People aren't the only ones concerned about the #RockyFire Spotted this heard of elk several miles from the fire line: image via Brian Hickey @kcraBrianHickey, 4 February 2015

I...Smoke

The #RockyFire, north of San Fran has burned more than 93sq miles, that's an area bigger than Seattle city: image via BBC Weather @bbcweather, 4 February 2015

People aren't the only ones concerned about the #RockyFire Spotted this herd of elk several miles from the fire line: image via Brian Hickey @kcraBrianHickey, 4 February 2015

A new plume from the Rocky fire: photo by Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times, 4 August 2015

A firefighter is dwarfed by a smoldering hillside that was lit in a backfire: photo by Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times, 4 August 2015

It was fire in the sky at daybreak as fire down below from the Rocky fire continued to burn in Lake County south of Clearlake: photo by Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times, 4 August 2015

The Rocky Fire from afar: photo by Noah Berger/EPA, 2 August 2015

II...Toast

A helicopter flies by charred trees as it prepares to drop a load of water on the Rocky fire, which, by Tuesday, had grown to 67,000 acres: photo by Genaro Molina via Los Angeles Times, 5 August 2015

Explosive Rocky fire defies odds -- and expectations: Joseph Serna, Chris Megarian and Corina Knoll, Los Angeles Times, 5 August 2015

The Rocky fire has become the blaze of perplexing whims, baffling fire officials with a mercurial nature that computer models and simulations could not predict. Sweeping across three counties in Northern California, the fire has plowed through containment lines, hurdled over a highway -- even managed to create its own weather system.

"This fire wants to do whatever it wants," Cal Fire spokesman Jason Shanley said. "It's defying all odds. Thirty-year, 40-year veterans have never seen this before."

Perhaps the most frustrating trait of the massive blaze -- 67,000 acres, about the size of Sacramento — has been its ability to suck up heat, energy and moisture, then shoot those elements into the air to form a mushroom top of smoke and ash. Every so often, that plume crashes to the ground, either because of its own weight or because of a temperature drop, which sends flames and wind rushing around it in all directions.

One fire behavior expert likened the effect to a child stomping into a puddle -- except that instead of water splashing everywhere, it's fire, heat and ash, along with winds that move up to 50 miles per hour.

"That's the killer," said Bill Patzert, a climatologist with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "In some cases, you can't outrun it. It's like an explosion."

Patzert pointed out that high-pressure systems carrying hot, muggy weather and pushing winds north along the coast are colliding with a low-pressure system, resulting in higher winds. He also said that while the drought-parched region isn't likely to have an effect on the amount of fires, dry conditions will add to their intensity.

"Once they start up, they burn hotter. They're less controllable," he said.

Breaking out Wednesday near Clear Lake in a rugged region north of Napa, the Rocky fire scorched 8,000 acres by the following afternoon. Computer models estimated it would take seven days for it to double in size. But on Saturday it exploded across 20,000 acres in just five hours. Fire retardant, break lines and backfires could not contain its flames.

Two days later, crews hoped a lull in the summer heat would help them gain ground — until the blaze jumped California 20, a ribbon of asphalt firefighters had hoped would halt its path.

The largest of the 22 fires being battled across the state, the Rocky fire stretches across Colusa, Lake and Yolo counties and has consumed 50 structures, including 24 homes. By Tuesday, it was 20% contained as it was fought by nearly 3,500 firefighters.

The rash of fires prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency last week, and on Tuesday, the White House issued a statement that said President Barack Obama had requested that his team stay in touch with local officials as fire efforts continued.

Federal and local officials were investigating the death of U.S. Forest Service Fire Capt. David Ruhl, 38, who died while fighting a fire in Modoc County.

No deaths have been reported in the Rocky fire, but its vast range has displaced thousands of residents, some of whom have been forced to pitch tents in parking lots or hop around to available hotels.

"We're running out of money really fast," said Antoinette Oliver, 37, who evacuated her Spring Valley home along with her mother-in-law and 8-year-old son. "You're not really prepared for situations like this."

Her husband, Brian Hultman, had stayed behind with their two dogs and witnessed flames close enough to rain ash on their property. "It looked apocalyptic," Hultman, 29, said. "It was just thick black as far as you could see."

The cause of the fire remains under investigation, but thousands of lightning strikes have ignited wildfires since last week, fire officials said.

Weather patterns carrying monsoonal moisture and thunderstorms add a level of unpredictability to the winds that help drive fires. Thunderstorms hovering over fires, in fact, create the same cloud effect that the Rocky fire has already been generating, said John Wood, a U.S. Forest Service fire behavior analyst.

Unfortunately, the Rocky fire gives fire officials a preview of what could be expected in a water-starved region during the heart of fire season.

That's a frightening future for fire crews who watched the Rocky fire produce its own fast-moving wind that not only breathed new life into its own blaze but sent embers flying miles around to spark new flames.

"It's misbehaving so much," Shanley said. "It's just almost, I want to say obnoxious -- that's not even the correct word for it. It's unbelievable."

Here's the latest perimeter map of the 65,000 acre #RockyFire: image via CAL FIRE PIO Berlant @CALFIRE_PIO, 4 August 2015

Burned signs are shown on a road near Lower Lake, California. A series of wildfires were intensified by dry vegetation, triple-digit temperatures and gusting winds.: photo by Jeff Chiu/Associated Press Noah Berger/EPA, 31 July 2015

Tracey Webb, 34, of Redding was arrested Monday on suspicion of starting 14 fires in Northern California: photo by Shasta County Sheriff Department via Los Angeles Times, 5 August 2015

A firefighter helps ignite a backfire while battling the Rocky Fire near Clearlake, California: photo by Noah Berger/EPA, 2 August 2015

III...Smoke Alarm

brushed hand against #DonaldTrump caterpillar's hair, lost all sensation in left arm for 24hrs #fieldworkfail: image via Joe Parker @Pselaphinae, 1 August 2015

Donald Trump’s allure: ego as ideology via NYT Opinion: image via The New York Times @nytimes, 4 August 2015

We are currently enjoying a master class in the art of political stupidity: image via The New York Times @nytimes, 4 August 2015

Donald #Trump, an unknown quantity of the first Republican debate - by @ivancouronne: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 4 August 2015

Predictions of #Trump's demise were apparently premature -- he's gaining momentum: image via Reuters Politics @ReutersPolitics, 30 July 2015

Iran nuclear deal "will bring war," Netanyahu says, in new appeal to Jewish Americans: image via AJE Newss @AJENewss, 4 August 2015

The first GOP debate is only a day away! Here's 3 ways other candidates can trump #Trump: image viaOpportunityLives @OppLives, 5 August 2015

PHOTOS:Warming up for the #GOP debate: image via Reuters Politics @ReutersPolitics, 5 August 2015

#Trump doesn't need to offer a lot of details. When politicians talk policy, Americans hear Charlie Brown's teacher.: image via #TrumpArmy @mitchellvi, 5 August 2015 Charlotte, NC

Article of clothing worn by a victim of the 6 August 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, seen in the archive of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum: photo by Ishiuchi Miyako From “Here and Now: Atomic Bomb Artifacts, ひろしま/Hiroshima 1945/2007—"; image via Behold, 27 August 2014 (Andrew Roth Gallery)

I come and stand at every door

But no one hears my silent tread

I knock and yet remain unseen

For I am dead, for I am dead.

I'm only seven although I died

In Hiroshima long ago

I'm seven now as I was then

When children die they do not grow.

My hair was scorched by swirling flame

My eyes grew dim, my eyes grew blind

Death came and turned my bones to dust

And that was scattered by the wind.

I need no fruit, I need no rice

I need no sweet, nor even bread

I ask for nothing for myself

For I am dead, for I am dead.

All that I ask is that for peace

You fight today, you fight today

So that the children of this world

May live and grow and laugh and play.

Nâzim Hikmet Ran (1902-1963): Kız Çocuğu (The Little Girl), translated by Jeanette Turner as I Come and Stand At Every Door

"In the late '50's I got a letter: 'Dear Pete Seeger: I've made what I think is a singable translation of a poem by the Turkish poet, Nazim Hikmet. Do you think you could make a tune for it? (Signed), Jeanette Turner.' I tried for a week. Failed. Meanwhile I couldn't get out of my head an extraordinary melody put together by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student who had put a new tune to a mystical ballad The Great Silkie from the Shetland Islands north of Scotland. Without his permission I used his melody for Hikmet's words. It was wrong of me. I should have gotten his permission. But it worked. The Byrds made a good recording of it, electric guitars and all."

Pete Seeger (1919-2014), from Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Singer's Stories, Songs, Seeds, Robberies (A Musical Autobiography), 1993

80,000 insanın bir anda, 200,000 insanın sonraki yıllarda ölmesine neden olan saldırıyı yapan #Enola Gay adlı uçak: image via Murad @muradcobanoglu, 6 August 1945

Hiroşima'da yüz binlerce insanın ölümüne neden olan #Enola Gay adlı uçağın kaptan pilotu Tuğg. Paul Warfield Tibbets.: image via Murad @muradcobanoglu, 6 August 1945

#TarihteBugün: ABD, 80,000 insanın ölümüne neden olan ilk atom bombasını 1945'te Japonya'nın Hiroşimakentine attı.: image via Murad @muradcobanoglu, 6 August 1945

Hiroshima 6 Agosto 1945 70 Anni fà ... #Pernondimenticare Che l'uomo ha dominato l'uomo a suo danno...: image via nando mele @mele_nando 6 August 2015 Milan, Lombardy

August 6, 1945: United States dropped the 1st (of 2) atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan: est. 140,000 deaths.: image via History #HistoryTime, 6 August 2015

Hiroshima 6 Agosto 1945 70 Anni fà ... #Pernondimenticare Che l'uomo ha dominato l'uomo a suo danno...: image via nando mele @mele_nando 6 August 2015 Milan, Lombardy

The shadows of the parapets are imprinted on the surface of the bridge, 2,890 feet (880 meters) south-south-west of the hypocenter. These shadows give a clue as to the exact location of the hypocenter: photo by U. S. Army, August 1945

A Turkish police officer questions a Kurdish boy about an attack on fellow officers that left one dead and another wounded. The attack occurred in Diyarbakir, Turkey, a predominantly Kurdish town, and came several days after violence that began with a suicide bombing that killed 32 along the Turkey-Syria border: photo by Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse, 23 July 2015

I...Autobiography

I was born in 1902
I never once went back to my birthplace
I don't like to turn back
at three I served as a pasha's grandson in Aleppo
at nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist University
at forty-nine I was back in Moscow as the Tcheka Party's guest
and I've been a poet since I was fourteen
some people know all about plants some about fish
I know separation
some people know the names of the stars by heart
I recite absences
I've slept in prisons and in grand hotels
I've known hunger even a hunger strike and there's almost no food
I haven't tasted
at thirty they wanted to hang me
at forty-eight to give me the Peace Prize
which they did
at thirty-six I covered four square meters of concrete in half a year
at fifty-nine I flew from Prague to Havana in eighteen hours
I never saw Lenin I stood watch at his coffin in '24
in '61 the tomb I visit is his books
they tried to tear me away from my party
it didn't work
nor was I crushed under the falling idols
in '51 I sailed with a young friend into the teeth of death
in '52 I spent four months flat on my back with a broken heart
waiting to die
I was jealous of the women I loved
I didn't envy Charlie Chaplin one bit
I deceived my women
I never talked behind my friends' backs
I drank but not every day
I earned my bread money honestly what happiness
out of embarrassment for others I lied
I lied so as not to hurt someone else
but I also lied for no reason at all
I've ridden in trains planes and cars
most people don't get the chance
I went to opera
most people haven't even heard of the opera
and since '21 I haven't gone to the places most people visit
mosques churches temples synagogues sorcerers
but I've had my coffee grounds read
my writings are published in thirty or forty languages
in my Turkey in my Turkish they're banned
cancer hasn't caught up with me yet
and nothing says it will
I'll never be a prime minister or anything like that
and I wouldn't want such a life
nor did I go to war
or burrow in bomb shelters in the bottom of the night
and I never had to take to the road under diving planes
but I fell in love at almost sixty
in short comrades
even if today in Berlin I'm croaking of grief
I can say I've lived like a human being
and who knows
how much longer I'll live
what else will happen to me

