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Bertolt Brecht: Children of the Future

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Israel Detains Jewish Extremists as Crackdown on Terror Cells Continues
 
Arson terror suspect 23-year-old ultra-orthodox activist Meir Ettinger detained by Israel in crackdown on terror cells appears at Nazareth Magistrates Court: photo by Nir Kafri/EPA via Vice News, 5 August 2015

Children of the Future

I've got to confess it to you:
I've given up hope.

The void --
Everybody's got a hedge against it,
A private exit strategy: we''ll
Work all the angles; make sure never
To be alone; and
When the program
Fails, we'll still have nothing
For a friend.


Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men dance by a giant bonfire during the celebration of Lag BaOmer in commemoration of the death 1800 years ago of the Jewish scholar Bar Yochai
: photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP via The Guardian, 6 May 2015

Den Nachgeboren


Ich gestehe es:
Ich habe keine Hoffnung.
Die Blinden reden von einem Ausweg.
Ich sehe.

Wenn die Irrtümer verbraucht sind
Sitzt als letzter Gesellschafter
Uns das Nichts gegenüber.

Bertolt Brecht (10 February 1898-14 August 1956):Den Nachgeborenen, c. early 1920s (later retitled Der Nachgeborenein Gedichte 2, 87); English version TC



#BREAKING: 2 Houses set on fire in #Duma village West Bank: Baby killed. parents & brothers injured. Writing sprayed.: image via Amichai Stein @Amichai Stein1, 1 August 2015


Alon, West Bank. Ultra-orthodox Jewish families ride camels joining the thousands of Israelis who spent the day outdoors, picnicking and touring the country during the eight-day Passover holiday
: photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP via The Guardian, 7 April 2015

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Jerusalem (AFP), 9 April 2015 - Israel Sunday arrested several suspects believed to be linked to the deadly firebombing of a Palestinian home and placed two more alleged Jewish extremists in detention without trial. One of those interned on Sunday was Meir Ettinger, a 23-year-old accused of being a key figure in a loose band of youths suspected to be behind a string of nationalist hate crimes. Ettinger's grandfather Meir Kahane founded Kach, a racist movement that wanted to chase Arabs from Israel. Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1990: photo by Jack Guez,/AFP, 9 August 2015

Last Train to Europe

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SERBIA, BELGRADE : Migrants sleep on a train heading north from Nis to Belgrade, early on 18 July 2015. Illegal immigrants cross Serbia on their way to other European countries as it has land access to four members of the 28-nation bloc -- Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia. Over the last two years, Hungary has been one of the main routes for people hoping to cross into Austria and Germany, most coming from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and African countries: photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 18 July 2015

Boarding

Migrants try to get on a train heading to the border with Serbia at the train station in Gevgelija, on the Macedonian-Greek border. According to the UN, some 224,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe so far this year.

Migrants try to get on a train heading to the border with Serbia at the train station in Gevgelija, on the Macedonian-Greek border: photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP, 7 August 2015
 
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Migrants try to climb on a train heading to the border with Serbia on the Macedonian-Greek border. By @dilkoff #AFP: image via Stephanie Beauge @sbeaugeAFP,  6 August 2015

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MACEDONIA - A man holds up his child as he tries to get onto a train in Gevgelija. By @dilkoff #AFP
: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 10 August 2015


Migrants are trying to cross Macedonia and Serbia and enter the EU via Hungary. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 22 July 2015

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MACEDONIA - MACEDONIA- Migrants try to board a train to Serbia in Gevgelija on the Macedonian-Greek border. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP,  31 July 2015


Migrants are trying to cross Macedonia and Serbia and enter the EU via Hungary. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 22 July 2015

Migrants Hungary EU fence

Migrants scramble to board a train heading to the border with Serbia at the station in Gevgelija, on the Macedonian-Greek border
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photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP, 5 August 2015

Migrants Hungary EU fence

A woman carrying her child gets on a train in Gevgelija, on the Macedonian-Greek border, heading to Serbia
:
photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP, 5 August 2015

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#Macedonia: A #migrant & his child stand in a train heading to Serbia from Gevgelija on the Macedonian-Greek border [Photo Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP]: image via Talar Kalajian @TalarKala, 3 August 2015

A rail ticket to Europe
 

 Migrants from Syria & Afghanistan sleep on a train crossing Serbia on their way to other EU countries Photo @dilkoff #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 20 July 2015


 Migrants from Syria & Afghanistan sleep on a train crossing Serbia on their way to other EU countries Photo @dilkoff #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 20 July 2015
 
Migrants Hungary EU fence

Migrants sit on a train headed to Serbia from the town of Gevgelija, on the Greek-Macedonian border
:
photo by Robert Atanasovski/AFP, 5 August 2015


Migrants are trying to cross Macedonia and Serbia and enter the EU via Hungary. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 22 July 2015


Migrants are trying to cross Macedonia and Serbia and enter the EU via Hungary. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 22 July 2015
 

A rail ticket to Europe: After Serbia, @dilkoff takes the train with migrants across Macedonia: image via Stephanie Beauge @sbeaugeAFP,  28 July 2015


A rail ticket to Europe: After Serbia, @dilkoff takes the train with migrants across Macedonia: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto,  28 July 2015


A rail ticket to Europe: After Serbia, @dilkoff takes the train with migrants across Macedonia: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto,  28 July 2015
 

A rail ticket to Europe: After Serbia, @dilkoff takes the train with migrants across Macedonia: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto,  28 July 2015

Migrants Hungary EU fence

A young migrant from Syria sleeps on a train heading north from Nis to Belgrade:
photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP, 18 July 2015


A rail ticket to Europe: After Serbia, @dilkoff takes the train with migrants across Macedonia: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 28 July 2015
The Land Route


1000/day migrants cross into Macedonia & Serbia from Greece according to UNHCR. Photo in Serbia by @dilkoff: image via Stéphane Arnaud @StéphaneArnaud,  16 July 2015


1000/day migrants cross into Macedonia & Serbia from Greece according to UNHCR. Photo in Serbia by @dilkoff: image via Stéphane Arnaud @StéphaneArnaud  16 July 2015


A migrant family walks on a road near Preservo, Serbia. Photo by @dilkoff: image via Stéphane Arnaud @StéphaneArnaud,  16 July 2015

Migrants Hungary EU fence

Migrants walk on train tracks towards the town of Gevgelija, on the Greek-Macedonian border
:
photo by Robert Atanasovski/AFP, 5 August 2015
 

1000/day migrants cross into Macedonia & Serbia from Greece according to UNHCR. Photo in Serbia by @dilkoff: image via Stéphane Arnaud @StéphaneArnaud, 16 July 2015

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MACEDONIA - Syrian migrants carry their injured friend as they walk on railway tracks near Gevgelija on the Macedonian-Greek border. By @dilkoff #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP,  5 August 2015

A migrant family walks on train tracks towards the town of Gevgelija, on the Macedonian-Greek border, on August 6, 2015. Many migrants try to cross Macedonia and Serbia to enter the European Union via Hungary, a country that will finish building its anti-migrant fence on its southern border with Serbia by August 31, ahead of a previous November deadline

A migrant family walks on train tracks towards the town of Gevgelija, on the Macedonian-Greek border, on Thursday. Many migrants try to cross Macedonia and Serbia to enter the European Union via Hungary, a country that will finish building its anti-migrant fence on its southern border by the end of this month: photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP, 6 August 2015

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 MACEDONIA - Pakistani migrants rest under a wagon on railway tracks at the train station in Gevgelija. By @dilkoff #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP,  5 August 2015

Migrants Hungary EU fence

An Afghan migrant rests after crossing the Hungarian border illegally from Subotica, Serbia: photo by Laszlo Balogh/Reuters, 5 August 2015

Syrian child injured

A Syrian child injured by a chemical attack according to her father, waits to reach a train heading to the border with Serbia at the train station in Gevgelija, on the Macedonian-Greek border on Tuesday: photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP, 4 August 2015

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Syrian girl injured in chemical attack waits for train to Serbia. Pic @dilkoff #AFPphoto: image via David Sim @davidsim, 5 August 2015
a long and difficult journey

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'Ordinary families on a long and difficult journey'. By @AFP's @dilkoff. #Serbia #migrants: image via AFP Correspondent @AFPblogs, 22 July 2015


Migrants sleep outside a train station in Budapest...Migrants sleep outside a train station in Budapest, Hungary, August 3, 2015. While Hungary is an avenue rather than a destination for the migrants, the central European country is increasingly weary and polarised as the influx grows. Conflicts have begun to appear, and the government is taking an ever harder line. Picture taken August 3, 2015. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh

Migrants sleep outside a train station in Budapest, Hungary. While Hungary is an avenue rather than a destination for the migrants, the central European country is increasingly weary and polarised as the influx grows: photo by Laszlo Balogh/Reuters, 5 August 2015

Migrants Hungary EU fence

Passengers walk past migrants sleeping in a train station in Budapest
:
photo by Laszlo Balogh/Reuters, 5 August 2015

 Migration Patterns Of Humanity Map

The migration patterns of humanity over the last 100,000 years. Historical migration of human populations began with the movement of humans out of Africa across Eurasia approximately a million years ago. Homo sapiens appear to have occupied all of Africa about 150,000 years ago, moved out of Africa 70,000 years ago, and had spread across Australia, Asia and Europe by 40000 BC. Migration to the Americas took place 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, and by 2,000 years ago, most of the Pacific Islands were colonized. Later population movements notably include the Neolithic Revolution, Indo-European expansion, and the Early Medieval Great Migrations including Turkic expansion: map via All That Is Interesting

Dog Days in the Human Zoo

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Ferguson, Missouri Marks One-Year Anniversary Of The Death Of Michael Brown...FERGUSON, MO - AUGUST 09:  Demonstrators, marking the one-year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown, march along West Florrisant Street in a driving rain on August 9, 2015 in Ferguson, Missouri. There are reports that two people were shot when gun fire broke out during protests later in the evening. Brown was shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer on August 9, 2014. His death sparked months of sometimes violent protests in Ferguson and drew nationwide focus on police treatment of black offenders.  (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

 Demonstrators, marking the one-year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown, march along West Florrisant Street in Ferguson, Missouri. There are reports that two people were shot when gun fire broke out during protests later in the evening: photo by Scott Olson via FT Photo Diary, 10 August 2015 


From afar you can make out the continual murmurings of the white women of Paris
Telling you how they feel about themselves, their dreams, their memories, their emotional extremities
It's a language without borders, it has elation, also it has anguish in it
Occasioned by having to live in a world with white men in it, and other kinds as well
From the beginning, or maybe even farther back than that -- them, them
And worse, and this is not a failure of compassion, it has a poetry
Of convenience, real life among the ultimately unavoidable adjacent physical bodies in the human
Zoo always reduces to a mere matter of conveniences in the end
And this extension of the middle inevitably seems an unbearable postponement of the end
But the conveniences in any case are never in any way simple
Particularly during the dog days, the dog days.
 


Ferguson Tense After Shootout On Anniversary Of Michael Brown's Death...FERGUSON, MO - AUGUST 10:  Demonstrators, marking the one-year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown, protest along West Florrisant Street on August 10, 2015 in Ferguson, Missouri. Mare than 100 people were arrested today during protests in Ferguson and the St. Louis area. Brown was shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer on August 9, 2014. His death sparked months of sometimes violent protests in Ferguson and drew nationwide focus on police treatment of black offenders.  (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) 
Demonstrators, marking the one-year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown, protest along West Florrisant Street in Ferguson, Missouri. More than 100 people were arrested today during protests in Ferguson and the St. Louis area: photo by Scott Olson via FT Photo Diary, 11 August 2015

Typhoon "Soudelor" Approaches To Southeast China...HANGZHOU, CHINA - AUGUST 07: (CHINA OUT) Paople use umbrellas as they walk in strong wind and heavy rain near West Lake as Typhoon "Soudelor" approaches on August 7, 2015 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province of China. Typhoon "Soudelor" will land on southeastern China's coastal areas this weekend, according to meteorological departments.  (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)

People use umbrellas as they walk in strong wind and heavy rain near West Lake as Typhoon “Soudelor” approaches in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province of China. Typhoon “Soudelor” will land on southeastern China's coastal areas this weekend, according to meteorological departments: photo by ChinaFotoPress, 7 August 2015

Cosplayers pose for a photo during the Gamescom fair in Cologne...Cosplayers pose for a photo during the Gamescom fair in Cologne, Germany August 6, 2015. The Gamescom convention, Europe's largest video games trade fair, runs from August 5 to August 9. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

Cosplayers pose for a photo during the Gamescom fair in Cologne, Germany. The Gamescom convention, Europe’s largest video games trade fair: photo by Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters, 6 August 2015

Visitors attend the annual Great British Beer Festival organised by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) at Olympia in London
Great British Beer Festival… Visitors attend the annual Great British Beer Festival organised by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) at Olympia in London today: photo by Anthony Devlin /PA via FT Photo Diary, 11 August 2016

Performers Fleur Tooth, Florence O'Mahony and Rosalind Hoy from the Human Zoo Theatre Company, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, advertise their act "The Girl Who Fell In love With The Moon" which is on at the  Pleasance Dome, ahead of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Performers Fleur Tooth and Florence O’Mahony from the Human Zoo Theatre Company, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, advertise their act “The Girl Who Fell In Love With The Moon” which is on at the Pleasance Dome, ahead of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival: photo by Andrew Milligan/PA via FT Photo Diary, 6 August 2015

Commuters sit in traffic on a bus

Commuters sit in traffic on a bus as a 24 hour tube strike hits the morning rush hour at Victoria station, central London on Thursday. The strike began at 6:30 pm (1730 GMT) on August 5 and will run until Friday morning, causing disruption for millions of commuters and tourists: photo by Leon Neal/AFP,  6 August 2015

TOPSHOTS A boy takes part in the closing...TOPSHOTS A boy takes part in the closing of the ten-day celebration of the Santo Domingo de Guzman festival in Managua, on August 10, 2015.  AFP PHOTO / INTI OCONInti Ocon/AFP/Getty Images

A boy takes part in celebrations of the Santo Domingo de Guzman festival in Managua, Nicaragua: photo by Inti Ocon/AFP via FT Photo Diary, 11 August 2015

Nâzim Hikmet Ran: Things I Didn't Know I Loved (on the Prague-Berlin train)

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Prague | by BadSoull

Night train, Prague: photo by Daniel Jurena, 22 January 2014

it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird


Lonely trains | by Medhi

Lonely trains. Train station called Smirchov in Prague: photo by Jirí Zraly, 19 April 2008

I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it
I've never worked the earth
it must be my only Platonic love



Charles Bridge at Night - Prague | by virtualwayfarer

Charles Bridge at night, Prague: photo by Alex Berger, 11 December 2012

and here I've loved rivers all this time
whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills
European hills crowned with chateaus
or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see
I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see
I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before
and will trouble those after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before
and will be said after me



Railway in the Sky | by herbraab

Railway in the Sky. The "Kalte Rinne" viaduct of the Semmering Raiway (Lower Austria) under a clear, starry sky. The Milky Way arches over the viaduct, while the trails of the passing train can be seen on top of the building
: photo by H. Raab, 6 September 2013

I didn't know I loved the sky
cloudy or clear
the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino
in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish
I hear voices
not from the blue vault but from the yard
the guards are beating someone again
I didn't know I loved trees
bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino
they come upon me in winter noble and modest
beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish
"the poplars of Izmir
losing their leaves. . .
they call me The Knife. . .
lover like a young tree. . .
I blow stately mansions sky-high"
in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief
to a pine bough for luck



İzmir'in Kavakları | by Nejdet Duzen

Zamir'n Kavalakari [Poplars, Izmir]: photo by nejdet düzen, 14 January 2010

I never knew I loved roads
even the asphalt kind
Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea
Koktebele
formerly "Goktepé ili" in Turkish
the two of us inside a closed box
the world flows past on both sides distant and mute
I was never so close to anyone in my life
bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé
when I was eighteen
apart from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon they could take
and at eighteen our lives are what we value least
I've written this somewhere before
wading through a dark muddy street I'm going to the shadow play
Ramazan night
a paper lantern leading the way
maybe nothing like this ever happened
maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy
going to the shadow play
Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather's hand
his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat
with a sable collar over his robe
and there's a lantern in the servant's hand
and I can't contain myself for joy
flowers come to mind for some reason
poppies cactuses jonquils
in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika
fresh almonds on her breath
I was seventeen
my heart on a swing touched the sky
I didn't know I loved flowers
friends sent me three red carnations in prison



Garden Cat | by LaValle PDX

 Garden Cat. Kadikoy, Istanbul: photo by LaValle PDX, 11 September 2010

Kadikoy Kiz Lisesi-04 | by OmniMIT

Kadikoy Kiz Lezesi [Istanbul}: photo by Umit Ozdemir, 2 April 2006

Kadikoy Kiz Lisesi-22 | by OmniMIT

 Kadikoy Kiz Lezesi [Istanbul}: photo by Umit Ozdemir, 2 April 2006

Dos enamorados | by Oxiourus with slow internet

Dos enamorados. Kadikoy, Istanbul: photo by Michael & Laura Dubois, 23 September 2014

I just remembered the stars
I love them too
whether I'm floored watching them from below
or whether I'm flying at their side



Cosmonaut | by sjrankin

Edited ISS image of a cosmonaut on an EVA: photo by Stuart Rankin, 16 August 2013

I have some questions for the cosmonauts
were the stars much bigger
did they look like huge jewels on black velvet
or apricots on orange
did you feel proud to get closer to the stars
I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine now don't
be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract
well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to
say they were terribly figurative and concrete
my heart was in my mouth looking at them
they are our endless desire to grasp things
seeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad
I never knew I loved the cosmos

028 : Le train de nuit - The night train. | by rino54

Le train de nuit. Seicheprey, France: photo by Renaud Chodkowski, 5 June 2010

snow flashes in front of my eyes
both heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind
I didn't know I liked snow



L1011000 | by Sigfrid Lundberg

Catching the train [Lund, Sweden]
: photo by Sigfrid Lundberg, 1 November 2014


I never knew I loved the sun
even when setting cherry-red as now
in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors
but you aren't about to paint it that way
I didn't know I loved the sea
except the Sea of Azov
or how much


A Cow of Azov Sea | by lukasz.kryger

A Cow of Azov Sea. Mysovoye, near Cape Kazantip, Eastern Crimea: photo by Lukasz Kryger, 30 July 2008

I didn't know I loved clouds
whether I'm under or up above them
whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts



Sea of Azov | by SHeva4ever1

Sea of Azov: photo by Alexander Shevchenko, 4 April 2010

moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois
strikes me
I like it


033 : Sous la pluie, la nuit - Under the rain at night. | by rino54
 
Sous la pluie, la nuit. Le Bourget, France: photo by Renaud Chodkowski, 19 January 2012
 
I didn't know I liked rain
whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my
heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop
and takes off for uncharted countries I didn't know I loved
rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting
by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
is it because I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could kill me
is it because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow
her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue



Peredelkino | by padshewscky

Peredelkino: photo by Paul Padshewscky, 16 July 2011

Peredelkino | by padshewscky

Peredelkino: photo by Paul Padshewscky, 16 July 2011

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn't know I loved sparks
I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return
 


Moscow, 19 April 1962
 

Nâzim Hikmet Ran (b. Salonica, 15 January 1902 - d. Moscow, 3 June 1963): Things I Didn't Know I Loved, 28 March-19 April 1962, translated by Mutlu Konuk and Randy Blasing, 1993


Euronight 477 Metropol From Praha hlavni nadraží to Budapest | by lukvalek

Euronight 477 Metropol from Praha hlavni nadrazi to Budapest: photo by Lukas Valicek, 29 July 2014

EuroNight #477, Berlin Hbf | by fotoeins

EuroNight #477 (night train from Berlin to Budapest via Prague), Berlin Hauptbahnhof: by Henry Lee, 4 October 2009

Waitin for Jesenius.. | by Ms Kat
 
Waitin' for Jesenius...The Jan Jesenius is the Prague-Berlin, Berlin-Prague night train
: photo by Ms Kat, 18 June 2011

arches and farewells | by moonbird

Hlavni Nadrazi (main train station), Prague, Czech Republic: photo by jay joslin, 9 October 2008

Untitled | by wenzday01

Main train station, Prague: photo by Wendy, 29 April 2008
 
Berlin #6 | by Ayertosco

Berlin #6e nouveaux horizons: photo by Emanuele Toscano, 11 November 2013

taking flight | by cuantofalta

Taking flight, Berlin: photo by Paula Gimeno, 21 November 2009

Night Trains in the Fog | by Ian_Boys

Night Trains in Fog. Czech-German border, 0100 hours: photo by Ian Boys, 10 January 2010

murder in a train - or - greetings from alfred hitchcock - or - was it mrs. marple? | by extranoise

Night train, Berlin. Murder in a train -- or -- greetings from Alfred Hitchcock -- or was it Mrs. Marple? I just shot the photo of the train and later saw this scene. Don't know what it is but it doesn't look nice. In the meantime, I came the to the conclusion that this "thing" must be the Berlin television tower, which is in the direction from where I shot the picture, although I took several photos from the same position and it doesn't appear on the other images: photo by Till Krech, 12 May 2008

Trains crossing in the night | by Fintrvlr

Trains crossing in the night. Helsinki railway yard: photo by Fintrvir, 9 March 2013

night train | by ewitsoe

Night train, Poznan, Poland
: photo by ewitsoe, 29 February 2012


Night Train | by Gerry Balding

Night Train. An electric multiple unit waits in the sidings at Lezsno. Taken during a watering stop on a steam special from Wroclaw to Poznan: photo by Gerry Balding, 6 July 2013

Rails | by Sebeats

Rails [Hanover, Germany]: photo by Sebastian Schlattmann, 22 November 2013

Sur les Rails | by Sylvain Courant photographies

Sur les Rails. La gare du Nord de nuit, partir vers de nouveaux horizons: photo by Sylvain Courant, 5 December 2012

Hösbach Bahnhof | by ConstiAB

Hösbach Bahnhof: photo by ConstiAB, 27 March 2015

TOPSHOTS TOPSHOTS A Perseid meteor along...TOPSHOTS TOPSHOTS A Perseid meteor along the Milky Way illuminates the dark sky near Villadiego in the province of Burgos, northern Spain, during the  "Perseids" meteor shower on August 12, 2015. AFP PHOTO/ CESAR MANSOCESAR MANSO/AFP/Getty Images

A Perseid meteor along the Milky Way illuminates the dark sky near Villadiego in the province of Burgos, northern Spain, during the “Perseids” meteor shower: photo by Cesar Manso/AFP, 12 August 2015

In the Dark

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Midnight migrants, a night time journey on the waves. Migrants aboard a dinghy sail off for the Greek island of Kos from the southern Turkish coastal town of Bodrum. Photo by Osman Orsal: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 12:02 AM 14 August 2015
 

God protect us from generalizations. There are a great many opinions in this world, and a good half of them are professed by people who have never been in trouble.

