1 June 2015

Chirp! Chirp! Bad Canary keeps busy busy busy always expanding the frame

Shadowy Web Site Creates Blacklist of Pro-Palestinian Activists - News #CanaryMission: image via PalestineTrends @Palestinolizer, 27 May 2014

Uh-oh -- unarmed young woman, Palestinian flag -- better call Bad Canary!

Demonstrator holding Palestinian flag calls for Israel's expulsion from FIFA during today's 65th Congress (AFP): image via Ben White @benabyad, 20 May 2015

Learning to kill on summer vacation: Children, come along with us on the 2-Hour IDF Shooting Adventure! (The Article that Sparked a Bad Canary Hasbara Storm)

Caliber 3's tourist programs leave most of our visitors feeling that this was the best part of their trip! Perfect for all ages and groups, choose from a variety of programs including our most popular - The 2-hour IDF Shooting Adventure which over 6000 visitors per year enjoy. English, French, Russian and Hebrew. All of our instructors have real battlefield experience and are weapons experts. You will be able to interact with them and hear their stories about places and operations you heard in the news or history lessons!: photo via Caliber3, 2013

War games and settlement excursions: inside a pro-Israel propaganda tour for student activists (extract): Rebecca Pierce via Mondoweiss, 21 August 2013

“‘TERRORIST! GO! BODY!’ I’m sprinting across the rocky terrain to reach safety…Heart racing, out of breath, I’m trying to remember the instructor’s commands. Muscle memory, no time to aim, hurry, hurry…”

So begins one California college student’s first-hand account of a June 2013 "commando tourism" paintball session at Caliber 3, a privately-owned counter-terrorism training facility in the illegal Israeli settlement bloc of Gush Etzion. The student, identified only as “JJL”, was on a ten-day BlueStar Fellows summer tour of Israel, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights with twenty-three peers from five California universities. The trip was part of a year-long program launched by San Francisco-based Israel advocacy group BlueStar PR with the goal of molding students into “powerful pro-Israel advocates, spokespeople and opinion leaders” on their college campuses.

In over fifty entries on the BlueStar Fellows program blog (penned with the assistance of a writing coach) participants from UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, San Francisco State, San Jose State, and Pitzer College reflect on a trip itinerary that often glorifies Israeli state violence while promoting a dehumanized image of Palestinians. The accounts provide insight into the sensational approach to the conflict pushed by some hardline Israel advocacy groups, and raise questions about the impact of their tactics in the battle for the hearts and minds of US college students.

After visiting the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and flying to Israel, BlueStar participants were first brought to the Museum of Independence in Tel Aviv. Sitting in the flag-swathed hall where the Israeli declaration of independence was signed in 1948, students listened to a tour guide play the national anthem and recount the Zionist narrative of the struggle to create a Jewish state in the land of Palestine, in defiance of hostile neighbors. Absent from accounts of the day is any mention of the 750,000 indigenous Palestinians displaced in the violence leading up to and following the establishment of Israel. In fact, students seem to write Palestinians out of the narrative entirely. After viewing a 1909 picture of the sand dunes part of Tel Aviv would be built on, Qi Li, a Chinese exchange student at SJSU, mused, “isn’t [it] obvious from the barren landscape that [the Palestinians] did not even know or care about this piece of land? How could this land be considered ‘occupied’ when Jewish settlers found this virgin land with no occupants?”

One of the next stops on the trip was the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, which houses a museum and memorial to Israeli intelligence officers killed in the line of duty. There, participants sat through another lecture and viewed rooms full of "weapons and explosives... showing he various techniques that terrorists utilize."  Students also saw videos and pictures of Palestinian youngsters “handed guns and celebrating death.” Deeply unsettled by this imagery, SFSU student Kayla Wold declared that “in the Islamic world children are raised with a mentality for death. Not just death upon Jews, but death to themselves…Coming from a country and culture where I was taught to cherish my life, it’s been a struggle to understand this mentality.” This death-cult image of Palestinian childhood would sharply contrast with the iconic caterpillar-shaped playground bomb shelter participants observed the next day as they toured Sderot, a city heavily impacted by rockets fired by armed groups in neighboring Gaza.

This playground also doubles as a bomb shelter for children at the park: photo via BlueStar Fellows, 2013

Commando tourism

After visiting the Israeli Holocaust Museum and touring holy sites in East Jerusalem, BlueStar participants journeyed into the occupied West Bank, passing concrete walls and military checkpoints en route to Caliber 3. Located in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, Caliber 3 Academy provides counter-terrorism training to Israeli combat units, private security companies, and SWAT teams from around the world. The training center also offers a variety of what it calls “commando tourism” activities for civilians, ranging from infantry and urban warfare instruction to paintball games to a Bar Mitzvah package.

 

At Caliber we know how important your Bar Mitzvah trip is, and that is the reason we came up with the Bar Mitzvah programs. We want you to have a "once in a lifetime experience". We have a variety of programs for all of the family. The programs are customized for each family. That way we can assure you that your experience is unique for your needs. We will build together with you a once in a lifetime experience for your family: photo via Caliber 3, 2013

The Caliber 3 website is blunt about the ideological motivations behind its contentious locale, and boasts of an experience that combines “the values of Zionism with the excitement and enjoyment of shooting.” A June 2013 NPR report on Caliber 3 describes instructors demonstrating firing techniques on targets dressed as Palestinians, and telling tourists that they can “help fight terrorism” by promoting a positive view of Israeli soldiers when they return home.

 

  At Caliber 3, before the paintball competition begins, you and your group are trained by some of the finest experts in close-quarters battle and urban combat in our professional tactical training facility.Training includes: Entering into battle / Room entry techniques / Room clearing / Close-quarter Battle (CQB) / Fighting in complex urban terrain. All you need to bring is clothes that you don't mind getting dirty - We supply the rest!: photo via Caliber 3, 2013

The BlueStar Fellows’ dramatic accounts of their tactical training and paintball session at Caliber 3 resemble a live action version of a first person shooter video game. SJSU student Jaspreet Kaur describes the thrill of learning “how to clear a house of an enemy and…snap into combat mode in less than three seconds.” This creates a chilling image when placed in the context of the frequent night raids the Israeli military leads into the homes of Palestinian families. “JJL” recalls hearing a lecture on the IDF code of ethics the night before the excursion, but admits to being so enthralled that “I did not once think while I was firing at the enemy team whether or not my stray ‘bullets’ might hit an innocent.” While the paintball game was far removed from the human impact of the conflict it mimicked, students felt their experience was authentic, and at times very real. Kaur vividly recalls being shot by a fellow student, saying, “[t]o me that wasn’t a paintball shot by a member of the other team but an actual bullet by a terrorist.”

In the programs we offer an action packed Counter Terror demonstration, Shooting Training, Krav Maga Taining, & Paintball Training! Get ready for the Best Bar Mitzvah Program that Israel has to offer you! Book your Experience TODAY!!: photo via Caliber 3, 2013

Rebecca Pierce is a recent graduate of the University of California Santa Cruz where she studied film production and was active in student media and Palestine solidarity organizing.

Retributive Bad Canary: or how not to spend your summer vacation (Fear Bad Canary now!)

 #CM Week in Review: Radical # 2 - Rebecca Pierce @aptly engineerd UCSC Digital Media #CJPFail: image via Canary Mission @canarymission, 30 May 2015

Survivor of "commando tourism""punished" for exercise of free speech

As @canarymission gets widely panned for their craven McCarthyism, they turn to bizarre harassment of their targets: image via Rebecca Pierce @aptly_engineerd, 28 May 2014

 
Account followed by Canary Mission calling me n****r, Kapo, and saying I have "monkey blood": image via Rebecca Pierce @aptly_engineerd, 2 June 2015

@support hope you will do something about @RememberMasada as he is now mentioning you in rape threats against me: image via Rebecca Pierce @aptly_engineerd, 2 June 2015 

Defense Minister reassures anxious Bad Canary: the 'heavy club is still hoisted in the air'

An Israeli military exercise on the Gaza border, 22 March 2015: photo by Ilan Assayag via Haaretz, 30 May 2015

"Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said on Wednesday in a Lecture at the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Studies that the 'heavy club of Operation Protective Edge is still hoisted in the air and it has to be maintained. We must not ignore it -- this part of our deterrence.'"

"Ya'alon spoke about the decision to bomb four Hamas and Islamic Jihad military targets in the organizations' training areas in Gaza..."

Amos Harel, Haaretz, 30 May 2015

When school's out... Bad Canary joins the almost brave Desert Blaze Battalion in time for the next onslaught in Gaza

  IDF soldiers of the Desert Blaze Battalion: photo by IDF Spokesman's Unit via The Jerusalem Post, 28 May 2015

Security and defense: Preparing for the next round in Gaza: Incorporating the lessons of last summer’s 50-day war, reservists are undergoing intensive battle drills: Yaakov Lappin, The Jerusalem Post, 28 May 2015

Two reservist infantry battalions from Training Base One near Mitzpe Ramon recently completed a grueling 10-day war exercise – which lasted double the time of past drills, was far more intensive, and sheds light on changes in IDF preparations for the next clash with Hamas in Gaza.

Training Base One is the main facility for qualifying army officers, but also serves as the center for a reserve combat brigade.

Col. Avi Gil commands both the reserve brigade and the training base. He told The Jerusalem Post this week that the drill’s extraordinarily difficult conditions are designed to “simulate the physical and mental difficulties” of combat, adding that despite some real doubts, the reservists successfully got through the exercises.

The drills saw frequent last-minute mission changes, and relentless pressure on the reservists – who had to carry out combat tasks in heavy heat, to simulate the fog and strenuous conditions of war.

Held at the Tze’elim Ground Forces training center deep in the Negev, it began at the combat squad level, gradually growing in size to the company level, followed by a battalion-level, live-fire exercise.

It culminated in the storming of mock enemy positions.

The last stage of the exercise was witnessed by IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, who specially arrived at Tze’elim to review the reservists in action.

The latest drills were part of a new program that incorporates lessons learned from that 50-day war, Gil said.

“Two battalions that took part in Operation Protective Edge were in this drill; this is the first time we trained reserves at the battalion and company level since the operation,” the commander explained.

The extended training period is part of an attempt to “avoid wasting time, which occurred in the past, when training was limited to only a week, and by the time the reservists were ready to start... they had to head home.”

The first week of training dealt with fundamentals of combat, and included “very intensive drills” that lasted for four days. Units practiced operating as a company, stretcher evacuations and navigating battlegrounds. They then stayed at base and held a Shabbat celebration – an experience Gil said was key to creating a bond among unit members.

“All segments of society were there,” he noted. “At first, there was lots of opposition. People asked, why do we need to do this? But we used civilian gelling models; hi-tech companies and law firms do these things to create cohesion among their employees, and cohesion is important for us too.” In the end, he added, the experience was a very positive one for all involved.

After a brief respite, the second week of training began in the desert sands, and battalion-wide, intensive war drills pushed the reservists to the edge of their capabilities.

The reservists “said they did not remember things like this, even during their time as conscripted soldiers,” Gil recalled. “When you fight the enemy, he doesn’t care if you are a reservist or a conscripted soldier; you have to win the battle. The enemy will not take into account the fact that you came from the civilian world, that you are a lawyer or doctor by profession.

“It was very tough, and I have to say, I started this with doubts. People said it was too difficult. Yet I was pleasantly surprised, in a very significant way.”

The second phase of training was defined by “lots of uncertainty, as in war; not knowing what will happen in two hours. The units studied drills, and were suddenly pulled away and mobilized elsewhere.

They did this while being extremely tired, and in very high temperatures,” Gil said.

Seventy percent of the drill simulated combat in confined, built-up areas, and the remaining 30 percent saw soldiers practice fighting terror cells in open areas.

“I saw how hard it was on their faces,” he said.

“They felt this had no end. They were running on three hours of sleep, and continued on with their missions.”

Most reservists serving in the battalions are aged 26 to 27, and a majority come from the Givati infantry brigade. “They really come from the whole of Israel. When they come together, suddenly, there are no divisions. There is unity surrounding the mission, it is something incredible,” Gil said.

The battalions gelled through weeks of intense combat in Gaza last summer, an experience Gil stressed changed his perception of their capabilities.

“When we arrived at Operation Protective Edge, on the first day, I knew the platoon and company commanders but not the soldiers. I looked at them and asked myself: Am I certain I want to fight with them? After a couple of days, I saw the combat framework come together. This was a wonder in and of itself.”

Although he considers the exercises to be a success, Gil said they also provided glimpses into gaps that need to be addressed. “Whatever you touch, you end up missing something else.

“It was a challenge to the leadership abilities of the commanders. Usually, reserve training is seen a as little bit of fun; they used to come and play backgammon.

Now, [in this training session,] battalion and company companies faced real pressure from soldiers below. This pressure is what happens whenever there is chaos,” he continued.

“I think we are more ready for any mission than we were two weeks ago. We still have steps to climb...

We are preparing for the Gaza region, and for a range of scenarios.”

Lt.-Col. Aviram Ring, commander of a reconnaissance battalion, told the Post that at the end of last year’s conflict, special teams were assembled to “study our performance. One of our conclusions was the need to increase the role of commanders, who must function in a rapidly challenging reality in Gaza.”

The 10-day exercise was born out of that process.

“The drill simulated northern Gaza’s sandy regions and built-up closed spaces within the Strip, as well as underground warfare,” Ring detailed.

“That’s how we began building the drill. Planning started months ago,” he added. “As the reconnaissance battalion, we are the brigade’s forward guard.

“We project on to the rest of the brigade, and up [the chain of command] to the Southern Command, as well as down the chain. When [officer] cadets see reservists in uniform and ceramic vests, carrying dozens of kilograms on them, it has an impact.”

The exercise focused on cooperation with other components of the ground forces, Ring said. “One of the conclusions from last year is that this cooperation was not well-understood.

“Every drill, from the platoon level upwards, involved armored and combat engineering units, and was assisted by lookouts. We understand there is no such thing anymore as an infantry-only operation.

Today, it is about the combined battle.”

Ring, who took command of the brigade’s reconnaissance battalion in January, said he hopes other reserve combat battalions will adopt the same training pattern.

“I can say unequivocally that our readiness has gone up. We still have not trained for 100 percent of scenarios... but the unit drilled everything it could in the live-fire training ground, and had access to the supporting environment the IDF can provide.”

Units practiced advancing, seizing territory, then stopping to seek cover from enemy fire, before continuing with an assault. “It all means that battle- readiness has risen,” he asserted. “Are we ready? Much more than before.”

Ring paid tribute to the 10 days his reservists gave up for training, 10 days in which “they were not at work and not with their families. This is tough, both physically and mentally, and they trained in very high temperatures.

“I saluted them at the end of it.” 

If not by land... the desolate sea shanty of Bad Canary

Israel Navy Tzar’a boat: photo by IDF Spokesman's Unit via The Jerusalem Post, 1 June 2015

Israel Navy's small boat unit practicing short-range strikes on Gazan targets: In recent weeks, the Snapir unit based at the Ashdod Naval Base, part of the navy’s 916 Patrol Squadron, held the first drill of its kind on the unit’s new offensive role: Yaakov Lappin, The Jerusaem Post, 1 June 2015

The Israel Navy’s Snapir unit of fast-moving, inflatable boats formerly had the conventional defensive task of securing the ports of Ashdod, Haifa, and Eilat, but the unit’s role is now expanding.

In recent weeks, the Snapir unit based at the Ashdod Naval Base, part of the navy’s 916 Patrol Squadron, held the first drill of its kind on the unit’s new offensive role.

During the drill, the unit’s Tzar’a boats simulated a close approach to terrorist targets on the Gazan coastline and carried out mock shortrange strikes against them.

The Tzar’a boats simulated coordinated attacks with other vessels from the 916 Squadron, like the Dvora and Shaldag-class fast patrol boats.

A senior navy source said last week that the drill is the culmination of a months-long process of assigning the small boats a new, offensive combat role, and developing a fresh operational doctrine for them.

Thanks to their speed, small size, and maneuverability, the source said, the Tzar’as can come right up to the Gazan coastline and thwart attacks, or seek out Hamas divers and drop depth charges to prevent them from reaching the Israeli coast.

In the months leading up to Operation Protective Edge last summer, the source said, the navy had concluded that Hamas would seek to attack Israel by sending naval commandos to reach the Israeli coast.

Now, instead of only defending Ashdod Port, the Snapir unit has to be able to hit Gazan targets and carry out detection and interception missions against terrorist commandos who may seek to land on an Israeli beach, just as they did during last summer’s conflict.

In addition to the depth charges, the Tzar’a boats are armed with a MAG 7.62 mm machine gun, night vision optics, and their sailors are also armed with assault rifles.

As part of its expanded role, the co-ed Snapir unit also received non-lethal combat equipment to help it enforce Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza and send back Palestinian fishing boats that stray from the allotted zone.

The broadened role for the unit has “very much increased its activities and hours at sea,” the officer said. “They also experience a lot more friction [with Palestinian vessels],” he said. “But the Snapir unit is meeting this challenge, with high rates of success.”

The neurotic war-chirp of Bad Canary plays again and again, and demolition may come at any moment

At any moment, Israeli occupation forces may demolish Palestinian village of Susiya near Hebron: image via Ben White @benabyad, 1 June 2015

• At any moment, Israel’s Civil Administration (CA) might demolish all homes and structures in Khirbet Susiya, a small Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills, the West Bank. On 4 May 2015, Israel’s High Court of Justice (HCJ) denied a request for an interim injunction that would prevent the CA from implementing the demolition orders it had issued. The request was made during a hearing of a petition filed by the villagers, the latest measure in their battle against efforts by Israeli authorities to forcibly transfer them from their homes in Area C to Area B or A, as part of a policy to annex the area de-facto to Israel. Demolition would effectively mean banishing the residents from their land and their village. The residents of Khirbet Susiya were expelled from the original site of their village in the 1980s, after the CA declared it a “national park”. They then took up residence on their farmland but the Israeli authorities tried to expel them from there, too. After a protracted legal battle, the villagers remained on the farmland, but the CA issued demolition orders for all their homes and refused to authorize the master plan they drew up for the new village. In response, the residents petitioned the HCJ with the help of Israeli NGO Rabbis for Human Rights. They argued that the CA had rejected their master plan on discriminatory grounds and requested that the court issue an interim injunction to stay the demolition until the petition is heard. Justice Noam Solhberg denied the request. Without homes to live in, the residents will remain without shelter in harsh desert conditions. Demolishing all structures in the village would be both cruel and illegal. International occupation law prohibits both the demolition of homes in such circumstances and the forcible transfer of an occupied population. Based on past experience, if the residents are forced to leave their land, settlers will take it over with the support of the state -- as they have already done with 300 hectares of village land. We can help the villagers fight for their land. They want to stay in their homes and need our help making their story public knowledge. At present it is virtually unknown to the world.  -- via btselem. org, 1 June 2015

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• Residents of village og Khirbet Susyiya, threatened with Israeli demolition: photo via btselem. org

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• We ain't going anywhere sweetie @YDan10 @purplhaze42 @canarymission @charlesfrith @umm_hashim @avibono: image via Shim Rational @shimrational, 30 May 2015

The death-song of Bad Canary echoes deep in the darkest night

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• Village of Khirbet Susyiya, faced with demolition: photo via btselem. org
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 Coal Miner's Canary. Tribute to the canaries that saved many miners' lives by detecting bad air. Trinidad, Colorado: photo by ccarlstead, 26 June 2012

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Vachel Lindsay: The Little Turtle: A Recitation for Martha Wakefield, Three Years Old; together with a Humane Consideration of the Hazards of Turtle Intervention

June 4, 2015, 11:27 am

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 Turtle 5, Alameda, California: photo by orientalizing, 18 April 2014

There was a little turtle.

He lived in a box.

He swam in a puddle.

He climbed on the rocks.

He snapped at a mosquito.

He snapped at a flea.

He snapped at a minnow.

And he snapped at me.

He caught the mosquito.

He caught the flea.

He caught the minnow.

But he didn't catch me.

Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931): The Little Turtle: A Recitation for Martha Wakefield, Three Years Old, from The Golden Whales of California and Other Rhymes in the American Language, 1920

Western Pond Turtles, Alameda, California: photo by orientalizing, 18 April 2014

Western Pond Turtles, Alameda, California: photo by orientalizing, 18 April 2014

Western Pond Turtle, Alameda, California: photo by orientalizing, 18 April 2014

A humane consideration of the hazards of turtle intervention

 

Western Pond Turtle, Alameda, California: photo by orientalizing, 18 April 2014

 

Don’t touch the turtles! Misguided ‘rescuers’ relocating reptiles: Peter Fimrite, San Francisco Chronicle, 1 June 2015

 

Western pond turtles have been subjected to many indignities over the years, but the latest threat to the sad-eyed reptiles comes from a surprising source -- rampaging do-gooders.

Wildlife biologists say would-be good Samaritans have been snatching native turtles around California this spring in ill-conceived attempts to save them from doing the kinds of things turtles do.

 

A western pond turtle climbs out of Jewel Lake onto a log at Tilden Park in Berkeley, Calif. on Wednesday, May 13, 2015. State fish and wildlife officials are urging people to leave turtles alone if they see one in dry terrain as they could simply be en route to nesting areas away from ponds or creeks and not in distress: photo by William Chinn / San Francisco Chronicle, 1 June 2015

Wildlife rehabilitation centers and animal shelters have complained that people have been bringing healthy Western pond turtles to their sites. The good-hearted but ill-informed folk have wrongly perceived distress as the turtles have waddled out of water, ambled up hillsides, moseyed about through grasslands or simply looked off into space with what appeared to be a needy gaze, said Laura Patterson, a senior environmental scientist for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. 