East Berlin, 11 September 1961

Nâzim Hikmet Ran (b. Salonica, 15 January 1902 - d. Moscow, 3 June 1963): Autobiography, 11 September 1961, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk, 1993

A Turkish police officer questions a Kurdish boy after one Turkish policeman was shot dead in Diyarbakir [photo Bulent Kilic]: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 23 July 2015

Protests, clashes in Istanbul's Gazi district: photo by @ozzyozann: image via Agence France-Presse @ AFP, 26 July 2015

Protests, clashes in Istanbul's Gazi district: photo by @ozzyozann: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 26 July 2015

Turkey accused of shelling Kurdish-held village in Syria (Istanbul photo by @Kilicbil): image via Kaycee Nightfire @KcNightfire, 27 July 2015

Protests, clashes in Istanbul's Gazi district: photo by @Kilicbil: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 26 July 2015

Turkey: Istanbul police, protesters clash in flashpoint district. Photo @Kilicbil: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 26 July 2015

Protests, clashes in Istanbul's Gazi district: photo by @Kilicbil: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 26 July 2015

Turkish President Says Can’t Continue Peace Talks with #Kurds #TwitterKurds #Turkey #PKK #HDP: image by Mewan DolamariHans Solo @thandojo, 28 July 2015

During clashes with riot police at a demonstration against the death of Gunay Ozarslan, in #Istanbul's Gazi, #Turkey: image by Hans Solo @thandojo, 28 July 2015

Nâzim Hikmet (Bologna): photo by stefano, 9 December 2013

II...It's This Way

I stand in the advancing light,

my hands hungry, the world beautiful.

My eyes can't get enough of the trees --
they're so hopeful, so green.

A sunny road runs through the mulberries,
I'm at the window of the prison infirmary.

I can't smell the medicines --
carnations must be blooming nearby.

It's this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.

Nâzim Hikmet Ran ((b. Salonica, 15 January 1902 - d. Moscow, 3 June 1963)): It's This Way, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk, 1993

Ulucanlar Prison, Turkey: photo by 'Enes Dilber, 19 September 2014

Nâzim Hikmet (r.) with fellow inmates, Sultahnamet Prison, Istanbul [?]. "Si yo no incendio, si tú no incendias, como hacer luz de las tinieblas?"Nâzim Hikmet, poeta y paisano.: photographer unknown, n..d.; image by J. Kresve, 17 December 2008

Street sign (Paris): photo by urb_mtl, 19 July 2010

Nâzim Hikmet: photographer unknown, n..d.; image by canburak, 23 January 2013

Socony-Vacuum Oil Company advertisement for Mobilgas: Life, 13 October 1941 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)

Bertolt Brecht: On Thinking about Hell

On thinking about hell, I gather
My brother Shelley found it was a place
Much like the city of London. I
Who live in Los Angeles and not in London
Find, on thinking about Hell, that it must be
Still more like Los Angeles.

In Hell too
There are, I've no doubt, these luxuriant gardens
With flowers as big as trees, which of course wither
Unhesitantly if not nourished with very expensive water. And fruit markets
With great heaps of fruit, albeit having
Neither smell nor taste. And endless processions of cars
Lighter than their own shadows, faster than
Mad thoughts, gleaming vehicles in which
Jolly-looking people come from nowhere and are nowhere bound.
And houses, built for happy people, therefore standing empty
Even when lived in.

The houses in Hell, too, are not all ugly.
But the fear of being thrown on the street
Wears down the inhabitants of the villas no less than
The inhabitants of the shanty towns.

Bertolt Brecht (10 February 1898-14 August 1956):Nachdenkend über die Hölle, 1941, translated byNicholas JacobsasOn Thinking about Hellin Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956, ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim with the co-operation of Erich Fried, 1976

Westwood Village in Los Angeles, California in 1941 | by vieilles_annonces

Westwood Village, Los Angeles, 1941: photographer unknown, image via Vieilles Annonces, 22 January 2011

Hell is a city much like London --
A populous and a smoky city;
There are all sorts of people undone,
And there is little or no fun done;
Small justice shown, and still less pity.

**-- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): from Part the Third: Hell, in Peter Bell the Third. By Miching Mallecho, Esq. (1839)**

Esther Williams, Hollywood -- Frammenti da film immaginari: photographer unknown, 1941; image by Norma Gombox (aka Regivar)

August 1 [1941]: Brecht has great difficulty becoming accustomed to the new environment, America and especially Hollywood. "There is hardly a place where it was harder for me to live than in this showplace of easy going." He misses Margaret Steffin: "It's as though my guide has been taken from me just when I enter the desert."
**-- Klaus Völker, Brecht Chronicle, 1971, translated by Fred Wieck, 1975; Brecht diary quotation from Bertolt Brecht: Arbeitsjournal, I, 291**

Socony-Vacuum Oil Company advertisement for Mobilgas:Harold Anderson (illustrator), Life, 28 April 1941 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)

Bertolt Brecht: Contemplating Hell

Contemplating Hell, as I once heard it,
My brother Shelley found it to be a place
Much like the city of London. I,
Who do not live in London, but in Los Angeles,
Find, contemplating Hell, that it
Must be even more like Los Angeles.

Also in Hell,
I do not doubt it, there exist these opulent gardens
With flowers as large as trees, wilting, of course,
Very quickly, if they are not watered with very expensive water. And fruit markets
With great leaps of fruit, which nonetheless

Possess neither scent nor taste. And endless trains of autos,
Lighter than their own shadows, swifter than
Foolish thoughts, shimmering vehicles, in which
Rosy people, coming from nowhere, go nowhere.
And houses, designed for happiness, standing empty,
Even when inhabited.

Even the houses in Hell are not all ugly.
But concern about being thrown into the street
Consumes the inhabitants of the villas no less
Than the inhabitants of the barracks.

Bertolt Brecht (10 February 1898-14 August 1956):Nachdenkend über die Hölle, 1941, translated as Contemplating Hell byHenry ErikButler

Socony-Vacuum Oil Company advertisement for Mobilgas: Life, 4 August 1941 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)

Bertolt Brecht:Nachdenkend über die Hölle

Nachdenkend, wie ich höre, über die HölleFand mein Bruder Shelley, sie sei ein Ort

Gleichend ungefäh der Stadt London. Ich
Der nich nicht in London lebe, sondern in Los Angeles
Finde, nachdenkend über die Hölle, sie mußNoch mehr Los Angeles gleichen.

Auch in der Hölle
Gibt es, ich zweifle nicht, diese üppigen Gärten
Mit den Blumen, so groß wie Bäume, freilich verwelkend
Ohne Aufschub, wenn nicht gewässert mit sehr teurem
Wasser. Und Obstmärkte
Mit ganzen Haufen von Früchten, die allerdings
Weder riechen noch schmecken. Und endlose Züge von Autos
Leichter als ihr eigener Schatten, schneller als
Törichte Gedanken, schimmernde Fahrzeuge, in denen
Rosige Leute, von nirgenher kommend, nirgendhin fahren.
Und Häuser, für Glückliche gebaut, daher leerstehend
Auch wenn bewohnt.

Auch die Häuser in der Hölle sind nicht alle häßlich.
Aber die Sorge, auf die Straße gerworfen zu warden
Verzehrt die Bewohner der Villen nicht weniger als
Die Bewohner der Baracken.

Bertolt Brecht (10 February 1898-14 August 1956):Nachdenkend über die Hölle, 1941, text from Gedichte 6, 52

Socony-Vacuum Oil Company advertisement for Mobiloil:Life, 23 June 1941 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)

Out of petroleum -- chickens!

Autocar advertisement for Autocar Trucks:Campbell (illustrator), Life, 6 June 1941 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)

Shell Oil Company advertisement for Shell Gasoline:Life, 23 June 1941 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)

TEXACO ALL-NIGHT SERVICE LIFE 06/23/1941

The Texas Company advertisement for Texaco All-Night Service:Life, 23 June 1941 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)

The gracious charm and boundless enthusiasm never vary -- at home or on safari

Chrysler Corporation advertisement for Chrysler Automobiles:Life, 23 June 1941 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)

LINCOLN AUTOMOBILES LIFE 09/29/1941 INSIDE FRONT

Ford Motor Company advertisement for Lincoln Automobiles: Life, 29 September 1941 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)

Ford Motor Company advertisement for Mercury Automobiles: Life, 13 October 1941 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)

STUDEBAKER AUTOMOBILES LIFE 04/28/1941 p. 75

Studebaker Corporation advertisement for Studebaker Automobiles:Life, 28 April 1941 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)

CHEVROLET AUTOMOBILES LIFE 06/23/1941 p. 5

General Motors advertisement for Chevrolet Automobiles:Life, 23 June 1941 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)

Emergency Exit

16e 1941 Cadillac Series 62 Coupe - Owned by Clark Gable and Carole Lombard - Side Crest (E) | by Kansas Sebastian

16e 1941 Cadillac Series 62 Coupe -- Owned by Clark Gable and Carole Lombard -- Side Crest (E): photo by Kansas Sebastian, 10 October 2010

Freeway Fire, I-5 South, Santa Clarita: photo by rocor, 2 July 2014

West Coast Crash: Carlos Almaraz (1941-1989), 1982, oil on canvas; photo by rocor, 20 November 2012 (Collection Elsa and Maya Almaraz)

CA: Sunset on the Fig: Carlos Almaraz (1941-1989), 1981, oil on canvas; photo by rocor, 20 November 2012; image courtesy Frank Romero (Collection Elsa and Maya Almaraz)

Chrysler Plant - Los Angeles, CA. 5800 S. Eastern Ave. Commerce, CA. 1932-1971 | by encanto_sunland

Chrysler plant, Los Angeles. 5800 S. Eastern Ave., Commerce City, CA. Starting in 1932, the Los Angeles plant made Plymouth and Dodge trucks. By 1941, having gained Dodge cars as well, the plant was producing up to 40,000 vehicles per year.: photographer unknown. c. 1941; image via George, 10 February 2015

Progress (a Bridge to Nowhere): "the contemplation of whether humanity is capable of preventing catastrophe"

Bridge in Macau: photo by Maitreya 8 (Mahesh Rao), 7 October 2011

For a theoretical account of the category of progress it is necessary to scrutinize the category so closely that it loses its semblance of obviousness, both in its positive and its negative usage. And yet such proximity also makes the account more difficult. Even more than other concepts, the concept of progress dissolves upon attempts to specify its exact meaning, for instance what progresses and what does not. Whoever wants to define the concept precisely easily destroys what he is aiming at. The subaltern prudence that refuses to speak of progress before it can distinguish progress in what, of what, and in relation to what, displaces the unity of the moments, which within the concept ritually elaborate each other, into a mere juxtaposition. By insisting on exactitude where the impossibility of the unambiguous appertains to the subject matter itself, dogmatic epistemology misses its object, sabotages insight and helps to perpetuate the bad by zealously forbidding reflection upon what, in the age of both utopian and absolutely destructive possibilities, the consciousness of those entangled would like to discover: whether there is progress. Like every philosophical term, 'progress' has its equivocations; and as in any such term, these equivocations also register a commonality. What at this time one should understand by 'progress' one knows vaguely, but precisely: for just this reason one cannot employ the concept roughly enough. To use the term pedantically merely cheats it out of what it promises: an answer to the doubt and the hope that things will finally get better, that people will at last be able to breathe a sigh of relief. For this reason alone one cannot say precisely what progress should mean to people, because the crisis of the situation is that precisely while everyone feels the crisis, the words bringing resolution are missing. Only those reflections about progress have truth that immerse themselves in progress and yet maintain distance, withdrawing from paralyzing facts and specialized meanings. Today reflections of this kind come to a point in the contemplation of whether humanity is capable of preventing catastrophe. The forms of humanity's own global societal constitution threaten its life, if a self-conscious global subject does not develop and intervene.