-- Anton Chekhov (1860-1904): from At the Mill (1886)


TOPSHOTS Migrant women carrying children...TOPSHOTS Migrant women carrying children comfort each other upon reaching the Greek island of Kos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece on August 13, 2015. Greece sent extra riot police to Kos as tensions mounted over a huge influx of migrants. The Greek government said it was "immediately" dispatching a ship to Kos to double up as an accommodation and processing centre for up to 2,500 people as around 7,000 migrants wait to apply for immigration papers.  AFP PHOTO / ANGELOS TZORTZINISANGELOS TZORTZINIS/AFP/Getty Images
  
Migrant women carrying children comfort each other upon reaching the Greek island of Kos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece. Greece sent extra riot police to Kos as tensions mounted over a huge influx of migrants.: photo by Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP, 13 August 2015



GREECE - Migrants comfort each other after they have reached the Greek island of Kos. By @atzortzinis #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 13 August 2015
 

GREECE - Migrants comfort each other after they have reached the Greek island of Kos. By @atzortzinis #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 13 August 2015


GREECE - Children stand on a beach on Kos after arriving on an inflatable boat carrying migrants. By @tzortzinis @AFP photo: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 13 August 2015 

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Afghan migrants arriving on the Greek island of Kos after crossing part of the Aegean Sea. By @tzortzinis @AFP photo: image via Photojournalism @photojournalink, 3 June 2015

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GREECE - Migrants get out of an inflatable boat after arriving on the Greek island of Kos. By @tzortzinis @AFP:  image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 11 August 2015



GREECE - Policemen disperse migrants with fire extinguishers during registration procedure in Kos. By @tzortzinis @AFP:  image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 11 August 2015
 

GREECE - Policemen disperse migrants with fire extinguishers during registration procedure in Kos. By @tzortzinis @AFP:  image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 11 August 2015

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Syrian migrants check their mobile phones after getting out of an inflatable boat in Kos
. By @tzortzinis @AFP photo
: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 12 August 2015

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GREECE - Women migrants
and children from Syria take a rest as they arrive on a beach in Lesbos. By @azavallis #AFP photo: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 13 August 2015
 

GREECE - Migrants get out of inflatable boats with their children on the beach of Kos. By @tzortzinis @AFP photo: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffard
AFP, 13 August 2015

 
GREECE - Migrants get out of inflatable boats with their children on the beach of Kos. By @tzortzinis @AFP photo: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 13 August 2015


GREECE - Migrants get out of inflatable boats with their children on the beach of Kos. By @tzortzinis @AFP photo: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffard
AFP, 13 August 2015
 

GREECE - Migrants get out of inflatable boats with their children on the beach of Kos. By @tzortzinis @AFP photo: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 13 August 2015


GREECE - Children stand on a beach on Kos after arriving on an inflatable boat carrying migrants. By @tzortzinis @AFP photo: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 13 August 2015


GREECE - Children stand on a beach on Kos after arriving on an inflatable boat carrying migrants.By @tzortzinis @AFP photo: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 13 August 2015


GREECE - Children stand on a beach on Kos after arriving on an inflatable boat carrying migrantsBy @tzortzinis @AFP photo: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 13 August 2015

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TURKEY - A migrant runs through the water near Bodrum to take a boat to the Greek island of Kos. By @Kilicbil #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 1:59 AM 14 August 2015


GREECE - Migrants arrive on the island of Lesbos after crossing Aegean sea from Turkey to Greece. By @azavallis #AFP: image via Frederique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 14 August 2015
 

GREECE - Migrants arrive on the island of Lesbos after crossing Aegean sea from Turkey to Greece. By @azavallis #AFP: image via Frederique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 14 August 2015
 

GREECE - Migrants arrive on the island of Lesbos after crossing Aegean sea from Turkey to Greece. By @azavallis #AFP: image via Frederique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 14 August 2015
 

GREECE - Migrants comfort each other after they have reached the Greek island of Kos. By @atzortzinis #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 13 August 2015
 
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GREECE - A migrant woman from Syria sits on a beach on the Greek island of Kos. By @tzortzinis @AFP:  image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 10 August 2015

Haze

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SF Ocean Beach sunset with smoke: image via NWSBayArea @NWSBayArea, 15 August 2015


Haze of smoke from the fires to the north streaming down upon a hot wind trapping the routine accumulation of vehicle exhaust ozone particulates in a toxic midden
and that's why everybody's calling the authorities anxiously and why the fire trucks are roaring through the gray pall of dawn but as yet with nowhere specific to go, the blaze 
of last night's sunset was a rusty blur above the ocean beyond the headland and the bridge fading finally into a long flattened russet cloud
that hung there over the unseen water through the sultry stinking evening until at about a quarter to four the traffic ebbed so that the only sound in the house became the growing
bell-like howl of the white cat with dementia
 
eight piercing wails pause eight more piercing wails echoing down the dark hallway

then rustling silence in the old clock-repairman's shop
 
as if time had stopped 



A watch and clock vendor sits in his shop in Seoul, South Korea.

A watch and clock vendor sits in his shop in Seoul, South Korea: photo by Ed Jones/AFP, 29 July 2015

Wislawa Szymborska: Distraction

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Portrait of Dr. Johannes Cuspinian (detail): Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1502 (Oskar Reinhart Collection, Winterthur)

I misbehaved in the cosmos yesterday. 
I lived around the clock without questions,without surprise.

I performed daily tasks 
as if only that were required.

Inhale, exhale, right foot, left, obligations, 
not a thought beyond 
getting there and getting back.

The world might have been taken for bedlam, 
but I took it just for daily use.

No whats -- no what fors -- 
and why on earth it is --
and how come it needs so many moving parts.

I was like a nail stuck only halfway in the wall 
or 
(comparison I couldn’t find).

One change happened after another 
even in a twinkling’s narrow span.

Yesterday’s bread was sliced otherwise 
by a hand a day younger at a younger table.

Clouds like never before and rain like never, 
since it fell after all in different drops.

The world rotated on its axis, 
but in a space abandoned forever.

This took a good 24 hours. 
1,440 minutes of opportunity. 
86,400 seconds for inspection.

The cosmic savoir vivre 
may keep silent on our subject, 
still it makes a few demands:
occasional attention, one or two of Pascal’s thoughts, 
and amazed participation in a game 
with rules unknown.

Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012): Distraction, from Colon (2005), translated by Clare Cavanagh in MAP: Collected and Last Poems, 2015




Portrait of Dr. Johannes Cuspinian: Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1502, oil on wood, 59 x 45 cm (Oskar Reinhart Collection, Winterthur)

Yes, but what time is it? | by rbrwr

Yes, but what time is it? These four clock faces in the new Bristol bus station have one hand each. The furthest right moves fast enough to be a second hand... I'm not sure about the rest. They don't seem to be pointing in appropriate directions for the time (just after five past two).: photo by Rob Brewer, 3 December 2005

File:Liesing Quando est hora ultima 23052007 01.jpg

Sundial on the steeple of the parish church Saint Nicholas at Liesing, municipality Lesachtal, district Hermagor, Carinthia/Austria: photo by Johann Jaritz, 23 May 2007

File:Kali, Hammer u. Sichel.jpg

Hindu Time Goddess Kali with written invitation for Kalipuja (festival), near Kolkata. To left, an  election mural of the Indian Communist Party of India (Marxist): photo by Christina Kundu, 23 May 2005

Listen Fates, who sit nearest of gods to the throne of Zeus, and weave with shuttles of adamant, inescapable devices for councels of every kind beyond counting, Aisa, Clotho and Lachesis, fine-armed daughters of Night, hearken to our prayers, all-terrible goddesses, of sky and earth.

Pindar:Fragmenta Chorica Adespota, 5

Now if it is not the causal connections which we are concerned with, then the activities of the mind lie open before us. And when we are worried about the nature of thinking, the puzzlement which we wrongly interpret to be one about the nature of a medium is a puzzlement caused by the mystifying use of our language. This kind of mistake recurs again and again in philosophy; e.g. when we are puzzled about the nature of time, when time seems to us a queer thing.We are most strongly tempted to think that here are things hidden, something we can see from the outside but which we can't look into. And yet nothing of the sort is the case. It is not new facts about time which we want to know. All the facts that concern us lie open before us. But it is the use of the substantive "time" which mystifies us. If we look into the grammar of that word, we shall feel that it is no less astounding that man should have conceived of a deity of time than it would be to conceive of a deity of negation or disjunction.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: from The Blue Book (1930s Cambridge lecture notes as circulated by students), 1958

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.
If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
Our life has no end in just the way our visual field has no limits.   

Ludwig Wittgenstein: from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921


The Three Fates, called by Hesiod the Daughters of the Night. Atropos or Aisa (left) was the oldest of the Three Fates, and was known as the "inflexible" or "inevitable." It was Atropos who chose the mechanism of death and ended the life of each mortal by cutting their thread with her "abhorred shears." She worked along with her two sisters, Clotho, who spun the thread, and Lachesis, who measured the length: Cecchino del Salviati, 1550 (Galleria Palatino, Pizzi Palace, Florence)



Atropos (Ἄτροπος, "inexorable" or "inevitable", literally "unturning, without turn"), in Greek myth one of the three Moirai, goddesses of Fate: Asmus Jacob Carsten (model), 1794 (Städelsches Kunstinstitut,  Frankfurt)
 
File:The Triumph of Death, or The Three Fates.jpg

The Triumph of Death, or The Three Fates.  The Three Fates, Clotho (right), Lachesis (centre) and Atropos (left), who spin, draw out and snip the thread of Life, represent Death, triumphing over the fallen body of Chastity, in this tapestry illustrating the third subject in Petrarch's poem The Triumphs (first, Love triumphs; then Love is overcome by Chastity, Chastity by Death, Death by Fame, Fame by Time and Time by Eternity): Flemish tapestry, probably Brussels, c. 1510-1520; image by Wilhem Meis, 5 December 2004

File:Atropos.jpg

Bas relief of Atropos cutting the thread of life: photo by Tom Oates, 18 June 2008


File:Schadow Grabmal Alexander 2.jpg

The Three Moirai (Greek "apportioners", l. to r. Clotho, Atropos, Lachesis), tomb of Prince Alexander von Mark
: Johann Gottfried Schaddow, 1788-1789; image by Andreas Praefcke, February 2006 (Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin)

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Ishtar, Queen of Night: Old Babylonian period baked clay relief panel; image by BabelStone, 24 June 2010 (British Museum)


Atropos (The Fates): Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, 1821-1823, oil on plaster mounted on canvas, 123 x 366 cm (Museo del Prado, Madrid)



Allegory of Melancholy: Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1532, oil and tempera on wood, 77 x 56 cm (Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar)



Allegory of Melancholy: Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1528, oil and tempera on wood, 113 x 72 cm (National Gallery of Scotland)



Portrait of Anna Cuspinian: Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1502, oil on wood, 59 x 45 cm (Oskar Reinhart Collection, Winterthur)


Portrait of Anna Cuspinian (detail)
: Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1502 (Oskar Reinhart Collection, Winterthur)



Portrait of Anna Cuspinian (detail)
: Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1502 (Oskar Reinhart Collection, Winterthur)


Landscape (fragment): Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1525-30, oil and tempera on wood, 43 x 28 cm (Private collection)

Wislawa Szymborska: Tarsier

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Tarsier, Bohol Island Sanctuary, The Philippines: photo by Bonnie Stewart, 2015: image via Aar Kay @pictureoftheday, 8 July 2015

I am a tarsier and a tarsier’s son,
the grandson and great-grandson of tarsiers,
a tiny creature, made up of two pupils
and whatever simply could not be left out;
miraculously saved from further alterations --
since I’m no one’s idea of a treat,
my coat’s too small for a fur collar,
my glands provide no bliss,
and concerts go on without my gut --
I, a tarsier,
sit living on a human fingertip.

Good morning, lord and master,
what will you give me
for not taking anything from me?
How will you reward me for your own magnanimity?
What price will you set on my priceless head
for the poses I strike to make you smile?

My good lord is gracious,
my good lord is kind.
Who else could bear such witness if there were
no creatures unworthy of death?
You yourselves, perhaps?
But what you’ve come to know about yourselves
will serve for a sleepless night from star to star.

And only we few who remain unstripped of fur,
untorn from bone, unplucked of soaring feathers,
esteemed in all our quills, scales, tusks, and horns,
and in whatever else that ingenious protein
has seen fit to clothe us with,
we, my lord, are your dream,
which finds you innocent for now.

I am a tarsier -- the father and grandfather of tarsiers
a tiny creature, nearly half of something,
yet nonetheless a whole no less than others,
so light that twigs spring up beneath my weight
and might have lifted me to heaven long ago
if I hadn’t had to fall
time and again
like a stone lifted from hearts
grown oh so sentimental:
I, a tarsier,
know well how essential it is to be a tarsier.

Wilawa Szmborska (1923-2012: Tarsier, from No End of Fun (1967), translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh


Tarsius bancanus - Tarsier | by Rookuzz.

Tarsius bancanus [Cephalopachus bancanus] -- Tarsier [Western Tarsier]: photo by Rookuzz, 15 May 2011
 
Tarsier | by Peter Hellberg

Tarsier. In the sanctuary near the town of Corella, on the Philippine Island of Bohol: photo by Peter Hellberg, 15 February 2011

Tarsier Sanctuary, Corella, Bohol | by yeowatzup

Tarsier, Bohol Island Sanctuary, Corella, The Philippines: photo by yeowatzup, 4 November 2007

File:Bohol Tarsier.jpg

Philippine Tarsier (Carlito syrichta), one of the smallest primates. This one is about 5 inches long with a tail longer than its body. Photo taken in Bohol, Philippines
: photo by mtoz, 20 June 2007

The Tarsier | by JT's Hazy Reality

Tarsier. Bohol, The Philippines: photo by JT's Hazy Reality, 22 February 2015
 
Philippine Tarsier | by Steven Olmstead

Philippine Tarsier: photo by Steve Olmstead, 14 November 2008

tarsier monkey | by zbigphotography (1M+ views)

Tarsier, Bohol, The Philippines: photo by Edward Musiak, 2 September 2011

Tarsier | by roxj

Tarsier, Bohol, The Philippines: photo by jaya, 22 December 2007

Tarsier | by roxj

Tarsiers, Bohol, The Philippines: photo by jaya, 22 December 2007

File:Tarsier-GG.jpg

Carlito syrichta
(Philippine Tarsier
): photo by Jasper Greek Golangco, 2006

Crowding the branch | by igorms

Crowding the branch. Tarsiers, Bohol, ThePhilippines: photo by igorms, 9 April 2006

IMG_3418 | by Roving_photographer

Western Tarsier (Cephalopachus bancanus borneanus), Kinabatangan River, Borneo: photo by Steve O'Shea, 29 July 2013

IMG_3403 | by Roving_photographer

Western Tarsier (Cephalopachus bancanus borneanus), Kinabatangan River, Borneo: photo by Steve O'Shea, 29 July 2013

Spectral Tarsier Tarsius tarsier | by berniedup

Spectral Tarsier (Tarsius tarsier), Nangkoko NP. Sulawesi, Indonesia: photo by Bernard Dupont, April 2003

Spectral Tarsier Tarsius tarsier | by berniedup

Spectral Tarsier (Tarsius tarsier), Nangkoko NP. Sulawesi, Indonesia: photo by Bernard Dupont, April 2003

Spectral Tarsier Tarsius tarsier | by berniedup

Spectral Tarsier (Tarsius tarsier), Nangkoko NP. Sulawesi, Indonesia: photo by Bernard Dupont, April 2003

Spectral Tarsier Tarsius tarsier | by berniedup

Spectral Tarsier (Tarsius tarsier), Nangkoko NP. Sulawesi, Indonesia: photo by Bernard Dupont, April 2003

Bornean Tarsier (Cephalopachus bancanus borneanus) | by berniedup

Bornean Tarsier (Cephalopachus bancanus borneanus), Bilit, Sabah, Malaysia: photo by Bernard Dupont, 19 September 2012
 
Bornean Tarsier (Cephalopachus bancanus borneanus) | by berniedup

Bornean Tarsier (Cephalopachus bancanus borneanus), Bilit, Sabah, Malaysia: photo by Bernard Dupont, 19 September 2012

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Tarsiers, Bohol Island Sanctuary, The Philippines: image via Atlas Obscura @atlasobscura, 28 June 2015
 
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Tarsier, Bohol Island Sanctuary, The Philippines; Hello again, little one!: image via The Tummy Traveler @tummytraveler, 27 July 2015

tarsier | by baltamour carla

Tarsier.  Bohol, The Philippines: photo by baltamour carla, 26 December 2008


John Keats: La belle dame sans merci ("The sedge has withered from the Lake...")

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Smoke from the Northern California wildfires and other major wildfires across the Western U.S. fill the horizon as the sun sets over Utah Lake and Provo...Smoke from the Northern California wildfires and other major wildfires across the Western U.S. fill the horizon as the sun sets over Utah Lake and Provo, Utah August 17, 2015. The U.S. Army has been asked to send 200 troops to assist the more then 29,000 civilian firefighters deployed throughput the West. This is the first time the Army has been called to provide troops to fight fires since 2006. REUTERS/George Frey

Smoke from the Northern California wildfires and other major wildfires across the Western U.S. fill the horizon as the sun sets over Utah Lake and Provo. The U.S. Army has been asked to send 200 troops to assist the more then 29,000 civilian firefighters deployed throughput the West. This is the first time the Army has been called to provide troops to fight fires since 2006: photo by George Frey/Reuters, 18 August 2015

O what can ail thee knight at arms
..Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the Lake,
..And no birds sing!