Western pond turtles line up on a log at Tilden Park's Jewel Lake in Berkeley, Calif. on Wednesday, May 13, 2015. State fish and wildlife officials are urging people to leave turtles alone if they see one in dry terrain as they could simply be en route to nesting areas away from ponds or creeks and not in distress: photo by William Chinn / San Francisco Chronicle, 1 June 2015

“They think they are either lost pets or they are confused, I guess, or in a place that they shouldn’t be, so they are taking them often to dog and cat animal shelters, where a lot of times workers don’t even know what they have,” said Patterson, the department’s statewide amphibian and reptile conservation coordinator. “I’m sure it happens a lot. Statewide it is probably in the hundreds.” 

Western pond turtles rest on a log at Tilden Park's Jewel Lake in Berkeley, Calif. on Wednesday, May 13, 2015. State fish and wildlife officials are urging people to leave turtles alone if they see one in dry terrain as they could simply be en route to nesting areas away from ponds or creeks and not in distress: photo by William Chinn / San Francisco Chronicle, 1 June 2015

Pond turtles are certainly partial to water, she said, but the olive brown creatures have been known to gallivant about on land, too. Spring is nesting season, and many pregnant females are venturing out from their aquatic habitats in search of cozy substratum to lay eggs. Pond turtles sometimes wander as far as 500 yards away from water to deposit their offspring, which they promptly leave to their own devices. They have been spotted prowling the highlands as far as a mile away from their native streams.

Western pond turtles bask on a log at Tilden Park's Jewel Lake in Berkeley, Calif. on Wednesday, May 13, 2015. State fish and wildlife officials are urging people to leave turtles alone if they see one in dry terrain as they could simply be en route to nesting areas away from ponds or creeks and not in distress: photo by William Chinn / San Francisco Chronicle, 1 June 2015

Moving upland earlier

Experts say scarce water caused by the worst drought in recent California history has also caused more turtles to move upland earlier in the season to “estivate,” or go into summer dormancy. Patterson said the reptiles have evolved in a way that allows them to go into a kind of suspended animation for long periods when there is no food or water. The turtles sometimes bury themselves during hard times to wait things out.

The Western pond turtle, which generally reaches a maximum length of 7½ inches, is California’s only native freshwater species of turtle. They were once abundant in Bay Area wetlands, creeks and sloughs, and much of their Bay Area habitat has been filled in, destroyed or overrun by invasive species over the decades.

The pond turtle population has gone down everywhere, but the decline has been particularly precipitous in Southern California because of habitat loss, predation, competition and diseases from nonnative species.

The species’ primary turtle nemesis is the larger, more colorful red-eared slider, an alien species from the East that is commonly sold in pet stores. Unfortunately, sliders are often dumped in local ponds and outcompete the drab-looking brownish pond turtles for food.

Sliders, which have yellow-and-green striped shells and telltale red markings on their heads, have contributed to huge declines in pond turtle populations, including some localized extinctions, according to biologists.

Western pond turtles are listed as a “species of special concern” in California, “critical” in Oregon and “endangered” in Washington. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in April that the species may warrant protection under the federal Endangered Species Act.

A western pond turtles swims in Jewel Lake at Tilden Park in Berkeley, Calif. on Wednesday, May 13, 2015. State fish and wildlife officials are urging people to leave turtles alone if they see one in dry terrain as they could simply be en route to nesting areas away from ponds or creeks and not in distress: photo by William Chinn / San Francisco Chronicle, 1 June 2015

Strict conditions of release

It is illegal to capture, collect, possess, purchase, propagate, sell or transport native reptiles or amphibians in California. The recent terrapin expropriations are also a problem because animal shelters and wildlife rescue centers are not allowed to release captive turtles without a clear understanding of how and where they were captured.

“They can only release them under strict conditions near where they were taken from the wild,” Patterson said. “We are very careful ... because of concerns about disease transmission and genetic mixing. So when people just drop them off and we don’t know where they came from, we may not want to risk releasing them back into the wild. To me, that’s the tragedy of this.”

The Department of Fish and Wildlife is urging tenderhearted nature lovers to stay away from the slow-moving reptiles unless the animal’s shell is cracked or it is obviously injured. Patterson said it is probably OK to move a turtle off a roadway or out of harm’s way, but nobody should ever take one home.

“It’s well-meaning but very counterproductive behavior,” she said. “We just want people to know that the best thing to do is leave them alone.”

Western pond turtle

Scientific name: Clemmys marmorata

Status: Species of concern in California

Length: Up to 7½ inches

Weight: Varies

Western pond turtles line up on a log at Tilden Park's Jewel Lake in Berkeley, Calif. on Wednesday, May 13, 2015. State fish and wildlife officials are urging people to leave turtles alone if they see one in dry terrain as they could simply be en route to nesting areas away from ponds or creeks and not in distress: photo by William Chinn / San Francisco Chronicle, 1 June 2015

Philip Whalen: Alleyway

June 5, 2015, 12:59 pm

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The Abandoned Children of Bucharest. Walking back from a neighbor's house the other day, I passed this disturbing scene. What's even more peculiar is that on the way to my neighbor's house, there was only one abandoned doll, and now suddenly a second showed up alongside the first. Most people just throw their broken dolls away. Not this family. Bucharest, Romania: photo by Jake Stimpson, 13 March 2015

 

The darling baby!

All wrapped up asleep

In his fuzzy blue bunting

An extra blanket carefully pinned

Around him asleep on the ground

Between two boxes of rubbish

Beside the overflowing garbage cans

All alone. Throwed away.

......................................................................3:i.72

 Philip Whalen (1923-1999): Alleyway, 3 January 1972, from Overtime, 1999

Abandoned. Unloved. Baby in town centre. Spotted in a back alley of Wisbech: photo by Trojan_Llama, 8 February 2014

Puppetmaster

June 6, 2015, 11:00 am

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@KJVShow @kevinrolston pulling the strings on #JasonBigfoot #puppetmaster #jbirdinheels: image via Andrew Levine @ Andrew Levine5, 29 May 2015

Puppetmaster: Shifting Sands in Macau

The Venetian -– US billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s main resort in Macau: photo by Alamy via The Guardian, 23 April 2015

How China's Macau crackdown threatens big US casino moguls: Exclusive: Investigation reveals how gambling giants made billions against backdrop of triads, vice and corruption in ‘Vegas of the east’: James Ball and Harry Davies for the Guardian and Lowell Bergman, Matt Isaacs and Simon Marks for the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, 23 April 2015

David Beckham leaves his private jet and travels in a limousine, from where he steps into the opulent Venetian casino in Macau, becoming the central attraction of a masquerade ball in full swing.

Revellers and dancers surround him as he smiles into the camera for the US casino group’s latest, lavish advertising push, launched this February just before Chinese new year.

With this advertising centrepiece, Beckham has become the public face of The Venetian, the flagship Macau resort of US billionaire –- and US Republican party backer -– Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corporation.

Macau is built on a gambling industry so huge it has made Las Vegas look like a smalltown carnival, with its casinos turning over in excess of $44bn in the past year alone.

Macau is serious business –- but it’s not all show business. The Macau casino scene has been repeatedly described by US authorities and independent experts as a nexus of money-laundering, triad operations, and an outlet for corrupt Chinese officials to spend the proceeds of their crimes.

#SheldonAdelson and #LasVegasSands Threatened by #Macau Revenue Decline: image via Casino Release USA @CasinoReleaseUS, 23 May 2015

But now the Chinese government is cracking down on the corrupt officials and money-laundering through Macau, and the stream of income from high rollers is rapidly drying up.

Such was Macau’s reliance on high-rolling, rather than retail -– casual –- gamblers that even at Chinese new year, a key date in the gambling calendar, Macau’s overall gaming revenues were down almost 50% on the year before.

If Macau’s casino and resort industry is to survive the crackdown, it has to change: the ultra-rich gamblers may not be there in such numbers as before, but the culture of luxury gambling trips, known as junkets, and fears of the ever-present triads in the background –- remain. Macau needs to reform, fast.

Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands faces the same challenges as its US and locally owned rivals, but is perhaps the furthest ahead in facing those challenges. Its bid to reshape its Macau business focuses on bringing in more retail gamblers, revamping its casinos as bigger resorts with shopping malls – and the backing of brand Beckham provides the face of that drive.

This ongoing investigation by the Guardian and the Investigative Reporting Program of UC Berkeley reveals how the US casino groups made their billions against Macau’s seamy backdrop of triads, vice and corruption.

David Beckham appearing in an advertisement for The Venetian, US billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s main resort in Macau: photo by PR via The Guardian, 23 April 2015

Next week, Adelson himself will give an account of his casino’s operations during Macau’s heyday, as he takes the stand for a hearing of a bitter legal dispute with a former employee, which has been shedding unprecedented light on the casino group’s inner workings.

The rise of Macau

What Hong Kong is to banking, Macau is to gambling. Like Hong Kong, the region was controlled by a colonial power -– in Macau’s case Portugal, rather than the UK –- until the late 1990s.

Gambling, already legal when Macau was in Portuguese hands, exploded after China re-established control. The operating of casinos in Macau was long a monopoly for just one man, the billionaire Stanley Ho, but in 2002 authorities opened up concessions to Chinese tycoons and a small number of foreign bidders -– who jumped at the prospect.

The foreign winners mostly came from America. The first to build was Adelson, in 2004. It made him a multi-billionaire who would become notorious for his strident views on US and Israeli politics.

Maybach limo - Sheldon Adelson's car of choice - pulls into Sands private hangar where Jeb Bush will speak to donors: image via Kenneth P. Vogel Verified account @kenvogel, 23 May 2015

Adelson’s personal income from his casino and resort operations has grown exponentially, reaching $33m a day in 2013 and today giving him a personal net worth in excess of $28bn. Adelson channels tens of millions of dollars into Republican causes -– with donations well in excess of $90m to candidates and PACs –- conduits for political funding -– in the last presidential election cycle, he is among the party’s primary funders.

It’s Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands casino group to which Beckham is affiliated, having signed a deal in November 2013 for a dining concept “partnership” between Beckham Ventures –- the commercial vehicle the Beckhams co-own with Simon Fuller –- and Las Vegas Sands for its resorts in Macau and Singapore.

A representative for Beckham said the former footballer worked with Sands Group across Asia, and had no operational role with its gaming side beyond the promotion for The Venetian resort.

“David is working on a dining concept with the Sands Group across Asia, just as some of the greatest and most respected chefs and retailers in the world have done,” he said. “He is also supporting a number of local charitable initiatives. We are not involved on the gaming side.”

Billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson: photo by Ethan Miller via The Guardian, 23 April 2015

 

Las Vegas Sands is publicly listed in the US, and like all casino groups in the country is required to operate casinos within the strict bounds of state and federal regulators.

But while Macau started out providing just a fraction of the revenues for Las Vegas Sands and those who followed it, the Chinese region has come from almost nowhere to dramatically outstrip Vegas.

In 2004, Macau’s gaming revenues of around $7bn lagged behind the $10bn generated in Vegas -– and American groups received almost none of it. By 2012, Las Vegas Sands generated more than 50% of its revenue from Macau alone, while a single special dividend at the end of the year generated $1.2bn in cash for Adelson. The billions Adelson generates from his Macau resorts render his huge contributions to US politics as virtual spare change.

By last year, Macau’s gambling industry generated close to seven times more than the Las Vegas Strip, and US companies, including Las Vegas Sands, Wynn Resorts and MGM, took more than a third of it: Vegas may be their spiritual home, but for moguls such as Adelson, Macau is where the biggest money is.

But only if you can get the right people in the doors.

The seamy side

Macau, though, isn’t like Vegas. The bulk of the casino revenue in the province doesn’t come from people shoving a few dollars of their savings into slot machines or roulette: the real action -– and substantial share of the casinos’ profits –- has come from high rollers, betting up to hundreds of thousands of dollars a game in VIP backrooms.

These VIP rooms work quite differently from regular casino operations. Groups of promoters attract and corral high net-worth individuals from across the east Asian region for gambling junkets, often chartering private jets and laying on special accommodation for the sessions.

The casinos hand over a significant degree of control of their VIP rooms to the junket operators, in some cases going as far as simply getting a share of the takings in exchange for providing the facilities.

The US companies stress they maintain safeguards and control over what happens on their premises.

A hostess deals cards during a baccarat demonstration at The Venetian in Macau: photo by AFP via The Guardian, 23 April 2015

 

Organising Macau’s high-rolling junkets is no simple affair. One problem is that it is not legal for wealthy Chinese business people and officials to take much money out of China at one time. The limit is about $3,300 a visit, and no more than $50,000 a year.

One solution is for the junket operators to extend credit to their wealthy guests. Any losses can be paid after the trip, back in China.

The only wrinkle is that as gambling is not legal in China, such debts cannot be enforced in the courts. Other measures have to be taken to ensure that a gambler will always pay off debts.

These debts are not owed to the casinos, but rather to the junket operators and their financial backers, who settle up with the casino at the time and take the risk of the debt themselves.

This results in a web of licensed junketeers, guarantors and investors that industry experts say makes it difficult, if not impossible, to know exactly who is involved in any given junket –- though casino groups insist their due diligence procedures mean they know who they are dealing with.

Debt collection is an issue, even those involved in the junket business will acknowledge. Tony Tong, a financier who backs Macau junkets, acknowledged “collection of gambling debt is illegal in China”.

Tong said that junkets and their backers recouped debts through traditional channels, even if they were not legally enforceable, but in some circumstances could use less conventional measures.

Tong said it was on debt collection where triads traditionally became involved. He explained that debts could be collected by “following the guy until he pays … or many people follow them. If the guy has 10 guys, you need to have 50 guys following them. So that’s just part of that business.”

“If you can’t enforce it in the legal system, what can you do?” he concluded.

People who have worked in law enforcement in the region are more explicit: in some cases, they say, triads enforce gambling debts through violence.

“You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to work out that obviously triads and organised crime figures are closely connected to junkets because of the necessity to enforce on losses,” said Steve Vickers, a former Royal Hong Kong police commander who specialises in Macau’s gaming sector. “The triad society members can be very brutal in pursuing debts, everything from simply knocking on your door and ringing you up five times a day … to physical assault and whatever.”

Triads play a strange role in Chinese society, according to Vickers: membership is illegal, so wouldn’t generally be admitted -– but nor would people generally be prosecuted just for being a member.

“Triad membership is a criminal offence, so they won’t tell you that they’re triad … generally the government don’t prosecute people solely for triad membership,” Vickers added.

Playing a 50 Lions slot machine at The Venetian casino in Macau: photo by Bloomberg via The Guardian, 23 April 2015

“Once you’re a triad [though], you’re a triad. I’m sure you can become less active. But like other global criminal organisations, once you’re in, you’re in.”

While triads are not given leave to operate inside US-owned casinos -– as even the independent experts stress –- they are endemic throughout Macau’s independent network of junket operators, which brings in the high rollers, and with them a huge swaths of casino revenue.

The result of this opaque network is tens of billions of dollars of untraceable money cycling in and out of Macau. A 2013 report from an advisory committee to the US Congress cautioned “the real value of Macau’s gaming industry is likely six times larger than the official reporting size” -– making the actual revenues something in excess of $200bn.

The same report starkly warns this is a huge money laundering risk.

“It is the variety, frequency and volume of transactions that make the casino sector particularly vulnerable to money laundering,” it states.

“In Macau there is an even bigger risk of money laundering within the VIP gaming room operations, which are physically conducted within the casinos, but remain outside of the casino’s official oversight.”

If Macau resembles Las Vegas, it’s not the cleaned-up Vegas of 2015, but something a bit more like the Vegas of the 1950s –- but on a far larger scale.

Prostitution is legal, and the culture is at least tolerant of the triads –- with violence on rare occasions spilling into the streets. International authorities look on with mounting interest as untraceable billions flood in and out of the city.

The problem for the big US casino groups such as Las Vegas Sands, which are heavily regulated in the US, is how they deal with this backdrop. The casinos point to steps they have taken, including working to take stronger controls over VIP junkets in their premises, including electronic monitoring and auditing.

Further, as US companies are subject to US laws such as anti-money laundering protocols and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, there are regular reviews and audits by US authorities of casino groups’ policies to detect and avoid associating with known criminals. Such reviews routinely acknowledge the risks of Macau as an operating environment, but have consistently recertified the major casino groups’ procedures.

The casino groups say their internal procedures have resulted in some of the most rigorous, strictly enforced and effective anti-crime policies anywhere in the world.

‘The top guys, the biggest’

One of the key figures at the heart of Macau’s casino and junket industry is 66-year-old Charles Heung, an actor-turned-producer-turned-film mogul and financier.

Heung is the very model of the new Chinese elite, with impeccable connections. Tao Siju, a former business partner of Heung, served as China’s minister of public security in the 1990s, while Heung’s politically connected wife, Tiffany Chen, was at the forefront of those denouncing Hong Kong’s recent student protests.

Charles Heung and his wife, Tiffany Chen, attend a charity night in Beijing: photo by ChinaFotoPress via The Guardian, 23 April 2015

Heung is unafraid to lavish attention on his wife: in 2013 he bought her the world’s most expensive briolette-cut diamond, a 75.36-carat stone worth HK$86m (£7.3m)

Heung’s family were once not so respectable. In 1919, Heung’s father founded the Sun Yee On, to this day one of the most influential triads in Hong Kong, China, and beyond. Two of Charles Heung’s older brothers, Chin-Sing and Wah-Yim, were convicted and jailed in 1988 as its leaders, though later cleared on technical grounds at appeal.

Heung has resolutely and consistently denied ever being involved with Sun Yee On. In a rare 1997 interview with the New Republic magazine he acknowledged that his family had a “a mafia background”, but denied personal involvement or knowledge, saying he had worked harder as a film producer to overcome his family name.

Still, for decades Heung has been haunted by his family past. In 1992 a US Senate report on Asian organised crime -– which has been contested for not citing its sources -– listed Heung as a senior figure on a Sun Yee On organisation chart, explaining the group was “linked to a wide variety of criminal activities, including heroin trafficking and control of the entertainment industry in Hong Kong”. The report did not mention Heung in its body text, nor explain why he appeared on its chart.

Two years later, a New York racketeering trial heard claims from Kwong Wing Wong, who said he had been an enforcer for Sun Yee On in Hong Kong -– “I wounded people who are using knife, and gambling house” –- and described Charles Heung and four of his brothers as “the top guys, the biggest” in the triad.

Sun Yee On’s criminal activities have continued. Last year the South China Morning Post tied the triad to the trading of raw materials for methamphetamine with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, as well as with infiltrating the protest camps of Hong Kong’s student protest movements, reporting that police were investigating triad links to attacks on the students.

Charles Heung has never been arrested, charged or prosecuted for any alleged ties to the Sun Yee On triad –- but they continue to haunt him. As recently as early 2015, he and his wife both appear in the US Homeland Security computers as having been denied visas by the State Department, and therefore entry into the United States, according to a senior Department of Homeland Security official.

Heung’s entry on the register states he has an “affiliation with Asian organised crime”, while Tiffany Chen’s records her as “the spouse of an Asian organised crime figure”.

Heung and the high-rollers

Documents suggest Heung was a significant figure in Macau’s VIP junkets, including those at Las Vegas Sands’ casinos.

This is set out in a 2010 report prepared for Steve Jacobs, then the CEO of Sands’ Macau operation, and a key Adelson aide, who is suing the group for wrongful termination. The short report, which focuses exclusively on Heung, combines a variety of public domain sources, such as the US Senate report, as well as private intelligence databases to detail Heung’s alleged triad ties, before noting Heung was the “guarantor”, or financial backer, of at least two junkets operating within Las Vegas Sands’ Macau casinos.

The covering note of the memo, from Venetian Macau’s then executive director of surveillance, describes the results of a “simple surface search”.

“Apart from being one of the most successful film producers in Hong Kong, Heung is also one of the most controversial due to his family’s triad background,” it says. “Heung is widely suspected of ties to one of Hong Kong’s largest and most powerful organised crime groups, the Sun Yee On triad.” The note ends with a promise: “I will get more detail.”

No room at the casino

By November of 2013 -– just as brand Beckham was hitching up with Las Vegas Sands –- Charles Heung abruptly found himself unwelcome in Adelson’s casinos.

The casino floor at The Venetian in Macau: photo by Vidler/Alamy via The Guardian, 23 April 2015

 

Heung was gambling -– or trying to -– with a group of high rollers around the time of Chinese new year. On trying to enter Las Vegas Sands’ Macau casinos, Heung and his group found themselves turned away. Not deterred, the group travelled by private jet to Adelson’s flagship Singapore casino -– where Heung was rejected again.

Marina Bay Sparkles. The Singapore Flyer, Marina Bay Sands and the lotus shaped ArtScience Museum are the key landmarks of Marina Bay. Seen here from the roof of One Raffles Place - the tallest building in Singapore: photo by Michael Elleray, 27 September 2011

The incident was emblematic of a series of heightened actions Las Vegas Sands appears to have taken to keep those it regards as undesirable figures out of its operations. Its measures have included hiring former FBI officers to beef up internal security, and new audits of customers and junket operators.

Statements from Las Vegas Sands now say the company has “no business relationship or otherwise” with Heung.

More broadly, the company’s vice-president of communications, Ron Reese, said Las Vegas Sands had invested in “Macau’s future as a centre of leisure and business tourism” and had tight controls on its gambling operations.

“Las Vegas Sands takes its regulatory obligations with the utmost importance. In fact, we strongly believe we are the industry leader in this area and specifically our anti-money laundering programme,” he said.

“Additionally, our company has been frequently cited as leading the industry in its commitment to regulatory compliance.”

Another US casino mogul, Steve Wynn, the billionaire owner of Wynn Resorts -– which owns and operates casinos in Macau -– and another major Republican backer, has suggested that “triad” should not be seen as a synonym of mafia, or even organised crime.