Theodor Adorno: excerpt from Progress, Lecture at Münster Philosophers' Congress, 22 October 1962, translated by Henry Pickford in Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, 1998

Bridge in Macau (the haze is from industrial polllution): photo by Maitreya 8 (Mahesh Rao), 7 October 2011

Test Drive

FORD AUTOMOBILES LIFE 04/28/1941 INSIDE FRONT

Ford Motor Company advertisement for Ford Automobiles: Life, 28 April 1941 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)

Climate Change: Can California cut gasoline use in half in 15 years? Probably not [extract]: Kate Galbraith, CALmatters, 4 August 2015

One sunny Saturday in Stockton, Mary Serrano climbed into the driver’s seat of a bright-red, all-electric Chevrolet Spark. A retiree who normally drives a 20-year-old Toyota Camry, she was curious about the new technology on display at the local fairground.

"I feel like I’m going to outer space," she said giddily, as a company representative prepared to explain the controls.

But after the excitement of the test drive, reality set in. The Camry, which had to be fixed after failing a smog test, will keep its place at her Stockton home. An electric car seems out of reach, despite the availability of rebates.

“For the moment, I don’t have the money to buy it,” she said by phone, a few months after the fairground event. “Maybe later in life.”

Her situation suggests that for all the allure of emissions-free vehicles, getting Californians to adopt them will take time. That in turn creates challenges for slashing gasoline and diesel use, a goal state leaders are championing as part of their battle against climate change. A bill that has passed the state Senate and awaits a vote in the Assembly seeks to halve the amount of petroleum used in motor vehicles by 2030. It will be difficult to accomplish in such a short period.

“If we’re talking about transportation petroleum use, then the goal probably isn’t possible,” said John German, a Michigan-based senior fellow with the International Council on Clean Transportation. A key problem, he said, is that people hold onto cars and trucks for a long time, an average of more than 11 years for American cars.

The bill has the backing of Gov. Jerry Brown, who earlier this year called for the state to cut petroleum use in cars and trucks "up to 50 percent." Senate Bill 350 contains an unequivocal 50 percent target.

“I wouldn’t set forth on this pathway if I believed that the targets were unrealistic,” said Senate leader Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, the bill’s powerful co-author, in a recent interview.

Other parts of the legislation call for electric utilities to use 50 percent renewable energy by 2030 and for buildings to become twice as energy efficient.

“We should be careful when we set round numbers like 50-50-50. Why 50?” said Eloy Garcia, who lobbies for the Western States Petroleum Association, in testimony before an Assembly committee in July. “I know they’re nice round numbers, but we should be careful about why we’ve picked those numbers.”

The bill would take gasoline use in the state back to the 1960s, a time when California’s population was close to half of what it is today. It would not only help cut greenhouse gas emissions, a priority for the state, but also reduce the fine particles and smog-forming gases that contribute to unhealthy air above some California cities, including Los Angeles, Bakersfield and Fresno.

“The primary driver of this target was air quality,” Stanley Young, a spokesman for the Air Resources Board, the state agency overseeing air quality and climate change policy, wrote in an e-mail.

The ARB would oversee the programs, creating a point of controversy because industry groups perceive it as high-handed, even as environmentalists cheer it on. Petroleum lobbyists and other opponents want elected legislators to plan how the goals will be met and not the appointed air board officials.

A general view shows oil pumping jacks and drilling pads at the Kern River Oil Field in Bakersfield, US. #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 29 July 2015

When?!?! #oil #gas: image via Reema Harfoushi @Reemaharfoushi, 9 August 2015

Giotto: Drilling-down in the Subterranean Realm of the Petroleum God

Last Judgment (detail): Giotto di Bondone, 1306, fresco, Cappella Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), Padua

A woman attacked by seagulls piece by Banksy, during the press view for the artist s biggest show to date, entitled 'Dismaland', at Tropicana in Western-super-Mare, Somerset.

A woman attacked by seagulls piece by Banksy, seen during the press view for the artist’s biggest show to date, entitled ‘Dismaland’, at Tropicana in Western-super-Mare, Somerset: photo by Yui Mok/PA, 20 August 2015

Wallace Stevens: from Two or Three Ideas, a lecture on Baudelaire's La Vie Anterieure

To see the gods dispelled in mid-air and dissolve like clouds is one of the great human experiences. It is not as if they had gone over the horizon to disappear for a time; nor as if they had been overcome by other gods of greater power and profounder knowledge. It is simply that they came to nothing. Since we have always shared all things with them and have always had a part of their strength and, certainly, all of their knowledge, we shared likewise this experience of annihilation. It was their annihilation, not ours, and yet it left us feeling that in a measure we, too, had been annihilated. It left us feeling dispossessed and alone in a solitude, like children without parents, in a home that seemed deserted, in which the amical rooms and halls had taken on a look of hardness and emptiness. What was most extraordinary is that they left no mementoes behind, no thrones, no mystic rings, no texts either of the soil or of the soul. It was as if they had never inhabited the earth. There was no crying out for their return. They were not forgotten because they had been a part of the glory of the earth. At the same time, no man ever muttered a petition in his heart for the restoration of those unreal shapes. There was always in every man the increasingly human self, which instead of remaining the observer, the non-participant, the delinquent, became constantly more and more all there was or so it seemed; and whether it was so or merely seemed so still left it for him to resolve life and the world in his own terms.

It is as if we had stepped into a ruin and were startled by a flight of birds that rose as we entered. The familiar experience is made unfamiliar and from that time on, whenever we think of that particular scene, we remember how we held our breath and how the hungry doves of another world rose out of nothingness and whistled away. We stand looking at a remembered habitation. All old dwelling places are subject to these transmogrifications and the experience of all of us includes a succession of old dwelling places, abodes of the imagination, ancestral or memories of places that never existed.

WallaceStevens: from Two or Three Ideas, a lecture on Baudelaire's La Vie Anterieure, given at Mt. Holyoke College, 28 April 1951

A woman attacked by seagulls piece by Banksy, seen during the press view for the artist's biggest show to date, entitled 'Dismaland', at Tropicana in Western-super-Mare, Somerset: photo by Yui Mok/PA, 20 August 2015

A woman attacked by seagulls piece by Banksy, seen during the press view for the artist's biggest show to date, entitled 'Dismaland', at Tropicana in Western-super-Mare, Somerset: photo by Yui Mok/PA, 20 August 2015

Man sits next to pigeons resting on a pile of bricks collected from the collapsed temple damaged during the earthquake at Hanumandhoka Durbar Square in Kathmandu...A man sits next to pigeons resting on a pile of bricks collected from the collapsed temple damaged during the earthquake at Hanumandhoka Durbar Square in Kathmandu, Nepal August 20, 2015

A man sits next to pigeons resting on a pile of bricks collected from the collapsed temple damaged during the earthquake at Hanumandhoka Durbar Square in Kathmandu, Nepal on Thursday: photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters, 20 August 2015

Migrants wait on the Greek side of the border to pass into Macedonia near southern city of Gevgelija, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, 20 August 2015. Macedonian special police forces arrived this morning and blocked the illegal border crossing between Macedonia and Greece. They don't give permission to the migrants to pass in Macedonia. Number of migrants who passing through Macedonia increase day by day. From the beginning of the year to mid-June 2015, nearly 160,000 migrants landed in the southern European countries, mainly Greece and Italy, on their way to wealthier countries in Western and Northern Europe, according to estimates by the International Organization for Migration (IOM

Migrants wait on the Greek side of the border to pass into Macedonia near southern city of Gevgelija, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia on Thursday. Macedonian special police forces arrived this morning and blocked the illegal border crossing between Macedonia and Greece: photo by Georgi Licovski/EPA, 20 August 2015

A ferry passenger reacts to the sight of massed migrants and refugees as she arrives off of a ferry in Kos Town, Kos, Greece: photo by Jonathan Brady/PA Wire, 20 August 2015

Migrants arrive on the shore of Kos island on a small dinghy on Wednesday. Authorities on the island of Kos have been so overwhelmed that the government sent a ferry to serve as a temporary centre to issue travel documents to Syrian refugees -- among some 7,000 migrants stranded on the island of about 30,000 people.: photo by Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP, 19 August 2015

Flight

Thousands of migratory birds at Poyang lake in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, China: photo by ChinaFotoPress via the Guardian, 2 January 2015

Simon Howard: ((sonnet)) ("there are no dreams about language")

there are no dreams about language

everyone dreams about language

signifies there is no one to dream about anything

other than dreaming about dreams about language,

dreams that do not exist / official wounds

when i opened the parcel

inside were numerous crows all sound

asleep. does that imply i was in paradise back then?

lights go on in the high-rises

like fruit oozing

from a dark orchard. ok they’ll tell the rest of the story

“i drank some soup & felt much better

i lay down with my eyes open

& rain poured in & washed me away”

Simon Howard: ((sonnet)) from walkingintheceiling, 9 March 2013

Black bird (Corvus corax) landing near a tent. (The image stabiliser happened to track the motion of the bird creating this blurred background effect.) Stovepipe Wells Campground, Death Valley National Park, California: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 22 December 2004

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Avian_Friends_at_Rooftop.jpg

Common Raven, North American subspecies (Corvus corax principalis), showing a pair of birds as friends, perching on top of a roof, Stovepipe Wells Campground, Death Valley National Park, California: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 22 December 2004

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Common_raves_landfill.jpg

Group of Common Ravens, North American subspecies (Corvus corax principalis) at a landfill site, Western Mojave Desert: photo by William J. Boarman, 2003; image by Clayoquot, 2007 (United States Geological Survey)

Dogs, Pigeons & Black Cat, Buenos Aires: photo by Beatrice Murch, 27 February 2010

A ferry passenger reacts to the sight of massed migrants and refugees as she arrives off of a ferry in Kos Town, Kos, Greece: photo by Jonathan Brady/PA Wire, 20 August 2015

The great escape (spring migration, Salmistu, Harju County, Estonia): photo by OKaur (Kaur O), 28 April 2013

Pelicans escaping from submerging colony, Año Nuevo State Reserve, California: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 19 October 2007

Too funny RT @bishopwsu: #MonsterStorm is getting real: image via Tiacuca @Tiacuca, 11 December 2014

"... dispossessed and alone in a solitude, like children without parents, in a home that seemed deserted..."