 
O what can ail thee knight at arms,
..So haggard and so woe begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
..And the harvest’s done.

 
I see a lilly on thy brow
..With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
..Fast withereth too --

 
I met a Lady in the Meads,
..Full beautiful, a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light
..And her eyes were wild --

 
I made a Garland for her head,
..And bracelets too, and fragrant Zone:
She look'd at me as she did love
..And made sweet moan --

 
I set her on my pacing steed,
..And nothing else saw all day long
For sidelong would she bend and sing
..A faery’s song --

 
She found me roots of relish sweet
..And honey wild and manna dew
And sure in language strange she said
..‘I love thee true’ --

 
She took me to her Elfin grot,
..And there she wept and sigh'd full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
..With kisses four.

 
And there she lulled me asleep,
..And there I dream'd -- Ah Woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dreamt
..On the cold hill side.

 
I saw pale kings and Princes too
..Pale warriors, death pale were they all;
They cried ‘La belle dame sans merci
..Hath thee in thrall.’

 
I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam,
..With horrid warning gaped wide
And I awoke and found me here,
..On the cold hill’s side.

 
And this is why I sojourn here
..Alone and palely loitering;
Though the sedge is wither'd from the Lake,
..And no birds sing ----


John Keats (1795-1821):La belle dame sans merci, 21 April 1819: text from JK journal-letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 14 Febuary-3 May 1819




An image taken by NASA's Terra satellite on 17 August 2015 shows five large fires raging through an area in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, located west of Redding, California. To the north are two additional fires, just south of the Oregon state line. The red pixels are heat signatures detected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument onboard NASA's Aqua satellite: image via NASA MODIS Rapid Response Team, Jeff Schmaltz, 17 August 2015 (NASA)



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 #MODIS continues to document extensive #wildfire smoke across the #drought stricken U.S. West  #WAwx #ORwx #CAwx #IDwx: image via UW-Madison CIMSS @UWCIMSS, 19 August 2015

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VIDEO: Wildfires scorch parts of Western U.S.:
image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 19 August 2015

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175 acres of the Los Angeles Reservoir covered in 96 million shade balls #drought
: image via Yahoo News @Yahoo News,
13 August 2015

110425 full

A bridge at the Delta-Mendota Canal, where the land sank enough for the bridge to nearly touch the water, New research by NASA scientists shows vast areas of California's Central Valley are sinking faster than previously thought as massive amounts of groundwater are pumped during the historic drought.The research released Wednesday says that in some places the ground is sinking nearly two inches a month.: photo by NASA via 89.3 KPCC, 19 August 2015

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 #Drought: Anyone else having a sinking feeling?: image via SF Gate @SF Gate, 19 August 2015

DPP_1012 | by dmcpeake55

Fallen Sequoia, California. "The giant sequoias of California have gone through punishing storms, wildfires and environmental damages. But now, experts are worried that the prolonged drought may be the cause of the trees' death." -- Tech Times, 18 August 2015: photo by Darrell McPeake, 20 October 2011

Dead fresh water fish, known as "popocha", float in the Cajititlan lagoon in Jalisco State, Mexico. At least 25 tons of fish have turned up dead in the lagoon in western Mexico and authorities are investigating whether a wastewater treatment plant is to blame.

Dead fresh water fish, known as “popocha”, float in the Cajititlan lagoon in Jalisco State, Mexico. At least 25 tons of fish have turned up dead in the lagoon in western Mexico and authorities are investigating whether a wastewater treatment plant is to blame: photo by Hector Guerrero/AFP. 18 August 2015


Visitors on the bank of Folsom Lake, the lone source of water for Folsom, Calif., which plans to add 10,200 homes. Amid a drought, the lake is at 29 percent of capacity.
: photo by Damon Winter/The New York Times, 19 August 2015



Folsom’s development plan calls for the construction of houses on 3,300 acres of grassland, annexed by the city, south of El Dorado Freeway. It would be economic folly, the city manager said, to shy away from growth..: photo by Damon Winter/The New York Times, 19 August 2015



The increased shoreline at the Folsom Lake State Recreation Area.: photo by Damon Winter/The New York Times, 19 August 2015



Lots opposite newly constructed homes in a housing development in Folsom. The city manager said he was confident there would be enough water for Folsom to absorb new residents.
: photo by Damon Winter/The New York Times, 19 August 2015


Evening shadows of new homes fall on lots awaiting construction in Folsom, California. Amid a crippling drought, the city plans to add 10,200 homes: photo by Damon Winter/The New York Times, 19 August 2015

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What California Girls should expect Valentines Day 2016 #drought: image via TAD. H @hd_shine, 20 August 2015

Smoke from the Northern California wildfires and other major wildfires across the Western U.S. fill the horizon as the sun sets over Utah Lake and Provo...Smoke from the Northern California wildfires and other major wildfires across the Western U.S. fill the horizon as the sun sets over Utah Lake and Provo, Utah August 17, 2015. The U.S. Army has been asked to send 200 troops to assist the more then 29,000 civilian firefighters deployed throughput the West. This is the first time the Army has been called to provide troops to fight fires since 2006. REUTERS/George Frey

Smoke from the Northern California wildfires and other major wildfires across the Western U.S. fills the horizon as the sun sets over Utah Lake and Provo. The U.S. Army has been asked to send 200 troops to assist the more then 29,000 civilian firefighters deployed throughput the West. This is the first time the Army has been called to provide troops to fight fires since 2006: photo by George Frey/Reuters, 18 August 2015

Turbulence and Serenity: van Gogh at Auxers, June-July 1890: Last Strokes

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I...Tree Roots

transistoradio:  Vincent van Gogh, Tree Roots (1890), oil on canvas, 100 x 50 cm. Collection of Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Via WikiPaintings.

Tree Roots: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 50.3 x 100.1 cm (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)

Van Gogh had already made several drawings of tree roots in The Hague in 1882. He wrote at the time of his wish ‘to express something of life’s struggle […] in those gnarled black roots’. It is tempting to see the same symbolism in these twisted tree roots, painted eight years later.

The work seems to consist at first sight of a jumble of bright colours and abstract forms, prompting some art historians to identify Van Gogh as an important forerunner of abstract art. If you keep looking, however, you make out the tree roots, plants and leaves, and beneath them the brown and yellow of the sandy forest floor, all laid down on the canvas with powerful brushstrokes and oily gobs of paint.

Many people believe that the more dramatic Wheatfield with Crows is Van Gogh’s final work. This colourful painting is a much likelier candidate, however, as he was unable to complete it, which helps explain its irregular, unfinished character. Theo’s brother-in-law, Andries Bonger, described it as follows in a letter: ‘The morning before his death, he had painted an underwood [sous-bois], full of sun and life.’

-- Van Gogh Museum

Tree roots - Vincent van Gogh

Tree Roots: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 50.3 x 100.1 cm (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)

Technique must be born of inner necessity. When Van Gogh at one time, in order to achieve the plastic character of the roots of a tree, squeezed oil directly from a tube on his picture, it seemed to him the best means of expressing what moved him at the moment in nature. That technique is the best which permits the artist to express what he has to say as directly and convincingly as possible.

-- The Materials of the Artist and Their Use in Painting, with Notes on the Techniques of the Old Masters: Max Doerner, 1934


File:Vincent van Gogh - Tree Roots and Trunks (F816).jpg

Tree Roots: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 50.3 x 100.1 cm (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)

...this amazing painting –- one of the very greatest (and least noticed) masterpieces from the founding moment of modernism –- is yet another experiment in the independent vitality of painted line and colour, as well as the uncountable force of nature. Almost lost within it -– as in  Undergrowth With Two Figures -– are allusions to and repudiations of, the exhausted traditions of landscape...
 

...The view is therefore bipolar: simultaneously that of the rabbit and the hawk. Colours -– wheat-gold, clay-brown -– tease the eye with possibilities of making sense of a field or a hill, but then scramble them into chaos. The usual aesthetic markers –- beauty and ugliness –- have been made meaningless. In Tree Roots the painted forms rap against the visual panes of our windows, as if trying to crash through the glass. In other paintings from these last weeks in Auvers the interior of the field –- green or gold stalks -– occupies the entirety of the visual field like a curtain. Without a beginning or an end this infinity of growing matter closes over us. It’s the ultimate compression of heaven and earth, a live burial within the engulfing sea of creation.

[This] may well be another view from inside Vincent’s hectic brain: all knots and strangling thickets, knobbly growths, bolting ganglia, claw-like forms, and pincers the look more skeletal than botanical... But this amazing painting – one of the very greatest (and least noticed) masterpieces from the founding moment of modernism -– is yet another experiment in the independent vitality of painted line and colour, as well as the uncontainable force of nature.

-- Simon Schama: on van Gogh's Tree Roots in Power of Art, 2006



Tree Roots: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 50.3 x 100.1 cm (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)

II...Undergrowth with Two Figures

Vincent van Gogh - Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890 (Cincinnati Art Museum) Van Gogh: Up Close at Philadelphia Museum of Art | by mbell1975

Undergrowth with Two Figures: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890; image by mbell1975, 5 May 2012 (Cincinnati Art Museum)

Then undergrowth, violet trunks of poplars which cross the landscape perpendicularly like columns. The depths of the undergrowth are blue, and under the big trunks the flowery meadow, white, pink, yellow, green, long russet grasses and flowers.

-- Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh and Jo van Gogh-Bonger, Auvers-sur-Oise, Wednesday, 2 July 1890

"Undergrowth with Two Figures" - detail | by hoobie3

 Undergrowth with Two Figures (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, June/July 1890; image by hoobie 3, 16 March 2011 (Cincinnati Art Museum)

brushwork | by !♥! Terri Viltrakis

Undergrowth with Two Figures (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890; image by Terri Viltrakis, 17 March 2007 (Cincinnati Art Museum)



Texture of Undergrowth with Two Figures by Vincent van Gogh, painted June 1890, one month before his death: photo by erkaflugge, 2 April 2014( Cincinnati Art Museum)



Undergrowth with Two Figures: Vincent van Gogh. Auvers-sur-Oise, late June 1890, oil on canvas, 50 x 100.5 cm: photo by David Lewis-Baker, 24 April 2011 (Cincinnati Art Museum)


Van Gogh's brush strokes: Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890 (taken at Cincinnati Art Museum): photo by elycefeliz, 4 February 2011

Van Gogh's Brush Strokes | by elycefeliz

Van Gogh's Brush Strokes."The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting." Undergrowth with Two Figures, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890 (detail): photo by elycefeliz, 4 February 2011


Van Gogh's brush strokes: Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890 (taken at Cincinnati Art Museum): photo by elycefeliz, 4 February 2011


Van Gogh's brush strokes: Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890 (taken at Cincinnati Art Museum): photo by elycefeliz, 4 February 2011


Van Gogh's brush strokes: Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890 (taken at Cincinnati Art Museum): photo by elycefeliz, 4 February 2011

Undergrowth with Two Figures - detail | by hoobie3

 Undergrowth with Two Figures (detail of brushwork): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, June/July 1890; image by hoobie 3, 16 March 2011 (Cincinnati Art Museum)

Undergrowth with Two Figures - detail | by hoobie3

 Undergrowth with Two Figures (detail of brushwork): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, June/July 1890; image by hoobie 3, 16 March 2011 (Cincinnati Art Museum)

Cincinnati Art Museum | by renzodionigi

 Undergrowth with Two Figures (detail of brushwork): Vnicent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, June/July 1890; image by renzo dionigi, 10 November 2009 (Cincinnati Art Museum)

Cincinnati Art Museum | by renzodionigi
Undergrowth with Two Figures: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890; image by renzo dionigi, 10 November 2009 (Cincinnati Art Museum)

III...Bank of the Oise at Auvers



Bank of the Oise at Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, July 1890, Auvers-sur-Ois, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit)


Van Gogh's Bank of the Oise at Auvers, detail (taken at Detroit Institute of Art): photo by Maia C, 3 September 2010

Van Gogh (detail) | by Martin Beek

Bank of the Oise at Auvers (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by Martin Beek, 20 July 2014

Detail of Bank of the Oise at Auvers | by ellenm1

Bank of the Oise at Auvers (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by ellenm1, 23 January 2010

Van Gogh (detail) | by Martin Beek

Bank of the Oise at Auvers (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by Martin Beek, 20 July 2014
 
Van Gogh (detail) | by Martin Beek

Bank of the Oise at Auvers (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by Martin Beek, 20 July 2014

Bank of the Oise at Auvers | by ellenm1

Bank of the Oise at Auvers (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by ellenm1, 23 January 2010

Vincent van Gogh - Bank of the Oise at Auvers (1890) | by Quick fix

Bank of the Oise at Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by Quck fix, 6 July 2012


Van Gogh detail | by Martin Beek

Bank of the Oise at Auvers (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by Martin Beek, 20 July 2014

IV...Auxers and environs: views



Thatched Cottage in Cordeville: Vincent van Gogh,
June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm (
Musée d'Orsay, Paris)



Landscape with Carriage and Train in the Background: Vincent van Gogh, June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 72 x 90 cm (Pushkin Museum, Moscow)

Yesterday in the rain I painted a large landscape, showing fields as far as one can see, looked at from a height, different kinds of green growth, a potato field of a sombre green, between the regular beds the rich violet earth, on one side a field of peas in white bloom, then a field of clover with pink flowers and the little figure of a mower, a field of long and ripe grass somewhat reddish in tone, then various kinds of wheat, poplars, on the horizon a last line of blue hills, along the foot of which a train is passing, leaving behind it an immense trail of white smoke over all the green vegetation. A white road crosses the canvas. On the road a little carriage, and white houses with harshly red roofs by the side of this road.

Vincent van Gogh to his mother, on the painting Landscape with Carriage and Train in the Background, Auvers-sur-Oise, 12 June 1890:




Vineyards with a View of Auvers: Vincent van Gogh,June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise,  oil on canvas, 64 x 80 cm (Art Museum, Saint Louis)



The Church at Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 94 x 74 cm (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)

V...Texture and Palette

van Gogh museum Amsterdam | by zutaten

Van Gogh texture (taken at Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam): photo by zutaten, 30 October 2013

painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot

Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009

painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot

Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009

painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot

Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009


Van Gogh: detail of brushstrokes
: photo by torpenhow3, 21 April 2011


Van Gogh's Wheat Field with Reape, detail (taken at Toledo Museum of Art): photo by Mario Q (aka MichSt), 9 February 2008
 
painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot

Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009

painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot

Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009

painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot

Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009

painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot

Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009

painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot

Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009

painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot

Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009



painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot

Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009

painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot

Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009

van Gogh museum Amsterdam | by zutaten

Van Gogh texture (taken at Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam): photo by zutaten, 30 October 2013

van Gogh museum Amsterdam | by zutaten

Van Gogh texture (taken at Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam): photo by zutaten, 30 October 2013

Netherlands-3963 - Van Gogh's Palette | by archer10 (Dennis) (50M Views)

Vincent van Gogh's palette, with tubes of paint. "The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting.": photo by Dennis Jarvis, 20 September 2013

VI..."...that immense plain with wheat fields up as far as the hills, boundless as the ocean..."


Landscape near Auvers: Wheatfields: Vincent van Gogh, July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise oil on canvas, 74 x 92 cm (Neue Pinakothek, Munich)



Young Peasant Woman with Straw Hat Sitting in the Wheat: Vincent van Gogh,June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 93 x 74 cm (Private collection)



Young Peasant Woman with Straw Hat Sitting in the Wheat: Vincent van Gogh,June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 93 x 74 cm (Private collection)



Two Women Crossing the Fields:
Vincent van Gogh,July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on paper on canvas, 30 x 60 cm (MacNay Art Museum, San Antonio)

Wheat Field with Auvers in the Background: Vincent van Gogh, Auxers-sur-Oise, summer 1890, oil on canvas, 44 × 51.5 cm (Collection of the Musées d'art et d'histoire, Geneva)
House at Auvers, by Vincent Van Gogh, 1890 | by Alaskan Dude

House at Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, summer 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas; photo by Frank Kovalchek, 28 October 2011 (The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.)


House at Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, summer 1890, oil on canvas, 48.6 × 62.9 cm (The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C)




Field with Wheat Stacks: Vincent van Gogh, July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise. oil on canvas, 50 x 100 cm (Private collection)


Wheat Fields: The Plain of Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 50 x 100 cm (Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna)


So -- having arrived back here, I have set to work again -- although the brush is almost falling from my fingers - and because I knew exactly what I wanted to do, I have painted three more large canvases. They are vast stretches of corn under troubled skies, and I did not have to go out of my way very much in order to try to express sadness and extreme loneliness. I hope you will be seeing them soon since I'd like to bring them to you in Paris as soon as possible. I'm fairly sure that these canvases will tell you what I cannot say in words, that is, how healthy and invigorating I find the countryside.

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, c. 10 July 1890



Wheat Field with Crows: Vincent van Gogh, July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 50.5 x 103 cm (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)

I myself am quite absorbed in that immense plain with wheat fields up as far as the hills, boundless as the ocean, delicate yellow, delicate soft green, the delicate purple of a tilled and weeded piece of ground, with the regular speckle of the green of flowering potato plants, everything under a sky of delicate tones of blue, white, pink and violet. I am in a mood of almost too much calm, just the mood needed for painting this.

--  Vincent van Gogh to his parents, Auvers-sur-Oise, c. 10-14 July 1890



Wheat Field under Clouded Sky: Vincent van Gogh, July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 50 x 101 cm (Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam)

Our dear friend Vincent died four days ago.

I think that you will have already guessed the fact that he killed himself.

On Sunday evening he went out into the countryside near Auvers, placed his easel against a haystack and went behind the chateau and fired a revolver shot at himself. Under the violence of the impact (the bullet entered his body below the heart) he fell, but he got up again, and fell three times more, before he got back to the inn where he was staying (Ravoux, place de la Mairie) without telling anyone about his injury. He finally died on Monday evening, still smoking his pipe which he refused to let go of, explaining that his suicide had been absolutely deliberate and that he had done it in complete lucidity. A typical detail that I was told about his wish to die was that when Dr. Gachet told him that he still hoped to save his life, he said, “Then I'll have to do it over again.” But, alas, it was no longer possible to save him….

On Wednesday 30 July, yesterday that is, I arrived in Auvers at about 10 o'clock. His brother, Theodore van ghohg [sic], was there together with Dr. Gachet. Also Tanguy (he had been there since 9 o'clock). Charles Laval accompanied me. The coffin was already closed, I arrived too late to see the man again who had left me four years ago so full of expectations of all kinds… The innkeeper told us all the details of the accident, the offensive visit of the gendarmes who even went up to his bedside to reproach him for an act for which he alone was responsible…etc…

On the walls of the room where his body was laid out all his last canvases were hung making a sort of halo for him and the brilliance of the genius that radiated from them made this death even more painful for us artists who were there. The coffin was covered with a simple white cloth and surrounded with masses of flowers, the sunflowers that he loved so much, yellow dahlias, yellow flowers everywhere. It was, you will remember, his favourite colour, the symbol of the light that he dreamed of as being in people's hearts as well as in works of art.

Near him also on the floor in front of his coffin were his easel, his folding stool and his brushes.

-- Emile Bernard to Albert Aurier, Paris, 2 August 1890



Landscape at Auvers in the Rain: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 48.3 x 99 cm (National Museum of Wales)

korenaren. Vincent van Gogh 1890-detail | by efraa

Ears of Wheat (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, Summer 1890, oil on canvas; image by marlie bouten, 29 June 2009 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)



The small attic room in Auvers-sur-Oise where Vincent van Gogh lived and died: photographer unknown, c. 1950s, via T. F. Simon: Vincent van Gogh and Auvers-sur-Oise

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

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A homeless man sleeps beside a wall covered with movie posters in Los Angeles [photo: Frederic J. Brown]: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 21 July 2015


The sun sets behind the minaret of a mosque in Ramallah on 16 July, marking the end of the last fasting day of Ramadan: photo by Nasser Nasser/AP,  16 July 2015

Holiday on the West Bank: House Raid

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Israeli army kills Palestinian man while trying to arrest his son #West Bank: image via Middle East Monitor @MiddleEastMnt, 23 July 2015

Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian inWest Bank: Palestinian doctor in Hebron identifies man who died in house raid, in which two others were injured, as Falah Abu Maria: Reuters in Ramallah, Thursday 23 July 2015

Israeli soldiers have killed a Palestinian and wounded two others during a raid on a house in the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian medical officials.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said soldiers were attacked while trying to arrest a suspect in the village of Beit Ummar and opened fire on the main attacker.