Speaking at a Massachusetts Gaming Commission hearing in October 2013, Wynn rejected suggestions that Macau could bring disrepute on the state, should Wynn Resorts be granted a licence. “What in Macau could threaten or bring disrepute on Massachusetts?” Wynn was asked at the hearing.

“A piece of unsubstantiated raw intelligence about a junket operator reputed to be, for example, a member of a triad,” he replied.

“That immediately presupposes the triad is synonymous with mafia, which is completely false. Experienced law enforcement people will tell you that triad is not a synonym for organised crime.”

The Massachusetts board approved Wynn Resorts to build and operate a casino in the state, but the recommendation is now subject to a legal challenge from the city of Boston.

Several experts in the law enforcement community regard an individual being involved with triads as a serious sign of bad character. “Wow. As someone who’s spent 17 years fighting organised crime, that’s certainly news to me that not all triads are bad or associated with crime,” said Jennifer Shasky Calvery, director of the financial crimes enforcement network (FinCen, a bureau of the US Treasury), said when she heard a version of Wynn’s quote.

Others report being contacted by at least one US casino group keen to get former police officers to say positive things about triads or those with ties to them.

Martin Purbrick, a former intelligence officer for the Royal Hong Kong police, said he had been contacted by a “major US casino operator” who asked him to “state publicly that Mr Charles Heung Wah-Keung is a reputable businessman”.

Tourists take a gondola ride inside The Venetian in Macau: photo by Chris McGrath via The Guardian, 23 April 2015

“Heung Wah-Keung was in fact named in a US Senate report as an office bearer [ie senior member] of the Sun Yee On triad society,” he continued. “I declined the request on the basis that the assertion by the casino operator is widely held by former Royal Hong Kong police officers to be untrue.”

Wynn Resorts has yet to comment on whether Charles Heung -– or the junkets he backs -– are welcome in its Macau casinos, and Wynn has never personally commented on Heung. A lawyer for Wynn Macau told the Guardian any allegations against Heung were “innuendo”, but declined to comment on whether the group had ever had any relationship with the celebrity junketeer.

The lawyer said: “It is not our practice to identify our customers or participants in junkets we do business with. However, we obtain criminal clearance certificates from the home police department (such as Hong Kong police department) for anyone that has a financial relationship with a junket doing business with us, and we disqualify anyone who does not comply with our strict procedures or who does not receive a clean criminal clearance certificate.”

A change is gonna come?

For a decade, Macau’s gambling industry has engaged in a wary but vastly lucrative relationship with junkets of China’s richest pleasure-seekers, and the triads who help those junketeers –- with revenues and profits increasing markedly for much of the past decade.

But it appears good times may be coming to an end. China’s new president, Xi Jinping, unlike some of this predecessors, has paid more than lip service to crackdowns on corruption, taking a harder line on party figures who spend too lavishly –- including on trips to the province.

This crackdown has been accompanied by a drop of 2.5% in Macau’s gaming industry revenue in 2014 -- the first year-on-year decline for several decades and a sign that the heady growth may be a thing of the past.

The early figures for 2015 are dramatically worse: January revenues were down 30% year-on-year, while in February -– the crucial month containing Chinese new year, and the month the Beckham advertising push was launched –- were still worse, down almost 50% on the previous year. Compared with its rivals, Sands was relatively sheltered from the storm, thanks to broadening its business into the leisure and conference sectors.

That may not stop those –- reputable or otherwise –- who have grown rich and powerful through the trade.

Within Macau, the fightback relies on reshaping the industry as a resort with more than gambling going on –- much like modern Vegas. On one side, there’s the marketing muscle and internal reforms of the US casino groups, with the PR side of the operation leaning heavily on brand Beckham. On the other lies the remaining junket operators and the triad groups who have grown rich through Macau’s web of vice, connections and black-market money.

And for Adelson himself, a particular headache looms. Mystery surrounds the operation at the top of his companies: Adelson is known not to use email, and communicates with his executives verbally. But he is set to take the stand next week in a public hearing for a wrongful termination suit from his former Macau chief executive, Steve Jacobs.

#SheldonAdelson and #Macau Business Under #US investigation: image via Casino Release USA @CasinoReleaseUS, 11 May 2015

The bitter suit, which has run for a period of years, has seen Adelson retaliate with a defamation suit of his own -– now dismissed, though a counter-suit on defamation filed by Jacobs is ongoing -– while the company’s representatives have suggested Jacobs stole documents and was trotting out “tired and false accusations” against the company and Adelson, all of which Jacobs denies.

Macau’s golden era of gambling may be reaching its end –- but only now might we all get a chance to see what the view from the top was like while the party was in full swing.

Las Vegas Sands chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson, center, waits to testify: photo by Jeff Scheid/Las Vegas Review-Journal/AP, Pool via the Guardian, 5 May 2013

Puppetmaster: “If somebody was going to chop my employee’s head off, of course I’d be interested"

Adelson denies ties to Chinese official in scandal: 'There’s a lot of Ngs in Macau': Gambling magnate rejects alleged links to several questionable figures in Las Vegas testimony: ‘You could bring in Stalin, you could bring in Hitler’: Chris McGreal in Las Vegas for The Guardian, 5 May 2015

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate and Republican donor, has denied ties to a senior Chinese official alleged to have been his gambling empire’s “contact with Beijing”. The official was named several years earlier in a US congressional report as a key player in illegal Chinese funding of US political campaigns.

Testifying in a Las Vegas court for a civil case rooted in allegations that his Las Vegas Sands company’s highly profitable Macau casinos were involved in influence peddling and had links to organised crime, Adelson was asked if he had ever met a Macau businessman named Ng Lap Seng. He said he had not but that he had heard of him.

“I heard that he was a real estate developer or that he was the head of the real estate developers’ association or something,” said Adelson.

Legal counsel for Steven Jacobs, the former CEO of Adelson’s Macau casinos, who is suing the 81-year-old billionaire for wrongful dismissal, told Adelson on the stand that Ng is better known as a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee and that he had acted as “a courier” for Adelson’s company.

“I know of nobody in the company who had dealings with Ng,” said Adelson.

Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson said Jacobs had ‘hypnotised’ a senior company lawyer into scrutinising payments to a Macau legislator out of concern they breached US anti-bribery laws: photo by Julie Jacobson/AP via the Guardian, 4 May 2015

 

“There’s a lot of Ngs in Macau"

According to documents first revealed by the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley in 2012, an internal company email sent by Jacobs described Ng as having “delivered msg. from SGA” –- Adelson’s initials.

The email also identifies Ng as “Leonel’s contact with Beijing”, a reference to Leonel Alves, a Macau legislator and lawyer who was hired by Sands Macau.

Jacobs claims he was sacked by Adelson in part because Jacobs refused to make payments to Alves that he regarded as amounting to bribes to influence Chinese officials on behalf of the Macau casinos. Jacobs ended the company’s contract with Alves; Adelson reinstated it after dismissing his Macau CEO.

Asked about a report Jacobs commissioned on Ng’s activities, Adelson replied: “There’s a lot of Ngs in Macau. It’s not as common as Kim or Park in Korea, but there’s a lot of Ngs.”

Jacobs’ lawyer, James Pisanelli, told the court: “We believe that there are connections and relationships.”

A US congressional investigation in 1998 found that Ng acted as an intermediary in sending more than $1m to the US to help fund Democratic candidates’ campaigns in a case that led to suspicions of Chinese government attempts to influence US elections.

“The source of Ng’s funds and what he or those behind him hoped to gain ... remain unknown,” the report said.

The case led to the conviction of others involved for breaching campaign funding laws but Ng was not charged. Ng also visited the White House and met with then president Bill Clinton.

Adelson denied that the large payments made to Alves, the company’s alleged contact with Ng, were in any way improper, saying he regarded them as the market rate for legal work in Macau.

Adelson authorised a $700,000 payment in legal fees to Alves even though the company’s in-house lawyers warned that the payment was far in excess of normal rates and could violate US anti-bribery law because Alves could be using his position as a legislator to influence officials.

According to internal emails uncovered by UC Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program, Alves said he could resolve several issues the company was facing for a payment of $300m. One had to do with property and another to settle a lawsuit.

Adelson said Alves was simply passing along a message about how much it would cost to settle a complex case and the payments were never made.

Move Over ISIS: Macau Beheading Plot Discussed During #SheldonAdelson Testimony: image via gambling911 @gambling911, 6 May 2015

“There was no bribery. It never happened. Companies like ours are getting offers from people every day. From India. From Russia. Yesterday from Kazakhstan,” said Adelson.

He said the company rejects the offers, usually connected to the opening of casinos, because they “smell of bribery”.

Adelson denied that the $300m figure was in part to pay off government officials. 

Pisanelli, the attorney for Jacobs, said that it was only officials who could help with issues around property. Adelson said it was not one official but then acknowledged that the decisions are made by people in public office.

“It’s a combination of people. It’s a land committee, it’s a minister of public works, a tourism committee,” he said.

"You could bring in all the bad guys in the world"

Pisanelli asked Adelson why he did not heed Jacobs’ warnings that the payments to Alves were not legitimate.

“Mr Jacobs tells you this stinks to high heaven and you instruct that Alves remain associated with the company?” the lawyer asked Adelson.

The billionaire responded by accusing Pisanelli of trying to smear Alves through association.

“You could bring in Mao Zedong, you could bring in Mussolini, you could bring in Stalin, you could bring in Hitler. You could bring in all the bad guys in the world,” he said.

Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson testifies at Clark County Justice Center on Tuesday in Las Vegas. Adelson said: 'I worked my whole life, coming from the other side of the tracks": photo by Jeff Scheid/Las Vegas Review-Journal/AP via The Guardian, 28 April 2015

Pisanelli put it to Adelson that his own senior executives said that Alves’ fees were “outrageous and smelled of illegality”.

Adelson said he had not done anything illegal in his life and defended Alves. “The man in my opinion was an honest ... I mean, he was a good attorney,” he said.

Pisanelli also told the court that Sands Macau had also commissioned an investigation of Cheung Chi Tai, who is an alleged leader of a Chinese organised crime group.

Adelson’s deputy, Robert Goldstein, acknowledged in court last week that Cheung ran so-called “junkets” which brought in high-rolling gamblers from other parts of China in return for a large cut from the Macao casinos. The Las Vegas Sands executive also said that Cheung was himself a major gambler at the company’s Macau and Las Vegas casinos.

Las Vegas Sands broke with Cheung following revelations in a Reuters report in 2010, based on the work of the Investigative Reporting Program, that he was the leader of the Wo Hop To, a triad gang.

The report said that Cheung had also been named in a criminal trial in Hong Kong six years ago as “the person in charge” of one of the VIP rooms at the Sands Macau.

At the trial, he was alleged to be the mastermind of a plot to kill a Sands Macau dealer suspected of helping a gambler to cheat the casino out of millions of dollars. One man was convicted of soliciting murder and four men were convicted of conspiracy to commit bodily harm, but Cheung was not charged.

Pisanelli asked Adelson if he was aware of Cheung’s background: “Cheung Chi Tai was accused of a plot to kill some of your employees. You’re aware of that, right?”

Adelson said he was not.

#CasinoMogul and #Sheldon Adelson will face graft and organized crime accusations in a US court: image via Press TV @PressTV, 23 May 2015

"I would leave it to the gaming department”

“It’s not something that I, as chairman of the board ... would get into. I would leave it to the gaming department,” he said.

Pisanelli expressed astonishment.

“If you were told of a plot by someone to behead one of your employees, that’s not something you would have got involved in?” he asked.

Adelson repeated an earlier denial that his company was doing business with Cheung. But he added: “If somebody was going to chop my employee’s head off, of course I’d be interested. But he wasn’t,” said the billionaire. “It feeds the narrative that only Adelson is involved in wrongdoing and not Jacobs.”

Sheldon Adelson testifies at Clark County justice center in Las Vegas this week: photo by Jeff Scheid/AP via The Guardian, 1 May 2015

A man walks past a billboard at the Global Gaming Expo Asia in the world’s biggest gambling hub of Macau on Wednesday. The three-day fair of gambling innovations, the largest gaming event in Asia, showcases the industry’s latest products, services and technologies at the glitzy Venetian Macau hotel: photo by Philippe Lopez/AFP via FT Photo Diary, 20 May 2015

A Recursive Nightmare

June 8, 2015, 5:24 am

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A Palestinian Bedouin girl drinks from a water tank outside her family’s tent near the West Bank town of Tubas in the Jordan Valley on 6 May. Besieged Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley have called on the international community to immediately intervene to halt Israeli military exercises in the area.: photo by Shadi Hatem / APA via The Electronic Intifada, 5 June 2015

Last month

Israeli tanks stand on agricultural land during a military training exercise in the Jordan Valley on 6 May: photo by Shadi Hatem / APA via The Electronic Intifada, 5 June 2015



Palestinians carry a wounded protester during clashes with Israeli Border Police following a demonstration marking the 67th anniversary of the Nakba outside Ofer military prison near the West Bank city of Ramallah on 15 May: photo by Shadi Hatem / APA via The Electronic Intifada, 5 June 2015

 

A Palestinian artist paints a mural on the rubble of a building following a march to mark the 67th anniversary of the Nakba in the al-Tuffah neighborhood east of Gaza City on 16 May: photo by Ashraf Amra / APA via The Electronic Intifada, 5 June 2015

Destroyed homes in the Shujaiya district of Gaza City on 20 May. At least 100,000 Palestinians are still living without adequate shelter more than nine months after the end of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip last summer.: photo by Ashraf Amra / APA via The Electronic Intifada, 5 June 2015

Palestinian children play on the rubble of their family’s home which was destroyed by Israeli forces last summer, Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, 28 May: photo by Nidal Alwaheidi / APA via The Electronic Intifada, 5 June 2015

A Palestinian protester throws stones at Israeli forces during clashes following a demonstration against the expropriation of Palestinian land in the West Bank village of Kufr Qaddum, near Nablus, on 29 May: photo by APA via The Electronic Intifada, 5 June 2015

This week

Happening now in #Gaza Live image from the site of explosion i just Heard another 2 AIRSTRIKES !! Photo by @Omar_Gaza: image via Dr. Bassel Abuwarda @DrBasselAbuwarda, 3 June 2015

I THINK THINGS HAVE SETTLED DOWN NOW CAN I GO BACK TO SLEEP !!! PLZ !: tweet via Dr. Bassel Abuwarda @DrBasselAbuwarda, 3 June 2015

BREAKING FROM #GAZA: All Gaza strip is under attack now Many Airstrikes are hitting NORTH, MIDDLE AND SOUTH OF GAZA: image via Dr. Bassel Abuwarda @DrBasselAbuwarda, 3 June 2015 

ENDLESS SUFFER, FEAR, INJUSTICE, HUMILIATION !!!: tweet via Dr. Bassel Abuwarda @DrBasselAbuwarda, 3 June 2015 

Breaking: Three Palestinian fishermen were injured after Israeli naval forces opened fire on their fishing boats: image via Dr. Bassel Abuwarda @DrBasselAbuwarda, 2 June 2015

Israeli forces demolished three Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem: image via Dr. Bassel Abuwarda @DrBasselAbuwarda, 2 June 2015

Israeli soldiers kidnapped, on Monday at dawn, nine Palestinians in different parts of the occupied West Bank (IMEMC): image via Dr. Bassel Abuwarda @DrBasselAbuwarda, 1 June 2015

#GazaUnderAttack @UN the claimers of human rights protection. Where are they? Are they blind? RT and viral #YaAllahHelpGaza: image via sumairajamil @real_sumaira, 4 June 2015

Meanwhile in #Gaza: image via Mila Jansen @jansen_mila, 3 June 2015

This is not sunrise, Israeli warplanes strike #Gaza tonight but Muslim world is still sleeping #GazaUnderAttack again: image via Mishkaat Umair @mishkoo90, 4 June 2015

#GazaUnderAttack yet again .... No news on Main Stream Media @CNN @BBCBreaking @AP: image via Casey @Wonam6, 3 June 2015

BDS: A Growing Wave

Daily Cartoon: Israel's new government braces for #BDS tsunami: image via Haaretzcom @haaretzcom, 7 June 2015

The rise of #BDS in the American South and at HBC's is astounding: image via Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal, 7 June 2015

At anti-#BDS donor summit, U.S. Jewish billionaires warn of impending "anti-Semitic tsunami": image via Haaretzcom @haaretzcom, 7 June 2015

"We will attack our attackers" - @naftalibennett on #BDS at #HC15: image via Thore Schroeder @ThoreSchroeder, 7 June 2015

Netanyahu Vows To 'Never Forgive' After @orange Boycotts Israel Deal via @MintPressNews #BDS: image via Joe Catron @jncatron, 7 June 2015

"Occupation isn't pretty"

Opinion: #Israel's problem isn't #BDS - it's the occupation: image via Haaretz @haaretzcom, 3 June 2015

Ahava products are made with pillaged mud on occupied land #BDS #Palestine: image via Stolen Beauty @BoycottAhava, 3 June 2015



Human rights organizations condemn Sheldon Adelson-led anti-BDS meeting: photo via Mondoweiss, 6 June 2013

#BDS-hit French telecom #Orange says it would get out of Zionist Entity "tomorrow" if it could: image via Abbs Winston @AbbsWinston, 7 June 2015

After @orange @srichard comments: #Orange #Israel offices today: image via Amichai Stein @AmichaiStein1, 4 June 2015

 The Great Hypocrisy Behind Sheldon Adelson's Anti-#BDS Summit | @AliGharib | @jdforward: image via JewishVoiceforPeace @jvplive, 3 June 2015

Puppetmaster: “Are you a stand-up comedian today?”

Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson said Jacobs had ‘hypnotised’ a senior company lawyer into scrutinising payments to a Macau legislator out of concern they breached US anti-bribery laws: photo by Julie Jacobson/AP via the Guardian, 4 May 2015

Sheldon Adelson laughs off allegations from 'pompous, arrogant' ex-CEO: Casino mogul rejects claims of influence-peddling in Macau and said Steven Jacobs only became important ‘when he squealed like a pig’ to the government: photo by Chris McGreal in New York for The Guardian, 4 May 2015

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire gambling magnate and major Republican donor, has accused the former head of his company’s Macao casinos of “squealing like a pig to the government” with allegations of influence-peddling and ties to organised crime.

Adelson, in his third day of testimony to a Las Vegas court, also said Steven Jacobs, the ex-CEO of his highly profitable Macau casinos had “hypnotised” a senior company lawyer into scrutinising payments to a Macau legislator out of concern they breached US anti-bribery laws.

Jacobs is suing Adelson for wrongful dismissal, claiming he was sacked in 2010 for trying to end links to Chinese triad organised crime groups and for curtailing large payments to the Macao legislator and lawyer Leonel Alves.

Adelson claims Jacobs was dismissed for incompetence.

high finance and hypnotism

The court has previously heard testimony that Jacobs was a highly regarded executive who could be expected to go on and lead Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands company. It is claimed he fell out of favour with Adelson after he ended Alves’ contract and sought to halt the practice of hiring “junket” operators to bring in high rolling gamblers from China because of links to the triads.

“This Jacobs never became important until he squealed like a pig to the government authorities and made up stories,” Adelson told the court on Monday.

Jacobs had refused to make a $700,000 payment to Alves who, according to court records and documents uncovered by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, played a number of roles. They included representing the casino company in meetings with Macao politicians and officials to apply “pressure”, and mending Adelson’s relationships with Chinese officials who had apparently been put off by his brusque manner.

Asked about Jacobs’ instruction to the Macau casino’s lawyer to examine the legitimacy of the contracts with Alves, Adelson said he understood that Jacobs had studied hypnotism and he believed Jacobs had hypnotised the lawyer into looking into Alves.

After Jacobs cancelled Alves’s contract, Adelson ordered him rehired.

“Are you a stand-up comedian today?”

Adelson was asked about testimony on Thursday from his current deputy and former head of global operations, Robert Goldstein, in which he said that he expected Jacobs to end up running the whole company.

The 81-year-old billionaire responded: “Are you a stand-up comedian today?”

When the question was put to him again, he said: “Over my dead body.”

Adelson said Jacobs was not respected within the company.

“The people in Macau called him the emperor. He was pompous. He was arrogant. He was condescending,” he said.

However, this view was contradicted by Goldstein’s testimony, and emails shown to the court last week in which Adelson’s former deputy, Michael Leven, described Jacobs as having “saved the Titanic” by turning around the Macau casinos.

In his testimony, Goldstein also acknowledged that the Sands’ Macau subsidiary used an alleged triad leader, Cheung Chi Tai, to run “junkets” and bring in high rollers. He said Las Vegas Sands ended the relationship following a Reuters report in 2010, based on the work of UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, naming him as a leader of the Wo Hop To, a triad gang. The report said that Cheung had also been named in a criminal trial in Hong Kong as “the person in charge” of one of the VIP rooms at the Sands Macau.

"a file labelled 'outrageous'”

Adelson claimed Jacobs maintained a file labelled “outrageous” in which he collected information against the company.

“This is an evil man,” he said. “All he was good at was firing people and saving information he could use to blackmail this company.”

Adelson kept up the verbal battles with Jacobs’ lawyer, James Pisanelli, that marked his previous testimony and led the billionaire to argue with the judge last week.

Pisanelli showed Adelson an email between senior Sands executives referring to an “exorcism strategy” which the lawyer said showed Adelson had a “secret plan” to remove Jacobs. Adelson said he had never heard the phrase.

“I don’t know of any plan you’re talking about,” he said.

“I have no memory whatsoever"

Adelson repeatedly said he could not recall events of five years ago. When Pisanelli questioned his lack of memory, Adelson hit back: “I have no memory whatsoever. You’re trying to fit the facts into your fantasies instead of taking the facts as they are.”

On another occasion, questioned about one of his answers, Adelson said: “Is there something about “no” you don’t understand? I could spell it for you.”

Adelson also grew exasperated with the being shown emails from his own executives which appeared to undermine his positions.