Storm clouds over Bodie ghost town, California: photo by Dave Toussaint, 5 August 2008

Cargo containers strewn about by tsunami in Sendai, northern Japan: photo by Itsuo Inouye/AP, 12 March 2011

If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves...

Wallace Stevens: from The Idea of Order at Key West, in Ideas of Order, 1936

Cars which were swept together by tsunami and then caught fire, after earthquake in Hitaichi City, Ibaraki Prefecture: photo by Reuters/Yomiuri, 12 March 2011

Legs and head: photo by efo, 4 April 2014

Thousands of migratory birds at Poyang lake in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, China: photo by ChinaFotoPress via the Guardian, 2 January 2015

Flight

Syrian migrants rescued from the drifting "ghost ship" Ezadeen. The International Organisation for Migration said such incidents took “the smuggling game to a whole new level”: photo by Stringer/Italy/Reuters, 3 January 2015

A Syrian woman looks out from the "ghost ship" Ezadeen. The Ezadeen was the second vessel in four days found sailing without a crew. Earlier in the week, 800 migrants on the Blue Sky M were rescued by Italian coastguards: photo by Alfonso Di Vincenzo/AFP, 3 January 2015

A man waits as the Ezadeen docks in Corigliano: photo by Antonino D'Urso/AP, 3 January 2015

A boat filled with Palestinian and Syrian immigrants sank and immigrants drowned near Alexandria, #Egypt, reports of numerous Gazans dead: image via Dr Belal Dabour - Gaza @Belalmd12, 13 September 2014

“I tried for two years to take this picture. I took the same photo the year before, again from a helicopter, of an almost identical boat. But we didn’t manage to get directly above: some of the people in the boat looked one way, others a different way. This year I tried again. I photograph the Italian navy calendar, so we collaborate. I waited 12 days on an Italian navy boat for the force seven sea to calm, for this moment. I took the shot outside the helicopter, my feet on the skids. The incredible thing is that every single person in the photo looks up.”: photo by: Massimo Sestini/eyevine via The Guardian, 28 December 2014

Novissima et Accuratissima Totius Americae Descriptio: Johannnes de Ram, c. 1685, engraving

Flat as the table
it’s placed on.
Nothing moves beneath it
and it seeks no outlet.
Above -- my human breath
creates no stirring air
and leaves its total surface
undisturbed.

Its plains, valleys are always green,
uplands, mountains are yellow and brown,
while seas, oceans remain a kindly blue
beside the tattered shores.

Everything here is small, near, accessible.
I can press volcanoes with my ﬁngertip,
stroke the poles without thick mittens,
I can with a single glance
encompass every desert
with the river lying just beside it.

A few trees stand for ancient forests,
you couldn’t lose your way among them.

In the east and west,
above and below the equator --
quiet like pins dropping,
and in every black pinprick
people keep on living.
Mass graves and sudden ruins
are out of the picture.

Nations’ borders are barely visible
as if they wavered -- to be or not.

I like maps, because they lie.
Because they give no access to the vicious truth.
Because great-heartedly, good-naturedly
they spread before me a world
not of this world.

Wislawa Szymborska: Map, 2012, translated by Clare Cavanagh in Map: Collected and Last Poems, 2015

Heart-shaped Map: Oronce Finé, 1536, engraving, watercolour, 51 x 57 cm (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris)

First Ottoman map of the United States): image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 22 July 2015

World Map: Benedetto Bordone, 1528, woodcut, 325 x 165 mm (British Library, London)

Leo Belgicus: Hendrik Floris van Langren, before 1609, hand coloured engraving and etching, 368 x 450 mm (National Széchényi Library, Budapest)

Lion Map (Leo Belgicus): Claes Jansz Visscher the Younger, 1609, coloured etching and engraving, 470 x 572 mm (Stichting Atlas van Stolk, Rotterdam)

Lion Map (Leo Belgicus) (detail): Claes Jansz Visscher the Younger, 1609, coloured etching and engraving (Stichting Atlas van Stolk, Rotterdam)

Map of Tuscany and the Chiana Valley: Leonardo da Vinci, c.1502, black chalk, pen, ink and colour on paper, 338 x 488 mm (Royal Library, Windsor)

Image of the Pilgrimage of St Paul: Abraham Ortelius, 1579, engraving

Synthetica: A New Continent of Plastic: Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation advertisement for plastics, Fortune, October 1940

The world as New Yorkers see it: image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 1 August 2015

New York: map of Flickr and Twitter locations. Red dots are locations of Flickr pictures. Blue dots are locations of Twitter tweets. White dots are locations that have been posted to both: image by Eric Fischer (See something or say something), 7 July 2011

German propaganda map showing the Allies' colonial empires (c1916): image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 24 July 2015

Accurata Utopia Tabula (Karte des Schlaraffenlandes): Matthäus Seutter (1678-1757), via Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps; image by Goustien, 19 February 2009

The Island of Utopia: Ambrosius Holbein, 1518, woodcut, 17.8 x 11.8 cm (Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel)

Île Chairman: illustration by Léon Benett, in Deux Ans en vacances: Jules Verne, 1888

Celanese Plastics advertisement: Time, 4 October 1963 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)

”RT @Mr_Bata: The South African map of Africa. @zapiro at his best! #Xenophobia: image via Rachael Akidi @rakidi, 20 April 2015

Some military instructions in Hebrew and a map of a school are seen on a blackboard after Israeli soldiers withdrew from the Beit Hanun High school for girls which was reportedly used as an advance base during Israel's military offensive against the Gaza Strip: photo by Marco Longari/AFP, 5 August 2014

A map of the world weighted around how much wealth each country has. Poor Africa! :(: image via Belal Dabour - Gaza @Belalmd12, 29 September 2014

The only countries that don't use the metric system are Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States: image via Belal Dabour - Gaza @Belalmd12, 29 September 2014

Map showing the extent of the oil sands in Alberta, Canada. The three oil sand deposits are known as the Athabasca Oil Sands, the Cold Lake Oil Sands, and the Peace River Oil Sands: image by Norman Einstein, 10 May 2006

Operational and proposed route of the Keystone Pipeline System (data source: TransCanada): image by Meclee, 21 July 2012

Saturated thickness map of Ogallala Aquifer with Keystone XL route layered: image by 570ajk, 17 November 2011, using aquifer map by kbh3rd

Trans-Alaska Pipeline map. A map of the route of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, showing pump stations, cities, roads, mountain ranges and passes, and bodies of water.: image by JKBrooks85, 23 July 2009

Trans-Alaska Pipeline work camps map. A map of the route of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, with pump stations and construction camps identified: image by JKBrooks85, 24 July 2009

Map of Dalton Highway (built as Trans-Alaska Pipeline North Slope haul road), Alaska: image by U.S. Bureau of Land Management, n.d.; image by Aconcagua, 8 July 2008

From October 1999 through March 2012, 2,269 deaths were recorded at the Arizona-Mexico border. Water stations, placed by the nonprofit Humane Borders, are intended to mitigate the deaths. Source: Migrant death map provided courtesy of Humane Borders, Inc. Data development by John F. Chamblee, Michael Malone, and Mathew Reynolds: image via Newsweek, 10 July 2013

Colours of passports around the world: image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 4 August 2015

Standard time zones of the world: image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 5 August 2016

World map of Flickr and Twitter locations. Red dots are locations of Flickr pictures. Blue dots are locations of Twitter tweets. White dots are locations that have been posted to both: image by Eric Fischer (See something or say something), 7 July 2011

A map made entirely from Facebook connections : image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 9 August 2015

Greater Tokyo area superimposed over Great Britain: image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 14 August 2015

Map of which countries are the butt of the most jokes around Europe: image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 7 August 2015

Average monthly disposable salary in USD: image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 17 July 2015

European detail map of Flickr and Twitter locations. Red dots are locations of Flickr pictures. Blue dots are locations of Twitter tweets. White dots are locations that have been posted to both: image by Eric Fischer (See something or say something), 7 July 2011

Percentage of non religious people in Europe that agreed to the statement "there is some sort of spirit life force": image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 21 August 2015

Heavy metal bands per 100,000 people: image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 8 October 2013

Where countries import the most from: image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 7 August 2015

Cigarette consumption by country: image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 30 July 2015

Most popular word used in online dating profiles by state: image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 9 August 2015

North American detail map of Flickr and Twitter locations. Red dots are locations of Flickr pictures. Blue dots are locations of Twitter tweets. White dots are locations that have been posted to both: image by Eric Fischer (See something or say something), 7 July 2011

Most common job held by immigrants in the USA: image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 18 August 2015

#Macedonia - Woman looks up at police blocking migrants trying to cross Macedonian-Greek border #AFP Photo by RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Sophie Chauveau @s_chauveauAFP, 22 August 2015

Migrants cross unhindered into Macedonia; trains, busses await: Fatos Bytyci, Reuters, 22 August 2015

GEVGELIJA, Macedonia -- Hundreds of migrants crossed unhindered from Greece into Macedonia on Sunday after overwhelmed security forces appeared to abandon a bid to stem their flow through the Balkans to western Europe following days of chaos and confrontation.

Riot police remained, but did little to slow the passage of a steady stream of migrants, many of them refugees from the Syrian war and other conflicts in the Middle East, a Reuters reporter at the scene said.

Macedonia had declared a state of emergency on Thursday and sealed its southern frontier to migrants pouring in at a rate of 2,000 per day en route to Serbia then Hungary and the Europe Union's borderless Schengen zone.

That led to desperate scenes at the border, as men, women and children slept under open skies with little access to food or water.

Saying they would ration access, riot police used tear gas and stun grenades to drive back crowds, but were overwhelmed on Saturday by several thousand who tore through police lines or ran through nearby empty fields.

The state eventually laid on extra trains, and buses arrived from across the country to take the migrants swiftly north to Serbia and the next step of a long journey from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

"I watched the news on TV and I was astonished," said Abdullah Bilal, 41, from the devastated Syrian city of Aleppo.

"I thought I would face the same when I arrive here. But it was very peaceful. The Macedonian police told us 'Welcome to Macedonia; trains and buses are waiting for you.'"
Mohannad Albayati, 35, from Damascus, traveling with his wife, two children and three brothers, said: "I passed one step but it is a long road to my destination. With Allah's help I will go to Germany."

The backlog created in Macedonia, which faces criticism from aid agencies for not expanding capacity to receive and process the migrants, reached Serbia overnight, straining the country's own ad hoc reception centers.

"Last night after midnight the first group of 200 people crossed the border," said a Serbian government official who declined to be named.

"So far we have more than 5,000 new arrivals. This is the biggest number in one day so far. They are waiting in long lines as we process them."

Macedonia has accused neighboring Greece, with which it enjoys a tense relationship, of aiding the migrants' journey north at a pace the Balkan country says it cannot cope with.

Greece has begun chartering boats to take migrants from inundated Greek islands to the mainland, after a record 50,000 hit Greek shores by boat from Turkey in July alone.