As the forces left the scene, the spokeswoman said, they were attacked once more, with rocks and bricks, and “responded to the assaults with fire towards the main instigator”.

A Palestinian doctor in a Hebron hospital said a 52-year-old man had been shot and killed and two of his sons were injured. The doctor identified the man as Falah Abu Maria.

Yusuf Abu Maria, an anti-Israeli settlement activist in the town, said there had not been any clashes and that the shooting had taken place inside a house.

On Wednesday, a Palestinian was killed in a separate arrest raid when clashes erupted with residents.

Israeli troops enter Palestinian-controlled territory frequently to detain people suspected of militant activity. Palestinians condemn this practice as an encroachment on the limited self-rule they hold in parts of the West Bank.



23 JulyDozens of Palestinians in the #WestBank  city of al-#khalll participate in the funeral of martyr Falah Abu Maria, 52: image via Al Qassam Brigades @qassamsms, 23 July 2015

Israeli forces kill Palestinian Falah Hamdi Abu Maria in the town of Beit Ummar in the West Bank while trying to arrest his son: Middle East Monitor, 23 July 2015

The Israeli army on Thursday killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank while trying to arrest his son.

Witnesses told Anadolu Agency that Israeli forces killed Falah Hamdi Abu Maria in the town of Beit Ummar.

Medical reports said he was shot in the chest.

"Dozens of Palestinians have begun arriving at Abu Maria's house, amid anger in the town," witnesses added.

On Wednesday, Israeli military forces killed a young Palestinian man in the northern West Bank.

More than 20 Palestinians have been killed and another 2,156 have been detained by the Israeli military in 2015, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said in a report issued earlier this month.


23 JulyDozens of Palestinians in the #WestBank  city of al-#khalll participate in the funeral of martyr Falah Abu Maria, 52: image via Al Qassam Brigades @qassamsms, 23 July 2015
 

23 JulyDozens of Palestinians in the #WestBank  city of al-#khalll participate in the funeral of martyr Falah Abu Maria, 52: image via Al Qassam Brigades @qassamsms, 23 July 2015

Holiday in Gaza

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A Palestinian man takes a picture of his daughter at sunset at the sea port in Gaza City [photo: Mohamed Abed]:  image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 22 July 2015 
 
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 A man hangs ears of corn out to dry before selling them on the beach in #Gaza. Photo by #MohammedAbed #AFPphoto: image via Catherine Weibel @Catherine Weibel, 18 May 2015



 #Gaza City - Palestinians in rubble of buildings destroyed during the 50-day war. By Mohammed Abed #AFP: image by AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 22 July 2015


 #Gaza City - Palestinians in rubble of buildings destroyed during the 50-day war. By Mohammed Abed #AFP: image by AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 22 July 2015


 #Gaza City - Palestinians in rubble of buildings destroyed during the 50-day war. By Mohammed Abed #AFP: image by AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 22 July 2015
 
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A Palestinian street vendor carries balloons on a street in #Gaza City. #MohammedAbed #AFPphoto: image via UNICEFpalestine @UNICEFpalestine, 18 May 2015

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Palestinian children pose for picture on a makeshift boat at the port of #Gaza City. #MohammedAbed #AFPphoto: image via UNICEFpalestine @UNICEFpalestine, 20 May 2015

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 Un petit garçon regarde une lampe de #Ramadan sur un marché de #Gaza City. Photo by #MohammedAbed #AFPphoto RamadanKarim!: image via Catherine Weibel @Catherine Weibel, 18 June 2015

Holiday on the West Bank: Don't Level My Village
 
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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

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    More than 900 Israeli settlement housing units approved #West Bank: image via Middle East Monitor @MiddleEastMnt, 23 July 2015



[Middle East Monitor:] 651k Israeli settlers live in 185 illegal settlements and 220 unauthorised locations in #WestBank and Jerusalem at the start of 2015: image via Palestine @ops_pal, 18 July 2015
 
US, EU take strong stand against Israeli demolition plan: Akiva Eldar, Al-Monitor Israel Pulse, 20 July 2015
 
The timing of the announcement by US State Department spokesman John Kirby regarding the Barack Obama administration’s position on the small Palestinian village of Susiya was no less important than its content. Kirby made the statement July 16, as the administration was going out of its way to douse the flames in US-Israeli relations following the signing of the nuclear agreement with Iran.

While world opinion speculated about the effect of the Iran agreement on US-Israeli relations, Kirby arrived for his briefing armed with a stern declaration about the potentially far-reaching implications of the planned demolitions in Susiya in the Judean Mountains south of Hebron.

Kirby made clear that the consequences of Israel's harassment of Susiya residents would extend beyond the demolitions’ impact on the villagers and their families. He noted that the planned expulsions and land appropriations in Susiya were particularly glaring given the settlement activity in that same region. Several hours beforehand, Dorothy Shea, acting US consul general in Jerusalem, had used similar language. She, too, urged Israeli authorities to abstain from demolishing the homes in the village. These sharp public pronouncements thus turned the Susiya affair into the first test of Israeli foreign relations in the post-Iran nuclear crisis era.

According to information acquired by human rights organizations in Israel and the territories, the Israeli civil administration did not wait until the end of the month of Ramadan to hand out demolition orders for 37 structures. It intends to carry out the orders before Aug. 3, the date set for the Supreme Court to hear an appeal submitted by the Palestinians and these organizations.

European capitals are also eyeing with concern the bulldozers parked outside the tiny village, whose residents have the dubious distinction of living in a region of the West Bank known as Area C. The Oslo Accord divided the West Bank into three zones -- A, B and C -- with Area C under complete Israeli control.



A Palestinian man, Jihad Nuwaja, stands next to a tent in Susiya village, south of the West Bank city of Hebron: photo by Mussa Qawasma/Reuters, 20 June 2015

On June 29, the European Union’s ambassador to Israel, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, said the EU’s humanitarian affairs agency had reported that every month, Israel destroys five to seven projects that the union funds in Area C. “We’re talking about European taxpayer money,” the envoy said at a conference on Susiya held by the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. The ambassador stressed that European aid does not free Israel of its responsibility under international humanitarian law to ensure a reasonable quality of life for the Palestinian population under its control. He noted that Area C constitutes some 60% of the West Bank and, therefore, is a key to the establishment of a future Palestinian state.

According to EU data, said Faaborg-Andersen, recent years have brought an increase in the number of demolitions in the region (in addition to extensive demolitions in Bedouin villages in Israel). He explained that this stems from the minute number of building permits Israel grants the residents of Palestinian villages throughout Area C.
“If people knew where they could build,” Faaborg-Andersen said, “it would prevent construction without permits and demolition orders.” He added that Yoav “Poli” Mordechai, coordinator of government activities in the territories, shares the view that the appropriate way to overcome the problem is to prepare an Israeli-Palestinian master plan that would enable the Palestinians to build in a legal and orderly manner.

“Unfortunately,” Faaborg-Andersen remarked, “the master plan process has been taken hostage by other events that have been going on between Israel and the Palestinians,” such as complaints against Israel lodged by the Palestinian leadership with international organizations. Like the American speakers, Faaborg-Andersen did not forget to mention that even as Palestinian homes are being destroyed, the settlements are taking over more and more land for construction and security needs.

One can assume that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not keen to see footage of bulldozers destroying the homes of indigent Palestinians on television screens worldwide, bumping reports on the condition of human rights in Iran. Even if the prime minister could be persuaded that he should seek a way out of this affair, he could expect a fair number of obstacles along the way.



A Palestinian woman holds a Palestinian flag in the West Bank village of Susiya: photo by Baz Ratner/Reuters, 24 June 2012

On the one hand, the international community is pressing him to stop the bulldozers. On the other, Netanyahu is being held hostage by the settlers and their representatives in the leadership of the Likud and HaBayit HaYehudi parties. They will not leave him alone until he wipes out the village stuck in the craw of the settlers of the south Hebron Hills. Yisrael Beitenu, the right-wing opposition party led by former Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, would have a field day were Netanyahu to surrender to the left.

This equation is missing an important element -- the Israeli left-wing opposition. The Zionist Camp has once again left the Meretz Party to face the right alone. The silence of the main opposition party on the Susiya affair can be added to the absence of its members from the vote on force feeding hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners held on security-related offenses, its vote in favor of the nationality bill that tears apart Palestinian families, its support for thwarting peace activists’ Marianne flotilla to Gaza and its competition with Netanyahu to slam the Iran agreement.

This time as well, Meretz was the sole Zionist party to rush to the defense of the downtrodden. This time, too, a handful of Israeli peace activists -- led by members of the organizations Ta’ayush (Living Together, in Arabic), B’Tselem and Rabbis for Human Rights -- are standing by the weakest group among the occupied Palestinian population. A chosen few among them, like professor David Shulman, serve as voices delivering the shepherds’ and farmers’ messages to air-conditioned administrative offices in Washington and at European Union headquarters in Brussels.

In his book Dark Hope: Journal of a Ta'ayush Activist, Shulman, a member of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and recipient of the prestigious Emet Prize, writes about how he and his friends collected poison pellets that the settlers had scattered to kill the Palestinian residents’ goats and sheep, planted olive trees to replace the ones uprooted by settlers, helped a farmer cross the few yards to his well and provided blankets for uprooted Palestinian cave dwellers.

“Two relentless national movements are engaged in a conflict, street to street, house to house,” Shulman wrote. “One side is infinitely stronger than the other, but not more magnanimous. It abuses its power over and over -- the tremendous machine of a state and army and judiciary -- in order to disown, threaten, expropriate, control, destroy.”

The well-oiled mechanism of the major powers proved in reaching an agreement with Iran in Vienna on July 14 that it can use its power to achieve compromise, to bridge, to rehabilitate and to build. Now this mechanism is free to focus on dismantling the ticking time bomb on the heights of the Hebron Hills.



[Middle East Monitor:] 651k Israeli settlers live in 185 illegal settlements and 220 unauthorised locations in #WestBank and Jerusalem at the start of 2015: image via Palestine @ops_pal, 18 July 2015

West Bank villagers deliver final plea to save homes from destruction: Shlomi Eldar, Al-Monitor Israel Pulse, 20 July 2015

On July 12, the residents of the Palestinian village of Khirbet Susiya, located in the Mount Hebron area of the West Bank, had a meeting with Gen. Yoav (“Polly”) Mordechai, the commander of the Israeli military's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories unit. It was only then that they discovered that at the beginning of August, the Civil Administration, which administers civilian activity in the West Bank on behalf of the Israeli government, plans to demolish half of the structures in the village.

If this happens, the curtain will fall on the legal battle they have been waging against the state for more than 20 years, ever since they were expelled from the caves where they had previously lived and which were designated a national park. After their expulsion, they set up several temporary structures on farmland they cultivated while they were living in the caves. According to the state, these structures are illegal. Israel plans to relocate the residents of Khirbet Susiya to Area A in the environs of the village of Yatta. Khirbet Susiya is located in Area C. Under the 1993 Oslo Accord, Area C is under full Israeli control, while Area A is under full Palestinian civil and security control.

Some 350 people currently live in Khirbet Susiya, half of whom are under 18. Located nearby is the Jewish settlement of Susiya that was established in 1983. Some of the residents of the Palestinian village who used to live there had given up because of the harsh conditions and unending legal battles. Instead, they moved to the area controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

“One day, in 1986, we were notified that we had to leave our village and go somewhere else. We were never given the opportunity to protest and no alternative location was offered. I was a child back then and I remember the trauma,” Salah Nawajeh, a resident of Khirbet Susiya, told Al-Monitor. “We were given a couple of days. Then the military showed up, put up fences and we were barred from going in. This was our land, our life, our homes. We were told that that was an archaeological site and that from that moment on it would be run by the settlers. But we came [to the cave village] because we were banished from our first natural territory.”

Salah’s father, Muhammad Nawajeh, told Al-Monitor, “We used to live in the area of Tel Arad [in the eastern part of the Negev Desert]. We had been there all our lives, since the times of the Ottomans and the British. We stayed there even after [Israel’s 1948 War of Independence]. In 1952 we were banished for the first time and then we built our village in Susiya. We dug caves and water wells. In 1986 we were expelled from there, too. Now we are being banished for the third time. I’m already 70. I’m old and tired. I was born before Israel was founded on this land, and this is where I want to die. All I can remember from the Jews is banishments.”

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    Don’t destroy #WestBank village: EU to Israel: image via Press TV @PressTV, 21 July 2015


The residents of Khirbet Susiya claim that for years their requests for construction permits were denied. Two years ago, they submitted to the Civil Administration a zoning blueprint they had prepared with the hope that the living structures they had built would be legalized. However, the Civil Administration rejected the plan, arguing that it did not meet the basic standards of living. With the help of the organization Rabbis for Human Rights, the residents filed an appeal with the Supreme Court against the rejection of the blueprint. Concurrently, they requested that the demolition orders be stayed pending the court hearing. In May of this year, Justice Noam Solberg turned down their petition. In the wake of the ruling, the residents have been looking for a new avenue for their struggle: international pressure.

In fact, already in 1986, in a bid to dissuade Israel from uprooting them from their land, the residents of Khirbet Susiya turned to the US ambassador to Israel, Thomas Pickering, asking that he intervene on their behalf. Pickering, they say, pledged to assist them, but two weeks later the area where they had been living was fenced off with barbwire. Now they have approached the US Embassy once again, asking that it pressure Israel not to demolish the village. It appears that their efforts have not been unsuccessful.

“An assistant and an attache from the embassy came to see us,” Salah said. “We explained to them about our legal battles against the State of Israel for the past 20 years and how everything works here in Susiya, with pressure brought to bear by the settlers. I told [the Americans] that in 1986 the ambassador promised that we would not be banished, but he didn’t keep his word. That’s why I asked that they not let us down again. Our fate, our lives are in their hands. If the Americans don’t exert pressure on the Israeli government, we, the residents of the village who have been living here for centuries, will be expelled again. This will be a blot on everyone’s reputation for generations to come.”

Recently, the Civil Administration has started promoting the demolition of the structures, submitting to representatives of the residents a list of the structures slated for demolition. As noted, the residents of Khirbet Susiya claim that the Civil Administration is being pressured by the settlers  and that they heard things in this vein during their meeting with the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. In response to this allegation, the Civil Administration says that Mordechai, on his own initiative, invited representatives from the village and their attorneys to find alternative solutions in keeping with planning considerations.

Presently, the residents of Khirbet Susiya refuse to accept the proposed solutions, claiming that the land has been theirs for many generations.

“We turned to whoever we could,” Salah said. ‘We used the Americans and the Europeans and even the Palestinian Authority. If the houses are demolished, we will turn to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. If Israel talks about coexistence and peace, it’s time to show it and not act because of pressure from the settlers. They have brought calamity on us ever since they arrived here and took over our lands. It was only a week ago that they uprooted four old olive trees, and they keep stopping us from working our land. That’s the reality of things and this is what we’re fighting against.”



[Middle East Monitor:] 651k Israeli settlers live in 185 illegal settlements and 220 unauthorised locations in #WestBank and Jerusalem at the start of 2015: image via Palestine @ops_pal, 18 July 2015

Israel, Don't Level My Village; Nasser Nawaja in Susiya, West Bank for New York Times, 23 July 2015
 
In 1948, as Israeli forces closed in on his village of Qaryatayn, my grandfather carried my father in his arms to Susiya, about five miles north, in the South Hebron Hills area.
“We will go back home soon,” my grandfather told my father.

They did not. Qaryatayn was destroyed, along with about 40 other Palestinian villages that were razed between 1948 and the mid-1950s. My family rebuilt their lives in Susiya, across the 1949 armistice line in the West Bank.

In 1986, my family was expelled from our home once again -- not because of war, but because the occupying Israeli authorities decided to create an archaeological and tourist site around the remains of an ancient synagogue in Susiya. (A structure next to the abandoned temple was used as a mosque from about the 10th century.) This time, it was my father who took me in his arms as the soldiers drew near.

“We will return soon,” he said.

We did not. Without compensation, we were forced to rebuild Susiya nearby on what was left of our agricultural lands.



A Palestinian child runs in the village of Susiya on the West Bank: photo by Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times 23 July 2015

If, in the coming weeks, the Israeli government carries outdemolition orders served on some 340 residents of Susiya, I will be forced to take my children in my arms as our home is destroyed and the village razed once again. I do not know if I will have the heart to tell them that we will soon go home; history has taught me that it may be a very long time until we are able to return.

In 2012, the Civil Administration branch of Israel's Defense Ministry issued demolition orders against more than 50 structures in Susiya, including living quarters, a clinic, shop and solar panels. The reason given in these orders was that our village was built without permits from the Israeli military authorities.

The new Susiya was built on Palestinian villagers’ private agricultural land, but that is no safeguard. In practice, it is virtually impossible for a Palestinian living in what is known as Area C -- the 60 percent of the West Bank under both civil and security control of the Israeli military -- to receive a building permit. According to Bimkom, an Israeli nonprofit focused on planning rights, more than 98 percent of Palestinian requests for building permits in Area C from 2010 to 2014 were rejected.

The threat has now become immediate. Following the initial distribution of demolition orders, there was a political and legal campaign spearheaded by the residents of Susiya that had support from Palestinian, Israeli and international activists and rights groups. The village was not demolished, our case returned to the courts and the pressure let up.

But this past May, a few months after the re-election of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Supreme Court justice Noam Sohlberg, who himself lives in an Israeli settlement that is considered illegal under international law, caved in to pressure from right-wing and settler organizations and ruled in the High Court that the Israeli military could go ahead with demolitions in the village -- despite the fact that the higher-ranking Supreme Court had scheduled a hearing for our case on Aug. 3.



[Middle East Monitor:] 651k Israeli settlers live in 185 illegal settlements and 220 unauthorised locations in #WestBank and Jerusalem at the start of 2015: image via Palestine @ops_pal, 18 July 2015

Earlier this month, I learned from lawyers working against the demolition of Susiya that representatives of the Israeli military had stated their intent to demolish parts of our village before the Aug. 3 hearing. Since the May ruling, we in Susiya have been grateful for an outpouring of support and solidarity. Last week, the State Department’s spokesman, John Kirby, made a strong statement on the issue.

“We’re closely following developments in the village of Susiya, in the West Bank,” he said, “and we strongly urge the Israeli authorities to refrain from carrying out any demolitions in the village. Demolition of this Palestinian village or parts of it, and evictions of Palestinians from their homes, would be harmful and provocative.”

That was a step in the right direction, but we need more than mere declarations now. If the Israeli government demolishes all or part of Susiya once again, it will be for no other reason than that we are Palestinians who refused to leave, despite immense pressure and great hardships of daily life under occupation.

The situation in Susiya is only one of many such situations in Area C of the West Bank. Several villages near ours have pending demolition orders as well. If Susiya is destroyed and its residents expelled, it will serve as a precedent for further demolitions and expulsions through the South Hebron Hills and Area C of the West Bank. This must not be allowed to happen.

This story is not a story of Jews against Muslims, or even a story of Israelis against Palestinians. We’re grateful for the many messages of support our village has received from Jewish communities around the world, and the groups and activists working by our side include many Israelis. This is simply a story of justice and equality against dispossession and oppression.

Nasser Nawaja is a community organizer and a field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.