“It seems to me to be a sign of real desperation to use other people’s emails to inquire of me,” he said.

reconstituted cheetoh and medical waste golem sheldon adelson: image via BAKOON! @BAKKOOONN, 28 May 2015

On the eve of World Environment Day, the devils dance

Pakistani rag-pickers search for recycleable items at a garbage dump on the outskirts of Lahore on Friday. World Environment Day is celebrated every year on June 5 with the objective to raise global awareness among the common people for global environmental concerns: photo by Arif Ali/AFP via FT Photo Diary, 5 June 2015

 
Members of the Dancing Devils of Naiguata take part in the catholic celebration of Corpus Christi in Naiguata, a neighbourhood in La Guaira, Vargas state, Venezuela: photo by Federico Parra/AFP via FT  Photo Diary, 5 June 2015

Migrants, who were found at sea on a boat, collect rainwater during a heavy rain fall at a temporary refuge camp near Kanyin Chaung jetty, northern Rakhine state, Myanmar: photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters via FT  Photo Diary, 4 June 2015

......................An Indian rag-picker looks for recyclable material in what is reportedly the largest rubbish tip in the state of Assam on the eve of World Environment Day in the Boragoan area of Guwahati on Thursday: photo by Biju Boro/AFP via FT  Photo Diary, 4 June 2015

  
A migrant, who was found at sea on a boat, arrives at a temporary shelter near Maungdaw township, northern Rakhine state, Myanmar: photo by Ye Aung Thu/AFP via FT  Photo Diary, 4 June 2015

Food and Style

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe eats a pickled plum as he meets with Miss Plum Fuyuka Baba and Miss Plum Kozue Kimoto, who are representing the Kishu Plum Organisation, at Abe’s official residence in Tokyo: photo by Toru Hanai/Reuters via FT  Photo Diary, 5 June 2015

Arab_America: Sheldon Adelson To Host Secret Anti-BDS Summit for Jewish Donors #TCOT: image via Sheldon Adelson @VegasGoblinKing, 5 June 2015

Sen. Ted Cruz calls on US government to cut off funds from universities supporting the Boycott Israel (#BDS) movement: image via Israel News Flash @ILNewsFlash, 31 May 2015

My new comic is a Tale of the Zombie Apocalypse in @tnr: image via Eli Valley @elivalley, 14 May 2015

Art Notes

#Singapore shenanigans from last year. #KuDeTa at the top of #MarinaBaySands where we partied. #TravelTuesday: image via Jason Maidwell @JayMasterJ1, 14 April 2015

Sheldon Adelson is the owner of several casinos, hotels and a large bank account. He’s now also the owner of a genuine George W. Bush.

The former president-turned-amateur painter proudly gave Mr. Adelson one of his works of art in late April, during his appearance as the keynote speaker at a Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas.

The painting was of Mr. Adelson’s Singapore casino and hotel, the Marina Bay Sands, an aide to the mogul confirmed. Mr. Adelson is the chief benefactor of the Republican Jewish Coalition, which often holds conferences in his Venetian hotel in Las Vegas.

The Marina Bay Sands hotel resorts in Singapore: photo by Roslan Rahman/Agence France-Presse via New York Times, 14 May 2015

For Mr. Bush, such an offering was an overt act of appreciation. He took up painting in 2012, and has been working to improve in his adopted craft ever since.

He has done portraits of world leaders like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. He lavished attention on a portrait of his father, former President George Bush.

George W. Bush’s creative side came to light after a hacker invaded a Bush family email account and discovered photos of the paintings, and leaked them online.

Bathroom Self-Portraits: George W. Bush, 2013, image via Gawker, 8 February 2013

Eli Valley: Goblin King Funnies: Sheldon Adelson Turns Israel into 'The Walking Dead' -- The only zombie democracy in the Middle East!

Sheldon Adelson Turns Israel Into 'The Walking Dead': Behold, the "only zombie democracy in the Middle East!": comic by Eli Valley, from The New Republic, 14 May 2015

Samuel Beckett: Cascando

June 9, 2015, 3:54 am

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Sono Osato in Francesca da Rimini costume, sometime in 1940: photographer unknown (Geoffrey Ingram collection of ballet photographs from the Ballets Russes Australian tour, 1936-1940, National Library of Australia)

 
     1
why not merely the despaired of
occasion of
wordshed

is it not better abort than be barren

the hours after you are gone are so leaden
they will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want splashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
nor nine months
nor nine lives

     2
saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love

the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words
terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending
I and all the others that will love you
if they love you

     3
unless they love you

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989): Cascando, 1934, first published Dublin Magazine, October-December 1936

Sono Osato in Colonel de Basil's "Original Ballet Russe" (Russian Ballet) season, Theatre Royal, Sydney, 1939-1940: photo by Sam Hood, c. 1939 (State Library of New South Wales)

The Tunnel

June 10, 2015, 7:25 am

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Tunnel traffic. Northbrae tunnel, Berkeley: photo by TJ Gehling, 20 December 2013

Adolescent faun with soft unformed horns

wandering back yards and side paths for a drink

mother having lately disappeared

to be living is to be among those lost

in traffic with the three surviving crows

of the family of five that was here last week

swooping for scraps between lethal speeders

on the freeway feeder

Fresh crow corpses crushed feather bones by

side of roadway

Cars racing past nonstop uphill to swell

the flood of cars racing in and out of the Tunnel

 Northbrae tunnel walkway: photo by TJ Gehling, 18 January 2013

 

  Northbrae tunnel, Berkeley: photo by TJ Gehling, 31 July 2014

Northbrae tunnel: photo by TJ Gehling, 18 January 2013

 

Northbrae tunnel: photo by TJ Gehling, 18 January 2013

Night jogger. Northbrae tunnel, Berkeley: photo by TJ Gehling, 31 July 2014

Public path #3: photo by TJ Gehling, 8 July 2012

 

Robert Creeley: Love

June 12, 2015, 8:28 am

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In the Forest of Fontainbleu: Camille Corot (1796-1875), c. 1860-65, oil on canvas, 46 x 59 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington)

Nothing is without place,

in mind, in physical apprehension --

or if "a dagger of the mind" is the purpose,

hold on to it for dear life, or else kill somebody.

Just when I thought I had it made, I lost it.

Just when I knew what to do, I was an old man.

You hear that bird sing in the tree, there,

you know still what a tree is?

Love is a place, not a person, love is

a weather of time, a convenience to absent sorrows.

But talk is the cheapest of all, means what it wants to,

waits up for no one, always goes home alone.

Robert Creeley (1927-2005): Love, from Places, 1990

Landscape: Camille Corot (1796-1875), n. d., oil on canvas 32.4 x 21.6 cm (private collection)

Forest in Fontainbleu: Camille Corot (1796-1875), oil on canvas, 49.35.5 cm (private collection)

Fontainbleu, the Bas Breau Road: Camille Corot (1796-1875), c. 1830-35, oil on canvas (private collection)

An Artist Painting in the Forest of Fontainbleu: Camille Corot (1796-1875), 1850-55, oil on canvas, 28.6 x 24.1 cm (private collection) 

Figures in a Forest: Camille Corot (1796-1875), c. 1850-60, fresco (private collection) 

Souvenir of Ville d'Avray: Camille Corot (1796-1875), 1872, oil on canvas, 49.35.5 cm (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)



In the Forest of Fontainbleu: Camille Corot (1796-1875), c. 1860-65, oil on canvas, 46 x 59 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington)

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Francis and the Miracle of the Spring

June 13, 2015, 11:13 am

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How will people be displaced by #climatechange?: image via World Economic Forum @wef, 13 June 2015

#PopeFrancis Condemns Multinational Corporations for Choosing Profit Over Ppl #UniteBlue: image via Stacey O'Brien @Irish0831, 13 June 2015

Explosive intervention by Pope Francis set to transform climate change debate: The most anticipated papal letter for decades will be published in five languages on Thursday. It will call for an end to the ‘tyrannical’ exploitation of nature by mankind. Could it lead to astep-change in the battle against global warming?: John Vidal, The Observer, 13 June 2015

Pope Francis will call for an ethical and economic revolution to prevent catastrophic climate change and growing inequality in a letter to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics on Thursday.

In an unprecedented encyclical on the subject of the environment, the pontiff is expected to argue that humanity’s exploitation of the planet’s resources has crossed the Earth’s natural boundaries, and that the world faces ruin without a revolution in hearts and minds. The much-anticipated message, which will be sent to the world’s 5,000 Catholic bishops, will be published online in five languages on Thursday and is expected to be the most radical statement yet from the outspoken pontiff.

However, it is certain to anger sections of Republican opinion in America by endorsing the warnings of climate scientists and admonishing rich elites, say cardinals and scientists who have advised the Vatican.

The Ghanaian cardinal, Peter Turkson, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and a close ally of the pope, will launch the encyclical. He has said it will address the root causes of poverty and the threats facing nature, or “creation”.

In a recent speech widely regarded as a curtain-raiser to the encyclical, Turkson said: “Much of the world remains in poverty, despite abundant resources, while a privileged global elite controls the bulk of the world’s wealth and consumes the bulk of its resources.”

The Argentinian pontiff is expected to repeat calls for a change in attitudes to poverty and nature. “An economic system centred on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it,” he told a meeting of social movements last year. “I think a question that we are not asking ourselves is: isn’t humanity committing suicide with this indiscriminate and tyrannical use of nature? Safeguard creation because, if we destroy it, it will destroy us. Never forget this.”

The encyclical will go much further than strictly environmental concerns, say Vatican insiders. “Pope Francis has repeatedly stated that the environment is not only an economic or political issue, but is an anthropological and ethical matter,” said another of the pope’s advisers, Archbishop Pedro Barreto Jimeno of Peru.

“It will address the issue of inequality in the distribution of resources and topics such as the wasting of food and the irresponsible exploitation of nature and the consequences for people’s life and health,” Barreto Jimeno told the Catholic News Service.

He was echoed by Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, who coordinates the Vatican’s inner council of cardinals and is thought to reflect the pope’s political thinking. 

“The ideology surrounding environmental issues is too tied to a capitalism that doesn’t want to stop ruining the environment because they don’t want to give up their profits,” Rodríguez Maradiaga said.

The rare encyclical, called “Laudato Sii”, or “Praised Be”, has been timed to have maximum public impact ahead of the pope’s meeting with Barack Obama and his address to the US Congress and the UN general assembly in September.

It is also intended to improve the prospect of a strong new UN global agreement to cut climate emissions. By adding a moral dimension to the well-rehearsed scientific arguments, Francis hopes to raise the ambition of countries above their own self-interest to secure a strong deal in a crucial climate summit in Paris in November.

“Pope Francis is personally committed to this [climate] issue like no other pope before him. The encyclical will have a major impact. It will speak to the moral imperative of addressing climate change in a timely fashion in order to protect the most vulnerable,” said Christiana Figueres, the UN’s climate chief, in Bonn this week for negotiations.

Francis, the first Latin American pope, is increasingly seen as the voice of the global south and a catalyst for change in global bodies. In September, he will seek to add impetus and moral authority to UN negotiations in New York to adopt new development goals and lay out a 15-year global plan to tackle hunger, extreme poverty and health. He will address the UN general assembly on 23 September as countries finalise their commitments.

However, Francis’s radicalism is attracting resistance from Vatican conservatives and in rightwing church circles, particularly in the US –- where Catholic climate sceptics also include John Boehner, Republican leader of the House of Representatives, and Rick Santorum, a Republican presidential candidate.

Earlier this year Stephen Moore, a Catholic economist, called the pope a “complete disaster”, saying he was part of “a radical green movement that is at its core anti-Christian, anti-people and anti-progress”.

Moore was backed this month by scientists and engineers from the powerful evangelical Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, who have written an open letter to Francis. “Today many prominent voices call humanity a scourge on our planet, saying that man is the problem, not the solution. Such attitudes too often contaminate their assessment of man’s effects on nature,” it says.

But the encyclical will be well received in developing countries, where most Catholics live. “Francis has always put the poor at the centre of everything he has said. The developing countries will hear their voice in the encyclical,” said Neil Thorns, director of advocacy at the Catholic development agency, Cafod. “I expect it to challenge the way we think. The message that we cannot just treat the Earth as a tool for exploitation will be a message that many will not want to hear.”

The pope is “aiming at a change of heart. What will save us is not technology or science. What will save us is the ethical transformation of our society,” said Carmelite Father Eduardo Agosta Scarel, a climate scientist who teaches at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina in Buenos Aires.

Earlier popes, including Benedict XVI and John Paul II, addressed environmental issues and “creation”, but neither mentioned climate change or devoted an entire encyclical to the links between poverty, economics and ecological destruction. Francis’s only previous encyclical concerned the nature of religious faith.

The pontiff, who is playing an increasing role on the world stage, will visit Cuba ahead of travelling to the US. He was cited by Obama as having helped to thaw relations between the two countries, and last week met the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to discuss the crisis in Ukraine and the threat to minority Christians in the Middle East.

The pope chose Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals, as his namesake at the start of his papacy in 2011, saying the saint’s values reflected his own.

Legend of St Francis: 15. Sermon to the Birds: Giotto di Bondone, 1297-99, fresco, 270 x 200 cm (Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi)

Apparition of St Francis at Arles: Fra Angelico, c. 1429, poplar, 26 x 31 cm (Staatliche Museen, Berlin)

Explosive intervention by#PopeFrancis set to transform #ClimateChange debate: image via Dr. Yaacoub Hallak @YNHallak, 13 June 2015

Legend of St Francis: 10. Exorcism of the Demons at Arezzo: Giotto di Bondone, 1297-99, fresco, detail (Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi)

Angry US republicans tell Pope Francis to ‘stick with his job and we’ll stick with ours': The US right will launch pre-emptive attacks on the pope’s stance on climate change: Suzanne Goldenberg, The Observer, 13 June 2015

Leading figures on the American right are launching a series of pre-emptive attacks on the pope before this week’s encyclical, hoping to prevent a mass conversion of the climate change deniers who have powered the corps of the conservative movement for more than a decade.

The prospect that the pope, from his perch at the pinnacle of the Catholic church, will exhort humanity to act on climate change as a moral imperative is a direct threat to a core belief of US conservatives. And conservatives –- anxious to hang on to their flock -– are lashing out.

“The pope ought to stay with his job, and we’ll stay with ours,” James Inhofe, the granddaddy of climate change deniers in the US Congress and chairman of the Senate environment and public works committee, said last week, after picking up an award at a climate sceptics' conference.

Rick Santorum, a devout Catholic and a long-shot contender for the Republican nomination, told a Philadelphia radio station: “The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we’re good at, which is theology and morality.”

A majority of Republicans in Congress deny the existence of climate change and oppose regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Among the ultra-conservative Tea Party set, climate change scepticism reaches epidemic proportions, about 80% of those on the far right, according to the Pew research centre. Only one of the nearly 20 Republicans running for president will acknowledge the danger of climate change, another long-shot contender, Lindsey Graham.

The fossil fuel industry, including the American Petroleum Institute lobby group and Peabody Coal, has cast fossil fuels as a route out of poverty in the developing world. Ultra-conservative and climate change denial thinktanks, such as the Heartland Institute, which has been funded by the oil industry, have argued that climate change was the cure for drought and famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s.

“In the US for the past 10 years we have allowed climate change to become an ideological political issue instead of being the moral issue that it is,” said the Rev Mitchell Hescox, leader of the Evangelical Environmental Network. “The idea that climate change is a liberal issue has just permeated the thought of those in the conservative movement, and those in the denier campaign have taken advantage of that to continue to drive home the message that climate change is not a moral issue,” added Hescox, who identifies himself as a conservative.

But it gets much harder to dismiss climate change as a fringe concern of liberals such as Al Gore, and environmental regulations as a sneaky first step to sweeping regulations and a government takeover of private lives, once the pope becomes involved.

“If I were a Catholic climate denier, I would be worried about the pope,” said Patrick Regan, who teaches the politics of climate change at Notre Dame University. “And if I had a vested interest in not changing climate policy, the pope would be a threat to my political stance.”

In the case of climate change, conservatives face multiple threats to the world view.

This week, the pope will cast climate change as the moral cause of our times. Over the summer, Barack Obama will finalise new rules cutting carbon pollution from power plants. In September, the pope will be back to stir up talk of climate change again, in the first ever speech by a pope to Congress –- just at a time when hard-core conservatives had hoped to be voting on long-shot legislation to block the power plant rules or cut climate aid to developing countries.

Meanwhile, Jay Faison, a conservative Christian businessman from North Carolina, last week pledged $175m of his own money to try to get Republicans to face up to the reality of climate change and the American Enterprise Institute, the establishment conservative thinktank in Washington, gave a platform  –- and respectful hearing -– to two Democratic senators launching a bill for a carbon fee.

The church has made an effort to prepare the ground for the pope, with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting leading Republican and Democratic Catholics in Congress on climate change.

“I think sceptics have their work cut out for them to overpower the pope’s influence,” said Marc Morano, a climate change denier notorious for a blog that attacks scientists. 

“The pope being involved in this is a huge coup for promoters of manmade global warming,” he said.

It also puts conservatives in an uncomfortable spot -– not unlike the Reagan era of the 1980s when bishops came out against nuclear weapons. “Conservative politicians will be in a position now of being where many liberals are when it comes to Catholic teaching,” Morano said. “It makes conservative politicians look like they are against Catholic teaching.” Other pontiffs have called for “creation care”, and Francis’s immediate predecessor at the Vatican, Benedict, was seen as the “green pope”. An encyclical raises the prospect of speeches on climate change from the pulpit of more than 17,000 Catholic parishes.

The discomfort will only increase in September when the pope is due to address the US Congress, said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island, who has made more than 100 speeches about climate change in Congress.

“Speaker John Boehner is a very proud and sincere Catholic, and I think it can’t not have an effect,” Whitehouse said. “I also think it will change the debate in public because it isn’t just an encyclical that goes up on the Vatican website. Every Catholic school will teach to it. Every Catholic parish will teach to it. Catholic universities will teach to it. It will be a significant force in the community and create very significant ripples.”Those ripples will likely travel well beyond Catholics, who make up about a quarter of the US population. Other conservatives will be influenced by the pope’s message too, said Hescox and they are unlikely to be receptive to the conservatives’ attacks.

“I think it is very hard to discredit the pope,” he said. “This completely destroys most of their arguments that climate change is not real, that it is funded by a 'mass UN conspiracy', that it is all to do with Al Gore and not to do with people of world.”

Legend of St Francis: 10. Exorcism of the Demons at Arezzo: Giotto di Bondone, 1297-99, fresco, 270 x 230 cm (Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi) 

Rows. Near Arbuckle, California: photo by JET, 17 May 2015

No dumping. Benicia, California: photo by JET, 3 May 2015

Almond trees fall victim to the drought in Coalinga in the Central Valley, California: photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters via the Guardian, 9 May 2015

Growing and dead almond trees in Coalinga in the Central Valley: photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters via the Guardian, 9 May 2015

Above the orchard. Northern California: photo by JET, 31 May 2015



Legend of St Francis: 14. Miracle of the Spring: Giotto di Bondone, 1297-1300, fresco, 270 x 200 cm (Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi)

A streak of rust (Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore: Gray Fox)

June 14, 2015, 3:53 am

≫ Next: Lemur lost -- last redoubt (Wislawa Szymborska: Consolation)

≪ Previous: Francis and the Miracle of the Spring

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A streak of rust on deserted stairs caught my eye whilst heading home last night. #urbanfox: image via Sophie Darlington @S_Darlington, 6 April 2014 Hackney, London

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore: Gray Fox
 
for Tom Clark

A gray fox this time
with black nose

slips almost unnoticed
along the city street

next to the great woods

and most think he’s a
neighborhood cat out for a

serendipitous stroll

a few sardine cans whose
oils may not be completely

ingested

He’s slick in the
full moonlight

as if wearing ermines

the light off his
gray coat shines

and he’s thinking foxy
thoughts pretty

unfathomable to such as

us with our limited though
technologically supported

communication skills

The fox who yips and
barks at night so

neighbors think it’s a
dog fight or a

tomcat commotion

bouncing along
nose choosing from the

menu of odors we can’t
even smell

Stops
pricks up his ears for a

moment
stock still

momentarily majestic

then ambles on
as much in God’s

sight as we are only
O so much more

naturally glamorous!