Police officers stopped a migrant and his child from crossing the border into Macedonia from Greece near Gevgelija, Macedonia, on Saturday. But hundreds of rain-soaked migrants rushed past officers who lobbed stun grenades and beat them with batons, struggling to enforce a decree to stem their flow to western Europe.: photo by Ognen Teofilovski/Reuters, 22 August 2015

Migrants talked to the police as they tried to cross from Greece into Macedonia: photo by Ognen Teofilovski/Reuters, 22 August 2015

Five #migrants hurt in clashes at Greek-Macedonian border. #AFP Photo by Sakis Mitrolidis:: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 21 August 2015

#Macedonia - Police are seen as migrant and refugee families try to cross Macedonian-Greek border. Photo by RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Sophie Chauveau @s_chauveauAFP, 22 August 2015

Migrants trying to cross the Macedonian-Greek border near the town of Gevgelija on August 21. #AFP Photo by @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 22 August 2015

Migrants wait to cross the Greek-Macedonian border near Idomeni, northern Greece today. #AFP Photo by Sakis Mitrolidis: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 22 August 2015

Migrants waiting at the Greek-Macedonian in Idomeni, northern Greece, on August 22. #AFP Photo by Sakis Mitrolidis: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 22 August 2015

Migrants waiting at the Greek Macedonian in Idomeni, northern Greece, on August 22. #AFP Photo by Sakis Mitrolidis: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 22 August 2015

A Syrian refugee holds up a sign as he and others wait at the Macedonian-Greek in Gevgelija #AFP Photo by @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 22 August 2015

Refugees and migrants wait in no-man's land along the Macedonian-Greek border near Gevgelija. #AFP Photo by @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 22 August 2015

Macedonia declares 'state of emergency' over #migrant influx.Photo by RAtanasovski #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 21 August 2015

Najat Abdul Samad:When I Am Overcome by Weakness

When I am overcome by weakness, I bandage my heart with a woman’s patience in adversity. I bandage it with the upright posture of a Syrian woman who is not bent by bereavement, poverty, or displacement as she rises from the banquets of death and carries on shepherding life’s rituals. She prepares for a creeping, ravenous winter and gathers the heavy firewood branches, stick by stick from the frigid wilderness. She does not cut a tree, does not steal, does not surrender her soul to weariness, does not ask anyone’s charity, does not fold with the load, and does not yield midway.

I bandage my heart with the determination of that boy they hit with an electric stick on his only kidney until he urinated blood. Yet he returned and walked in the next demonstration.

I bandage it with the steadiness of a child’s steps in the snow of a refugee camp, a child wearing a small black shoe on one foot and a large blue sandal on the other, wandering off and singing to butterflies flying in the sunny skies, butterflies and skies seen only by his eyes.

I bandage it with December’s frozen tree roots, trees that have sworn to blossom in March or April.

I bandage it with the voice of reason that was not affected by a proximate desolation.

I bandage it with veins whose warm blood has not yet been spilled on the surface of our sacred soil.

I bandage it with what was entrusted by our martyrs, with the conscience of the living, and with the image of a beautiful homeland envisioned by the eyes of the poor.

I bandage it with the outcry: “Death and not humiliation.”

Najat Abdul Samad: When I Am Overcome By Weakness, translated by Ghada Alatrash, 2013

An injured boy after crossing the border into Macedonia: photo by Ognen Teofilovski/Reuters, 22 August 2015

Hundreds of #migrants force their way over Macedonia border. Photo by @RAtanasovski #AFP : image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 22 August 2015

Migrants trying to cross the Macedonian-Greek border near the town of Gevgelija on August 21. #AFP Photo by @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 22 August 2015

A Macedonian police officer held a baby as other refugees tried to get past: photo by Georgi Licovski/European Pressphoto Agency, 22 August 2015

The Macedonian security forces managed to contain hundreds of migrants, but hundreds more tore through muddy fields into Macedonian territory after days in the open without shelter, food or water: photo by Ognen Teofilovski/Reuters, 22 August 2015

A migrant tries to pass a fence near to the town of Idomeni, on the Greece-Macedonia border. #AFP Photo by Sakis Mitrolidis:: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 22 August 2015

Hundreds of #migrants force their way over Macedonia border. Photo by @RAtanasovski #AFP : image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 22 August 2015

#Macedonia allows all 1,500 migrants at border to enter from Greece: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 22 August 2015

#Migrants push an elderly woman in wheel chair near train tracks at Greek-Macedonian border. #AFP Photo by Sakis Mitrolidis:: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 22 August 2015

Migrants talked to the police as they tried to cross from Greece into Macedonia: photo by Ognen Teofilovski/Reuters, 22 August 2015

Colima, México, February 2015. | by Emigdio Salgado

Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 21 February 2015

I Millo Salgado: On the Other Side

Puesto de periódicos y revistas. | by Emigdio Salgado

Posta de periodicas y revistas. Pueblo, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 2 January 2014

Police. Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 10 September 2014

Colima, México, septiembre 2014. | by Emigdio Salgado

Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 16 September 2012

Colima, México, diciembre 2013. | by Emigdio Salgado

Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 12 December 2013

Horses in the streets. | by Emigdio Salgado

Horses in the streets. Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 15 February 2014

Charros in the streets. | by Emigdio Salgado

Charros in the streets. Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 9 February 2014

People at the Cathedral. | by Emigdio Salgado

People at the cathedral. Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 4 December 2012

Spiritual cleansing. | by Emigdio Salgado

Spiritual cleansing. At night on the day of the dead, a Chamán performs public spiritual cleansings in downtown Colima. Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 4 November 2013

The passion of the Christ in Comala. | by Emigdio Salgado

The Passion of the Christ in Comala. Comala, Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 18 April 2014

The Passion of the Christ. | by Emigdio Salgado

The Passion of the Christ. Comala, Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 6 April 2012

Dramatic performance of the Passion of Christ. | by Emigdio Salgado

Dramatic performance of the Passion of Christ. Comala, Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 18 April 2014

Young charro riding a bull. | by Emigdio Salgado

Young charro riding a bull. Villa de Alvarez, Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 17 February 2013

Toro de Once Portfolio. | by Emigdio Salgado

Toro de Once. Villa de Alvarez, Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 17 February 2013

Villa de Álvarez, Colima, February 2014. | by Emigdio Salgado

Villa de Alvarez, Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 17 February 2014

The sinister clown. | by Emigdio Salgado

The sinister clown. Villa de Alvarez, Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 11 February 2013

Untitled. Villa de Alvarez, Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 12 February 2013

This is what you get. | by Emigdio Salgado

This is what you get. Villa de Alvarez, Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 18 February 2014

II...White Peril at the Border

"I think @realDonaldTrump is a wrecking ball for the future of the Republican Party.” @lindseygrahamsc #trumpyourcoffee: image via Donald Purrump @trumpyourcat, 2 August 2015

The Fearful and the Frustrated: Donald Trump’s nationalistcoalition takes shape -- for now (excerpts): Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, 31 August 2015

On July 23rd, Donald Trump’s red-white-and-navy-blue Boeing 757 touched down in Laredo, Texas, where the temperature was climbing to a hundred and four degrees. In 1976, the Times introduced Trump, then a little-known builder, to readers as a “publicity shy” wunderkind who “looks ever so much like Robert Redford,” and quoted an admiring observation from the architect Der Scutt: “That Donald, he could sell sand to the Arabs.” Over the years, Trump honed a performer’s ear for the needs of his audience. He starred in “The Apprentice” for fourteen seasons, cultivating a lordly persona and a squint that combined Clint Eastwood on the high plains and Derek Zoolander on the runway. Once he emerged as the early front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination, this summer, his airport comings and goings posed a delicate staging issue: a rogue wind off the tarmac could render his comb-over fully erect in front of the campaign paparazzi. So, in Laredo, Trump débuted a protective innovation: a baseball hat adorned with a campaign slogan that he recycled from Ronald Reagan’s 1980 run for the White House -- “Make America Great Again!” The headwear, which had the rigid façade and the braided rope of a cruise-ship giveaway, added an expeditionary element to the day’s outfit, of blazer, pale slacks, golf shoes -- well suited for a mission that he was describing as one of great personal risk. “I may never see you again, but we’re going to do it,” he told Fox News on the eve of the Texas visit.

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump speaks to reporters after arriving for a visit to the U.S. Mexico border in Laredo, Texas, Thursday, July 23, 2015. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump speaks to reporters after arriving for a visit to the U.S. Mexico border in Laredo, Texas: photo by LM Otero/AP, 23 July 2015

When Trump announced his candidacy, on June 16th, he vowed to build a two-thousand-mile-long wall to stop Mexico from “sending people that have lots of problems.” He said, “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Three of the statements had no basis in fact -- the crime rate among first-generation immigrants is lower than that for native-born Americans -- but Trump takes an expansive view of reality. “I play to people’s fantasies,” he writes in “The Art of the Deal,” his 1987 memoir. “I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration -- and a very effective form of promotion.”

Trump’s campaign announcement was mocked and condemned -- and utterly successful. His favorability among Republicans leaped from sixteen per cent to fifty-seven per cent, a greater spike than that of any other candidate’s début. Immigration became the centerpiece of his campaign. “Donald Trump has changed the entire debate on immigration,” Rush Limbaugh told his listeners last month. As the climax of events in Las Vegas and Phoenix, Trump brought onstage Jamiel Shaw, Sr., whose seventeen-year-old son was killed, in 2008, by a man who was in the country illegally. Trump stood by while Shaw told the crowd how his son was shot.

File:Camping on the Border, near El Paso, Texas.jpg

Camping on the Border, near El Paso, Texas: photo by Curt Teich & Co, 1916; image by Tangerinehistry, 9 March 2012 (University of Houston Libraries)

They invited me, and then, all of a sudden, silencio!

Before departing for Laredo, Trump said, “I’ve been invited by border patrols, and they want to honor me, actually, thousands and thousands of them, because I’m speaking up.”

Though Trump said “border patrols,” the invitation had in fact come from a local branch of the border-patrol union, and the local, after consulting with headquarters, withdrew the invitation a few hours before Trump arrived, on the ground that it would not endorse political candidates. Descending the airplane stairs, Trump looked thrilled to be arriving amid a controversy; he waded into a crowd of reporters and described the change of plans as the handiwork of unspecified enemies. “They invited me, and then, all of a sudden, they were told, silencio! They want silence.” Asked why he felt unsafe in Laredo -- which has a lower crime rate than New York City or Washington, D.C. -- he invoked another “they”: “Well, they say it’s a great danger, but I have to do it. I love the country. There’s nothing more important than what I’m doing.”

Trump was now going to meet with city officials instead of with the union. He disappeared into one of seven S.U.V.s, escorted by a dozen police vehicles -- a larger motorcade than Mitt Romney merited as the Republican nominee. He passed shopping malls, churches, and ranch houses with satellite dishes in the front yard. Some drivers waved; others stared. A car had been positioned along the route with a sign across the windshield: "Mr. Trump, Fuck U."

He reached the World Trade Bridge, a trucking link to Mexico, where he stepped inside an air-conditioned building for a half-hour briefing. He emerged to talk to reporters, and, after pausing to let the cameras set up, resumed his event. He was asked, “You keep saying that there’s a danger, but crime along the border is down. What danger are you talking about?”

Trump gave a tight, concerned nod. “There’s great danger with the illegals, and we were just discussing that. But we have a tremendous danger along the border, with the illegals coming in.”

“Have you seen any evidence here to confirm your fears about Mexico sending its criminals across the border?”

Another grave nod. “Yes, I have, and I’ve heard it, and I’ve heard it from a lot of different people.”

“What evidence, specifically, have you seen?”

“We’ll be showing you the evidence.”

“When?”

He let that one pass.

“What do you say to the people on the radio this morning who called you a racist?”

“Well, you know, we just landed, and there were a lot of people at the airport, and they were all waving American flags, and they were all in favor of Trump and what I’m doing.”