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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

  • Village of Khirbet Susiya, faced with demolition: photo via btselem. org, 1 June 2015



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  • Residents of village og Khirbet Susiya, threatened with Israeli demolition: photo via btselem. org, 1 June 2015


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  •  I want this to be a picture of dignity: a true canvas of the suffering of humanity. #MohammedAbed #Gaza: image via Jean Stürgoen @asicjk, 18 November 2013
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  • A Palestinian girl plays outside a tent in the southern West Bank village of Susya on Wednesday. Israel's High Court ruled in May that Susya's 340 residents could be relocated and its structures demolished

    A Palestinian girl plays outside a tent in the southern West Bank village of Susya on Wednesday. Israel’s High Court ruled in May that Susya’s 340 residents could be relocated and its structures demolished: photo by Hazem Bader/AFP, 22 July 2015
     

Negativland: No Other Possibility ("...dying is easy, comedy is hard")

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RIP radio master Don Joyce #negativland #KPFA @kpfa: image via Derk Richardson @Derk Richardson, 23 July 2015


DON: Well, dying is easy, comedy is hard. That 19th Century actor's death bed confession could hardly have suspected that making fun is not only hard, but that someday there would be nothing left to make fun of! I think a longer view will show that there is plenty left to make fun of now, even if there is nothing "new" to make fun of. Let's start with ultra serious religionism before it kills us...

-- from interview with Don Joyce and other members of Negativland in Wired, October 2008


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RIP Don Joyce of Negativland (1944-2015) father of "culture jamming" #donjoyce #negativland: image via Kutmusic @Kutmusic, 23 July 2015

Don Joyce (February 9, 1944-July 22, 2015)

Words cannot do justice to the loss of Donald S. Joyce, Crosley Bendix, C. Eliot Friday, Omer Edge, Izzy Isn’t, Bud Choke, Leland Googleburger, Wang Tool and Dr. Oslo Norway, who all died yesterday in Oakland, CA of heart failure at age 71. Perhaps a loud, mournful squawk from Don's “Booper” feedback oscillator would better sum up the feelings of Negativland, his comrades and partners in art for 34 years, who are devastated. It was Don who coined the term “culture jamming”, and who devoted his life to the art of sound collage and his weekly live radio program, "Over the Edge", on KPFA FM in Berkeley, where it has continuously lived on the dial on Thursday nights at midnight since 1981, without interruption.

Don was a DJ at the station when a mutual friend, Ian Allen (who died this past January) introduced him to a group of Contra Costa County noise/music artists called Negativland, who entered the station one night, armed with stacks of recordings and electronic gear, and immediately transformed Don’s “normal music show” into a free-form collage sound odyssey, totally blowing open Don’s idea of what a radio program could be and what a DJ could “do”. And in Don Joyce (whose initials were conveniently also “DJ”), Negativland had found its “lead vocalist” without even realizing they were looking for one. It was Don who took the idea of reshaping previously recorded words -– in a pre-sampling age –- and ran with it to an extent and depth never before heard, and never equalled. “Recontextualization” became his weapon, with the 1/4” tape machine and razor blade his ammunition, and the radio “cart player"–- an entirely forgotten piece of broadcast history using endless-loop tape cartridges, which he used until his death - – his delivery system.

When he and Negativland discovered their mutual love for “found” sounds, an intensely collaborative creative partnership was cemented. It continued non-stop for the ensuing decades, with Don endlessly scanning the airwaves of radio and television, along with his massive LP collection, for new material, day by day, week by week. There was often a TV and a radio on in his room simultaneously, cassette recorders always at the ready. And as an extremely shy and often quite reclusive person, radio was a perfect medium for Don. He could reach thousands of people each week without having to deal with very many actual humans, just as he preferred it. Creating art was not only Don’s full-time pursuit, it was literally his life’s work. He had made it clear to the group as recently as a few weeks ago that he was happy and satisfied with what he had been able to achieve in his life, and were he not able to continue to work, his life would feel as good as over.

Don Joyce’s singular editing style was laced with profundity and silliness in equal measure. His work was that of a dada humanist, able to wring unforgettable sentiments and statements out of material which originally spoke something entirely different. Hugely inspired by both the droll radio of Bob and Ray and the reckless free-form of the Firesign Theatre, he created a wicked language of repurposed purple prose which has inspired legions of other collage artists over the past three decades. He was the father of the form. One need only to listen to his work on “Time Zones” (on the Escape from Noise album) or “Piece of Pie” (in the No Business CD/book) to immediately tune into his unique wavelength.

He was also an animal lover, a Bob Dylan fanatic, a staunch atheist, a convicted (but never jailed) draft dodger, and slept with the radio on. Cranky, curmudgeonly, loyal and fair, brilliant, hilarious and uncompromising, he was steadfastly devoted to the creation of his art, full-time, for more than three decades. He leaves behind not only his massive recorded legacy via "Over the Edge", but his work on nearly 30 Negativland albums, two books, three DVDs, and his giant, meticulous paper collages.

There was Negativland before Don Joyce (though not by much), and there will be Negativland after (indeed, Don stopped touring with the group in 2010), and he made it clear that he wished for the group to continue on in some fashion if he was the next member to go. At the very least, there are two nearly-completed albums in the works and possible live shows, and, in late 2015, all 34 years of “Over the Edge” (5000-plus hours' worth) will be available until the end of time on the Internet Archive, the result of a multi-year archiving project. But there will never be another Don Joyce.

Don Joyce was born in Keene, New Hampshire, where he spent his childhood obsessed with drawing, leading to him getting a masters degree in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. By the late 1960s, he had relocated to Northern California (with a brief stint living in Toronto during Vietnam) where he lived, in Oakland, until his death. He is survived by his sister, his brother, a spider plant which thrived on a window sill through decades of choking cigarette smoke, and his Negativland family.

Don Joyce obit via Negativland, 23 July 2015


Negativland live!  Doing a faux radio show about atheism! | by skyfaller

Negativland live! Doing a faux radio show about atheism!: photo by Nelson Pavlosky, 5 August 2007

Negativland | by fo.ol

Negativland. Taken at 12.50 AM -- cameraphone upload by ShoZu: photo by fo.ol, 28 November 2007

It's All in Your Head FM | by Rádio Zero

It's All In Your Head FM. Negativland no Auditório de Serralves, 18 de Maio de 2008: photo by Rádio Zero, 18 May 2008

Negativland - A Big 10-8 Place | by kevin dooley

Negativland -- A Big 10-8 Place: image by Kevin Dooley, 31 May 2009

Ian Allen

Ian Allen: photo courtesy of Peter Montgomery/Sharon Jue via Rolling Stone
 
Ian Allen (December 15, 1958-January 17, 2015)

Past Negativland member, and long time friend of the group, Ian Allen, died on January 17, 2015 from unexpected complications and infections following heart valve replacement surgery at Stanford Hospital in California. We are extremely shocked and saddened by this news. He was with dear friends of his at the time of his death, and is survived by his brother, Pyke Allen.

Ian was very active with Negativland from 1981 to about 1987, and his impact, inspiration, and influence on the group is impossible to overestimate. There would be no group as we know it today, no Over The Edge radio show, no "culture jamming" and no "A Big 10-8 Place" LP without him.

Ian struggled with various serious health issues his entire adult life, and while they lead to his gradual withdrawal from active participation with the group by the late 80s, he remained a good friend and supporter, attending all of our live shows whenever we performed in the SF Bay Area. With Ian's blessings we were thrilled to recently revive and rework an early 80's unfinished tape loop based work of his called "Like Cattle Act," and made it a part of our current live set. He was part of creating Negativland's "points" LP in 1981, introducing to the rest of us, on the track BABAC D'BABC, the idea of using tape splicing not just as a way to make loops and connect tracks, but as a compositional tool unto itself. This revelation led to the exploration of this technique full-on in 1983's "A Big 10-8 Place," and he played a major role in the creation of that record and its unique packaging. He was instrumental in helping to create and articulate the group's idea of "culture jamming," and pushed the group into making "A Big 10-8 Place" our first ever concept LP. From then on that was the standard for us, and nearly every single Negativland release, up to and including our current one, "It's All In Your Head," has been a concept project. He came up with the idea of making four-channel tape loops (as we couldn't afford early expensive samplers back then) and this became a technique that was used extensively on 1987's "Escape From Noise." Ian was obsessed with the number 17, which is why it appears in various ways on so many Negativland projects and texts in the 80's and 90's (please note the day he died!). In the summer of 1981 he introduced the current group members to radio DJ (and now long time Negativland member) Don Joyce, and thus our weekly audio collage radio show Over The Edge was born, still broadcasting to this day.

For those who knew him, he was a visionary, magical, impish, playful and eccentric thinker, a true genius who was light years ahead of all of us with his ideas about art, sound, society, and technology. He will be dearly missed.

Ian Allen obit via Negativland, 21 January 2015

Cover Photo

Recently deceased Negativland founding members Ian Allen (d. December 2014) and Don Joyce (d. July 2015), early to mid 80s...: photo courtesy of Negativland 

Negativland - A Big 10-8 Place | by kevin dooley

Negativland -- A Big 10-8 Place: image by Kevin Dooley, 31 May 2009


Free High Speed Internet (Vallejo, California): photo by efo, 21 January 2014

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Sad news,  #don joyce of #negativland has passed. Give "Escape from Noise" a spin: image via murraybradmurray @mrrybrdmrry, 23 July 2015

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Rain (Albany, California): photo by efo, 8 June 2013

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@jobsworth #London in the 1929s: #Telephone #Engineer /v @oldpicsarchive: image via Alexander Ainslie @AAinslie, 8 January 2015

"Everything is sighing" (Joseph Ceravolo: Come Clean)

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Young men clean second-hand shoes to sell them on a market in Bujumbura on July 24, 2015. Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza is set to win a controversial third term in office, but analysts say his victory will be hollow, with the country divided, isolated and facing aid cuts

Young men clean second-hand shoes to sell them in a market in Bujumbura on Friday. Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza is set to win a controversial third term in office: photo by Phil Moore/AFP, 24 July 2014


Everything upsets me,
sick people suffering,
friends leaving, friends parting.
Even having to tell you this,
having to admit that
I am burning out like the edges
of lava. But I think it is related
to you as I try to understand,
because I am not brilliant
like a nuclear formula.
But I think it is related to you
and only music seems to breathe,
only insects seem to speak.
I do not want to be a fool
who struggles within my own breast forever.

Now the sun is coming out
and the sting within my breast crawling away,
troubled, spiked with insanity

Everything is sighing, even
the trees without the wind that you possess.

...............................August 1, 1986

Joseph Ceravolo (1934-1988): Come Clean, 1 August 1986, from Collected Poems, 2013

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Men carry tables on their heads through the streets of Bujumbura @AFPphoto @fil
: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 24 July 2015


Palestinian protesters from the village of Beit Ummar near Hebron, West Bank, clash with Israeli soldiers in the village on 23 July 2015. Following the funeral of Falah Abu Maria, 53, who was shot dead by  Israeli soldiers during a raid on his home early 23 July 2015 to arrest his son, in the southern West Bank town of Beit Ummar. The man's two sons, both in their 20s, were injured in the raid

Palestinian protesters from the village of Beit Ummar near Hebron, West Bank, clash with Israeli soldiers in the village on Thursday: photo by Abed Al Hashlamoni/EPA, 23 July 2015

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Funeral of 22-year-old Mohammed Alawneh on July 22 in the West Bank village of Birqin. @AFP Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh @fil: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 22 July 201

A man uses a cane as he walks past a store in the Poto Poto popular district, of the Congolese capital Brazzaville
 
A man uses a cane as he walks past a store in the Poto Poto popular district of the Congolese capital Brazzaville: photo by Frederico Scoppa/AFP, 23 July 2015

Josephine Miles: Saving the Bay

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L1009027 | by Film&PhotoArchivist
 
[Looking westward from Berkeley hills, early evening]: photo by Film&PhotoArchivist, 19 May 2015

Apart from branches in courtyards and small stones,
The countryside is beyond me.
I can go along University Avenue from Rochester to Sobrante
And then the Avenue continues to the Bay. 
 
Often I think of the dry scope of foothill country,
Moraga Hill, Andreas, Indian country, where I was born
And where in the scrub the air tells me
How to be born again.
 
Often I think of the long rollers
Breaking along the beaches
All the way down the coast to the border
On bookish cressets and culverts blue and Mediterranean.
 
There I break
In drops of spray as fine as letters
Blown high, never to be answered,
But waking am the shore they break upon.
 
Both the dry talkers, those old Indians,
And the dry trollers, those old pirates,
Say something, but it's mostly louder talking,
Gavel rapping, and procedural dismays.
 
Still here we are, and where we roll and call,
The long rollers of the sea come in
As if they lived here. The dry Santa Ana
Sweeps up the town and takes it for a feast.
 
Then Rochester to El Sobrante is a distance
No longer than my name.


Josephine Miles (1911-1985): "Apart from branches in courtyards...", from Saving the Bay, 1967, in Collected Poems 1930-83 (1983)

Bay Side Ocean View | by davehebb

Bay Side Ocean View (Berkeley). 35 mm plastic toy camera from dog food. Expired Tri-X from the 1980s.: photo by Dave Hebb, 12 July 2015
 
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7a/Berkeleynight.jpg/1024px-Berkeleynight.jpg

University Avenue, Berkeley, at night: photo by Whyzee, February 2008
 
photo

StrawberryCreek I: photo by Sean Goebel (geekyrocketguy), 3 February 2010


StrawberryCreek III: photo by Sean Goebel (geekyrocketguy), 3 February 2010

File:StrawberryCreek12.JPG

StrawberryCreek coming out of the culvert from UC Berkeley: photo by Coro, 13 January 2009photo by Coro, 2009

File:StrawberryCreek6.JPG
 
StrawberryCreek as it drops to a lower level, just east of Sather Gate Bridge at UC Berkeley: photo by Coro, 13 January 2009
 

StrawberryCreek: postcard, c 1906, photographer unknown for E.P. Charlton and Company, San Francisco (via East Bay Creeks)

Oak trees | by nickton

Oak trees, El Sobrante Ridge Regional Preserve: photo by nick fullerton, 15 October 2010

Manzanita trunk | by nickton

Manzanita trunk, El Sobrante Ridge Regional Preserve: photo by nick fullerton, 15 October 2010

Pallid Manzanita | by nickton

Pallid Manzanita trunk, El Sobrante Ridge Regional Preserve: photo by nick fullerton, 16 February 2010

Path with Manzanitas | by nickton

Path with Manzanitas, El Sobrante Ridge Regional Preserve: photo by nick fullerton, 16 February 2010
 
IMG_6566 | by Paul Excoff

Oak, El Sobrante, California: photo by Paul Excoff, 19 February 2009

Varied Thrush | by Becky Matsubara

Varied Thrush, El Sobrante, California: photo by Becky Matsubara, 28 February 2015

Wildcat Canyon Hike Panorama | by jdnx

Wildcat Canyon hike panorama. Taken from Wildcat Canyon, facing east at the center, San Pablo Bay is on the left, San Francisco Bay on the right: photo by Daniel Ramirez, 7 February 2009

DSC_0138 | by nickton

 El Sobrante Ridge Regional Preserve: photo by nick fullerton, 13 April 2012

TreasureIsland.01925 | by Film&PhotoArchivist

Treasure Island. Bay Bridges.: photo by Film&PhotoArchivist, 13 July 2014

TreasureIsland.01933 | by Film&PhotoArchivist

Treasure Island. Angel Island: Camp Reynolds Barracks. If we had been around here 50-100 years ago we'd have also seen a row [of] enlisted [men's] barracks on the right, but those were demolished many years ago.: photo by Film&PhotoArchivist, 13 July 2014

Underground

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The Day in Photos – July 21, 2015

A homeless person sleeps back dropped by wallpaper of New York city on the windows of a casino near the main railway station during a police raid in Bucharest, Romania. Police in Romania have searched the capital's sewers in an anti-drug raid and detained dozens of people, mostly homeless, including the suspected ringleader, for questioning on suspicion of trafficking: photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP, 21 July 2015
 
BUCHAREST, Romania, 21 July 2015 (Associated Press)— Police in Romania have searched the capital’s sewers in an anti-drug raid and detained dozens of people for questioning on suspicion of trafficking.

Anti-narcotics officers and prosecutors who investigate organized crime went down into the sewers, where some of the alleged drug traffickers live, and also conducted searches in several nearby buildings on Tuesday.

Prosecutors said in a statement that the probe is centered on breaking up a drug trafficking ring with 23 known members, who were selling methadone, heroin and other drugs. Dozens were detained for questioning, including the 41-year-old suspected ringleader.

Media reported that police found paintings, televisions, drugs and money in the sewers, but prosecutors couldn’t immediately confirm that.

Hundreds of people are believed to live in the sewers.




Florin Hora, known as Bruce Lee, a leader of the homeless people inhabiting the sewers and suspected ringleader of a drug trafficking network, watches special police officers as he sits handcuffed near the main railway station during a police raid in Bucharest, Romania.. Police in Romania have searched the capital’s sewers in an anti-drug raid and detained dozens of people, mostly homeless, including the suspected ringleader, for questioning on suspicion of trafficking: photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP, 21 July 2015

Bruce Lee, un.king of the underground

King of the Park at Gara de Nord | by JoB Colours and More

This man told me that he is the King of the homeless at the park near the main train station in bucharest. He showed me the entrance to the sewer tunnels, where they can sleep during winter: photo by Joe, 15 July 2011
 
heroinomanie. | by alainboucheret

heroinmanie (bucharest). met the underground world of bucareste there several years every time I went to the Roma people see I passed and I realized a little about this .parias addicts community. They began to seek refuge in the sewers, there are nearly two decades after the fall of communism. Now this strange and literally underground community has joined together to become a famille. Des hundred people live in the tunnels of the sewers of Bucharest network not just adults, but children have nowhere to go but here they food and water and chaleur. ils almost all HIV and tuberculosis. it can be dangerous. To be admitted inside their world, there is a leader, an elusive and mysterious man known as Bruce Lee.un king by those who live underground. He also wears medals full heals the corp has a large pack of dogs with him .: photo by Alain, 24 April 2015

Hidden Bucharest | by Sentamashi

 Hidden Bucharest: photo by Sen Kadokura, 3 April 2015

goin' Underground... | by god.universe

Goin' Underground. Bucharest, Romania.
: photo by Sven Beck, 31 August 2006


disco sewer | by i like it! what is it?

disco sewer. i took this in bucharest. i really don't like that city. I think the way the casino lights were reflected in the puddle at top of the sewer cover was pretty funny. it really shows my feelings about the way things are there.: photo by Dacian Groza, 27 September 2006
 
heaven is in a bucharest sewer | by dtailed

heaven is in a bucharest sewer: photo by Tudor Prisăcariu, 30 October 2007

Darkness. Shadowy, shadowy,  yet unbroken 

Paturica tine de cald. | by Ion Cristian

Paturica tine de cald: photo by Ion Cristian, 23 October 2014
 
Hope, Loneliness & Degradation | by Avisionn Photo
 
Hope, Loneliness & Degradation. Bucharest, Romania.: photo by Avisionn Photo, 18 September 2012

DSC03534.JPG | by moroiu

[Homeless, Bucharest]: photo by moroiu, 25 April 2008

lalele | by Ion Cristian

lalele: photo by Ion Cristian, 23 May 2014
 
in the streets of bucharest | by energeticspell

in the streets of bucharest: photo by Cinty Ionescu, 16 July 2008

Uitare. | by Ion Cristian

Uitare: photo by Ion Cristian, 2 July 2014

Nichita Stănescu: Decree
 
I may be forgotten, because
I don’t care for my arms. I may lose them.
I may be abandoned, because
I don’t love my legs. I can walk
just as well with air.
I may be left alone, because
my blood will pour into the sea
in any case.
There’s room. My ribs have all risen
like sea walls.
There’s enough light. My eyes
see only one mask.
But it does not yet exist,
so there’s room, there’s room, there is.


Nichita Stănescu, b. Ploiesti, Romania (1933-1983): Decree, from Necuvintele (The Unwords), 1969, translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter in Wheel with a Single Spoke and Other Poems, 2012


my homeless neighbour | by energeticspell

my homeless neighbour (bucharest): photo by Cinty Ionescu, 18 August 2008

Marieta Maglas: Latina Time
 
Once all of them have won a very special princess prize,
the game is over....
and they will never buy another one.....