5/12/15

#ChaosReigns: image via David Raposa @falsebinary, 29 November 2014



Urban Fox on the move: photo by Ian Wade, 16 September 2010

 

Great working with you yesterday @heidi_delve. Well, I say just you, but inspiration came from all around... #urbanfox: image via Michael Warley @MichaeWarley, 9 April 2014

Didn't expect to see this from breakfast table this morning #urbanfox: image via Chuffed Productions @WeAreChuffed, 12 February 2015

 

What a load of rubbish! #UrbanFox #photography #Glasgow #nature: image via James Moore @Mr_P_Marten, 5 September 2014

 

Last one from me for the #WildLondoner hour. #urbanfox #canarywharf #london #urbanwildlife: image via jamie Hall @jamiehallphoto, 23 September 2014

 

Ok, one more... #WildLondoner #urban #urbanwildlife #urbanfox: image via jamie Hall @jamiehallphoto, 23 September 2014

But sure you've loads of space to drive around me! #fox #car #urbanfox #london: image via Nessy @Nessymon, 18 October 2014

 

RIP #urbanfox this morning by side of road north london: image via Ana Sanchez-Martin @AnaGerminate, 26 February 2015 

Urban Fox, Bristol: photo by Ian Wade, 18 July 2011



Urban Fox, Bristol: photo by Ian Wade, 18 July 2011



Urban Fox, Bristol: photo by Ian Wade, 18 July 2011

Urban Foxes, Bristol: photo by Ian Wade, 18 July 2011

Urban Foxes, Bristol: photo by Ian Wade, 18 July 2011



Urban Fox, South Bristol: photo by Ian Wade, 23 July 2011
 

The perils of living in #London #UrbanFox #Clatter: image via SunburntEmily @sunburntemily, 25 October 2014 Wandsworth, London

Urban Fox at #KewGardens, stayed about 30 minutes then ran off with @smit_edward's iPhone. #kew #urbanfox: image via Oli Broadhead @OliBroadhead, 6 August 2014



Father and Son, Urban Foxes, Bristol: photo by Ian Wade, 26 September 2010



Urban Fox cub, Bristol: photo by Ian Wade, 7 October 2010



Young Urban Fox relaxing in street, Bristol: photo by Ian Wade, 7 October 2010



Young Urban Fox relaxing in Cotham  Bristol: photo by Ian Wade, 16 October 2010



Young Urban Fox cleaning in street, Bristol: photo by Ian Wade, 16 October 2010



Young Urban Fox cleaning in street, Bristol: photo by Ian Wade, 16 October 2010



Urban Fox with mange, Bristol. I enjoyed spending last night looking for suitable locations with Secret world rescue centre in Somerset to set up a cage to trap an urban fox with bad mange. Hopefully the cage will work and we can save this beautiful fox!This fox has featured in many of my photos over the months. He was once a beautiful male fox and now is in a terrible state. I have become very attached to Freddy as many other people have in the location. Hopefully we can catch him this week and save his life!Fingers crossed: photo by Ian Wade, 6 February 2011


Urban Fox, Bristol: photo by Ian Wade, 26 April 2013


 

Gray Fox, Bright Angel Campground, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona: photo by Caleb Putnam, 7 November 2012


 

A chilla (Lycalopex griseus) -- South American Gray Fox, or Zorro, in Pan de Azúcar National Park on the coast of the Atacama Desert, Chile: photo by Alejandro Torres Frías, 2008



Gray Fox: photo by faungg's photos, 19 October 2008

 


Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), sometimes called the arboreal fox. You will find this common west coast species at home climbing trees as well as on the ground...: photo by Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith. 28 April 2014

Gray Tree Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), Terlingua, Texas: photo by cyclewidow, 13 April 2006

 

Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), Paseo Padre Parkway, just south of Coyote Hills Regional Park, Alameda County, California - 23 February 2011. I found this unfortunate fox on the side of the road this morning, just before sunrise. The black guard hairs that run the length of the dorsal surface of the body are well seen here. I entered the observation into the California Roadkill Observation System: photo by K Schneider, 22 February 2011

#chaosreigns @emergency_fox: image via Negative Nancy @LaurieFromMiami, 12 March 2014

Lemur lost -- last redoubt (Wislawa Szymborska: Consolation)

June 15, 2015, 8:15 am

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≪ Previous: A streak of rust (Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore: Gray Fox)

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The largest living lemur, the large-bodied Indri (Indri indri) of Magagascar's rainforest, faces imminent extinction, according to the latest global assessment of at-risk species by the IUCN: photo by Nick Garbutt/PA via the Guardian, 23 June 2014

Wislawa Szymborska: Consolation

Darwin.

They say he read novels to relax,

But only certain kinds:

nothing that ended unhappily.

If anything like that turned up,

enraged, he flung the book into the fire.   

True or not,

I’m ready to believe it.

Scanning in his mind so many times and places,

he’d had enough of dying species,

the triumphs of the strong over the weak,

the endless struggles to survive,

all doomed sooner or later.

He’d earned the right to happy endings,

at least in fiction

with its diminutions.

Hence the indispensable

silver lining,

the lovers reunited, the families reconciled,

the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded,

fortunes regained, treasures uncovered,

stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways,

good names restored, greed daunted,

old maids married off to worthy parsons,

troublemakers banished to other hemispheres,

forgers of documents tossed down the stairs,   

seducers scurrying to the altar,

orphans sheltered, widows comforted,

pride humbled, wounds healed over,

prodigal sons summoned home,

cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean,   

hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation,

general merriment and celebration,

and the dog Fido,

gone astray in the first chapter,

turns up barking gladly

in the last.

Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012): Consolation, translated by Clare Cavanagh, 2006, from Map: Collected and Last Poems, 2015

Lemur lost -- last redoubt

 

Silky sifakas, snow-white, metre-high lemurs that are among the world's most endangered creatures, perch in a treetop in Marojejy national park, Madagascar. Ongoing deforestation is a grave threat to this rare and fabled species; in recent years, gangs have run rampant in the rainforests, feeding demand for tropical hardwoods in China.: photo by Alamy via The Guardian, 21 February 2014

Diademed Sifaka (Propithecus diadema), ready to push off and leap, Mantadia National Park, Madagascar: photo by C. Michael Hogan, 2006

 

Diademed Sifaka (Propithecus diadema), sitting, Mantadia National Park, Madagascar: photo by C. Michael Hogan, 2006

 


Diademed Sifaka (Propithecus diadema), with radio collar, Andaside-Mantadia National Park, Madagascar: photo by Karen Coppock, 2007


 

Diademed Sifaka (Propithecus diadema): photo by Tom Junek, 2003

Diademed Sifaka (Propithecus diadema): photo by Tom Junek, 2003

 

A rare baby diademed sifaka lemur peaks out from its mother’s lap, almost hidden in the canopy of a lowland rainforest of Madagascar, the only island where lemurs can be found. They are critically endangered due to habitat destruction and hunting: photo by Hery Randriahaingo / Aspinall Foundation via The Guardian, 21 October 2014

 "… Madagascar tells us which rules would still hold true if time had once broken its banks and flowed to the present down a different channel …"

Alison Jolly's in-depth field research on the behaviour and ecology of lemurs in Madagascar helped to transform our understanding of the evolution of social behaviour: photo by Cyril Ruosovia the Guardian, 19 February 2014

 "… Madagascar tells us which rules would still hold true if time had once broken its banks and flowed to the present down a different channel …"

-- Alison Jolly (1937-2014), from A World Like Our Own: Man and Nature in Madagascar (1980)

Ring-tailed Lemurs (Lemur catta) in Isalo national park, Madagascar: photo by Paul Souders/Corbis via The Guardian, 27 January 2015

Madagascar’s ‘otherworldly’ rainforest, Masoala Peninsula national park, north east Madagascar: photo by Alex Hyde/Corbis via The Guardian, 27 January 2015

 

A Comet moth or Madagascar moon moth (Argema mittrei), recently emerged and drying its wings in Andasibe-Mantadia national park, Madagascar: photo by Nick Garbutt/Corbis via The Guardian, 27 January 2015

 

A leaf-tailed Gecko (Uroplatus sikorae) in Montagne D’Ambre national park, Madagascar. Many of the country’s species, such as this, are found nowhere else: photo by Thomas Marent/Corbis via The Guardian, 27 January 2015

 

An illegal logger fells a 300-400-year-old rosewood trees in Madagascar's Masoala national park, a Unesco world heritage site: photo by Pascal Maitre/Cosmos/eyevine via The Guardian, 23 December 2015

 Lemur lost

Two female blue-eyed black lemur, Madagascar. The male is black, the female a reddish brown colour. Lemurs are the only primate species other than humans that have blue eyes. They are the most endangered primate species in the world, owing to the destruction of their tropical forest habitat: photo by Frans Lanting/Alamy via The Guardian, 15 August 2013

 

More than 90% of lemurs face extinction, IUCN warns: Updated 'red list' describes the primates as one of the most threatened groups of animals on Earth: Jessica Aldred, The Guardian, 11 June 2014
 

More than 90% of lemurs are facing extinction, according to the latest update to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) “red list”, a global assessment of the world’s most threatened species.

Ring-tailed Lemurs (Lemur catta), travelling in a small group, Berenty Private Reserve, Madagascar: photo by Alex Dunkel, 2003

With 90 species of lemur now classed as being at risk of extinction (91%), the primates are one of the most threatened groups of animals on Earth. Of the 99 known species -– which live only on the island of Madagascar off the coast of east Africa –- 22 are critically endangered, including the largest living lemur, the large-bodied Indri (Indri indri). Almost half (48 species) are endangered, including the world’s smallest primate, Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur (Microcebus berthae). Twenty lemurs were listed as vulnerable to extinction.

Ring-tailed Lemur (Lemur catta), Berenty Private Reserve, Madagascar: photo by Alex Dunkel, 2003

Lemurs are threatened by the destruction of their tropical forest habitat in Madagascar, where political instability and rising levels of poverty in the past 20 years have accelerated illegal logging. As much as 90% of the original natural vegetation on the island has been destroyed and what remains is severely fragmented. Lemurs –- members of the primate family –- are also being hunted for food.

 

Shandong, China. Lemurs eat at Qingdao Forest Wildlife World in Qingdao: photo by China Daily/Reuters via The Guardian, 27 January 2015

 A plague of ills-- sorrow beyond consolation?

Quand trafic et délinquance saccagent la nature. Episode 1, le bois de rose #Madagascar: image via Aurélie @prune_1, 26 January 2015

Donc la semaine dernière 2 bateaux de bois de rose #Madagascar Min Tai Leng arraisonné vide Min Feng parti chargé: image via Kasahy Mahitsy @KasahyMahitsy, 27 January 2015

Donc la semaine dernière 2 bateaux de bois de rose #Madagascar Min Tai Leng arraisonné vide Min Feng parti chargé: image via Kasahy Mahitsy @KasahyMahitsy, 27 January 2015

Quel est votre avis sur ce trafic de Bolabola ? Quelles mesures mettre en place ? #Madagascar: image via Le Monde Afrique @LeMonde Afrique, 27 January 2015

#Madagascar could lose battle against locusts if funds don’t come, UN warns: image via Plague.io Trends @Plaguelizer, 27 January 2015

A powerful image showing the realities of Madagascar's locust swarm..... #Madagascar: image via Azafady @azafady, 29 January 2015

#Madagascar: journée de deuil après la tempête Chedza : image via Afrikatv @afrikatvnet, 27 January 2015

WHO chief warns of 'alarming' plague outbreak in #Madagascar: image via Plague.io Trends @Plaguelizer, 26 January 2015

The national poverty line in #Madagascar is 535,603 Ariary (£126) per year, 71.5% of the population fall below this: image via Azafady @azafady, 30 January 2015

Men work on a brick kiln in #Madagascar. Mainly fueled by burning wood, this is a very inefficient use of forest resources. Brick kilns also emit #carbons and other toxic fumes into the atmosphere, impacting our #environment and climate. #climatechange…: image via Ed Kashi @edkashi, 31 January 2015

Pourquoi on se préoccupe si peu de l'incroyable biodiversité de #Madagascar: image via WCS Madagascar @WCS_Mada, 27 January 2015

At fawning time

June 16, 2015, 4:11 am

≫ Next: Don't Look Back (Wislawa Szymborska: Lot's Wife)

≪ Previous: Lemur lost -- last redoubt (Wislawa Szymborska: Consolation)

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Black-tailed deer in the Blake Garden, Kensington, Calfornia. Two in the open and one behind the tree.: photo by TJ Gehling, 2 February 2013

she will stay close

to home

unless driven

by need

to browse afar 

the largely pregnant

carstruck doe

lying aslant

the traffic flow

in morning fog

black mouth agape

eyes wide unseeing

targets

for the pecking crows

 

 

Columbian black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus subsp. columbianus), female, Olympic National Park: photo by Walter Siegmnd, 3 July 2008

 

Columbian black-tailed deer at Angel Island. Caught this Columbian black-tailed deer jumping down from a retaining wall on Angel Island. I didn't even notice the sailboat until I reviewed the picture later on my computer (I believe that's the Richmond / Berkeley area in the background).: photo by Adam Ince, 3 September 2010

Black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus), doe with fawn, Oregon: photo by Noël Zia Lee, 25 October 2007

Black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus), doe, Oregon: photo by Noël Zia Lee, 25 October 2007

Black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus), doe, Oregon: photo by Noël Zia Lee, 25 October 2007

 

Deer grazing, Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 4 January 2014

Dead Deer. Found in Berkeley, California: photo by Larry Jones, 13 March 2011

[Untitled]: photo by Rob Scumaci, 21 December 2013

[Untitled]: photo by Rob Scumaci, 21 December 2013

[Untitled]: photo by Rob Scumaci, 21 December 2013

Recycling (Black-tailed deer, El Cerrito, California): photo by TJ Gehling, 17 October 2012

Don't Look Back (Wislawa Szymborska: Lot's Wife)

June 17, 2015, 8:33 am

≫ Next: Austin Granger: In a wide wilderness, a far cry / Robert Creeley: Moral

≪ Previous: At fawning time

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Woman Lamenting by a Burning City: Jan Swart van Groningen, 1550-55, pen in black, brush in brown, 360 x 283 mm (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

They say I looked back out of curiosity.
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot's neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn't so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for pursuers.
Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind.
Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop.
I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back setting my bundle down.
I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.
Serpents appeared on my path,
spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now -- every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.
I looked back in desolation.
In shame because we had stolen away.
Wanting to cry out, to go home.
Or only when a sudden gust of wind
unbound my hair and lifted up my robe.
It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom
and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again.
I looked back in anger.
To savor their terrible fate.
I looked back for all the reasons given above.
I looked back involuntarily.
It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me.
It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks.
A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge.
It was then we both glanced back.
No, no. I ran on,
I crept, I flew upward
until darkness fell from the heavens
and with it scorching gravel and dead birds.
I couldn't breathe and spun around and around.
Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing.
It's not inconceivable that my eyes were open.
It's possible I fell facing the city.

Wislawa Szymborska (1923 -2012): Lot's Wife, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh in Poems New and Collected 1957-1997

Lot and his Daughters: Lucas van Leyden, c. 1520, oil on wood, 48 x 34 cm (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

Lot and His Daughters (detail): Jan Massys, 1565, oil on oak, 148 x 204,5 cm (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels)

Lot and his Daughters: Jan Harmensz. Muller (1571-1628), c. 1600, oil on panel, 29 x 39 cm; image by Diomede, 27 April 2006 (Private collection)
 

Lot Fleeing with his Daughters from Sodom: Albrecht Dürer, c. 1498, oil and tempera on panel, 52 x 41 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington)

 

Lot and His Daughters: Juan de la Corte, first half of 17th century, oil on canvas, 133 x 194 cm (private collection)


Lot flieht mit seinen Töchtern aus dem brennenden Sodom: Johann Georg Trautmann (1713-1769), oil on canvas, 65 × 68 cm; image by Andreas Praefcke, 23 March 2006 (Collections of the Granddukes of Baden, Karlsruhe)



The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: John Martin, 1852, oil on canvas, 136.3  x 212.3 cm (Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne)

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (detail): John Martin, 1852, oil on canvas, 136.3  x 212.3 cm (Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne)

Lot's Wife: The Unknown Woman

Alternate Universe: Lot's Wife Turns Into a Gallon of Milk: image by Marc-Anthony Macon, 18 April 2013

Orientation Targets -- Titan I -- VAFB (LF). Near the the VAFBOSTF facility, these two orientation targets stood -- just as they had more than four decades ago, when they were used in the guidance of the first operational Titan 1 missile complex in the United States. In a strange way, these objects seemed anthropomorphic in my imagination, and I felt I was standing in front of Lot's wife (from the Hebrew Scriptures), who had long since become a frozen pillar of salt: photo by Jonathan Haeber, 11 January 2010

Lot's Wife [Ottawa]: photo by Mike Taylor, 29 June 2014

Lot's Wife at the antique shop [Canaan, Maine]: photo by Peter Linehan, 3 May 2008

Blue Mesa. Petrified wood in the lower Lot's Wife beds, part of the Sonsela Member of the Chinle Formation (Late Triassic). [Apache, Arizona]: photo by Lazurite, 25 October 2010

Lot's Wife Misses Her Train[Tucson Amtrak Station and Museum]: photo by Voenix Rising, 24 August 2008

Shy. Lot's Wife? [Berlin]: photo by James Guppy, 4 March 2009

Lot's wife looked back: photo by Terri Lynn, 12 February 2008

Riverside swimming (Elsie, Lot's wife, Lot). Taken around 1930. Gladys Badgley, Elsie Jensen Bishoff, Lot Bishoff. [Indianola, Iowa]: image by Nathan Rank, 4 November 2007

 Lot's Wife's Road. Looking back at Monument Valley from the road to Mexican Hat.: photo by Simon Bisson, 3 January 2009

LOT'S WIFE / LA MUJER DE LOT: photo by ARETE, 22 June 2009

Grounded. The curse of Lot's wife... The bible never gave her name!!: photo by Liam Moloney, 22 June 2008

Lot's Wife. Looked back at the evil Mickey D's and was transformed into an extra large french fry: photo by Mike Steele, 24 March 2014

Austin Granger: In a wide wilderness, a far cry / Robert Creeley: Moral

June 18, 2015, 2:56 am

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≪ Previous: Don't Look Back (Wislawa Szymborska: Lot's Wife)

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Path, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 21 May 2015

Path, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 21 May 2015

Path, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 21 May 2015

Moral

Now the inevitable 

As in tales of woe 

The inexorable toll 

It takes, it takes. 
 

Robert Creeley (1926-2005): Moral, first published as an Alternative Press postcard, n.d., reprinted in Gnomic Verses in Echoes, 1994  

Gift Shop, Woodland, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 28 May 2015

Gift Shop, Woodland, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 28 May 2015

Gift Shop, Woodland, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 28 May 2015

Library, Christmas Valley, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 19 May 2015

Library, Christmas Valley, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 19 May 2015

Library, Christmas Valley, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 19 May 2015

Early Morning, Christmas Valley, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 17 May 2015

Early Morning, Christmas Valley, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 17 May 2015

Early Morning, Christmas Valley, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 17 May 2015

Mount St. Helens from the Plains of Abraham: photo by Austin Granger, 7 May 2015

Mount St. Helens from the Plains of Abraham: photo by Austin Granger, 7 May 2015

 

Mount St. Helens from the Plains of Abraham: photo by Austin Granger, 7 May 2015

Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 4 May 2015

 

Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 4 May 2015

Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 4 May 2015

 

Erosion Control Structure, near Las Vegas, Nevada: photo by Austin Granger, 1 May 2015

Erosion Control Structure, near Las Vegas, Nevada: photo by Austin Granger, 1 May 2015

Erosion Control Structure, near Las Vegas, Nevada: photo by Austin Granger, 1 May 2015
 

Atop a Parking Garage, Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 30 April 2015

Atop a Parking Garage, Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 30 April 2015

 

Atop a Parking Garage, Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 30 April 2015

 

Atop a Parking Garage, Las Vegas: photo by Austin Granger, 28 April 2015

Atop a Parking Garage, Las Vegas: photo by Austin Granger, 28 April 2015

Atop a Parking Garage, Las Vegas: photo by Austin Granger, 28 April 2015

 

Car in a Wash, Nevada: photo by Austin Granger, 27 April 2015

Car in a Wash, Nevada: photo by Austin Granger, 27 April 2015

Car in a Wash, Nevada: photo by Austin Granger, 27 April 2015

 

Nude Girls, Nevada: photo by Austin Granger, 25 April 2015

Nude Girls, Nevada: photo by Austin Granger, 25 April 2015

Nude Girls, Nevada: photo by Austin Granger, 25 April 2015

Jesus and Mary, Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 25 April 2015

Jesus and Mary, Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 25 April 2015

Jesus and Mary, Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 25 April 2015

 

Pier, Astoria, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 15 April 2015

Pier, Astoria, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 15 April 2015

 

Pier, Astoria, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 15 April 2015

 

Ruin, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 14 April 2015

 

Ruin, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 14 April 2015

Ruin, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 14 April 2015

Oyster shells, Nahcotta, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 10 April 2015

Oyster shells, Nahcotta, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 10 April 2015

Oyster shells, Nahcotta, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 10 April 2015

Oystervile, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 9 April 2015

Oystervile, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 9 April 2015

 

Oystervile, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 9 April 2015

 

Atop a Parking Garage, Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 2 April 2015

Atop a Parking Garage, Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 2 April 2015

Atop a Parking Garage, Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 2 April 2015

Farm for Sale, near Donald, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 2 April 2015

Farm for Sale, near Donald, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 2 April 2015

Farm for Sale, near Donald, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 2 April 2015

Along Old Highway 8, Goodnoe Hills, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 12 March 2015

Along Old Highway 8, Goodnoe Hills, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 12 March 2015

 

Along Old Highway 8, Goodnoe Hills, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 12 March 2015

Van, Columbia River Gorge, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 10 March 2015

Van, Columbia River Gorge, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 10 March 2015

Van, Columbia River Gorge, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 10 March 2015

 

Abandoned Schoolhouse, Goodnoe Hills, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 9 March 2015

Abandoned Schoolhouse, Goodnoe Hills, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 9 March 2015

Abandoned Schoolhouse, Goodnoe Hills, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 9 March 2015

 

Thomas Hardy: Waiting Both

June 19, 2015, 3:02 am

≫ Next: Jim Dine: Murder (for Tom Raworth)

≪ Previous: Austin Granger: In a wide wilderness, a far cry / Robert Creeley: Moral

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[Untitled, Indian Brook, Clarksburg, Ontario]: photo by John Brownlow, 14 April 2006

A star looks down at me,
And says: “Here I and you
Stand, each in our degree:
What do you mean to do, --
Mean to do?”

I say: “For all I know,
Wait, and let Time go by,
Till my change come.” -- “Just so,”
The star says, “So mean I,
So mean I.”