He shrugged -- an epic, arms-splayed shrug.

“They were chanting against you.”

“No, they were chanting for me.”

“What would you do with the eleven million undocumented immigrants who are already here?”

“The first thing we have to do is strengthen our borders, and after that we’re going to have plenty of time to talk about that.” He thanked everyone and retreated to the S.U.V.s.

On the way back to the airport, Trump stopped at the Paseo Real Reception Hall, where his supporters had assembled a small rally; guests were vetted at the door to keep out protesters. I sat beside a Latino family and asked the father what had attracted him to the event. He said that a friend involved in the border patrol had called him and asked him “to take up the spaces.” He’d brought five relatives. I asked what he thought of Trump’s politics. He paused and said, “I like his hotels.” Trump told the group, “I don’t think that people understand the danger that you’re under and the talent that you have. But I understand it.” When he opened the floor to questions, José Diaz-Balart, an anchor for Telemundo and MSNBC, said, “Many feel that what you said, when you said that people that cross the border are rapists and murderers -- ”

Trump cut him off: “No, no, no! We’re talking about illegal immigration, and everybody understands that. And you know what? That’s a typical case of the press with misinterpretation.” His supporters jeered at the reporter, and Trump shouted over the jeers: “Telemundo should be ashamed!”

Diaz-Balart said, “Can I finish?”

“No, no. You’re finished,” Trump said. He did his thank-yous, flashed thumbs-up signs, and headed for his airplane.

"@tobyharnden: Missouri woman finds Donald Trump's face in tub of butter": image via Pat Bagley @Patbagley, 24 August 2015

The New American Fascism: "they want to cut the Gordian knot.”

On August 16th, with the media in full summer frenzy, Trump made his first detailed proposal, a six-page immigration plan that outlined an unprecedented crackdown. Presented as the remedy for a victimized nation -- “We will not be taken advantage of anymore” -- Trump’s plan called for the government to deport large segments of the undocumented population, seize money that these immigrants attempt to send home, and, contravening the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, deny citizenship to their U.S.-born children.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington-based organization that seeks to reduce immigration (it is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center), hailed Trump’s plan as the “American Workers’ Bill of Rights.” Mark Meckler, the co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, described it as a new standard “that all the other candidates will now have to meet,” and Scott Walker immediately echoed Trump’s call for building a wall and ending birthright citizenship. Other Republicans recoiled, convinced that Trump’s nativist turn would taint the Party’s image as ruinously as Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” comments in his race against Barack Obama. At the time, Trump himself disapproved of Romney’s approach, saying, in November, 2012, “He had a crazy policy of ‘self-deportation,’ which was maniacal. It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote. He lost the Asian vote. He lost everybody who is inspired to come into this country.” Trump now faced the risk that his new stance could eventually undo him.

On Tuesday of last week, Jorge Ramos, the most influential Latino news anchor, told his audience on the Fusion network, “Right now Donald Trump is, no question, the loudest voice of intolerance, hatred, and division in the United States.”

#Trump rally @UmassAlum28 @JGilliam_SEAL @paddoc63 @jjauthor @ChristiChat: image via Jeannie @gulfcoastbred, 21 August 2015

Before dawn on Wednesday, two brothers from South Boston allegedly attacked a homeless Hispanic man, breaking his nose and urinating on his face. The police said that, after the men were arrested, one of them, Scott Leader, justified the assault by saying, “Donald Trump was right -- all these illegals need to be deported.” (Both men pleaded not guilty.) When Trump was asked at a press conference about the case, and about threats of other violence, he replied, “I think that would be a shame, but I haven’t heard about that. I will say that people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country, and they want this country to be great again, and they are very passionate, I will say that.” (Two days later, Trump, under fire, tweeted, “Boston incident is terrible. . . . I would never condone violence.”)

When Trump leaped to the head of the Republican field, he delivered the appearance of legitimacy to a moral vision once confined to the fevered fringe, elevating fantasies from the message boards and campgrounds to the center stage of American life. In doing so, he pulled America into a current that is coursing through other Western democracies -- Britain, France, Spain, Greece, Scandinavia -- where xenophobic, nationalist parties have emerged since the 2008 economic crisis to besiege middle-ground politicians. In country after country, voters beset by inequality and scarcity have reached past the sober promises of the center-left and the center-right to the spectre of a transcendent solution, no matter how cruel. “The more complicated the problem, the simpler the demands become,” Samuel Popkin, a political scientist at the University of California in San Diego, told me. “When people get frustrated and irritated, they want to cut the Gordian knot.”

Vendedora de boletos. | by Emigdio Salgado

Vendedora de boletos. La feria, Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado 2 November 2014

Trump has succeeded in unleashing an old gene in American politics -- the crude tribalism that Richard Hofstadter named “the paranoid style” -- and, over the summer, it replicated like a runaway mutation.

Stadium in Alabama waiting for #Trump: image via Greta Van Susteren @greta, 21 August 2015

A trader gestures on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the start of the trading day in New York, New York, USA,on Monday. Global markets have been reacting to the economic situation in China and the Dow Jones Industrial average followed that trend losing 1,000 points in early trading

A trader gestures on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the start of the trading day in New York on Monday. Global markets have been reacting to the economic situation in China and the Dow Jones Industrial average followed that trend losing 1,000 points in early trading before recovering: photo by Justin Lane/EPA, 24 August 2015

Investors look at stock information on an electronic board at a brokerage house in Hangzhou, China: photo by Reuters, 25 August 2015

Migrants from Syria sit along a road as they wait for a bus in the village of Miratovac near the town of Presevo, Serbia August 24, 2015. Long lines of migrants, many of them refugees from Syria, snaked through southern Serbia by foot on Monday before jumping on trains and buses north to Hungary and the last leg of an increasingly desperate journey to western Europe

Migrants from Syria sit along a road as they wait for a bus in the village of Miratovac near the town of Presevo, Serbia. Long lines of migrants, many of them refugees from Syria, snaked through southern Serbia by foot on Monday before jumping on trains and buses north to Hungary and the last leg of an increasingly desperate journey to western Europe: photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters, 24 August 2015

A mother and children look through a train window at Gevgelija, Macedonia, as migrants continue their journey towards other EU countries: photo by Vassil Donev/EPA, 25 August 2015

A Malaysian woman walks past an advertis...A Malaysian woman walks past an advertisement outside a jewellery store at a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur on August 25, 2015. Prices of crude oil and most other commodities rebounded in Asia on August 25 but stayed under pressure following a global sell-off sparked by the faltering economy in China, the world's top user of industrial metals and energy. Gold prices remained steady, boosted by prospects of increased demand due to its status as a safe haven in times of turmoil. AFP PHOTO / MANAN VATSYAYANAMANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images

A Malaysian woman walks past an advertisement outside a jewellery store at a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur. Prices of crude oil and most other commodities rebounded in Asia on Tuesday but stayed under pressure following a global sell-off sparked by the faltering economy in China, the world’s top user of industrial metals and energy. Gold prices remained steady, boosted by prospects of increased demand due to its status as a safe haven in times of turmoil: photo by Manan Vatsyayana/AFP, 25 August 2015

Children play with hula hoops at a park ...Children play with hula hoops at a park where migrants have found temporary shelter in the Serbian capital Belgrade on August 25, 2015. A record number of refugees streamed into EU member state Hungary from Serbia on August 24, police said, just days before Hungary completes a border fence to keep out migrants. A total of 2,093 migrants, the highest ever daily total, crossed the border near the Hungarian town of Roszke, a police statement said. They were part of a wave of around 7,000 refugees whose journey to the European Union had been blocked last week when Macedonia declared a state of emergency and closed its borders after being overwhelmed by the huge influx of people, amid Europe's worst migration crisis since World War II. AFP PHOTO / ANDREJ ISAKOVICANDREJ ISAKOVIC/AFP/Getty Images

Children play with hula hoops at a park where migrants have found temporary shelter in the Serbian capital Belgrade: photo by Andrej Isakovic/AFP, 25 August 2015

An investor looks at an electronic board showing stock information at a brokerage house in Beijing, China, August 25, 2015

An investor looks at an electronic board showing stock information at a brokerage house in Beijing, today. China stocks slumped about 4 percent on Tuesday, touching eight-month lows, as investors dumped shares after a grim “Black Monday” that battered global markets but failed to prompt fresh rescue measures from Beijing: photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters, 25 August 2015

Heads in Hands (The Great Fall)

Global stocks, dollar rebound but China slumps again: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 25 August 2015

China stocks plummet again as 'mood of panic' dominates: image via NBC News @NBCNews, 25 August 2015

China stocks take another tumble after huge decline: image via CBS News @CBSNews, 24 August 2015

China stocks continue to slide after Black Monday: image via The Independent @Independent, 25 August 2015

Three reasons why the Great Fall of China is not as bad as it seems: image via The Independent @Independent, 25 August 2015

Which U.S. stocks got hit hardest in Monday’s global selloff?: image via Slate @Slate, 25 August 2015

Investors grasp for answers amid wild stock rout: image via Wall Street Journal @WSJ. 25 August 2015

China, Japan and Europe are flashing giant economic warning signs: image via NYT Opinion @nytopinion, 24 August 2015

The great fall of #China sinks world stocks: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 24 August 2015

China’s stock market sickness is becoming contagious: image via Reuters Opinion @ReutersOpinion, 24 August 2015

Here's what has happened today on Wall Street: image via Reuters Business @ReutersBiz, 24 August 2015

Great fall of China sinks world stocks, dollar tumbles: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 24 August 2015

Martial Interlude: On the bloodied field of the trading floor

Battle of Anghiari (Tavola Doria): Leonardo da Vinci, 1503-05, oil on panel, 85 x 115 cm (formerly private collection, Munich, now lost)

the stunned footsoldiers on the bloodied floor
of the exchange

with heads in hands

while for the generals
in their tents arising to a new day

profit taking

a fraction of a second
is as nothing
in a thousand year war
the tausendjährigen Krieges

The Dream of Ossian: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1813, oil on canvas, 348 x 275 cm (Musée Ingres, Montauban)

The Great Wave Will Pause in Mid-Air a Moment Before Cresting

China cuts main interest rate after two days of stock market turmoil: image via BBC Breaking News @BBCBreaking, 25 August 2015

The Great Wave Will Fall Back Upon Itself After Cresting

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/jpd/02000/02018v.jpg

TheGreatWave off Kanagawa: Katsushika Hokusai 1760-1849), from Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, between 1826 and 1833 (Library of Congress)

The Great Wave: Katsushika Hokusai, 1831, print, 26x38 cm; image by Bigjap. 11 March 2013

Double Happiness (The Great Refraction)

Markets back up, but @bethpinsker explains why investor confidence will still lag: image via Reuters Money @ReutersMoney, 25 August 2015

Shanghai stocks continue to dive, but global markets rebound; oil prices are up, too: image via NYT Business @nytimesbusiness, 25 August 2015

Morning Briefing: Here's what you need to know to start your day: image via The New York Times @nytimes, 25 August 2015

Wall Street rebounds sharply after #BlackMonday. LIVE coverage: image via Reuters Live @Reuters Live, 25 August 2015

Markets rally after #China rate cuts. LIVE coverage: image via Reuters Live @Reuters Live, 25 August 2015

Global stocks, oil, dollar extend gains after #China cuts rates. LIVE coverage: image via Reuters Live @Reuters Live, 25 August 2015