Alis grave nil.
Nothing is heavy to those who have wings

And maybe we cannot understand what's going on,
but we can understand that the players
skillfully hide behind the walls....
They think....

Cessante ratione legis cessat ipsa lex.
When the reason for the law ceases, the law itself ceases.

We seek escape from reality, we undermine our self-esteem.
Maybe we are unable to see them, but we need to talk about this.
And maybe they do not trust us when we tell them to come to us if they need
to talk....
....about those who become their victims......

Sed ipse Spiritus postulat pro nobis, gemitibus inenarrabilibus.
But the same Spirit intercedes incessantly for us, with inexpressible sighs.


Marieta Maglas, b. Suceava, Nord-Est, Romania: Latina Time, from Eschatological Regression, 2015

Untitled | by Ion Cristian

Tragedy: photo by Ion Cristian, 26 June 2014
Nichita Stănescu: Knot 23

I stole my childhood body,
I swaddled it and put it in a basket of rushes,—
and threw it in the river
so it would go and die in the delta.

The unfortunate, tearful, tragic fisherman, full of pity,
brought me the body in his arms
just now.

Nichita Stănescu, b. Ploiesti, Romania (1933-1983): Knot 23, fromNoduri şi semne (Knots and Signs), 1982, translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter in Wheel with a Single Spoke and Other Poems, 2012


Zi torida. | by Ion Cristian

Zi torida: photo by Ion Cristian, 9 June 2014

Nichita Stãnescu:
The Keynote


The bone is a joy only when it's the forehead bone,
when it protects, does not disjoin,
as are the alkaline vertebrae
from the difficult depths of the flesh and the wedding.
I'm resigned to losing the habit
of my manner of being,
but not the desertion
preserved in the verb to be.

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

I will lose the habit of using my body,
giving birth to a Prince Charming of verbs,
as the wolf loses the habit of being a wolf,
of hunger.

I will lose the habit of stars in the heavens
as frozen water loses the habit of snowflakes.
I will take my frozen body
and give it to the young goats that they might graze it.

It was my lot, and easily given,
to lose the habit of being a man.
To lose the habit of living,
I needed only death with murder.

I find it hardest to lose the habit of wolves.
they are alone and on the snow.
Surely I must lose the habit of loneliness.
Surely I must lose the habit of snow.

For what remains, time departs, time returns.


Nichita Stănescu, b. Ploiesti, Romania (1933-1983): The Keynote, fromNoduri şi semne (Knots and Signs), 1982, translated from the Romanian byThomas Carlson and Vasile Poenaru in Bas-Relief with Heroes: Selected Poems 1960-1982, 1988


Darkness | by Ion Cristian

Darkness. Shadowy, shadowy,  yet unbroken (subway, Bucharest): photo by Ion Cristian, 22 January 2015
 
București (Bucharest, Romania) - Gara de Nord (metro station) | by jaime.silva

Bucuresti (Bucharest, Romania) -- Gara de Nord (metro station)): photo by jaime.silva, 17 August 2010

Massimo Branca: Catalina, Child of the Underground

Picture of Catalina at the entrance to a tunnel.

Catalina at seventeen, 2013,
seen at the entry to the Bucharest sewer tunnelwhere she had been living for five years: photo by Massimo Branca via National Geographic PROOF, 17 June 2015 (Launch Gallery)

One Girl’s Tunnel Life: Under the Streets of Bucharest: Coburn Dukehart, National Geographic PROOF, 17 June 2015

Photographer and anthropologist Massimo Branca first met Catalina in 2013 when she was 17 years old.

“Her large, black eyes seemed to become more mysterious the longer I looked at them,” he said. “It took me a lot to understand just how much she had been through in her short life.”

Picture of Catalina in Romania

Catalina, 17 years old, 2013. After being abandoned at birth, she grew up in an orphanage, then lived on the street and in Bucharest’s tunnels starting at age 12.: photo by Massimo Branca via National Geographic PROOF, 17 June 2015 (Launch Gallery)

At the time, Catalina was living with a group of homeless people in, around, and under the Gara de Nord train station in Bucharest, Romania. She was left in the hospital at birth, raised in an orphanage until age six, then was reunited with her family only to run away at age 12. At 13 she started using intravenous drugs.

Branca photographed Catalina’s life as part of a larger project called "Under the Surface," which documents the people who live in the tunnels under Bucharest. Hot, humid, and cramped, the tunnels were part of former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's plan to centrally heat the city. Now, they are home to multiple generations of street children and adults who access them via small craters in the ground.

During winter, up to 40 people occupy the tunnel to stay warm, living together in a space of only a few square meters. 
During winter, up to 40 people occupy the tunnel to stay warm, living together in a space of only a few square meters: photo by Massimo Branca via National Geographic PROOF, 17 June 2015 (Launch Gallery)

Branca and his friend Igor Marchesan first gained access to the tunnels in July 2013, after receiving permission from the de facto leader -- a man who goes by the name of Bruce Lee -- who controls all the ins and outs of tunnel life, including food and electricity. Branca had to convince Lee that they weren’t out to produce a quick exposé, but rather wanted to study the group’s social relationships from an anthropological perspective.

“I want people to understand what happens in street life and to be more tolerant and open, in case they accidentally meet these people -- or meet homeless people anywhere,” said Branca. “I want to enable the audience to imagine what underground life is like, without their eyes being clouded by pity, judgment, or fear.”

Boredom is common in the tunnels, with few available activities apart from using drugs. Although she started using intravenous drugs at age 13, Catalina also liked to write.

Boredom is common in the tunnels, with few available activities apart from using drugs. Although she started using intravenous drugs at age 13, Catalina also liked to write: photo by Massimo Branca via National Geographic PROOF, 17 June 2015 (Launch Gallery)

Picture of dishes in tunnels underground

Washed dishes and a copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper” are seen in the tunnel. The tunnel’s inhabitants use generators to produce electricity for lights, fans, stereos, refrigerators, and television: photo by Massimo Branca via National Geographic PROOF, 17 June 2015 (Launch Gallery)

According to Branca, most of the tunnel residents suffer from tuberculosis, hepatitis, or HIV, and are addicted to drugs including heroin, mephrodone, and Aurolac -- a silver paint they inhale from plastic bags. He says most of the people end up in the tunnels because of a lack of a stable home life -- many are former orphans, people exiled from their families after contracting HIV, or folks who ran away from poverty or abuse.

Catalina and Bruce Lee (center) are seen during a blackout. Before the arrival of Lee—the de facto leader of the tunnels—the tunnels were only lit by candle.

Catalina and Bruce Lee (center) are seen during a blackout. Before the arrival of Lee -- the de facto leader of the tunnels -- the tunnels were only lit by candle: photo by Massimo Branca via National Geographic PROOF, 17 June 2015 (Launch Gallery)

Branca says that while at first glance the environment can appear shocking to a casual observer, he doesn’t want viewers to be shocked by his work. Instead, he wants people to feel compassion and understanding for his subjects. He wants viewers to understand how the tunnel dwellers came to be there, and that people like Catalina are worthy of empathy, compassion, and love.

“I think shocking images would make an observer feel more distant from these people, and my aim is exactly the opposite,” he said. “I want to make the audience understand that they could be in the same situation, and I would like people who see my pictures to change their behavior toward these kinds of issues.”

For a while Catalina tried to stay off drugs. During this period she ate and slept most of the time, trying to recover and find relief from her pain.

For a while Catalina tried to stay off drugs. During this period she ate and slept most of the time, trying to recover and find relief from her pain: photo by Massimo Branca via National Geographic PROOF, 17 June 2015 (Launch Gallery)

Despite being an anthropological observer, Branca says he still tried to help Catalina, even while documenting her life.

In January 2014 she passed out after inhaling fumes from a faulty generator and badly burned her leg on one of the tunnel’s heating pipes. Branca took her to the hospital, and later to a safe house, where she stayed off drugs for a few weeks and swore to him she would quit for good. But she begged him to take her back to the tunnels, and shortly afterwards she began using drugs again.

“I was a human being, and was trying to think of some way to help her. I felt really close to her -- like she was something between a sister and a daughter to me,” Branca said. “I knew she wasn’t in good health, but a lot of other people living in the tunnel were in worse condition. She was quite independent, and I didn’t think about the possibility of her dying.”

After a couple of weeks of abstinence, Catalina couldn’t resist using drugs any longer. She wrote: “It’s too late, I’m a drug addict and there is nothing left to do.”
 
After a couple of weeks of abstinence, Catalina couldn’t resist using drugs any longer. She wrote: “It’s too late, I’m a drug addict and there is nothing left to do.”: photo by Massimo Branca via National Geographic PROOF, 17 June 2015 (Launch Gallery)

But on May 28, 2014, one month after she turned 18, Catalina died. The official cause was listed as cardiopulmonary arrest -- but unofficially, it was from AIDS and an infection at a drug injection site that traveled to her brain.

Branca was in Italy when he heard the news. He rushed to Romania for her funeral -- mostly paid for by her street family.

Catalina died on May 28, 2014, one month after she turned 18.  Her boyfriend, Santo (bottom right), asked to be buried near her. He is also HIV-positive.
 
Catalina died on May 28, 2014, one month after she turned 18. Her boyfriend, Santo (bottom right), asked to be buried near her. He is also HIV-positive: photo by Massimo Branca via National Geographic PROOF, 17 June 2015 (Launch Gallery)

“Many say that these people could have a different kind of life if they choose -- get a job and have stability,” says Branca. “But they don’t consider that after many months or years closed to other people, they consider each other a family.”

Massimo Branca is an anthropologist and photographer living in Italy and Romania. He is a member of Collettivo Fotosocial, an Italian association of documentary photographers that uses visual storytelling to produce positive social change.

His project "Under the Surface" recently received a Magnum 30 Under 30 award for documentary photography. He is currently working on a project following Catalina’s birth family, documenting the many hardships they are facing in life.

Branca says Catalina used to smile with caution and a little shame, because a couple of years earlier she had lost her front teeth.

Branca says Catalina used to smile with caution and a little shame, because a couple of years earlier she had lost her front teeth: photo by Massimo Branca via National Geographic PROOF, 17 June 2015 (Launch Gallery)

Down the rabbit hole with Bruce Lee (May 2014)
Beneath the streets of Romania's capital, a living hell: Paraic O'Brien and Jim Wickens, Channel Four News, 20 May 2014

Deep under the streets of Bucharest -- in Europe, in the 21st century -- there is a network of tunnels and sewers that is home to hundreds of men, women and children stricken by drug abuse, HIV and TB.

You can travel to the heart of the EU from Bucharest's Gara du Nord,but our journey will take us just a few metres.

On the surface, the newest member of the European club has worked hard to redefine itself. But there's another Romania, underground.

When Ceausescu fell there were tens of thousands of children in orphanages and in state "care" in Romania. But in 1990 a series of reports revealed what a nightmarish misnomer that was. Scenes of neglect and cruelty reminiscent of the concentration camps.

So what happened to those children?

We've been told that some moved into the tunnels underneath Bucharest. Drug addiction is rife, some have had children of their own.

The streets gangs of Bucharest, who live in the sewers

Photo courtesy of Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Channel 4 News, 20 May 2014

The entrance to this underworld is a hole in the pavement on a traffic island in front of the station. By late afternoon they start to wake up, clambering up out of the ground like the undead.

Among them is a little boy, Nicu, who looks about 12. We find out later that "little" Nicu is in fact 17 but his development has been stunted by the drug abuse. He agrees to send word down that we would like to meet the boss.

This underworld, we're told, has an overlord and you only get to go down by invitation. A couple of hours later and word comes back up: he will see us now.

On our hands and knees we pothole down into the darkness and a parallel universe. It's the heat that hits you first. These old tunnels were part of Ceausescu's grand design to centrally heat the city.

Then there's the smell: a metallic paint called Aurolac, snorted by the addicts from small black bags. Next up the music.

The streets gangs of Bucharest, who live in the sewers
 
Photo courtesy of Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Channel 4 News, 20 May 2014

The whole place is wired with electricity, there's a stereo system pumping out dance music. If they had a club night in hell it would feel like this.

We're in the first chamber: they call it The Office. You try not to gawp. Out of the corner of your eye, a woman with a syringe between her legs; a little boy stares at you with the Aurolac bag at his mouth, pumping slowly, like a black heart.

Everyone here is HIV positive, a quarter have TB. They're all on their way to "the counter".

Bruce Lee, King of the Sewers

Photo courtesy of Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Channel 4 News, 20 May 2014
 
The man behind the counter is called "Bruce Lee" (pictured above) after his street fighting days. He points to a tattoo on his inner thigh, it reads: "Bruce Lee, King of the Sewers".

He will be our guide down Bucharest's surreal, tragic rabbit hole.


News

Photo courtesy of Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Channel 4 News, 20 May 2014

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Remembering Catalina: photo by Jim Wickens via Channel 4 News, 13 June 2014

Is death the only escape? (13 June 2014)

Is death the only escape from life in Romania's tunnels? Catalina was one of the main characters in our film about life in Bucharest's tunnels. After the film was shown, she died from Aids-related heart failure. Channel 4 News returned for her funeral.: Paraic O'Brien and Jim Wickens, Channel 4 News, 13 June 2014

Deep beneath the streets of Romania's capital, a living hell exists, The last time we met Catalina had been underground, deep in the Bucharest tunnel system that Bruce Lee and his gang of homeless drug addicts call home.

She was in the queue to buy drugs, perched on one of the heating pipes in front of an icon of the Virgin Mary. The ring of infected syringe sores around her neck a jagged reminder of her drug-addicted life in the sewers. "This is where I destroyed myself," she had told us almost prophetically that day.

But it is too late for Catalina. She is dead. She collapsed and died in the tunnels last week after suffering from Aids, chronic pneumonia and heart failure which cut short her painfully short life. She had just turned 18.

Channel 4 News was invited back to Romania  and to her wake. We were ushered through the cobblestones and courtyard, past children playing in the dust and adults weeping by the door of the tiny tin-roofed shack.

Veiled in a bridal gown, as is custom for Roma girls who die before their wedding day

Catalina lay in the open casket, veiled in a bridal gown, as is custom for Roma girls who die before their wedding day. A priest stood to one side, chanting prayers as her sisters stood over her, fussing over the veil or rearranging her beloved pink CD player that they had stuffed under her pillow, music to keep her company in the grave.

As the candles flickered late into the night, Catalina's friends began to arrive in the house, familiar faces from her home in the tunnels, coming to pay their last respects.

"We met in a foster house named Pinocchio"

We found Eliza, one of Catalina's best friends whom we filmed joking around in the tunnels weeks earlier. "We met in a foster house named Pinocchio. I hanged out with her everywhere. She was like a sister to me," she told us, tears streaming down her face.

One of five siblings born into acute poverty, Catalina's parents had abandoned her as a baby, sending her to live in a children's institution called Pinocchio's on the edge of Bucharest, for the first years of her life.

It was a factor, we were told later by the head of the institution, that had impacted deeply upon her life, a lifetime lacking in love that had drawn her deeply into life within the sewers -- Bruce Lee and the tight-knit gang underground she said had become the family Catalina had never had.

"For her, getting some attention was an extraordinary experience," said Carmen, her sister, "because now she felt valued in those moments. She was happy if anybody was looking out for her or giving her any attention," she said.

The procession of mourners continued to stream in, silent faces, clutching her hand, kissing her forehead, whispering their goodbyes.

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Remembering Catalina:
photo by Jim Wickens via Channel 4 News, 13 June 2014


The new shack above ground; raid and eviction (22 July 2015)

Romania's 'sewer people' evicted from tunnel network: Channel 4 News, 22 July 2015

Police have raided a network of tunnels and sewers in Bucharest, home to a community of drug addicts. Bruce Lee, who led the underground community has been arrested along with 5 others.

Police have carried out a large-scale raid on a network of Bucharest tunnels and sewers, home to hundreds of men, women and children stricken by drug abuse and TB. Police said the operation followed months of surveillance on what they described as an organised criminal gang and reports of child prostitution.

Over the past year, some of the so-called 'sewer people' constructed a shack by the tunnel entrance in an attempt to build a better life above ground. This was the complex just last week -- before the raid took place:

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Photo via Channel 4 News, 22 July 2015
 
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Photo via Channel 4 News, 22 July 2015

It had 20 rooms, beds for 60 people, kitchens, internet access and a pool in the courtyard.

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Photo via Channel 4 News, 22 July 2015

The tunnels and shack were a form of shelter for an alienated community -- many of them born in Ceausescu's notorious orphanages.

News

Photo via Channel 4 News, 22 July 2015

Police seized knives, swords, stolen paintings and a large quantity of stolen cash. They also claimed they raided an upmarket villa -- away from the tunnels -- believed to be owned by network's leader, Bruce Lee.

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Photo via Channel 4 News, 22 July 2015

The tunnels were a destination for people looking to buy synthetic heroin substitutes and to inhale the fumes of a metallic paint called aurolac.

The self-styled 'king of the sewers', Bruce Lee may be imprisoned -- but another gang lord was bound to take his place. And it's likely to do little for Bucharest's people of the tunnels.

News

Photo via Channel 4 News, 22 July 2015

The Private Life of the Undead -- As It Was (May 2014)
 
'Sewer children': Beneath the Baroque mansions and iconic squares of central Bucharest lies a second city that no tourist gets to see - an underground kingdom of outcasts and drug addicts living in the city's vast network of sewers

Sewer children': Beneath the Baroque mansions and iconic squares of central Bucharest lies a second city that no tourist gets to see -- an underground kingdom of outcasts and drug addicts living in the city's vast network of sewers:photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

Drugs and disease: Here, everyone is HIV-positive and a quarter have TB, yet they are left to rot in the darkness, huddling against heating pipes and sniffing glue to stay warm

Drugs and disease: Here, everyone is HIV-positive and a quarter have TB, yet they are left to rot in the darkness, huddling against heating pipes and sniffing glue to stay warm:photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

Hell's disco: The whole place is wired with electricity and there's a stereo system pumping out dance music

Hell's disco: The whole place is wired with electricity and there's a stereo system pumping out dance music: photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

Dog days: The place is full of dogs - there's just enough room in the tunnel to let a group of puppies scamper passed

Dog days: The place is full of dogs -- there's just enough room in the tunnel to let a group of puppies scamper past:photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

Mainline to addiction: A resident inspects a needle containing a synthetic drug similar to methadone

Mainline to addiction: A resident inspects a needle containing a synthetic drug similar to methadone:photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

No invite, no go! Beginning outside Bucharest's Gara de Nord, you need an 'invitation' from Bruce Lee (standing) to be let in

No invite, no go! Beginning outside Bucharest's Gara de Nord, you need an 'invitation' from Bruce Lee (standing) to be let in:photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

More drugs: A synthetic drug similar to methadone is also on offer and injected

More drugs: A synthetic drug similar to methadone is also on offer and injected: photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

Puppy love: There is a twisted order to Bruce Lee's underground fiefdom. Social workers say he tries to protect the young ones from sexual predators

Puppy love: There is a twisted order to Bruce Lee's underground fiefdom. Social workers say he tries to protect the young ones from sexual predators: photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

Hard life: Lee looks through pictures of his friends and of him as a child. he was abandoned by his mother aged three

Hard life: Lee looks through pictures of his friends and of him as a child. he was abandoned by his mother aged three: photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

Survivor: Lee has been living in the sewers since he was a child, with many others that are now dead

Survivor: Lee has been living in the sewers since he was a child, with many others that are now dead:photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

Tragic: Bruce Lee puts his arm around Nico. Last year Nico contracted full blown AIDS and nearly died in hospital.