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928): Waiting Both, writ early 1920s, first published in The London Mercury, November 1924, collected in Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles, 1925

[Untitled, from Wild Things XI -- Indian Brook]: photo by John Brownlow, 7 February 2006

 

[Untitled, from Wild Things XI -- Indian Brook]: photo by John Brownlow, 7 February 2006

 

[Untitled, from Wild Things XI -- Indian Brook]: photo by John Brownlow, 7 February 2006

[Untitled, Indian Brook, Clarksburg, Ontario]: photo by John Brownlow, 14 April 2006

[Untitled, Clarksburg, Ontario]: photo by John Brownlow, 5 July 2006

 

[Untitled, Clarksburg, Ontario]: photo by John Brownlow, 27 March 2006

 

[Untitled, Thornbury, Ontario]: photo by John Brownlow, 16 October 2006

 

[Untitled, from Wild Things XXI -- Indian Brook]: photo by John Brownlow, 6 April 2015

 

[Untitled, from Wild Things XXI -- Indian Brook]: photo by John Brownlow, 7 April 2015

---

Jim Dine: Murder (for Tom Raworth)

June 20, 2015, 5:51 am

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≪ Previous: Thomas Hardy: Waiting Both

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Passage Vivienne, Paris: photo by Pierre Paqueton, 22 February 2015

Hope

Lost hope

with you

and young eyes

that are black

with hope

last hope

A ghost

steps out of

Passage Vivienne

Lower that

Rifle Mister

The smell of glass

The smell of mosaic books

The End of Traffic

Blinking at me

Heavenly secret

Heavy weight

of Celestial

Shhhh

A raga

Lights

the sky

with amore

Love --

Loved by god

and you.

Jim Dine: Murder (for Tom Raworth), Paris, 20 June 2015

Paris. Dans la Galerie Vivienne: photo by Guillaume Baviere, 18 October 2014

Galerie Vivienne, Paris: photo by Patrick Godeau, 14 August 2012

l'an 2010 qui s'en va [Escaiier, Passage Vivienne, Paris]: photo by Barbara De Vito, 11 December 2010

Escaiier, Passage Vivienne, Paris: photo by Calinore, 7 March 2009

Enter Passage Vivienne: photo by z@doune, 12 April 2009

Exiting Passage Vivienne: photo by z@doune, 12 April 2009

Tightly Protected

June 21, 2015, 10:08 am

≫ Next: The Last Rhodesian Barbeque

≪ Previous: Jim Dine: Murder (for Tom Raworth)

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Gun shop advertisement affixed to front page of Charleston, South Carolina Post and Courier the day after a racially-motivated massacre in which nine people were shot dead at a church in the city. The flyer stuck to The Post and Courier offered a $30 (£19) deal for Thursday, which is “ladies’ night”, just miles away from the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. For that price ATP Gun Shop gives women a pistol or revolver, 50 rounds of ammunition, eye and ear protection, access to a shooting range, an instructor and a souvenir T-shirt.: photo via The Independent, 19 June 2015

Sail Away

In America you'll get food to eat
Won't have to run through the jungle
And scuff up your feet
You'll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day
It's great to be an American

Ain't no lions or tigers
Ain't no mamba snake
Just the sweet watermelon and the buckwheat cake
Ev'rybody is as happy as a man can be
Climb aboard, little wog
Sail away with me

Sail away
Sail away
We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay
Sail away
Sail away
We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay

In America every man is free
To take care of his home and his family
You'll be as happy as a monkey in a monkey tree
You're all gonna be an American

Sail away
Sail away
We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay
Sail away
Sail away
We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay

Sail Away: Randy Newman, 1972

JMW Turner, Slave Ship, detail of ship. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1850): Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840, oil on canvas, 90.8 x 122.6 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston): image by Steven Zucker, 11 March 2012

Bristol slave ship. The cargo was packed in tight, empty space cost money: image by Paul Townsend, 31 October 2010

Slave Ship Poster -- detail 1: image by Believe Creative, 7 April 2008

 

Dr. Martin Luther King at #EmanuelAME, Charleston, South Carolina, 1962. #HistoricBlackChurch #CivilRIghtsMovement #CharlestonShooting: image via The King Center @TheKingCenter, 17 June 2015


 

Members of Emanuel AME Church announce that services and Sunday school will go ahead as scheduled Sunday, four days after the pastor and eight other people were shot to death: photo by Chip Somodevilla via Los Angeles Times, 20 June 2015

 

A photo from the white supremacist website The Last Rhodesian showing Dylann Roof, the suspect in the Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting: photo via New York Times, 21 June 2015


A photo from the white supremacist website The Last Rhodesian showing Dylann Roof, the suspect in the Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting: photo via New York Times, 21 June 2015

According to a lot of silly #RWNJs I run into on Twitter, those guys are liberals. #CharlestonShooting #Confederacy: image via J-S Poupart @jspoupart, 20 June 2015

The confederate flag still flies in South Carolina. #TakeDownTheFlag: image via deray mcckesson @deray, 20 June 2015

The confederate flag is tightly protected, chain is only at the top, hard to get to to take down. Columbia.: image via deray mcckesson @deray, 20 June 2015

 

It's time for the Magnolia State to get a new flag. Any reference to the Confederacy is unacceptable. #Mississippi: image via Jon Shonebarger @JonShonebarger, 20 June 2015

 

ANYone believes #DylannStormRoof  is mentally ill...IS mentally ill. He IS a racist who planned a racist mass murder: image via AnonNOTORIOUS @MrMilitantNegro, 20 June 2015

People march in protest to the Confederate Museum in Charleston, South Carolina on Saturday: photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Los Angeles Times, 20 June 2015
  

Charleston shooting suspect Dylann Roof is escorted from the Shelby, North Carolina Police Department: photo by Tod Sumlin / Charlotte Observer. 18 June 2015

 

No Sanctuary in #Charleston: image via Tracee Ellis Ross @TraceeEllisRoss, 19 June 2015

A man kneels across the street from where police gather outside the Emanuel AME Church following a shooting Wednesday, June 17, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina: photo by Wade Spees / The Post And Courier via AP, 18 June 2015

The desk of South Carolina Senator Clementa Pinckney is draped in black cloth with a single rose and vase in an empty chamber prior to a Senate session, Thursday, June 18, 2015, at the Statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina. Pinckney was killed, Wednesday, June 17, 2015, in a shooting at an historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina: photo by Rainier Ehrhardt / AP, 18 June 2015

Family members of the nine victims of the Emanuel AME Church shooting gather for a prayer vigil at the College of Charleston TD Arena: photo by Chip Somodevilla via Los Angeles Times, 20 June 2015

Marie Goff wipes away tears during a prayer vigil at Morris Brown AME Church in Charleston, S.C., on Thursday for the victims of the previous day's shooting at the city's Emanuel AME Church: photo by Grace Beahm / AP via Los Angeles Times, 20 June 2015

Thousands of people gather for a city-sponsored prayer vigil for the nine victims of the Emanuel AME Church shooting at the College of Charleston TD Arena: photo by Chip Somodevilla via Los Angeles Times, 20 June 2015

 College of Charleston TD Arena. Victims of the Charleston, South Carolina church shooting from top row left: Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Rev. Sharonda Singleton, bottom row left, Tywanza Sanders, Susie Jackson and Ethel Lee Lance (no photo of Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr. and Myra Thompson available): photo by Associated Press /MCT via Los Angeles Times, 20 June 2015

Dylann Roof appears via video before a judge in Charleston, South Carolina on Friday: photo by AP via Los Angeles Times, 20 June 2015

ANYone believes #DylannStormRoof  is mentally ill...IS mentally ill. He IS a racist who planned a racist mass murder: image via AnonNOTORIOUS @MrMilitantNegro, 20 June 2015

 

 Dylann Storm Roof, seen in a photograph posted on his website The Last Rhodesian: image via New York Daily News, 20 June 2015

A man wears a T-shirt representing the Confederate flag during a protest in Columbia, South Carolina, on Saturday: photo by Mladen Antonov via Los Angeles Times, 20 June 2015

Shooting Suspect Dylann Storm Roof is in custody at the Charleston County Sheriff's Office.  Roof waived extradition in North Carolina, where he was captured, and was sent back to South Carolina. He also waived his right to counsel, reports the Associated Press: photo by Charleston County Sheriff's Office via Huffington Post, 18 June 2015

An undated handout photo provided by the Berkeley County South Carolina Government shows 21 year-old Dylann Roof of Columbia, South Carolina. Dylann Roof has been identified as the suspect in a shooting at an African American church in Charleston, South Carolina: photo by EPA via Los Angeles Times, 20 June 2015

 

JMW Turner, Slave Ship, detail with leg. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1850): Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840, oil on canvas, 90.8 x 122.6 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston): image by Steven Zucker, 11 March 2012

JMW Turner, Slave Ship, detail with shark. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1850): Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840, oil on canvas, 90.8 x 122.6 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston): image by Steven Zucker, 11 March 2012

 

JMW Turner, Slave Ship, detail with surf. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1850): Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840, oil on canvas, 90.8 x 122.6 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston): image by Steven Zucker, 11 March 2012

JMW Turner, Slave Ship, detail with chains. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1850): Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840, oil on canvas, 90.8 x 122.6 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston): image by Steven Zucker, 11 March 2012

The Last Rhodesian Barbeque

June 22, 2015, 4:02 am

≫ Next: In a broken doll's eyes: vulnerability and abandonment in the American city: Ken Paik, Kansas City, 1973

≪ Previous: Tightly Protected

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website theme image via The Last Rhodesian, 2015

The Last Rhodesian: A manifesto by Dylann Storm Roof, 17 June 2015

.......I was not raised in a racist home or environment. Living in the South, almost every White person has a small amount of racial awareness, simply beause of the numbers of negroes in this part of the country. But it is a superficial awareness. Growing up, in school, 

the White and black kids would make racial jokes toward each other, but all they were were jokes. Me and White friends would sometimes would watch things that would make us think that “blacks were the real racists” and other elementary thoughts like this, but there 

was no real understanding behind it.  

  .....The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case. I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up. I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that 

Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words “black on White crime” into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages 

upon pages of these brutal black on White murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on White murders got ignored? 

...... From this point I researched deeper and found out what was happening in Europe. I saw that the same things were happening in England and France, and in all the other Western European countries. Again I found myself in disbelief. As an American we are 

taught to accept living in the melting pot, and black and other minorities have just as much right to be here as we do, since we are all immigrants. But Europe is the homeland of White people, and in many ways the situation is even worse there. From here I found 

out about the Jewish problem and other issues facing our race, and I can say today that I am completely racially aware. 

Blacks

...... I think it is is fitting to start off with the group I have the most real life experience with, and the group that is the biggest problem for Americans. 

        Niggers are stupid and violent. At the same time they have the capacity to be very slick. Black people view everything through a racial lense. Thats what racial awareness is, its viewing everything that happens through a racial lense. They are always thinking 

about the fact that they are black. This is part of the reason they get offended so easily, and think that some thing are intended to be racist towards them, even when a White person wouldnt be thinking about race. The other reason is the Jewish agitation of the 

black race. 

...... Black people are racially aware almost from birth, but White people on average dont think about race in their daily lives. And this is our problem. We need to and have to.

        Say you were to witness a dog being beat by a man. You are almost surely going to feel very sorry for that dog. But then say you were to witness a dog biting a man. You will most likely not feel the same pity you felt for the dog for the man. Why? Because dogs 

are lower than men. 

 ......This same analogy applies to black and White relations. Even today, blacks are subconsciously viewed by White people are lower beings. They are held to a lower standard in general. This is why they are able to get away with things like obnoxious behavior 

in public. Because it is expected of them. 

 ......Modern history classes instill a subconscious White superiority complex in Whites and an inferiority complex in blacks. This White superiority complex that comes from learning of how we dominated other peoples is also part of the problem I have just mentioned. 

But of course I dont deny that we are in fact superior. 

 ......I wish with a passion that niggers were treated terribly throughout history by Whites, that every White person had an ancestor who owned slaves, that segregation was an evil an oppressive institution, and so on. Because if it was all it true, it would make it 

so much easier for me to accept our current situation. But it isnt true. None of it is. We are told to accept what is happening to us because of ancestors wrong doing, but it is all based on historical lies, exaggerations and myths. I have tried endlessly to think of 

reasons we deserve this, and I have only came back more irritated because there are no reasons. 

.......Only a fourth to a third of people in the South owned even one slave. Yet every White person is treated as if they had a slave owning ancestor. This applies to in the states where slavery never existed, as well as people whose families immigrated after slavery 

was abolished. I have read hundreds of slaves narratives from my state. And almost all of them were positive. One sticks out in my mind where an old ex-slave recounted how the day his mistress died was one of the saddest days of his life. And in many of these 

narratives the slaves told of how their masters didnt even allowing whipping on his plantation. 

 ......Segregation was not a bad thing. It was a defensive measure. Segregation did not exist to hold back negroes. It existed to protect us from them. And I mean that in multiple ways. Not only did it protect us from having to interact with them, and from being 

physically harmed by them, but it protected us from being brought down to their level. Integration has done nothing but bring Whites down to level of brute animals. The best example of this is obviously our school system. 

.......Now White parents are forced to move to the suburbs to send their children to “good schools”. But what constitutes a “good school”? The fact is that how good a school is considered directly corresponds to how White it is. I hate with a passion the whole idea 

of the suburbs. To me it represents nothing but scared White people running. Running because they are too weak, scared, and brainwashed to fight. Why should we have to flee the cities we created for the security of the suburbs? Why are the suburbs secure in the 

first place? Because they are White. The pathetic part is that these White people dont even admit to themselves why they are moving. They tell themselves it is for better schools or simply to live in a nicer neighborhood. But it is honestly just a way to escape 

niggers and other minorities. 

 ......But what about the White people that are left behind? What about the White children who, because of school zoning laws, are forced to go to a school that is 90 percent black? Do we really think that that White kid will be able to go one day without being 

picked on for being White, or called a “white boy”? And who is fighting for him? Who is fighting for these White people forced by economic circumstances to live among negroes? No one, but someone has to. 

Here I would also like to touch on the idea of a Norhtwest Front. I think this idea is beyond stupid. Why should I for example, give up the beauty and history of my state to go to the Norhthwest? To me the whole idea just parralells the concept of White people 

running to the suburbs. The whole idea is pathetic and just another way to run from the problem without facing it. 

 ......Some people feel as though the South is beyond saving, that we have too many blacks here. To this I say look at history. The South had a higher ratio of blacks when we were holding them as slaves. Look at South Africa, and how such a small minority held the 

black in apartheid for years and years. Speaking of South Africa, if anyone thinks that think will eventually just change for the better, consider how in South Africa they have affirmative action for the black population that makes up 80 percent of the population. 

 ......It is far from being too late for America or Europe. I believe that even if we made up only 30 percent of the population we could take it back completely. But by no means should we wait any longer to take drastic action.Anyone who thinks that White and black people look as different as we do on the outside, but are somehow magically the same on the inside, is delusional. How could our faces, skin, hair, and body structure all be different, but our brains be exactly the same? 

This is the nonsense we are led to believe. 

.......Negroes have lower Iqs, lower impulse control, and higher testosterone levels in generals. These three things alone are a recipe for violent behavior. If a scientist publishes a paper on the differences between the races in Western Europe or Americans, he can

 expect to lose his job. There are personality traits within human families, and within different breeds of cats or dogs, so why not within the races? 

 ......A horse and a donkey can breed and make a mule, but they are still two completely different animals. Just because we can breed with the other races doesnt make us the same. 

In a modern history class it is always emphasized that, when talking about “bad” things Whites have done in history, they were White. But when we lern about the numerous, almost countless wonderful things Whites have done, it is never pointed out that 

these people were White. Yet when we learn about anything important done by a black person in history, it is always pointed out repeatedly that they were black. For example when we learn about how George Washington carver was the first nigger smart 

enough to open a peanut. 

 ......On another subject I want to say this. Many White people feel as though they dont have a unique culture. The reason for this is that White culture is world culture. I dont mean that our culture is made up of other cultures, I mean that our culture has been 

adopted by everyone in the world. This makes us feel as though our culture isnt special or unique. Say for example that every business man in the world wore a kimono, that every skyscraper was in the shape of a pagoda, that every door was a sliding one, and 

that everyone ate every meal with chopsticks. This would probably make a Japanese man feel as though he had no unique traditional culture. 

 ......I have noticed a great disdain for race mixing White women within the White nationalists community, bordering on insanity it. These women are victims, and they can be saved. Stop. 

  Jews

...... Unlike many White naitonalists, I am of the opinion that the majority of American and European jews are White. In my opinion the issues with jews is not their blood, but their identity. I think that if we could somehow destroy the jewish identity, then they 

wouldnt cause much of a problem. The problem is that Jews look White, and in many cases are White, yet they see themselves as minorities. Just like niggers, most jews are always thinking about the fact that they are jewish. The other issue is that they network. 

If we could somehow turn every jew blue for 24 hours, I think there would be a mass awakening, because people would be able to see plainly what is going on. ......  

 ..... I dont pretend to understand why jews do what they do. They are enigma. 

Hispanics

...... Hispanics are obviously a huge problem for Americans. But there are good hispanics and bad hispanics. I remember while watching hispanic television stations, the shows and even the commercials were more White than our own. They have respect for 

White beauty, and a good portion of hispanics are White. It is a well known fact that White hispanics make up the elite of most hispanics countries. There is good White blood worht saving in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and even Brasil. 

 ......But they are still our enemies. 

      East Asians

.......I have great respent for the East Asian races. Even if we were to go extinct they could carry something on. They are by nature very racist and could be great allies of the White race. I am not opposed at all to allies with the Northeast Asian races. 

   Patriotism

 ......I hate the sight of the American flag. Modern American patriotism is an absolute joke. People pretending like they have something to be proud while White people are being murdered daily in the streets. Many veterans believe we owe them something for

 “protecting our way of life” or “protecting our freedom”. But im not sure what way of life they are talking about. How about we protect the White race and stop fighting for the jews. I will say this though, I myself would have rather lived in 1940's American

 than Nazi Germany, and no this is not ignorance speaking, it is just my opinion. So I dont blame the veterans of any wars up until after Vietnam, because at least they had an American to be proud of and fight for. 

    An Explanation

......To take a saying from a film, “I see all this stuff going on, and I dont see anyone doing anything about it. And it pisses me off.”. To take a saying from my favorite film, “Even if my life is worth less than a speck of dirt, I want to use it for the good of society.”.  

.......I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, 

no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.  

 ......Unfortunately at the time of writing I am in a great hurry and some of my best thoughts, actually many of them have been to be left out and lost forever. But I believe enough great White minds are out there already.
 

    ... Please forgive any typos, I didnt have time to check it. 

 Dylan Storm Roof: A Manifesto: via the website The Last Rhodesian, 17 May 2015

Battling Africanus Criminalis 

Dylann Storm Roof dangles a major super-stringy slow-loogie toward American flag: image via The Last Rhodesian, 2015

Leader of group cited in 'Dylann Roof manifesto' donated to top Republicans: Jon Swaine, The Guardian, 21 June 2015

The leader of a rightwing group that Dylann Roof allegedly credits with helping to radicalise him against black people before the Charleston church massacre has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republicans such as presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum.

Earl Holt has given $65,000 to Republican campaign funds in recent years while inflammatory remarks -- including that black people were "the laziest, stupidest and most criminally-inclined race in the world" -– were posted online in his name.

After being approached by the Guardian on Sunday, Cruz’s presidential campaign said it would be returning all money the senator had received from Holt.

Holt, 62, is the president of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC), a Missouri-based activist organisation cited by the author of a manifesto-style text that was posted on a website registered in Roof's name along with photographs of the gunman. The FBI said on Saturday it was investigating the website.

The manifesto’s author, who has been widely reported but not verified as Roof, recounted learning about “brutal black on white murders” from the CofCC website.

“At this moment I realised that something was very wrong,” the manifesto said.

Roof, 21, is charged with the murders of nine people at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, last Wednesday. He is accused of joining a bible study group before opening fire and fleeing.

In a statement published on Sunday, Holt said it was “not surprising” that Roof was apparently informed by the group’s website as it reported race relations “accurately and honestly”. However, he added: “The CofCC is hardly responsible for the actions of this deranged individual merely because he gleaned accurate information from our website.”

Reached by telephone at home on Sunday evening by the Guardian, Holt said he was busy and hung up.

Holt has since 2012 contributed $8,500 to Cruz, the Texas senator running for the Republican presidential nomination, and his Jobs, Growth and Freedom Fund political action committee, according to Federal Election Commission  (FEC) filings. On some filings Holt’s occupation was listed as “slumlord”.

He has also given $1,750 to RandPAC, the political action committee of Paul, the Kentucky senator and presidential contender, and he gave $2,000 to the 2012 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney.

A further $1,500 was donated by Holt to Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator and 2012 Republican presidential primary runner-up, who is running for president again in the 2016 race and attended Sunday’s memorial service  at Emanuel AME Church.

In response to questions from the Guardian, Rick Tyler, a spokesman for Cruz, said in an email: “Upon review, we discovered that Mr Holt did make a contribution. We will be immediately refunding the donation.”

Tyler said Cruz’s own campaign and leadership PAC would “be making a full refund”.

Matthew Beynon, a spokesman for Santorum, said in an email: “Senator Santorum does not condone or respect racist or hateful comments of any kind. Period. The views the Senator campaigns on are his own and he is focused on uniting America, not dividing her.”

A spokesman for Paul’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

A series of racist statements have been posted over the past four years to the website of The Blaze, a conservative news outlet, by a user going by Holt’s full name, Earl P Holt III. The user referred to Longview, Texas -- which is where Holt lives -- as his hometown. A commenter using the same screen name  on various other news websites has identified himself as a member of the CofCC.

Jared Taylor, a close associate of Holt and former director of the CofCC, who said Holt had asked him to handle media inquiries relating to the massacre, said in an interview: “If there’s a statement that is ‘Earl P Holt III’, he probably made it.”

Several of the comments referred to black people as “Africanus Criminalis”, a faux-Latin label also used in an online message for which Holt reportedly apologised in 2004. Holt, then a radio host in Missouri, referred to black people as “niggers” five times in the message.