Global stocks, dollar, oil extend gains after #China cuts rates. LIVE coverage: image via Reuters Live @Reuters Live, 25 August 2015

A Great Wave, Unbroken

#migrantcrisis #Serbia Migrants rest in a refugee center in Presevo, on August 25. #AFP Photo by Armend Nimani: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 25 August 2015

#migrantcrisis A migrant rests in a refugee center in Presevo, on August 25. #AFP Photo by Armend Nimani: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 25 August 2015

#migrantcrisis Near the border of Roszke, at the Hungarian-Serbian border on August 25. #AFP Photo by @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 25 August 2015

Migrants walk behind the metal fence near the border village Roszke, at the Hungarian-Serbian border. #AFP @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 25 August 2015

Migrant near the railway crossing between Hungary and Serbia: photo by Sandor Ujvari/European Pressphoto Agency, 26 August 2015

Through the fields

Along the tracks

Into the makeshift encampments

Always looking back

Anxiously

Always moving onward

Fearfully

Always knowing what they're fleeing from

Never where they're going

A migrant has a destination

A purpose

An end toward which

A refugee

Is merely on the run

A migrant family walk between the rails near Asotthalom, at the Hungarian-Serbian border. By Csaba Segesvari #AFP: image via Christopher Delattre @chrisdelattre7, 26 August 2015

A migrant from Syria carries her child as she walks through a field in Serbia: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 26 August 2015

Up to 3,000 refugees, migrants expected to cross into Macedonia every day: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 26 August 2015

Migrants at a railway crossing on the Hungary-Serbia border. Human rights groups warn that if Hungary completes its border fence, tens of thousands of people may be trapped in squalid conditions in Serbia and Macedonia: photo by Sandor Ujvari/European Pressphoto Agency, 26 August 2015

Refugees rest in a park beside the main railway station after arriving in Belgrade: photo by EPA, 26 August 2015

A mother and child wait near a refugee center in Presevo, Serbia, close to the Macedonian border. More than 9,000 people, mostly Syrian refugees, have entered Serbia in the past three days: photo by Armend Nimani/Agence France-Presse, 26 August 2015

#Hungary volunteers offer aid 2 asylum seekers; gov't builds fence 2 keep them out #refugees: image via Lydia Gall @LydsG, 26 August 2015

A look at migrants and refugees in Greece, Serbia and Hungary: image via NYT Photo @nytimesphoto, 25 August 2015

Syrian refugees near Idomeni, Greece, on their way to the Macedonian border. The United Nations’ refugee agency expects 3,000 people to make the crossing daily: photo by Santi Palacios/Associated Press, 26 August 2015

Berlin eases asylum rules for Syrians as migrants pour into EU: image via Agence France-Presse @FP, 26 August 2015

A Syrian refugee sleeps in Idomeni as her family waits to enter Macedonia: photo by Santi Palacios/Associated Press, 26 August 2015

Why your face is now part of your workout: image via The New York Times @nytimes, 26 August 2015

"Fear the Walking Dead" premiere draws record viewers: image via The New York Times @nytimes, 24 August 2015

How #Trump plans to turn gawkers into hardcore supporters: image via Reuters Politics @ReutersPolitics, 25 August 2015

Trump is offering himself as a problem-solver, not as a man of principle -- and it's working:: image via Reuters Opinion @ReutersOpinion, 25 August 2015

#migrantcrisis - Migrants attempt to enter into Macedonia at Greek border near Gevgelija. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Christopher Delattre @chrisdelattre7, 26 August 2015

Fearfully

Migrants near the railway crossing between Hungary and Serbia: photo by Sandor Ujvari/European Pressphoto Agency, 26 August 2015

This is the single most life rocking picture of the entire refugee situation I have seen so far. #refugeesGr #Heidenau: image via sesikar @sesikar, 22 August 2015

Violent riots by Nazis against refugees in German town #Heidenau for the second night in a row. Photo @SPIEGELONLINE: image via Laura Schneider @alauraschneider, 23 August 2015

#Germany vows to fight xenophobia aftr attacks by neoNazis on refugee home @Reuters #Heidenau: image via Yannis Koutsomitis @YanniKouts, 23 August 2015

Violent riots by Nazis against refugees in German town #Heidenau for the second night in a row. Photo @SPIEGELONLINE: image via Laura Schneider @alauraschneider, 23 August 2015

#Germany: #Heidenau (Saxony) locals & Neo-Nazis trying to stop arriving refugees from reaching their accommodation: image via syndicalist @syndicalisms, 21 August 2015

Masked demonstrators marched near a refugee shelter in Heidenau, Germany, on Aug. 23 in a protest of government migration policy that led to clashes with neo-Nazis and police: photo by Arno Burgi / Associated Press, 23 August 2015

Merkel, jeered on visit to #refugees, says no to xenophobia #migrantcrisis #Germany @Refugees: image via AlertNet @AlertNet, 26 August 2015

Hungarian soldiers install a wire fence near their country’s border with Serbia. Serbia has been issuing documents to large numbers of refugees, most of whom plan to enter Hungary as a gateway to Europe’s wealthier countries: photo by Tamas Soki/European Pressphoto Agency, 26 August 2015

A Hungarian border officer patrols the razor wire fence under construction along the 109-mile frontier with Serbia, near the Serbian town of Horgos: photo by Darko Vojinovic / Associated Press, 25 August 2015

Syrian migrants cross under a fence at Hungarian-Serbian border near Roszke

Syrian migrants cross under a fence into Hungary at the border with Serbia, near Roszke, on Wednesday. Hungary’s government has started to construct a 175-km-long (110-mile-long) fence on its border with Serbia in order to halt a massive flow of migrants who enter the EU via Hungary and head to western Europe: photo by Laszlo Balogh/Reuters, 26 August 2015

Kurdish women and children from Syria at a Turkish military checkpoint near Kobani, a Syrian town badly damaged by the war last year: photo by Bryan Denton for The New York Times, 1 July 2015

Hassan Elwahabi arrived to Hungary w/ his disabled son. He`s looking for his sons in #Sweden. Pls RT. #migrantcrisis: image via Marietta Le, @lemarietta, 26 August 2015

Embedded image permalink

#migrantcrisis - - A child rests on the knees of a woman in a refugee center in Presevo, #serbia. By Armend Nimani #AFP: image via Christopher Delattre @chrisdelattre7, 26 August 2015

Migrants sleep on a bench at a park in Belgrade, Serbia, Friday, Aug. 28, 2015. Over 10,000 migrants, including many women with babies and small children, have crossed into Serbia over the past few days and headed toward Hungary and the EU Schengen Area, a zone with no internal border checks between member countries

Migrants sleep on a bench at a park in Belgrade, Serbia on Friday. Over 10,000 migrants, including many women with babies and small children, have crossed into Serbia over the past few days and headed toward Hungary and the EU Schengen Area: photo by Marko Drobnjakovic/AP, 28 August 2015

Under the Wire

#migrantcrisis - A man creeps under the metal fence near Roszke, at Hungarian-Serbian border. By Csaba Segesvari #AFP: image via Chrisophe Delattre @chrisdelattre7, 26 August 2015

#Hungary - #Migrants crawl under a barbed fence at the Hungarian-Serbian border near Roszke. By @afpattila @AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 26 August 2015

Honest Chicken in Transit Zone Europe

Just drove past truck on A4 in Austria with 50 dead refugees inside. Terrible smell of death as we passed.: image via Lindsey Hulsum @lindseyhulsum, 27 August 2015

Hungarian police arrest driver of lorry that had 71 dead migrants inside: Romanian national held after death toll in Austrian motorway tragedy is raised from initial estimate of about 50 victims: Luke harding and agencies, The Guardian, 28 August 2015

Hungarian police have arrested the driver of a lorry found on an Austrian motorway with the decomposing bodies of more than 70 people inside.

Police cars round truck in which refugees died at side of #Austrian motorway. Travelling fm Serbia, they suffocated.: image via Lindsey Hulsum @lindseyhulsum, 27 August 2015

The man is a Romanian national, a police statement said on Friday. It came as the Austrian interior ministry confirmed it had made arrests in the case, following reports from the Krone newspaper that seven smugglers linked to the lorry had been held by authorities in Hungary. The main organisers are still at large, and believed to be in Romania, it said.

The death toll was raised on Friday from initial estimates of 20 to 50 following the discovery of the remains on Thursday morning on Austria’s A4 motorway between Neusiedl and Parndorf. The truck, which had been abandoned on the hard shoulder of the road near Parndorf, had apparently been there since Wednesday. Austrian police said all those on board appeared to have suffocated and died before they entered the country.

Forensic experts investigate a truck in which refugees were found dead in Austria: photo by Roland Schlager/EPA, 27 August 2015

Austrian police said of the 71 dead, 59 were men, eight women and four children, and included Syrian refugees.

The lorry set off from Budapest in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and reached the Hungarian-Austrian border by 9am. It crossed into Austria that night and was spotted on the A4 at 5am or 6am on Thursday, police said.

Forensic team at the truck containing suffocated #refugees at side of #Austrian motorway. Travelling fm Serbia, they suffocated.: image via Lindsey Hulsum @lindseyhulsum, 27 August 2015

The state of the bodies had made establishing an exact death toll difficult. Their identities were also not known, said Hans Peter Doskozil, head of police in the eastern district of Burgenland. “The deaths already occurred some time ago,” he added. “We can make no concrete assumptions about the origin or cause [of death]. We can assume, however, that they are refugees.”

An abandoned truck on the outskirts of Vienna was found to contain the decomposed remains the bodies of 71 people, assumed to be migrants: photo by Roland Schlager/European Pressphoto Agency, 27 August 2015

The 7.5-tonne vehicle used to belong to the Slovak chicken meat company Hyza and still has the slogan “Honest chicken” on the side. The company said it sold the lorry in 2014. According to the Hungarian government, it is registered to a Romanian citizen from the central city of Kecskemét.

Austrian forensic team at truck of dead refugees. What a terrible, necessary, heartbreaking job.: image via Lindsey Hulsum @lindseyhulsum, 27 August 2015

Road officials said on Thursday that an employee mowing the grass alerted police after noticing putrid liquid dripping from the back of the white refrigerated vehicle. Its door had been left ajar. Detectives then made the grim discovery.

An abandoned truck carrying the dead bodies of people assumed to be migrants was found in Austria on Thursday. Images in the Austrian news media showed a white vehicle with a rear cooler compartment, emblazoned with the word “Hyza” in brown letters, with a chicken standing in for the letter Y, surrounded by police cars.: photo by Roland Schlager/European Pressphoto Agency, 27 August 2015

Forensic teams at the scene examined the lorry, which has Hungarian number plates. Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 News tweeted that the “smell of death” at the scene was overwhelming. On Thursday afternoon, police towed the vehicle to a nearby hall and began removing bodies.

Austrian forensic team at truck. Driver reportedly fled. Bodies of #refugees still inside: image via Lindsey Hulsum @lindseyhulsum, 27 August 2015

In a statement on Thursday, Austria’s interior minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, denounced the traffickers as criminals. “This tragedy is a concern for us all. Smugglers are criminals. They have no interest in the welfare of refugees. Only profit.”

A truck stands on the shoulder of the highway A4 near Parndorf south of Vienna, on Austria, Thursday. At least 20 migrants were found dead in the truck parked on the Austrian highway leading from the Hungarian border, police said: photo by Ronald Zak/AP, 27 August 2015

The EU has found itself overwhelmed by the sheer scale of migration, with a record number of 107,500 migrants crossing the EU’s border last month. Chaotic attempts by Macedonian police to hold back refugees last week failed. On Wednesday, the UN's Refugee Agency said it expected 3,000 people a day to enter Macedonia from Greece until at least the end of the year.