Tragic: Bruce Lee puts his arm around Nico. Last year Nico contracted full blown AIDS and nearly died in hospital: photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

Safe and warm: He pays protection money to a local gang. Also, addicts are less likely to die down here because he offers them a sort of safety and a warm place to sleep

Safe and warm: He pays protection money to a local gang. Also, addicts are less likely to die down here because he offers them a sort of safety and a warm place to sleep: photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

Decor: There are pictures on the wall in some rooms while one has a television with a chintzy china cat on top. Another has artificial grass

Decor: There are pictures on the wall in some rooms while one has a television with a chintzy china cat on top. Another has artificial grass: photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

Not scum: Lee says he wants to prove that 'we are not like what they believe, the scum of society, rats or prisoners, or whatever'

Not scum: Lee says he wants to prove that 'we are not like what they believe, the scum of society, rats or prisoners, or whatever': photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

Nico says: 'They come to me, for food, warmth, parental advice, understanding. We are a family, we want to be a family here, and that's what we are'

Nico says: 'They come to me, for food, warmth, parental advice, understanding. We are a family, we want to be a family here, and that's what we are': photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

Free for all: A dog tries his luck in a cauldron of drugs on 'The Counter'

Free for all: A dog tries his luck in a cauldron of drugs on 'The Counter': photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

Happy family? Channel 4 News' portrait of Lee, Nico and aluca is a dappled, confusing, family snapshot full of darkness and light

Happy family? Channel 4 News' portrait of Lee, Nico and Raluca is a dappled, confusing, family snapshot full of darkness and light: photo by Radu Ciorniciuc/Casa Journalist via Daily Mail, 19 May 2014

Cecil the Lion, Meet Man the Killer

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Only a monster could kill such a majestic beautiful animal we share this world with. RIP #CecilTheLion: image via mike @WhiskeySoured, 28 July 2015

The hunter who killed Cecil the Lion doesn't deserve our empathy: Rose George, The Guardian,  29 July 2015

We love a good fight, don’t we? Enter Walter J Palmer, a tanned dentist from Minnesota, with a bow and arrow. Along comes Cecil the lion, the alpha male of his pride, minding his own business being the best-known and most beloved lion in Zimbabwe if not in Africa, as well as the subject of an Oxford University study.  Then Cecil is shot with a bow and arrow, taking 40 hours to die, all because Palmer thought killing a magnificent animal was sporty.

I read the story of Cecil’s killing and my education and intellect deserted me for a minute. I felt only disgust and rage, somewhat inarticulately. I feel no calmness about big-game hunters. I am not persuaded by their justifications, which can be easily punctured with buckshot. Trophy hunting contributes to conservation, they say: when the Dallas Safari Club auctioned the right to kill an endangered Namibian black rhino, it said the $350,000 winning bounty -- they called it a “bid” -- went towards conservation efforts in Namibia. There are only 5,000 black rhinos left.

The population of African lions has been reduced by 50% in the last three decades, says the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and there are now only 32,000. Elephants, leopards, polar bears and giraffes are all hunted for “sport” too. Shooting an endangered species and calling it sustainable is like waving a fan and thinking you’re helping to stop global warming.


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Rebecca Francis accuses Ricky Gervais of using ‘influence’ to target female hunters
: image via The Independent @independent, 15 April 2015


In April, after Ricky Gervais tweeted a picture of the blonde, pretty Rebecca Francis lying next to a dead giraffe she had just shot, the internet went ape. Arguably, it went more ape than it would have if she hadn’t been female, and you can find plenty of earnest essays about how women have the right to be big-game hunters without getting an online hounding. I don’t care what gender she was. I care that afterwards, she declared that she had done a good thing. 

The giraffe was elderly, she wrote, and was going to die soon. By shooting him, she had honoured his life by making his body useful to locals: his tail could make jewellery and his bones could make “other things”. “I’m no game biologist,” she wrote, but “there is no question that hunters contribute the most to the welfare of wildlife.”

Follow this argument further and you reach the reasoning that poaching and trafficking do more harm than big-game hunting. True. Wildlife trafficking is worth $7-10bn, and is the fifth most profitable illegal market worldwide. Yet in many countries where poaching is rampant, policing is patchy and punishment often nothing more than a fine. Yes, poaching is more damaging than trophy hunting. Murder is worse than grievous bodily harm, technically, but I’m comfortable strongly objecting to both.

But violently objecting to hunters can be almost as bad as hunting. Most public displays of big-game hunting attract fury and sometimes death threats, as Palmer has been subjected to since his identity was revealed. The fact that African countries such as Namibia and Zimbabwe sell licences to shoot their own big game gets less attention.

Palmer is said to be “quite upset,” but only because he got the wrong lion. He blamed his guides for this, rather than his own bizarre and repellent desire to augment his own self-worth (somewhat damaged, now, by a campaign to shut down his dental practice) by killing another creature. Francis was compelled to release a statement saying that she “couldn’t understand how people who claim to be so loving and caring for animals can turn around and threaten to murder and rape my children.”

Let’s not turn Palmer and Francis into trophies too, repugnant though their actions are. I don’t want to understand them or empathise. I’d rather not attempt to comprehend the inexplicable act that is the murder of animals for fun. But trophy hunting is about something bigger than that: an assumption that all animals are at our service, and ignoring the fact that we are just clever animals too.

Here is a product of my superior animal brain: a plan. If you’re going to pay $50,000 towards conservation efforts by shooting a lion, then give the money and don’t shoot. Preserving life, by killing fewer animals –- now that would be worth a trophy.


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Zimbabwe's 'iconic' #CecilTheLIon killed by hunter: image via NewsDay @NewsDayZimbabwe, 29 July 2015

The absence of a predatory instinct in the great ape's genetic makeup was always going to be a problem once the descent from the trees to the forest floor had taken place. Paleolithic man compensated for this lack by displacing patterns of intra-species aggression and redirecting them toward other species. 
Thus was born hunting, a conduct in which the characteristics of an equal are projected upon the prey, which thus becomes an "enemy". Killing your enemy is OK. From animal sacrifice, in turn, is born religion.

This is the thesis of Walter Burkertin his profound study of ancient Greek myth and religion, Homo Necans: the Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (1992).

Homo Necans means man the killer. Short sentence. Capital offense.

You might say that's putting a fine point on it. Or then again you might say, well, that's just connecting the dots.



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can't believe this man counted it as valor to lure #CecilTheLIon out of his protective home and kill him. #Cowardice: image via MC HAMMER @MCHammer, 28 July 2015

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#CecilTheLion: The last known photograph: image via the Telegraph @Telegraph, 29 July 2015

American Hunter Killed Cecil, Beloved Lion That Was Lured Out of Its Sanctuary: Katie Rogers, New York Times, 28 July 2015

Cecil, a 13-year-old lion, wandered out of his sanctuary in a national park in Zimbabwe this month, following the scent of a potential snack.

At the other end of Cecil’s search was a lure, placed there by hunters who, conservationists say, wanted their prey to cross into unprotected territory so they could kill him.

Cecil, well known to those who visited the Hwange National Park in western Zimbabwe for his jet black mane, was beheaded, according to conservation officials. His corpse was left to rot in the sun.

Zimbabwean officials said that Dr. Walter J. Palmer, an American hunter known for killing big game with a bow and arrow, killed Cecil, and was being sought on poaching charges.

Johnny Rodrigues of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said Cecil was lured out of a protected game preserve one night in early July by a hunting party that tied a dead animal to a car.

The first shot, which the authorities say came from Dr. Palmer’s crossbow, was not enough to kill the lion. Cecil was tracked for nearly two days before Dr. Palmer killed him with a gun.

The details of the lion’s death have outraged nature enthusiasts and conservationists around the world who are troubled by wealthy big-game hunters who pay tens of thousands of dollars for licenses to kill protected animals for trophies and sport.

Hunting advocates and some conservationists argue that, if done responsibly, the selling of expensive licenses to big-game hunters can help pay for efforts to protect endangered species. In 2013, the Dallas Safari Club in Texas fought for the right to sell at auction a permit for the hunting of a black rhino in Namibia, setting off a debate over the practice.

The group argued that a limited hunt helped thin the herd of weak rhinos so the population could grow, and that the $350,000 paid in 2014 by a reality show host to hunt the animal would help fund Namibia’s conservation efforts.

In 2009, Dr. Palmer, a dentist from Minnesota, paid $45,000 at an auction to help preserve an elk habitat in California.

A big-game hunter who prides himself on his skills in hunting without firearms, Dr. Palmer was profiled in 2009 in The New York Times, when he shot an elk from 75 yards with a compound bow in pursuit of a new bowhunting record. The Telegraph in Britain reported on Tuesday that he paid around $54,000 for the opportunity to hunt a lion.



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 #CecilTheLion was killed for 'sport', now @piersmorgan and @rockygervais are calling for action: image via VICE News @vicenews, 28 July 2015

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We share your concern about the issue surrounding #CecilTheLion and we're working to gather the facts: image via US Fish and Wildlife @USFWS, 29 July 2015

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#CecilTheLion rest in peace beautiful beast. We hope your story changes history for the better: image via HaatiChai @HaatiCha, 28 July 2015

Red Shuttleworth: Three Poems from the Bone-Dry West

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Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 8 July 2015

Before the Hand of

Spilled beer and Jesus-platitudes,
road-twisted cheap-brass rodeo trophy buckle...
And the pickup rattles... fencing tools and crushed beer cans.

Red wildfire-sun,
three roadside crosses in one downhill mile,
illegal burn barrel with a smokin' garden hose....

It's a drought-year nothin'.
Just sit sullen on a padded oak rockin' chair...
fire a nickel-plated seven-inch Colt revolver,
all the .45 rounds you can afford, into a neighbor's
center pivot section of gene-combo corn.

 
Before the Hand of: Red Shuttleworth, from Poet Red Shuttleworth, 8 July 2013
 

Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 14 July 2015
 
Collapse of Stacked-Up Details

You dream rattlers...
drinking caffeine-rich soda pop
from your dog's stainless steel supper bowl.

Dry grass... wildfire-weeks...
you quick-buy a nebulizer.

The Wolfhound wants to sit
for a strip of old-style photo booth portraits...
wants you to plunk the last car-change
quarters into some chewing-gummed slot.

A best friend drops into a diabetic blackout
while driving home with Chinese take-out,
crashes into a parked dildo-Lexus... totals it.
Not much later comes the small stroke...
loss of vision in the left eye...
the one that best saw a ninety-plus
baseball coming 60-feet from the bump.

Blue haze... mourning doves
forever in nonlinear time and space...
wildfire smoke and bird-screech.

Age seventy's residue....
You're just another dust devil.

 
Collapse of Stacked-Up Details: Red Shuttleworth, fromPoet Red Shuttleworth, 14 July 2013




Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 12 July 2015

The Core of Our Moon is Iron

Miles traveled are points in the game of mistakes.
The sun rises bronzy... soon turns brimstone-yellow.

The little faces the sky makes jiggle and jump...
and it's a joke for some dry-humor god.

And within recall:
the rumble of fractured bottom ground,
rock climbing rock to new elevation.

Lily skin, lavender shawl, tight greenish jeans,
Go... we should go somewhere.  She also said,

Nobody really feeds the heart-sprawled...
certainly not little banjo players.  On the corners.

You sit, flask of bourbon-water: the sun thrill-rises sulfuric
through basalt dust and grass-fire, sagebrush smoke.

 
The Core of Our Moon is Iron: Red Shuttleworth, from Poet Red Shuttleworth, 12 July 2013



 
Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 29 June 2015

 
Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 28 June 2015


 
Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 23 June 2015
 


Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 24 June 2015
 

Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 21 June 2015
 

Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 20 June 2015



Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 17 June 2015
 

Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 22 June 2015



Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 20 June 2015

Tom Raworth: Shadows

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Mark Rothko, Untitled (Black on Grey), 1970 | by ekenitr

Untitled (Black on Gray): Mark Rothko (1903-1970), 1970: photo by ekenitr, 1 March 2015
 

once upon a time is no more
in the dark each page
seems written upon
light dawns
a high ceiling is not wasted space


Tom Raworth: Shadows, from Collected Poems, 2003
 


"Expired" expired film: Image made with expired film ("a roll of a roll of Kodak Plus-X 127 film, expired October 1953, shot through a Brownie Holiday at Zion National Park"): photo by Moominsean via moominstuff, 5 September 2006


"Expired" expired film: Image made with expired film ("a roll of a roll of Kodak Plus-X 127 film, expired October 1953, shot through a Brownie Holiday at Zion National Park"): photo by Moominsean via moominstuff, 5 September 2006


"Expired" expired film: Image made with expired film ("a roll of a roll of Kodak Plus-X 127 film, expired October 1953, shot through a Brownie Holiday at Zion National Park"): photo by Moominsean via moominstuff, 5 September 2006
 
Mark Rothko, Untitled (Black on Grey), 1970 | by ekenitr

Untitled (Black on Gray): Mark Rothko (1903-1970), 1970, oil on canvas: photo by ekenitr, 1 March 2015


Celestograph I (The Full Moon): photo by August Strindberg, 1893-94 (Manuscript collections, National Library of Sweden)

“I have worked like a devil and have traced the movements of the moon and the real appearance of the firmament on a laid-out photographic plate, independent from our misleading eye. I have done this without a camera and without a lens. [...] The photographic plate showed an area full of moons. Certainly, every spot on the photographic plate reflects a moon. The camera misleads as the eye does and the tube hoaxes the astronomers!”

-- August Strindberg: from a letter to Bengt Lidforss, a physiologist, 26 December 1893, quoted in Traces of/by nature: August Strindberg's photographic experiments of the 1890s: Katharina Steidl (2010)


The celestographs or coelestographs are photos of the sky taken without camera or lens. The plates were directly exposed to the night sky for some time and then developed. The plates are now lost and only prints remain. August Strindberg thought he had captured the stars, so he called the photos celestographs.
 
The series was taken during the winter of 1893-1894 in Dornach in Austria where Strindberg was staying with his wife Frida Uhl.
 
Strindberg distrusted lenses and thought they gave a distorted rendering of reality. The celestographs were therefore an attempt to produce a more objective view of stars and planets. He sent the prints to the French Astronomical Society, where they were discussed.

-- National Library of Sweden



 
Celestograph IV: The Sun: photo by August Strindberg, 1893-94 (Manuscript collections, National Library of Sweden)



Celestograph VI: Starry Sky: photo by August Strindberg, 1893-94 (Manuscript collections, National Library of Sweden)


Celestograph VII: Stars: photo by August Strindberg, 1893-94 (Manuscript collections, National Library of Sweden)



Celestograph VIII: Stars. Region of  Orion: photo by August Strindberg, 1893-94 (Manuscript collections, National Library of Sweden)
 
At the museum - Mark Rothko | by catheadsix

No. 14: Mark Rothko (1903-1970), 1960, oil on canvas: photo by Catherine, 21 October 2008

Mark Rothko (1903,Dvinsk - 1970,New York), Untitled [Black, Red over Black on Red], det-1964 | by michellecourteau

Untitled (Black, Red over Black) (detail): Mark Rothko (1903-1970), 1970, oil on canvas (Gemeente Museum, Den Haag): photo by Michelle @c, 3 January 2013
 
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Parting shot from the #RockyFire. Headed back to SJSU.: image via SJSU FireWeatherLab@FireWeatherLab, 30 July 2015

Mark Rothko (1903,Dvinsk - 1970,New York), Untitled [Black, Red over Black on Red], det-1964 | by michellecourteau

Untitled (Black, Red over Black), (detail): Mark Rothko (1903-1970), 1970, oil on canvas (Gemeente Museum, Den Haag): photo by Michelle @c, 3 January 2013

Five get high in Hove | by Tabellion

Tom and Val Raworth, Hove, 13 July 2015: photo by Tabellion from Five Get High in Hove via Tom Raworth: Notes, 15 July 2015

Fire Season

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 #RockyFire east of Clear Lake is now 27,000 acres & 5% contained. Hwy 16 now closed between Hwy 20 & Yolo County Line: image via CAL FIRE PIO Berlant @CALFIRE_PIO, 1 August 2015

Night Sky: Firewatching


.............................................
to Blanqui

The universe as the site of lingering cosmic
catastrophes -– points of conflict in the text,

................................Nablus, Jenin,.......................................
through which it’s impossible to see the stars.

Dark spots that shade the eyes. “This eternity
of the human being among the stars is a melancholy
thing… There exists a world where a man follows a
road that, in the other world, his double did not take.”

The routinization of the suffering that comes with
having a soul. The martyr’s pain is repeated in
the same moment over and over again at infinite sites
scattered through the universe, pockets of darkness between stars.

Life as the monotonous flow of an hourglass
that eternally empties and turns itself over, teaching
yes, but always the same lesson, the new sand is
always old the old sand always new.


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#RockyFire burns into the night. Now at 3000 acres. Via Lake County News #cafire: image via Ian Schwartz @SchwartzTV, 30 July 2015

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The #RockyFire around 9pm: photo by Benjamin Zuffi @benuwine, 29 July 2015
 
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Massive #RockyFire forces more evacuations near Lake-Colusa border, closes highways: image via ThePressDemocrat @NorthBayNews, 1 August 2015
 
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Tonight's view of #rockyfire with the nearly full moon: image viaNiniane @NinianeK, 30 July 2015
 
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Parting shot from the #RockyFire. Headed back to SJSU.: image via SJSU FireWeatherLab@FireWeatherLab, 30 July 2015
Incendiary Writing on the Wall: The 'Price Tag'


Palestinians in the West Bank village of Duma watched and attended the funeral of Ali Saad Dawabsha, the 18-month-old child killed in an arson attack in Nablus about 30 miles north of Jerusalem: photo by Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse 31 July 2015

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Palestinian baby burned to death in settler terror attack #WestBank Rest in Peace
: image via Drive for Justice @DriveJustice, 31 July 2015
 
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#BREAKING: #Israel's #IDF
commender in cheif: "I denounce this act of terror". Ordered the #IDF stay in high alert: image via Amichai Stein @AmichaiStein1, 31 July 2015

Israel’s hawks can't dodge blame for this day of violence: Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, 31 July 2015 (Last modified Saturday 1 August 2015)

The condemnations are striking but still they ring hollow. Binyamin Netanyahu denounced the arson attack by Jewish settlers on the West Bank home of the Dawabsha family, in which Ali Saad, a baby just 18 months old, was burned to death, as an “act of terrorism in every respect”. Netanyahu was joined by Naftali Bennett, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party, which is close to being the political wing of the settlers’ movement. Bennett described the murder as a “horrendous act of terror”. The defence minister, the army, they all condemned this heinous crime.


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Condemnations from across political spectrum after Palestinian baby burnt in #WestBank arson
: image via Haaretz,com@haaretzcom, 31 July 2015
 
Which is welcome, of course. It’s good that there were no ifs or buts, no attempts to excuse the inexcusable. But still it rings hollow.



BREAKING: Palestinian baby dies, 4 others wounded in suspected arson attack by Jewish extremists in #WestBank
: image via syndicalist @syndicalisms, 30 July 2015
 
The words sound empty partly because, while this act is extreme in its cruelty, it is not a freak event. Talk to the Israeli human rights groups that monitor their country’s 48-year occupation of the West Bank and they are clear that the masked men who broke into the Dawabsha family home in the early hours and set it alight committed a crime exceptional only in its consequences. “Violence by settlers against Palestinians is part of the daily routine of the occupation,” Hagai El-Ad, director of the B'tselem organisation, told me.



BREAKING: Palestinian baby dies, 4 others wounded in suspected arson attack by Jewish extremists in #WestBank
: image via syndicalist @syndicalisms, 30 July 2015
 
Indeed, El-Ad says this attack was the eighth time since 2012 that settlers have torched inhabited buildings. There have been dozens of assaults on property, too: mosques, agricultural land, businesses. “In most of these cases, they didn’t find the perpetrators, despite having the best intelligence agencies on the planet.” He is referring to the culture of impunity that has always protected the settlers.



#BREAKING: 2 Houses set on fire in #Duma village West Bank: Baby killed. parents & brothers injured. Writing sprayed.: image via Amichai Stein  @Amichai Stein1, 30 July 2015

That charge can be directed at past Israeli governments of the centre-left as well as the hawkish right: while the latter actively sponsored the settlement that followed the 1967 war, the former indulged it. But the right’s guilt runs deeper, which is why its tearful words of regret now sound so false.