In June 2012 the poster “Earl P Holt III” stated that he had bought and become proficient in "a great many weapons" to ensure that being white did not “get me murdered” by non-white people. Two months earlier the same user responded to an article about the New Black Panther Party with a request for advice on buying ammunition. "Does anyone know where I can get 180 grain .308 NATO rounds with a polymer lip?," he wrote. 

Various Small Fires  

Dylann Storm Roof demonstrates an unusual barbeque-lighting device: image via The Last Rhodesian, 2015

Council of Conservative Citizens: A Profile: via Southern Poverty Law Center, 2015
 

The Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) is the modern reincarnation of the old White Citizens Councils, which were formed in the 1950s and 1960s to battle school desegregation in the South. Among other things, its Statement of Principles says that it “oppose[s] all efforts to mix the races of mankind.” Created in 1985 from the mailing lists of its predecessor organization, the CCC, which initially tried to project a "mainstream" image, has evolved into a crudely white supremacist group whose website has run pictures comparing the late pop singer Michael Jackson to an ape and referred to black people as "a retrograde species of humanity." The group's newspaper, Citizens Informer, regularly publishes articles condemning "race mixing," decrying the evils of illegal immigration, and lamenting the decline of white, European civilization. Gordon Baum, the group’s founder, died in March of 2015.

In Its Own Words

"God is the author of racism. God is the One who divided mankind into different types. ... Mixing the races is rebelliousness against God."
— Council of Conservative Citizens website, 2001

"We believe the United States is a European country and that Americans are part of the European people. … We therefore oppose the massive immigration of non-European and non-Western peoples into the United States that threatens to transform our nation into a non-European majority in our lifetime. We believe that illegal immigration must be stopped, if necessary by military force and placing troops on our national borders; that illegal aliens must be returned to their own countries; and that legal immigration must be severely restricted or halted through appropriate changes in our laws and policies. We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called ‘affirmative action' and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races."
—Statement of Principles, Citizens Informer, 2007 

"Controlling immigration is about the security of this republic [terrorists illegally crossing the borders] and making sure countries like Mexico stop dumping their murderers, rapists, those carrying AIDS and other communicable diseases and gang members on America's door step."
—Devvy Kidd, Citizens Informer, 2006 

Background

Founded in 1985 by Gordon Baum, a worker's compensation attorney and longtime racist activist, the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) rose from the ashes of the Citizens Councils of America (CCA), commonly called "White Citizens Councils," a coalition of white-supremacist groups and individuals formed throughout the South to defend school segregation after the Supreme Court outlawed the policy in 1954 in Brown vs. Board of Education. 

Unlike the KKK, the CCA groups had a veneer of civic respectability, inspiring future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to refer to it as the "uptown Klan." While there were plenty of bare-knuckle racists attracted to the councils' anti-integration slogan, "Never!," the members also included bankers, merchants, judges, newspaper editors and politicians -- folks given more to wearing suits and ties than hoods and robes. During the White Citizens Councils' heyday, the groups claimed more than 1 million members. Although they weren't immune to violence -- Byron De La Beckwith, who murdered civil-rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963, was a member -- the councils generally used their political and financial pull to offset the effects of "forced integration." 

Once the segregation battle was lost, the air went out of the White Citizens Councils. The councils steadily lost members throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Sensing the need for a new direction, Baum, formerly the CCA's Midwest field director, called together a group of 30 white men, including former Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox and future Louisiana Congressman John Rarick, for a meeting in Atlanta in 1985. Together, they cooked up a successor organization: the Council of Conservative Citizens. 

Like the original White Citizens Councils, the CCC is made up of local chapters, some of which are active in civic affairs beyond the national group's racist agenda. And until the 2000s, some of the group's "uptown" attitude remained, as meetings resembled Rotary Club events more than Klan outings and regularly featured politicians as keynote speakers. 

Most Americans learned of the CCC in late 1998, when a scandal erupted over prominent Southern politicians' ties to the brazenly racist group. After it was revealed that former Congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga.) gave the keynote speech at the CCC's 1998 national convention and that then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) had spoken to the group five times, both claimed they knew nothing about the CCC. However, an Intelligence Report investigation, publicized by national television and newspaper reports, made clear what the CCC really was: a hate group that routinely denigrated blacks as "genetically inferior," complained about "Jewish power brokers," called LGBT people "perverted sodomites," accused immigrants of turning America into a "slimy brown mass of glop," and named Lester Maddox, the now-deceased, ax handle-wielding, arch-segregationist former governor of Georgia, "Patriot of the Century." 

As evidence of widespread association between Southern GOP officeholders and the CCC mounted, Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson took the unusual step in 1998 of asking party members to resign from the group because of its racist views. A resolution moved through the U.S. Congress "condemning the racism and bigotry espoused by the Council of Conservative Citizens," although it ultimately failed. (Congress had earlier condemned the black supremacist Nation of Islam in a similar manner, but failed to do the same with the CCC. Republican Party leaders, likely embarrassed by Lott's very public connection to the CCC, managed to defeat the censure effort.)

But six years later, many Southern lawmakers were still pandering to and meeting with the CCC — and still pleading ignorance. According to a 2004 Intelligence Report review of the Citizens Informer, no fewer than 38 federal, state and local elected officials had attended CCC events between 2000 and 2004, most of them giving speeches to local chapters of the hate group. 

Since the 1998/1999 scandal stripped much of the remaining varnish off the CCC's mainstream pretensions, the extremist views expressed on its website and in its newspaper have become increasingly crude. "What do you call ... four blacks, three Hispanics, three Russian Jews, and one white guy?" the CCC home page asked in 2003. "The FBI's Most Wanted List!" Another day, the home page ran photos of accused Beltway snipers John Muhammad and John Malvo, 9/11 conspirator Zacharias Moussaoui and shoe-bomber Richard Reed. "Notice a Pattern Here?" asked a caption underneath the four photos. "Is the face of death black after all?" In 2002, the Web site featured a photo of Daniel Pearl, the "Jewish Wall Street Journal reporter" who had just been decapitated by Islamic terrorists. In the photo, Pearl was shown with his "mixed-race wife, Marianne." The headline above the couple's picture was stunning even for the CCC: "Death by Multiculturalism?"

The danger of "race-mixing" has been a consistent theme for the group since the days of the White Citizens Councils. "God is the author of racism," said one story on the CCC's website in 2001. "God is the One who divided mankind into different types. ... Mixing the races is rebelliousness against God." After the NAACP declared its boycott of South Carolina in 1999 because the state continued to fly the Confederate battle flag over its Capitol dome, the CCC distributed a mock advertisement proclaiming, "South Carolina Now Has Whiter Beaches!" The Citizens Informer item urged whites to vacation in South Carolina and "enjoy a civil liberty that has been denied to them for many years at hotels, restaurants and beaches: the freedom to associate with just one's own people."

Along with theological arguments, the Citizens Informer has published countless stories detailing "scientific" evidence for white people's inherent superiority. Writing about Brown vs. Board of Education in 2004, contributor Michael Polignano noted that many commentators were using the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling striking down public school segregation to talk about "how far America still falls short of racial equality." According to Polignano, that lack of progress "should surprise no one, because racial inequality is genetic and cannot be changed by social programs. ... Blacks are on average probably less intelligent than Whites and more aggressive, impulsive and prone to psychopathologies." To prove this point, a 2005 article in the Citizens Informer written in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina described "[a]ccounts of little children — girls and boys —being gang raped, rescue vans and copters being repeatedly fired upon by mobs of violent blacks, anarchy, chaos, confusion, looting even by black police officers." 

More recently, the CCC has focused very heavily on battling non-white immigration. The group jumped quite early on the "threat" it perceived was posed by immigration, holding a rally against immigration in Cullman, Ala., in 1998 that featured major nativist hate group leaders Barbara Coe and Glenn Spencer, both of whom worked to pass the punishing California anti-immigrant Proposition 187 (the rally was also attended by an unrobed Klan leader and a top official of the Federation for American Immigration Reform).  The CCC has held rallies nearly every year since then against immigration and the topic is addressed regularly at the CCC's biannual conferences, which have included as participants CCC leaders and prominent racists including Jared Taylor, editor of the anti-black and anti-Latino race science newsletter American Renaissance, and Don Black, founder of the first hate site on the web, Stormfront,org.

CCC meetings have rarely featured politicians as speakers since the 2004 Intelligence Report exposé that exposed the fact that dozens of GOP politicians (and one Democrat) had been speaking at the group's events despite GOP chief Jim Nicholson's warnings in 1998. But a few have continued to associate with the CCC. In 2005, George Wallace Jr., the son of the late segregationist Alabama governor who was then an Alabama Public Service commissioner, spoke at the group's summer conference. In June 2008, another Alabama politician, state Sen. Charles Bishop (R-Jasper), addressed the group. Bishop's speech appealed to the assembled CCC crowd, particularly when he denounced the idea that Southern states should apologize for having sanctioned slavery. Bishop said that "atonement equals reparations" -- meaning that apologies would surely be greeted by demands for financial payback by black Americans. Bishop received a standing ovation from the audience and he and his wife posed for pictures with members afterwards. 

And in 2009 Republican Mississippi State Sen. Lydia Chassaniol spoke to the group. She gave a rabble-rousing speech on "Cultural Heritage in Mississippi." In a brief history of the state since 1540, Chassaniol complained that the U.S. was in decline, as evidenced by tributes to Michael Jackson, a "pedophile who's being celebrated." She indicated that the government wants to "take from those who have and give to those who don't want to work for it." And she worried that the 2010 national census might hand over government "to the radical left." Chassaniol confirmed to the Southern Poverty Law Center that she is a member of the CCC, which she described as a "conservative organization."

A June 2011 barbeque held in Tennessee showcased another set of unsavory relationships maintained by the CCC. According to postings on website of the CCC’s Tennessee chapter, members of Volksfront and Blood and Honour, two notorious and violent racist skinhead groups, joined CCC members to network and discuss “ideas and plans to make a positive impact on our regions.” The then-head of the CCC, Gordon Baum, referred to the meeting as a “no-no” after stating that the chapter was not supposed to meet with “costumed Nazis.”

On April 7, 2013, Leonard R. Wilson of Jasper, Alabama, died. He was a charter member of the CCC, as well as the organization’s national secretary and the Alabama state coordinator. He earned the nickname of "Flagpole" Wilson by climbing a flagpole during 1956 anti-integration riots at the University of Alabama to shout, "Keep 'Bama white!"

A few months later, at the organization’s 2013 annual conference in Winston-Salem, N.C., Bill Lord addressed a crowd of around 75 attendees, imploring them to think locally and “get you some bigots together and take some organizations over.” Lord, who was then the chairman of the Carroll County Democratic Party in Mississippi, was referring to positions such as the school board. He then went on to refer to Greenwood, Miss., as “the Congo” because of its large black population. The gathering only went further sideways from there, with Keith Alexander of the “Political Cesspool,” a racist and anti-Semitic far-right radio program, decrying Jewish political power and influence before stating, “The only people who can be trusted to be in charge are white people.” Another attendee, John Shudlick, five-time mayor of Ocean Ridge, Fla., encouraged the crowd to use critical thinking in the struggle for the country’s soul. According to Shudlick, the “six million figure [Jews killed in the holocaust] is a dirty filthy lie.”

In November of the same year, the CCC and the neo-Confederate League of the South held their first joint protest together against the removal of a statue of Tom Watson, an infamous racist and anti-Semite known for playing a key role in instigating the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915, from the steps of the Georgia state Capitol. The two groups’ membership rolls overlap a good deal; however, this event was demonstrative of the CCC’s longstanding strategy, focused on small, local rallies, being adopted by other hate groups.

Gordon Baum, the CCC’s founder and longtime leader, died at the age of 74 in early March 2015, leaving the future of the CCC uncertain. However, Baum’s death did little to slow down the activities of several of the group’s board members. Just weeks later, Jared Taylor and Sam Dickson, both well-known racist activists, appeared as speakers at the Russian Conservative Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, alongside some of Europe’s most extreme, right-wing fringe.

Barbeque grill system patent drawing US patent #7168363 B1: image via Google Patents

In a broken doll's eyes: vulnerability and abandonment in the American city: Ken Paik, Kansas City, 1973

June 23, 2015, 2:52 am

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Residents of Mulky Square, a low-income neighborhood on the city's west side, face large scale displacement by a new interstate highway (I-635). Many houses have been demolished, others stand empty. For the people who remain, life goes on with very little change. On Saturday in a neighborhood tavern, Ernest Watkins of Mulky Square finds his favorite relaxation. Mr. Watkins, father of nine, is a biscuit company worker: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, September 1973 (US National Archives)

 

 

 I...Ernest Watkins

Mulky Square neighbors meet over a beer. This low-income neighborhood faces major disruption with the projected building of a new highway (I-635) through the area: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Ernest Watkins in his Mulky Square home. Mr. Watkins, father of nine, is a biscuit company worker: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

 

Ernest Watkins of Mulky Square, biscuit company worker and father of nine, sits on his front doorstep with his three-year-old son: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

 


Ernest Watkins of Mulky Square, biscuit company worker and father of nine, likes his beer and likes teaching his three-year-old son to like it: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Ernest Watkins in his Mulky Square home. Mr. Watkins, father of nine, is a biscuit company worker: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)



Weekends for this Mulky Square biscuit company worker and father of nine mean beer and sleep. Mulky Square, an area of low income families on the city's west side, is soon to be torn up for a new interstate highway: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

II...May Watkins and Watkins children

Mrs. May Watkins of Mulky Square with her three-year-old son Kevin, one of nine Watkins children: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Mrs. May Watkins cuddles the youngest of her nine children on the front porch of their of Mulky Square home. This west side neighborhood of low-income families will soon be torn up to make way for a new interstate highway: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

The Watkins of Mulky Square, a family of eleven, live in the 1600 block of Madison Street, a few blocks from the area being cleared for I-95. On the Watkins front porch: Mrs Watkins, her son, daughter-in-law and grandchild: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

 


A barefoot Mrs. May Watkins (right) sits in her Mulkey Square house with the youngest of her nine children and a daughter-in-law. Much of her time is spent like this. The kitchen in the background badly needs cleaning, but the incentives are lacking: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

 


Young Kevin Watkins goes to sleep while his nephew (his second brother's son) eats a bowl of cereal on the living room floor. Kevin is one of nine children in a Mulky Square biscuit worker's family: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Residents of Mulky Square, a low-income neighborhood on the city's west side, face large scale displacement by a new interstate highway (I-635). Many houses have been demolished, others stand empty. For the people who remain, life goes on with very little change, Mrs May Watkins, mother of nine, roughhouses with son Dale and daughter-in-law on the Watkins' front porch: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

 


Residents of Mulky Square, a low-income neighborhood on the city's west side, face large scale displacement by a new interstate highway (I-635). Many houses have been demolished, others stand empty. For the people who remain, life goes on with very little change. Mrs May Watkins, mother of nine, on the porch of her Mulky Square house: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Dirty hands of one of the nine children of Mulky Square biscuit worker hold small nephew. In this family love of children is strong but sanitation belongs to a different world. Mulky Square is a low-income area soon to be torn up by a new interstate highway: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

 

A barefoot Mrs. May Watkins, mother of nine, shares couch in her Mulkey Square living room, Kansas City, with two of her daughters. They find shoes more to their liking: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)



Mrs. May Watkins and one of her nine children in the living room of their Mulky Square home, Kansas City. Mrs. Watkins' husband works for a local biscuit company: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

 


Diane Watkins, one of nine children of a Mulky Square family, eats on the living room couch. The only table in the house is occupied by her 14-year-old sister: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)



Diane Watkins, 9, in bedroom of her family's house in Mulky Square. Diane is one of the nine children of a biscuit company worker and his wife. Area soon to be torn up to make way for a new interstate highway (I-635): photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)



Going to exchange empties for more soda pop in Mulky Square, a low-income neighborhood on the city's west side. Residents face uprooting by a new interstate highway (I-95): photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

III...Watkins boys

The Watkins of Mulky Square, a family of eleven, live in the 1600 block of Madison Street, a few blocks from the area being cleared for I-635. The older Watkins boys tinker with cars, a favorite occupation: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)



Residents of Mulky Square, a low-income neighborhood on the city's west side, face large scale displacement by a new interstate highway (I-635). Many houses have been demolished, others stand empty. For the people who remain, life goes on with very little change. Mrs May Watkins with the wife of one of her sons on the Watkins' front porch: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

 

Wife of Dale Watkins, one of nine children of a Mulky Square family, performs a little cosmetic surgery on her husband's face. Mulky Square is a deteriorating neighborhood of low-income famlies, soon to be torn up to make way for a new interstate highway: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)



Wife of Dale Watkins, one of nine children of a Mulky Square family, performs a little cosmetic surgery on her husbands's face. Mulky Square is a deteriorating neighborhood of low-income famlies, soon to be torn up to make way for a new interstate highway: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives) 



Doodles of Dale Watkins, one of nine children in a Mulky Square biscuit worker's family. An isolated, poor and deteriorating neighborhood, Mulky Square faces major disruption from a new interstate highway: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006): photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Billy and Sandy Watkins call to a friend on the street from the doorway of their Mulkey Square home, Kansas City: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Billy Watkins, one of nine children in a biscuit worker's family, broods on the stairs of their Mulky Square house: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

 

Billy Watkins, one of nine children in a Mulky Square family, doesn't go to school, but amuses himself sometimes by writing and drawing: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

 

Billy Watkins, one of nine children of a biscuit worker's family, gets himself a bowl of cereal in the kitchen of their Mulky Square home: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Billy Watkins eats a bowl of cereal in the living room of his house in Mulky Square, Kansas City, Billy is one of nine children of a biscuit company worker and his wife: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)



Look, Ma, one wheel. Billy Watkins of Mulkey Square, Kansas City, can ride like this for a whole block, and has even offered to teach others the trick for a small fee -- but so far has found no takers: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, September 1973 (US National Archives)



Residents of Mulky Square, a low-income neighborhood on the city's west side, face large scale displacement by a new interstate highway (I-635). Many houses have been demolished, others stand empty. For the people who remain, life goes on with very little change. Billy Watkins plays with an old tire in a cleared-out section now used as a dump. Billy, one of nine children in a biscuit worker's family, doesn't go to school and has a lot of time to kill: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Residents of Mulky Square, a low-income neighborhood on the city's west side, face large scale displacement by a new interstate highway (I-635). Many houses have been demolished, others stand empty. For the people who remain, life goes on with very little change. Billy Watkins, one of nine children in a biscuit worker's family, passes a run-down apartment building on his way home. The tenants have gone, the building is closed: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Residents of Mulky Square, a low-income neighborhood on the city's west side, face large scale displacement by a new interstate highway (I-635). Many houses have been demolished, others stand empty. For the people who remain, life goes on with very little change. Billy Watkins, one of nine children in a biscuit worker's family, passes through a now-deserted section of the neighborhood. Billy does not go to school and much of each day is spent "killing time": photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

IV...Mulky Square kids

 Mulky Square child looks out of a screen door on a rainy day. His family occupies part of a building that will soon be razed  to make way for a new interstate highway (I-635). Many other houses on the street have already been abandoned: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, September 1973 (US National Archives)

Mulky Square, an isolated, low-income area on the city's west side, is soon to be torn up to make way for a new interstate highway. Many houses stand vacant. A part of this building is still occupied by a family. Their children play around the building: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, September 1973 (US National Archives) 



Looking over the "West Bottoms" of Kansas City from Mulky Square Park, a city facility. Park monument makes good climbing: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, September 1973 (US National Archives)

Playing football at Mulky Square Park, a city facility: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, September 1973 (US National Archives) 

Mulky Square area children playing in roadside trash. Within five blocks of the area are a park and recreation area provided by the city: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, September 1973 (US National Archives)



Mulky Square youth with cowboy gear and transistor: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the  Environmental Protection Agency, September 1973 (US National Archives)

Residents of Mulky Square, a low-income neighborhood on the city's west side, face large scale displacement by a new interstate highway (I-635). Many houses have been demolished, others stand empty. For the people who remain, life goes on with very little change. For neighborhood children, go-cart races are still big weekend fun: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the  Environmental Protection Agency's Documerica project, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Children play in Mulky Square, a low income area soon to be torn up to make way for a new interstate highway: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency,  October 1973 (US National Archives)

 

Donny, a neighborhood youngster, drags on a cigarette passed to him by an older boy: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, September 1973 (US National Archives)

Mulky Square youngsters show off their tattoos -- everybody has them. "It don't hurt," they assure the photographer: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, September 1973 (US National Archives)

Mulky Square girl offers her raccoon, but it still isn't good enough to win her a place in the gang: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, September 1973 (US National Archives)

 

Harold, a Mulkey Square boy who says that he spent a year at the Missouri Boys' Reformatory in Boonville, shows off his smoking style and his tattoos. Younger boys accept Harold as a natural leader: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Mulky Square is a neighborhood on the west side of Kansas City, an area of low-income dwellings. I-635 will cut right through Mulky Square, which is already isolated by railroad yards on the west, I-70 on the north and I-35 plus a 4-lane freeway on the east. Buildings are being closed down. These brothers talk about moving to California as they sit on the steps of an already abandoned house on the 1600 block of Madison Street outside the area being cleared for I-635: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006): photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)



Mulky Square boy walks past a building marked for demolition to make way for a new interstate highway (I-635). The building of the road through the area means large-scale displacement for the residents: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

V...Vulnerability -- the elderly

Elderly resident of Mulky Square must soon find new lodging. Her present home is in the path of I-635: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006): photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

 

Mulky Square is a neighborhood in the west side of Kansas City, an area of low-income dwellings. I-635 will cut right through Mulky Square, which is already isolated by railroad yards on the west, I-70 on the north plus a 4-lane freeway on the east. This building in the West 700 block of 16th street is coming down. Finding other housing for the same rent is a problem: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

 

Mulky Square is a neighborhood in the west side of Kansas City, an area of low-income dwellings. I-635 will cut right through Mulky Square, which is already isolated by railroad yards on the west, I-70 on the north plus a 4-lane freeway on the east. This elderly woman, living on social security, must find other lodging because her present home is in the path of I-635: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Elderly residents of this building in the West 700 block of 16th Street in Mulky Square must find other lodging soon. Their present home is in the path of I-635: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006): photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

 

Elderly residents of this building in the West 700 block of 16th Street in Mulky Square must find other lodging soon. Their present home is in the path of I-635: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006): photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Elderly residents of this building in the West 700 block of 16th Street in Mulky Square must find other lodging soon. Their present home is in the path of I-635: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006): photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Mulky Square is a neighborhood in the west side of Kansas City, an area of low-income dwellings. I-635 will cut right through Mulky Square, which is already isolated by railroad yards on the west, I-70 on the north plus a 4-lane freeway on the east. Looking east toward downtown. Area in foreground was cleared for I-635: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Mulky Square is a neighborhood in the west side of Kansas City, an area of low-income dwellings. I-635 will cut right through Mulky Square, which is already isolated by railroad yards on the west, I-70 on the north plus a 4-lane freeway on the east. I-635 will extend westward from this point: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)



Mulky Square is a neighborhood in the west side of Kansas City, an area of low-income dwellings. I-635 will cut right through Mulky Square, which is already isolated by railroad yards on the west, I-70 on the north plus a 4-lane freeway on the east. Looking east toward downtown: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Mulky Square is a neighborhood in the west side of Kansas City, an area of low-income dwellings. I-635 will cut right through Mulky Square, which is already isolated by railroad yards on the west, I-70 on the north plus a 4-lane freeway on the east. I-635 will extend westward from this point. A resident returns from downtown by the 14th Street bridge, the only connection for people north of 23rd Street: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)



Mulky Square is a neighborhood in the west side of Kansas City, an area of low-income dwellings. I-635 will cut right through Mulky Square, which is already isolated by railroad yards on the west, I-70 on the north plus a 4-lane freeway on the east. On Madison Street, above the area cleared for I-635, some businesses and residents plan to stay on: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)



A couple of older residents of Mulky Square move down an empty street. The place where these men are standing will soon be part of a new interstate highway. About five blocks away (background) is the downtown area: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, September 1973 (US National Archives)

VI...Demolition and Abandonment

Member of a wrecking crew rests during demolition of hosing in the Mulkey Square area. Many of the low income residents living there were displaced by construction of an interstate highway through an area already isolated by roads and railroad tracks. It took one such family two months to find rental housing within their price range on the other side of town in Kansas City, Kansas. Moving was traumatic for many of the families: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, May 1973 (US National Archives)

Mulky Square is a neighborhood in the west side of Kansas City, an area of low-income dwellings. I-635 will cut right through Mulky Square, which is already isolated by railroad yards on the west, I-70 on the north plus a 4-lane freeway on the east. Clearing for I-635: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

 

Mulky Square is a neighborhood in the west side of Kansas City, an area of low-income dwellings. I-635 will cut right through Mulky Square, which is already isolated by railroad yards on the west, I-70 on the north plus a 4-lane freeway on the east. Billy Watkins watches an apartment building come down in the 1600 block of Madison Street: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

 Mulky Square houses, vacant now because they stand in the path of a new interstate highway (I-635). Mulky Square is an isolated west side neighborhood of low-income families. The highway means disruption on a major scale: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, September 1973 (US National Archives)



 Mulky Square houses, vacant now because they stand in the path of a new interstate highway (I-635). Mulky Square is an isolated west side neighborhood of low-income families. The highway means disruption on a major scale: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, September 1973 (US National Archives)



Mulky Square is a neighborhood in the west side of Kansas City, an area of low-income dwellings. I-635 will cut right through Mulky Square, which is already isolated by railroad yards on the west, I-70 on the north plus a 4-lane freeway on the east. Boarded-up building on Summit Street: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Mulky Square is a neighborhood on the west side of Kansas City, an area of low-income dwellings. I-635 will cut right through Mulky Square, which is already isolated by railroad yards on the west, I-70 on the north and I-35 plus a 4-lane freeway on the east. Buildings are being closed down: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

Mulky Square, an isolated, low-income area on the city's west side, is soon to be torn up to make way for a new interstate highway. Many houses stand vacant. A part of this building is still occupied by a family: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-1966) for the Environmental Protection Agency, September 1973 (US National Archives) 

VII...Junkyard America: In a broken doll's eyes

The owner of this huge junk shop on the Kansas River in Bonner Springs died in 1971. Now there is only the river and the junk; each day the river claims a small part: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, June 1973 (US National Archives)

 

Time Lapse

Each day, a

small part

of a whole lot

of yesterday

twilight

in the whites

of the broken

doll's eyes

A broken doll's face by the river edge -- silent commentary on man's use of nature as a junkyard. Near the 7th street bridge on the Kansas River, Kansas City: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973; image by Queeg, October 2011 (US National Archives)

A broken doll's face by the river edge -- silent commentary on man's use of nature as a junkyard. Near the 7th street bridge on the Kansas River, Kansas City: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, October 1973 (US National Archives)

VIII...Now there is only the river and the junk

The owner of this huge junk shop on the Kansas River in Bonner Springs died in 1971. Now there is only the river and the junk; each day the river claims a small part: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, June 1973 (US National Archives)



The owner of this huge junk shop on the Kansas River in Bonner Springs died in 1971. Now there is only the river and the junk; each day the river claims a small part: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, June 1973 (US National Archives)



The owner of this huge junk shop on the Kansas River in Bonner Springs died in 1971. Now there is only the river and the junk; each day the river claims a small part: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, June 1973 (US National Archives)



The owner of this huge junk shop on the Kansas River in Bonner Springs died in 1971. Now there is only the river and the junk; each day the river claims a small part: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, June 1973 (US National Archives)



The owner of this huge junk shop on the Kansas River in Bonner Springs died in 1971. Now there is only the river and the junk; each day the river claims a small part: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, June 1973 (US National Archives)



The owner of this huge junk shop on the Kansas River in Bonner Springs died in 1971. Now there is only the river and the junk; each day the river claims a small part: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, June 1973 (US National Archives)



The owner of this huge junk shop on the Kansas River in Bonner Springs died in 1971. Now there is only the river and the junk; each day the river claims a small part: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, June 1973 (US National Archives)



The owner of this huge junk shop on the Kansas River in Bonner Springs died in 1971. Now there is only the river and the junk; each day the river claims a small part: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, June 1973 (US National Archives)



The owner of this huge junk shop on the Kansas River in Bonner Springs died in 1971. Now there is only the river and the junk; each day the river claims a small part: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, June 1973 (US National Archives)



The owner of this huge junk shop on the Kansas River in Bonner Springs died in 1971. Now there is only the river and the junk; each day the river claims a small part: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, June 1973 (US National Archives)

 

12rh Street in the early morning looking south toward the Kansas River. Junk cars are being sold to a local factory which processes scrap metal: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, June 1973 (US National Archives)

 


Automobile junkyard on the north bank of the Kansas River between the 12th and 18th Street bridges: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, May 1973 (US National Archives)



Inner city viaduct area where railroad and auto bridges across the Missouri River join Kansas City, Kansas with Kansas City, Missouri. This is the point where the Kansas River and the Missouri River come together: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, May 1973 (US National Archives)



 Industry just upstream from the 18th Street bridge discharges waste from water filtering process into the Kansas River, Kansas City: photo by Kenneth Paik (1940-2006) for the Environmental Protection Agency, June 1973 (US National Archives)

The photographer

Ken Paik (1940-2006) covers the NAIA Basketball Tournament as a photographer with the Kansas City Star: photo by Dale Monaghen,19 March 1974; posted 27 November 2006 (via Dale Monaghen)


Ken Paik (1940-2006) covers the NAIA Basketball Tournament as a photographer with the Kansas City Star: photo by Dale Monaghen, 19 March 1974; posted 27 November 2006 (via Dale Monaghen)

Ken Paik (1940-2006) covers a fire at 12th and Central Ave. in Kansas City, Missouri as a photographer with the Kansas City Star: photo by Dale Monaghen, April 1974; posted 27 November 2006 (via Dale Monaghen)

 Ken Paik (1940-2006) covers the KU Relays in Lawrence, Kansas as a photographer with the Kansas City Star: photo by Dale Monaghen, 19 April 1974; posted 27 November 2006 (via Dale Monaghen)

Ken Paik (1940-2006) covers the arrival of Vietnamese refugees at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas as a photographer with the Kansas City Star: photo by Dale Monaghen, May 1975; posted 27 November 2006 (via Dale Monaghen)

Ken Paik (1940-2006) covers the arrival of Vietnamese refugees at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas as a photographer with the Kansas City Star: photo by Dale Monaghen, May 1975; posted 27 November 2006 (via Dale Monaghen)

Faces in the sky (Mahmoud Darwish: I'm from there)

June 24, 2015, 8:09 am

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Faces in the sky ... #clouds & #sky: image via Monica M. Singer @MonicaMSinger67, 26 June 2015

 

Sky: photo by Seth Ilys, 2004

Palestinians climbing the Israeli apartheid wall to pray the first Jummah of Ramadan at AlAqsa, Jerusalem. #Palestine: image via صايل ‏  @Pxlestine, 19 June 2015

أنا من هناك. ولي ذكرياتٌ . ولدت كما تولد الناس. لي والدة
وبيتٌ كثير النوافذِ. لي إخوةٌ. أصدقاء. وسجنٌ بنافذة باردهْ.
ولي موجةٌ خطَِفتها النوارس. لي مشهدي الخاص. لي عُشْبةٌ زائدهْ
ولي قمرٌ في أقاصي الكلام، ورزقُ الطيور، وزيتونةٌ خالدهْ

مررتُ على الأرض قبل مرور السيوف على جسدٍ حوّلوه إلى مائدهْ.
أنا من هناك. أعيد السماء إلى أمها حين تبكي السماء على أمها،
وأبكي لتعرفني غيمةٌ عائدهْ.
تعلّمتُ كل كلام يليقُ بمحكمة الدم كي أكسر القاعدهْ
تعلّمتُ كل الكلام، وفككته كي أركب مفردةً واحدهْ
هي: الوطنُ...

On the first day of Ramadan a family in #Gaza break their fast amid the rubble of their destroyed home #Palestine: image via Mohammed Matter @AbuYazan_Gaza, 19 June 2015



The next time you hear that "innocent" israeli civilians were targeted in occupied #Palestine, remember these images: image via Abbas Hamideh @Resistance49, 21 June 2015



Israeli army prevented Palestinians from reaching Al-Aqsa mosque so they climbed the wall and made it. #Palestine: image via Mohammed Matter @AbuYazan_Gaza, 19 June 2016

I'm from 

there. 

I

have memories. Like

 

any other  

human 

I  

was born.

 

I come 

from 

there. And I go  

back

 

crying 

to return the sky 

to 

its mother,

 
when  

it cries 

for 

her.

I'm from there: Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008); primitivo English version: TC, 2009

On the first day of Ramadan a family in #Gaza break their fast amid the rubble of their destroyed home #Palestine: image via Mohammed Matter @AbuYazan_Gaza, 19 June 2015

On the first day of Ramadan a family in #Gaza break their fast amid the rubble of their destroyed home #Palestine: image via Mohammed Matter @AbuYazan_Gaza, 19 June 2015

Mahmoud Darwish at University of Bethlehem: photo by Amer Somali, 2006

 

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008): photo via Arabic Literature (in English), 9 August 2013

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008): photo via Arabic Literature (in English), 9 August 2013

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008): photo via Arabic Literature (in English), 9 August 2013

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008): photo via Arabic Literature (in English), 9 August 2013

The next time you hear that "innocent" israeli civilians were targeted in occupied #Palestine, remember these images: image via Abbas Hamideh @Resistance49, 21 June 2015

The next time you hear that "innocent" israeli civilians were targeted in occupied #Palestine, remember these images: image via Abbas Hamideh @Resistance49, 21 June 2015

The next time you hear that "innocent" israeli civilians were targeted in occupied #Palestine, remember these images: image via Abbas Hamideh @Resistance49, 21 June 2015

Displaced Palestinian children peek from under the door of a shop where their family is taking shelter in Gaza City in July 2014: photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP via The Guardian, 26 March 2015

UN officials accused of bowing to Israeli pressure over children's rights list: Source says officials backed away from recommending that IDF be added to list of children’s rights violators after phone calls from Israeli officials: Harriet Sherwood for The Guardian, 15 March 2015 (updated 26 March 2015)

Senior UN officials in Jerusalem have been accused of caving in to Israeli pressure to abandon moves to include the state’s armed forces on a UN list of serious violators of children’s rights.

UN officials backed away from recommending that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) be included on the list following telephone calls from senior Israeli officials. The Israelis allegedly warned of serious consequences if a meeting of UN agencies and NGOs based in Jerusalem to ratify the recommendation went ahead. Within hours, the meeting was cancelled.

“Top officials have buckled under political pressure,” said a UN source. “As a result, a clear message has been given that Israel will not be listed.”

The mother of one of the four Palestinian children from the Bakr family who were killed by Israeli military strikes on Wednesday grieves outside a morgue in Gaza City. Eight boys from the Bakr family had gone to the beach because their Gaza neighborhood had become a constant target of Israeli airstrikes: photo by Finbarr O'Reilly / Reuters. 16 July 2014

Organisations pressing for the IDF’s inclusion on the list since the war in Gaza last summer -– which left more than 500 children dead and more than 3,300 injured -– include Save the Children and War Child as well as at least a dozen Palestinian human rights organisations, the Israeli rights organisation B’Tselem and UN bodies such as the children’s agency Unicef.

“These organisations are in uproar over what has happened,” said the UN source.

The children keep #Gaza #Palestine alive. Lens: Khaled AbuHassira: image via Bea @Bea4Palestine, 21 June 2014

The IDF’s inclusion on the UN’s list of grave violators of children’s rights would place it alongside non-state armed forces such as Islamic State, Boko Haram and the Taliban. It would propel Israel further towards pariah status within international bodies and could lead to UN sanctions.

I love Gaza: image via صايل ‏  @Pxlestine, 23 June 2015

Although Jerusalem-based officials cancelled the meeting -– and subsequently decided not to recommend the IDF’s inclusion on the list -– the UN complained to Israel over the intimidation of its staff. Susana Malcorra -– a high-ranking official in the New York office of the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon -– raised the issue in a private letter to Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor. The UN in New York said it could not comment on leaked documents.

The telephone calls were made to June Kunugi, Unicef’s special representative to Palestine and Israel, on 12 February, the night before a meeting to decide whether to recommend the IDF’s inclusion on the list. One call was from a senior figure in Cogat, the Israeli government body that coordinates between the IDF, the Palestinian Authority and the international community; the other was made by an official in Israel’s foreign ministry.

The children keep #Gaza #Palestine alive. Lens: Khaled AbuHassira: image via Bea @Bea4Palestine, 21 June 2014

According to UN and NGO sources, Kunugi was advised to cancel the meeting or face serious consequences. However, Israeli sources described the telephone conversations as friendly and courteous attempts to persuade Kunugi to delay the working group’s decision on its recommendation regarding the IDF until Israel had been allowed to present its case on the issue.

At 8.54am the next morning, an email was sent on behalf of James Rawley, a senior official with UNSCO (the office of the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process) who had called the meeting, to participants. It said: “Please be informed that today’s meeting scheduled at 13:00hrs has been postponed. Sincere apologies for the inconvenience this may have caused.”

A joint statement to the Guardian from Kunugi and Rawley said the “strictly confidential process” of determining inclusion on the list was still ongoing and was the “prerogative of the UN secretary general, and it rests with him alone”. The UN in Jerusalem was unable to comment on the process, it added, but the submission from Jerusalem to New York was “based on verified facts, not influenced by any member state or other entity”.

Palestinian girls walk past the rubble of a heavily damaged building in Shejaiya, which was destroyed during the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas militants last year. Israel killed more Palestinian civilians in 2014 than in any other year since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip began in 1967, according to a UN report: photo by Thomas Coex/AFP via The Guardian, 18 April 2015

Unicef has called a fresh meeting to update UN and NGO officials in Jerusalem on Thursday.

The decision on which state and non-state armed forces are to be included on the list will be taken by UN chiefs in New York next month. However, according to the UN source, “a political decision has already been taken not to include Israel”.

There is ample evidence … Israel’s armed forces have committed acts that amount to … grave violations against children

-- Defence for Children International (Palestine)

A separate source told the Guardian: “The UN caved to Israel’s political pressure and took a highly contentious step to shelter Israel from accountability.”

The children keep #Gaza #Palestine alive. Lens: Khaled AbuHassira: image via Bea @Bea4Palestine, 21 June 2014

The list of violators of children’s rights is contained in the annex of the annual report of the secretary general on children and armed conflict. A “monitoring and reporting mechanism”, established by a UN security council resolution, supplies information on grave violations of children’s rights, such as killing and maiming, recruitment of minors into armed forces, attacks on schools, rape, abduction, and denial of humanitarian access to children. The secretary general is required to list armed forces or armed groups responsible for such actions.

Relatives of Palestinians killed by the Israeli strike at a UN school mourn outside a hospital morgue in the northern Gaza Strip: photo by Mohammed Salem / Reuters, 24 July 2014

Following last summer’s seven-week war in Gaza, a number of UN agencies and NGOs met to consider whether to recommend the IDF’s inclusion on the list. According to insiders, participants “agreed there is a strong and credible case to recommend listing”.

A 13-page internal Unicef paper seen by the Guardian examined the case for the IDF to be listed on the basis of its actions in last summer’s war in Gaza, including the killing and injuring of children, and “targeted and indiscriminate” attacks on schools and hospitals. 

The children keep #Gaza #Palestine alive. Lens: Khaled AbuHassira: image via Bea @Bea4Palestine, 21 June 2014

Several of the working group’s participants wrote to the UN secretary general to urge the inclusion of the IDF on the list. A letter sent in December by Defence for Children International (Palestine) said: “There is ample evidence to demonstrate that Israel’s armed forces have committed acts that amount to the grave violations against children during armed conflict, as defined by UN security council resolutions, including killing or maiming children and attacks against schools and hospitals.”

The Israeli ministry of foreign affairs and Cogat declined to answer specific questions about the phone calls to Kunugi, but said in a joint statement: “Israel has a good working relationship with Unicef and the United Nations in general. Israel has no desire to get into a slanging match with anti-Israel elements nor to submit to their intimidations.”

Less than an hour ago, Palestinian boy run over by Israeli illegal settler in Alkhalil...#Palestine: image via Mohammed Matter @AbuYazan_Gaza, 21 June 2015

Israeli settler runs over Palestinian child in Hebron shortly before ...  #WestBank #Palestine: image via Said Shoaib - Gaza @saidshouib, 21 June 2015

Freedom to our prisoners written on one of AlQuds streets. Pray for them in this blessed #Ramadan. #Palestine: image via Abbas Sarsour @iFalasteen, 23 June 2015

 

 The beauty of Ramadan atmosphere in AlQuds. #Ramadan_in_AlQuds_is_Different #Ramadan #Palestine #FreePalestine: image via Abbas Sarsour @iFalasteen, 23 June 2015

 

Palestinians climbing the Israeli apartheid wall to pray the first Jummah of Ramadan at AlAqsa, Jerusalem. #Palestine: image via صايل ‏  @Pxlestine, 19 June 2015

 

Israeli army prevented Palestinians from reaching Al-Aqsa mosque so they climbed the wall and made it. #Palestine: image via Mohammed Matter @AbuYazan_Gaza, 19 June 2016

Picture of a Palestinian young man when he entered al-Aqsa mosque for the first time. #Palestine #Jerusalem: image via Palestine Social @Palestine Social, 22 June 2015

 

Israeli army prevented Palestinians from reaching Al-Aqsa mosque so they climbed the wall and made it. #Palestine: image via Mohammed Matter @AbuYazan_Gaza, 19 June 2016

 

It's a long day of fasting I'm just going to sit here and relax. #Ramadan. #Palestine: image via Abbas Sarsour @iFalasteen, 20 June 2015

 

"I Come From There..." Courage in the Face of Cowardice. That's #Palestinianism #Palestine: image via Bea @Bea4Palestine, 21 June 2014

Jerusalem. A Palestinian youth uses a satellite dish as a shield during clashes with Israeli security forces in the At-Tur neighbourhood, after Israeli police shot dead a knife-wielding Palestinian who attempted to stab colleagues at a checkpoint: photo by Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via the Guardian, 26 March 2015

Israeli soldier aims his weapon at stone-throwing #Palestinian girl during a protest in #KfarQaddum #Nablus #AA [photo by Ahmed Talat]: image via Anadplu Images @anadoluimages, 12 June 2015

#KfarQaddum #LastStand #respect #SettlementsAreIllegal #Israel #BDS #HumanRights #BoycottIsrael #PalestinianState #UN: image via AJ. @ajwildlife, 20 March 2015

Intifada at its best: 1 Palestinian throwing rocks X at least 5 IDF armed forces. #KfarQaddum: image via Kety Shapazian @KetyBrazil, 6 April 2012

A Palestinian protester throws tyres into a fire during clashes with Israeli security forces following a demonstration against the expropriation of Palestinian land by Israel in the village of Kfar Qaddum, near Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, on Friday: photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via FT Photo Diary, 19 June 2015

Tonight's sunset from Nationals Park @ABC7News @nbcwashington @usa9 @fox5newsdc: image via Chris Duncan@AD4G, 23 June 2015

View from NYC #Sunset #Sky: image via Zaddy @MissZindzi, 23 June 2015