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Grandfather standing in the second house burnt by settlers in.#duma. Only by chance no one slept there that night.: image via Combatants for Peace @cfpeace, 1 August 2015

Take Bennett. Put aside his repeated insistence that there will never be a Palestinian state, thereby crushing the dreams of an independent life for all those living under Israeli rule. Focus only on his conduct this week. Today’s murderous arson attack is assumed to be an act of revenge for the court-ordered dismantling on Wednesday of two buildings in the West Bank settlement of Bet El. The buildings were unfinished and empty. Israel’s supreme court ruled them illegal and ordered the army to demolish them. The settlers raged at the decision, demonstrating violently against the soldiers and police who were there to enforce it. And guess who stood on a roof at Bet El, egging the protesters on, stirring them to ever greater heights of fury? Why, it was Naftali Bennett.  


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#WestBank Settlers clash with Israeli police in West Bank. Photo @menahemkahana #AFP
: image via Stephanie Beauge @sbeaugeAFP, 29 July 2015
Israeli hawks pump ever more air into the ultra-nationalist balloon –- only to feign shock when it explodes

Netanyahu himself is not much better. You don’t have to recall his own disavowal of Palestinian statehood and a two-state solution on the eve of March’s election, or his racist warning that Arab citizens of Israel were heading to the polls “in droves”. Look only at his actions in recent days. Stung by the protests at Bet El, he announced construction of another 300 units in Bet El and 504 in East Jerusalem. In other words, he did not punish the settlers for their lawless behaviour: he rewarded it.


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@LTCPeterLerner We who've been on the ground know that when settlers attack, the Israeli army backs them up. #Duma: image via Max Blumenthal @ Max Blumenthal, 31 July 2015
 
There is a pattern here. The hawks of the Israeli right pump ever more air into the ultra-nationalist balloon -– only to feign shock when it explodes. A small, but telling example: yesterday an ultra-orthodox Jewish fanatic went on the rampage at the Jerusalem Pride march, stabbing wildly at anyone his knife could reach. He injured six, one critically. Among those who condemned his actions was Jewish Home Knesset member Bezalel Smotrich. Yet Smotrich calls himself a "proud homophobe": in 2006 he helped organise “the beast parade” which saw demonstrators mock Pride by walking through Jerusalem with donkeys and goats, as if to equate homosexuality with bestiality.



An Israeli woman received medical care after she and five others were stabbed during a gay rights parade in Jerusalem. The assailant, who was arrested, was identified as an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man who had recently been released from jail after serving time for a similar attack: photo by Atef Safadi/European Pressphoto Agency, 30  July 2015 
 
The prime example of turning on the tap –- only to be appalled by the flood -– is Netanyahu himself. Twenty years ago he stirred up crowds livid at then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s apparent concessions to the Palestinians. They waved placards depicting Rabin as a Palestinian terrorist, even as an SS officer –- but Netanyahu said nothing. They carried a mocked-up coffin of Rabin and still Netanyahu said nothing. But when a far rightist assassinated Rabin, Netanyahu was of course among the first to be shocked, shocked, by such wickedness.


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Next to Ali's crib, his baby bottle; milk still in it. #Duma
: image via Molly Hunter @mollymhunter, 31 July 2015
 
It’s true too that each “price tag” attack like yesterday’s –- designed to show that even the slightest brake on the settlement venture will come at a price –- helps entrench the position that territorial compromise is impossible, that the evacuation of settlements will trigger civil war. That is a conclusion that can only boost support for the Bibi-Bennett hostility to a two-state accord with the Palestinians. And yet, for all that, it would be wrong to see the Israeli right as a monolith -– and even more wrong to see Israel itself that way. There are distinctions and they matter. This week’s men of violence illustrate them.



#BREAKING: 2 Houses set on fire in #Duma village West Bank: Baby killed. parents & brothers injured. Writing sprayed.: image via Amichai Stein  @Amichai Stein1, 30 July 2015
 
The graffiti left by the murderers of baby Ali Saad offered a clue. “Long live the messiah,” said one. I’ve seen slogans like that before, in the radical settler enclave of Hebron: they point to a strand of settler extremism that denounces the actual state of Israel, and especially its army, as godless institutions of secular democracy, demanding in their place the creation of a “Judean kingdom”. To them, Netanyahu is a traitor and apostate.



#BREAKING: 2 Houses set on fire in #Duma village West Bank: Baby killed. parents & brothers injured. Writing sprayed.: image via Amichai Stein  @Amichai Stein1, 30 July 2015
 
Similarly, the would-be assassin of the Pride rally, Yishai Schlissel, told the Jerusalem court where he appeared today that he did not recognise its authority because it "does not follow the rules of the holy Torah" (as if he does). That suggests he belongs to the strand of anti-Zionist ultra-orthodoxy that regards the modern, secular state of Israel as a blasphemous pre-empting of the divine plan for the Jews.


#UPDATE: Letter published by #Jerusalem stabber a week ago: "Im willing die to prevent the Pride Parade": image via Amichai Stein @AmichaiStein1, 30 July 2015
 

#Jerusalem: PICS of the moment when the stabbing attack occurred during the Gay Pride Parade. (PICS: @AP & @Reuters): image via Amichai Stein @AmichaiStein1, 30 July 2015


#Jerusalem: PICS of the moment when the stabbing attack occurred during the Gay Pride Parade. (PICS: @AP & @Reuters): image via Amichai Stein @AmichaiStein1, 30 July 2015


#Jerusalem: PICS of the moment when the stabbing attack occurred during the Gay Pride Parade. (PICS: @AP & @Reuters): image via Amichai Stein @AmichaiStein1, 30 July 2015


#Jerusalem: PICS of the moment when the stabbing attack occurred during the Gay Pride Parade. (PICS: @AP & @Reuters): image via Amichai Stein @AmichaiStein1, 30 July 2015
Written in Blood


#UPDATE: Letter published by #Jerusalem
stabber a week ago: "Im willing die to prevent the Pride Parade": image via Amichai Stein @AmichaiStein1, 30 July 2015
 
It can be baffling, but such are the deep divisions within Israeli society, often missed by those looking on from afar. Israel's president, Reuven Rivlin -– who, though a hawk on territorial issues, has emerged as the country’s most urgent voice against bigotry and intolerance -– spoke in June of Israel’s four tribes: the strictly orthodox, the secular, the national-religious and the Arab minority.


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MAP are in touch with Dr. Anas, from Nablus burns unit we support, he's spent all night treating children from #Duma: image via MedicAidPalestiniansl @ MedicAidPal, 31 July 2015
 
Back when we used to speak of the “Middle East peace process” there was an assumption, contained in that very phrase, that if only Palestinians and Israelis could reach an accord, peace would come to the entire region. Now we surely know that even if there were such a pact, it would not end the killing in Yemen, the slaughter in Syria or the carnage in Iraq. Even if Palestinians and Israelis embraced, Isis would keep on beheading those it deems the wrong kind of Muslim.


Muslim worshipers, guarded by Israeli police, pray on the streets of the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood in east Jerusalem, following restrictions by Israeli police to only allow men above 50-year-old to access the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Muslim worshipers, guarded by Israeli police, pray on the streets of the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood in east Jerusalem, following restrictions by Israeli police to only allow men above 50-year-old to access the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound: photo by Jack Guez/AFP, 31 July 2015
 
But something else is true too. If the Palestinian-Israeli conflict were solved tomorrow, there are no guarantees it would bring tranquillity to Israel or indeed to the divided Palestinians. It might simply unleash the internal conflicts that the external clash has bottled up and contained for so long.


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A tiny body, in a tiny grave. #Duma
: image via Molly Hunter @mollymhunter, 31 July 2015
 
As the Dawabsha family mourns, and as Israelis and Palestinians hold their breath, trembling at the prospect of yet another dread cycle of retaliation and escalation, it is worth remembering that this conflict involves enmity piled upon enmity, hatred upon hatred, within and without –- making it harder to solve with each passing day.



A Palestinian protester uses a slingshot during clashes with Israeli security forces near Ramallah on Friday
: photo by APA Images/REX Shutterstock via The Guardian, 1 August 2015

Palestinian youth killed by troops after arson attack sparks West Bank violence:The 17-year-old was shot by Israeli troops at Atara checkpoint near Ramallah, Palestinian officials said, amid unrest over death of 18-month old boy: Kate Shuttleworth in Jerusalem for The Guardian, 1 August 2015

A Palestinian youth has been killed by Israeli forces in Ramallah in the wake of violent West Bank clashes that erupted after an 18-month-old toddler was killed in an arson attack in Duma yesterday morning.

According to Palestinian medical officials Laith Fadel al-Khaladi, 17, from Jifna, a village near Ramallah died early on Saturday after he was shot by Israeli sniper fire during clashes at Atara checkpoint near Bir Zeit.

Two Palestinians have been killed in the past 24 hours after he fatal arson attack that killed Palestinian infant Ali Dawabsheh that also left his parents Reham and Saad with third degree burns over up to 90% of their bodies. His four-year-old brother also has burns over 60% of his body. They are all being treated in an Israeli military hospital near Tel Aviv.

Earlier on Friday Mohammed al-Masri, also 17, from Gaza, was killed by Israeli army fire as he reportedly approached the border fence during a youth protest against the fatal arson attack that killed West Bank infant Ali Dawabsheh.

Dozens of other Palestinians were injured in clashes across the West Bank yesterday. 

Another Palestinian youth in Hebron was shot in the leg during violent protests and another four were injured when the IDF fired tear gas and rubber bullets at stone-throwers near Halhul in the West Bank.

Clashes broke out overnight in East Jerusalem. In Shuaafat refugee camp another Palestinian was seriously injured with a rubber-coated steel bullet allegedly fired at his head and another 11 were injured during clashes.


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Suspected Jewish attackers torch Palestinian home in West Bank, killing toddler: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 31 July

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 #NOW: While his parents struggle for their lives in hospital, baby Ali Saad Dawabsha, 1.5, is laid to rest in #Duma
: image via ActiveStills @activestills, 31 July 2015
two more brigades


#BREAKING: #Israel #IDF sent 2 more brigades to the West Bank fearing the arson in #Duma might start protest & riots
: image via Amichai Stein @AmichaiStein1, 30 July 2015



#BREAKING: #Israel #IDF sent 2 more brigades to the West Bank fearing the arson in #Duma might start protest & riots: image via Amichai Stein @AmichaiStein1, 30 July 2015


#BREAKING: #Israel #IDF sent 2 more brigades to the West Bank fearing the arson in #Duma might start protest & riots: image via Amichai Stein @AmichaiStein1, 30 July 2015
Various Small Fires


A Palestinian protester threw a stone at Israeli soldiers in clashes in Hebron, on the West Bank.  The violence came after Jewish extremists were suspected of setting fire to the home of a Palestinian family in Nablus that left a child dead and  others in the family injured: photo by Abed Al Haslhamoun/European Pressphoto Agency, 31 July 2015

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A photo from today's disturbances at#Duma: #Palestinians blocked a road and protested and burned tires: image via Seth Frantzman @sfrantzman, 1 August 2015

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#Israel army at scene of riots next to entrance of #Palestinian #Duma village, where a baby was murdered Friday.: image via Seth Frantzman @sfrantzman, 1 August 2015


Pictures of the ongoing clashes between youths and #IOF in #Duma village, south of #Nablus: image via PalestineSocialSeth Frantzman @PalestineSocial, 1 August 2015


Pictures of the ongoing clashes between youths and #IOF in #Duma village, south of #Nablus: image via PalestineSocial @PalestineSocial, 1 August 2015
 

Pictures of the ongoing clashes between youths and #IOF in #Duma village, south of #Nablus: image via PalestineSocial @PalestineSocial, 1 August 2015


Pictures of the ongoing clashes between youths and #IOF in #Duma village, south of #Nablus: image via PalestineSocial @PalestineSocial, 1 August 2015

consumed by flames

A wall of flames lurches over a ridge as a resident of Morgan Valley Road near Lower Lake, California, prepares to evacuate because of the 3,000 acre Rocky Fire that has taken hold in Lake County.

A wall of flames lurches over a ridge as a resident of Morgan Valley Road near Lower Lake, California, prepares to evacuate because of the 3,000 acre Rocky Fire that has taken hold in Lake County: photo by Kent Porter/The Press Democrat via AP, 30 July 2015

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Wow! Kent Porter once again showing the power of professional photojournalism. #RockyFire: image via Kevin McCallum @SRCityBeat, 30 July 2015

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Updated photos from @kentphotos
on the scene of the #RockyFire in #LakeCounty: image via The Press Democrat b@NorthBayNews, 29 July 2015

Rocky fire in Northern California

Flames consume the landscape at the Rocky fire near Lower Lake, California: photo by Kent Porter / Associated Press, 29 July 2015
 
Rocky fire in Northern California

Smoke rises above the landscape as the Rocky fire continues to burn at sunset outside Lower Lake, California: photo by Kent Porter / Associated Press, 1 August 2015
 
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 #RockyFire in #LakeCounty quickly grows to 3,000 acres; evacuations ordered: #Calfires: image via Ed Joyce @EdJoyce, 29 July 2015

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#RockyFire Spot fire now its own significant fire. This thing is big.: image via Stuart Palley @stuartpalley, 30 July 2015

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 #rockyfire moonrise and spot fire. 13,500 acres 5% contained: image via Stuart Palley @stuartpalley, 30 July 2015
 
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The #RockyFire is unreal I have no words to explain how massive this fire is -Taken off Hwy 20 where it's heading: image via Sara Zendehnam @szendehnam, 1 August 2015

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 More evacuations as #RockyFire at Clear Lake, California is now 25,750 acres & 5% contained: image via Ed Joyce @EdJoyce, 1 August 2015

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On HWY 20 just before it was closed. To all Firefighters & their support, be safe & thank you #RockyFire: image via 27suns 27@suns, 1 August 2015

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24 homes consumed by the #RockyFire. #cafire: image via Ian Schwartz @SchwartzTV, 1 August 2015

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The #RockyFire in Lake County has grown to 25,750 acres & continues to burn north toward Hwy 20. Still 5% contained: image via CAL FIRE PIO Berlant @CALFIRE_PIO, 1 August 2015

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 #RockyFire [has] burned more than 23,000 acres
: image via Scott Rates @RealScottRates, 1 August 2015  California, USA


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 #RockyFire burned more than 22,000 acres, creating its own #weather @kron4news
: image via Scott Rates @RealScottRates, 1 August 2015  Clearlake, CA


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Firefighters push #RockyFire
away from 5,000 homes: image via SFGate @SFGate, 1 August 2015

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Firefighters drive Lake County's #RockyFire away from 5,000 homes: image via Kurtis Alexander @Kurtis Alexander, 1 August 2015

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Lidar scanning this pyroCU right now at #RockyFire @FireWeatherLab
: image via Neil Lareau @nplareau, 30 July 2015


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#RockyFire
bus not yellow anymore @NorthBayNew @CAL_FIRE @CALFIRE_PIO: image via Kent Porter @kentphotos, 30 July 2015

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#rockyfire claims a mobile home: image via Stuart Palley @stuartpalley, 30 July 2015

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 #RockyFire smoke plumes capping out Thursday evening. @NorthBayNews @NWSBayArea @NWSSacramento @NWSEureka #CAwx: image via Kent Porter @kentphotos, 31 July 2015
 

Deer in the path of advancing Rocky Fire
: photo by Al Francis/Healdsburg Patch, 29 July 2015

Ask the Goats

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Two stranded dogs on the roof of a flooded building in Kale township, Myanmar: photo by Lynn Bo Bo/EPA, 3 August 2015

Locals use makeshift raft and rubber inner tube as a means of getting through  flooded road in Kale township of Sagaing Region, Myanmar on Monday. Myanmar president  declared four regions (Sagaing, Magway Regions and Rakhine, Chin States) as disaster zones on 31 July 2015. Heavy monsoon rains caused floods around Myanmar with dozens deaths being reported as thousands are fleeing their homes in several regions across the country. In Myanmar monsoon starts at the beginning of June and ends in September.

Locals use makeshift raft and rubber inner tube as a means of getting through flooded road in Kale township of Sagaing Region, Myanmar on Monday. Myanmar president declared four regions (Sagaing, Magway Regions and Rakhine, Chin States) as disaster zones: photo by Lynn Bo Bo/EPA, 3 August 2015


Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz compared global warming believers to ‘flat-Earthers’: photo by Yuri Gripas/Reuters, 2 August 2015

Ask the goats

Ted is right.
Zed is dead.

The earth is flat.
Its head is square.

It has a wee
wistful

oily malevolence, and will
eat an insect

for money.
American Geek

is a lying language.
Ask the dogs

if the weather's
the same

as it ever was.
Ask the goats.


Rocky fire in Northern California

Goats run away from their pen after firefighters freed them as the Rocky fire approaches, in Lower Lake: photo by Justin Sullivan via Los Angeles Times, 31 July 2015

Ted Cruz expresses 'full out denial' of global warming during forum: Republican presidential candidate said the debate was a device used by liberals to appease ‘environmentalist billionaires and their campaign donations’: Ben Jacobs in Washington for The Guardian, 2 August 2015

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has stated that he doesn’t believe in the science behind global warming. In a forum hosted on Sunday evening by Freedom Partners, a key cog in the political network of the Koch Brothers, the Texas senator stated that “the data and facts don’t support” that global warming is occurring.

The moderator of the forum described Cruz’s stance as “full out denial”. The Texas senator did not disagree with that characterisation. Cruz has previously compared those who believe in global warming to “flat-Earthers.”

Cruz also criticised the new regulations, set to be unveiled by the Obama administration on Monday, to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. To the Republican presidential candidate, these new rules were a sign that the Democratic party had abandoned union members for “California environmentalist billionaires and their campaign donations”, in a clear reference to hedge fund mogul and environmentalist Tom Steyer.

In denying global warming, which Cruz saw as a Trojan horse used by liberals to impose “massive government control” on the economy, the Texas Republican distinguishes himself from many others in the GOP field. Earlier, 2016 rival Marco Rubio also attacked the new regulations, although the Florida senator was loth to address the science behind global warming. In contrast, other Republicans, like former Florida governor Jeb Bush, have acknowledged that the planet is getting warmer.

However, Bush did have some fierce words for the Obama administration’s plans on Sunday. “I think it’s a disaster. It’s typical of the Obama administration, taking the power he doesn’t have,” he told the audience at the Freedom Partners forum. He added that he thought the regulations were both “unconstitutional” and “a job killer”.

Research by the federal government shows that the rate of global warming has been steady and unchanging in recent years and that 2014 was the warmest year on record.


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Wildfires in droughty California threaten thousands of acres, #RockyFire only 5% contained. (Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty): image via reportedly @reportedly, 3 August 2015

Rocky fire in Northern California

Flames from the Rocky fire approach a house on Friday, in Lower Lake: photo by Justin Sullivan via Los Angeles Times, 31 July 2015

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Over 10,000 villagers washed out in Irrawaddy Division #Burma #Myanmar: image via he Irrawaddy @IrrawaddyNews, 3 August 2015


#Myanmar UN warns Myanmar flood toll to increase as rains lash region. Photo @ye_aung_thu #AFP
: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 2 August 2015
 

#Myanmar UN warns Myanmar flood toll to increase as rains lash region. Photo @ye_aung_thu #AFP
: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 2 August 2015
 
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Picture of the day: Deadly floods hit #Myanmar: image via euronewst @euronews, 3 August 2015
 
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UN warns: #Myanmar flood toll
likely to incr | Disaster in Rakhine, Chin, Magwe, & Sagaing: image via The Myanmar Times  @TheMyanmarTmes, 3 August 2015
 
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#Myanmar: Hundreds dead, millions displaced as monsoon rains heap misery on Asia Photo @ye_aung_thu #AFP: image via Stephanie Beauge @sbeaugeafp, 3 August 2014

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#Myanmar: Hundreds dead, millions displaced as monsoon rains heap misery on Asia Photo @ye_aung_thu #AFP: image via Stephanie Beauge @sbeaugeafp, 3 August 2014

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As fires ravage CA the most concerning is the #rockyfire: image via Christina Salvo @ABC7Christina, 3 August 2015

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#Wildfires rage across swathes of California. Photo Josh Edelson #AFP: image via Stephanie Beauge @sbeaugeafp, 2 August 2014
 

President Barack Obama set the stage on Sunday for the release of the nation’s most ambitious environmental regulation in decades — a crackdown on power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions that the administration hopes will put the U.S. in striking distance of achieving a global agreement to combat climate change: photo by AP, 2 August 2015
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