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Bosnian Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic, from left, listen to a speech at the start of the Western Balkans Summit in the Hofburg palace in Vienna, Austria: photo by Roland Zak/AP, 27 August 2015

Berlin, backed by Austria, wants a new system of mandatory quotas for refugees across the EU despite the issue being rejected in acrimonious scenes by EU leaders at a summit in June. Germany expects 800,000 asylum applications this year. The EU has also proposed a common “safe countries of origin” list, which would see migrants from these nations swiftly deported.

With the EU’s common border policy increasingly dysfunctional, member states are taking matters into their own hands. Hungary is building a new fence along its border with Serbia, though this week refugees got through with relative ease.Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, opposes the initiative, saying: “We are not advocates of fences.”

Up to 50 dead as Austria finds truck loaded with migrant bodies: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 27 August 2015

On Tuesday, meanwhile, Austrian police arrested three drivers on suspicion of transporting migrants from Syria and other war-torn areas into the EU. One of them had driven 34 people packed into the back of a white van across the Austrian border.

The group included 10 small children, whom the driver abandoned by the side of the motorway near the city of Bruck an der Leitha. According to police, the migrants said in interviews they were hardly able to breathe during the trip.

They had asked repeatedly for more air, but the driver had ignored their requests, police added, and had driven without stopping from Serbia to Austria.

At least 20 migrants found dead in truck on Austria highway: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 27 August 2015

Amnesty International’s Europe deputy director, Gauri van Gulik, said countries in the region needed urgently to do more.

“People dying in their dozens –- whether crammed into a truck or a ship -– en route to seek safety or better lives is a tragic indictment of Europe’s failures to provide alternative routes,” he said. “Europe has to step up and provide protection to more, share responsibility better and show solidarity to other countries and to those most in need.”

Investigations underway after up to 50 refugees found dead in truck in Austria:: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 27 August 2015

Honest Chicken Took Them On Their Last Ride

Forensic investigators are seen working on a refrigerated truck parked along a highway near Neusiedl am See, Austria, on August 27, 2015. The bodies of between 20 and 50 migrants have been found in the truck on the A 4 highway in Austria, police said Thursday, the latest tragedy involving people desperately trying to reach Europe. AFP PHOTO / DIETER NAGL

Dozens of dead migrants found in abandoned lorry in eastern Austria, near the Hungarian border. The German daily Kurier has written that the refugees suffocated to death in the lorry's cargo container, probably a long time ago. Hyza, Slovakia's leading poultry producer and processor, said in a press release that the lorry no longer belongs to the company, which sold it in 2013 or 2014. Hyza, seated in Topoľčany, west Slovakia, says on its website that since 2006 it has been a part of Agrofert, a giant holding company owned by Czech Finance Minister Andrej Babis.: photo by Czech News Agency via Prague Post, 27 August 2015

Honest Chicken says

Come with me Little Refugee

And see the world from the dark place inside

This large metal box on wheels

But don't expect to breathe too deeply

Or too often

On the long road north

And west

To the Land of Your Dreams

Iron modder entry | by Yappen All Day Long

Iron modder entry. Magpul magpul, silencer, halo sight. Fried chicken.: photo by Yappen All Day Long, 9 December 2011

from Dal Tokyo (detail): Gary Panter, 1984; image via Fantagraphics Books, 2012

Transit Zone Europe

A ticket on the #refugee train from Macedonia to Serbia. 10 euros. Sardine room only. Fresh air through open doors.: image via Anemona Hartocollis @anemenanyc, 26 August 2015

Migrants waiting in line for documents at a refugee processing center on Thursday in Presevo, Serbia: photo by Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times, 27 August 2015

@anemonanyc is traveling with migrants desperate to reach Hungary before it seals its border: image via Palko Karasz @karaszpalko, 27 August 2015

Budapest train stations morph into makeshift refugee camps: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 27 August 2015

Refugee children playing at a way station just inside #Hungary. Their families hope to reach Germany. #Syria: image via Lindsey Hulsum @lindseyhulsum, 25 August 2015

Hard to be a refugee when you're disabled or injured. Just arrived in #Hungary. #Serbia: image via Lindsey Hulsum @lindseyhulsum, 25 August 2015

Hundreds of refugees are camping at the railway station in #Budapest. #Hungary.: image via Lindsey Hulsum @lindseyhulsum, 26 August 2015

Afghans heading for Northern Europe - Hungarian govt won't let them take train without passports so stuck at station.: image via Lindsey Hulsum @lindseyhulsum, 26 August 2015

#Keleti station in #Budapest, temporary home to some 500 people fleeing war and poverty in #Syria, #Afghanistan, etc.: image via Lindsey Hulsum @lindseyhulsum, 26 August 2015

#Keleti station in #Budapest, temporary home to some 500 people who've left fleeing war and poverty in #Syria, #Afghanistan, & elsewhere: image via Lindsey Hulsum @lindseyhulsum, 26 August 2015

Across Transit Zone Europe: Long Walk, Small Promise

......................................................................

............................................................................Thousands reach Europe before border is blocked. Photo by: Armend Nimani/ AFP: image via The Times Pictures @Times Pictures, 25 August 2015

A Syrian migrant carries children as he walks along railway track to cross Serbian border with Hungary near the village of Horgos...A Syrian migrant carries his children as he walks along a railway track to cross the Serbian border with Hungary near the village of Horgos August 27, 2015. Hungary made plans on Wednesday to reinforce its southern border with helicopters, mounted police and dogs, and was also considering using the army as record numbers of migrants, many of them Syrian refugees, passed through coils of razor-wire into Europe

......................................................................A Syrian migrant carries his children as he walks along a railway track to cross the Serbian border with Hungary near the village of Horgos on Thursday: photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters, 27 August 2015

A Syrian couple waits for the train in Gevgelija with other refugees and migrants to continue their way to Europe: image via Aris Messinis @arismessinis, 29 August 2015

Hungarian policemen detain a Syrian migrant family after they entered Hungary at the border with Serbia, near Roszke, August 28, 2015.

Refugee arrested after risking Hungarian wire fence border barrier is surrounded by his despairing family: photo by Bernadett Szabo/Reuters, 28 August 2015

#Refugee family's despair as father is arrested after braving wire fence #Hungary border photo @afpattila @AFPphoto: image via Sunday Times Pictures @STPictures, 28 August 2015

Hungary says anti-migrant barrier along Serb border complete: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 28 August 2015

Hongrie: 2.700 réfugiés ont passé la frontière serbo-hongroise hier #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 29 August 2015

#migrantcrisis - Syrian refugees and migrants after crossing Greece continue through FYR of Macedonia their way to Europe.: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 29 August 2015

A young Syrian boy stands inside a train heading from FYR of Macedonia to the border with Serbia: image via Aris Messinis @arismessinis, 29 August 2015

A Syrian boy cries after a missile fired by Syrian government forces hit a residential area of #Aleppo: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 22 July 2015

Refugee wave into hotspot Hungary hits new record high - photo by @iandrej: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 28 August 2015

71 migrants perish in Austria truck tragedy: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 28 August 2015

Four arrested over discovery of 71 bodies in abandoned truck, another grim migrant tragedy: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 28 August 2015

The #migrant crisis death toll rises – and the EU again fails to lead, writes @kwatkinsodi: image via ODI @ODI, 28 August 2015

Migrants: un enfant dans un train entre la #Grece et la #Macedoine en partance pour la Serbie #AFP @RAtanasovski: image via Isabelle Tourné @isatourne, 28 August 2015

Migrants on their way to cross the border from Greece to F.Y.R of Macedonia: image via Aris Messinis @arismessinis, 29 August 2015

#migrantcrisis - Migrants walk through a field to cross the border from Greece to Macedonia. By @ArisMessinis #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 29 August 2015

#migrantcrisis - Migrants walk after crossing border from Greece to Macedonia near Gevgelija. By @ArisMessinis #AFP: image via Christophe Delattre @chrisdelattre7, 30 August 2015

Governing a state like a business (I): The Honest Chicken Solution

Czech Finance Minister and oligarch Andrej Babis: photo by Michal Cizek via Foreign Policy/Democracy Lab, 10 April 2015

Now the Czechs Have an Oligarch Problem Too: How the rise of a powerful businessman threatens to undermine democratic institutions in the heart of Europe: Ola Cichowlas and Andrew Foxall, Democracy Lab/Foreign Policy, 10 April 2015

Czech oligarch Andrej Babis, his country’s second-richest man and one of the most politically influential billionaires in the world, is expanding his business empire into Prague’s corridors of power.

Babis currently serves as finance minister, but his ambitions are far grander. The rise of Babis -- nicknamed "Babisconi," after Italian billionaire turned prime minister Silvio Berlusconi -- marks a turning point in his country’s post-communist history.

Since its “Velvet Divorce” with Slovakia in 1993, the Czech Republic has made a rapid transition to democracy and market economics, enjoying some of Europe’s highest growth rates and becoming an active member of the EU. Like its Central European neighbors, the new country flourished and became, initially, a remarkable success story. But in recent years, its liberal democracy has weakened.

Since the global financial crisis, many Czechs have become increasingly disillusioned with Brussels. The Czech media landscape, once admirably diverse, is now increasingly controlled by powerful tycoons. President Milos Zeman has encouraged this process and, under his leadership, anti-establishment forces have flourished. Though the situation in Prague is not quite as dire as in Budapest, where Viktor Orban appears to be losing faith in democracy as a system, the rollback of democratic institutions in the Czech Republic is ringing alarm bells in a corner of Europe vulnerable to the influence of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The rise of Andrej Babis is a case in point.

Police suspect Bulgarian-Hungarian trafficking ring behind deaths of migrants found in truck: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 28 August 2015

Four years ago Babis founded the Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) party. After a series of scandals in which politicians enriched themselves in office, Babis’s party aimed, ironically enough, to capitalize on Czechs’ rising distaste for wealthy businessmen. ANO rose to power with the help of anti-corruption and anti-establishment slogans, at times even calling the Czech Republic a "failed state." It finished second in the country’s 2013 parliamentary elections and went on to join the coalition government. A year later, in the 2014 European Parliament elections, ANO went one better: It won more votes than any other Czech party.

Woman with smartphone (Milan): photo by Luca Napoli, 2 June 2013

As elsewhere in Europe, ANO’s brand of anti-politics resonates with the public. Portraying himself as a non-politician and outsider, Babis promises to dramatically change Czech governance. ANO’s voters are also attracted by his personal appeal: A blunt-speaking entrepreneur, his face beams out at Czechs from billboards and newspaper pages. But Babis and his fortune -- $2.4 billion, according to Forbes -- are mired in controversy.

Historians from Slovakia’s National Memory Institute, which preserves files dating from the country’s period under Nazi and communist rule, published documents suggesting not only that Babis collaborated with Czechoslovakia’s secret police, the StB (under the codename Bures), but that he may have even worked for the Soviet KGB as well. In 2014, Babis successfully sue the National Memory Institute in a Bratislava court, claiming that he had been wrongly registered as an agent in StB files. But the institute is appealing, maintaining that the court ruled unfairly and that former StB officers had lied under oath to protect him. Under the 1991 Czech lustration law, it is illegal for former StB collaborators and top communist functionaries to hold high political and economic posts. Yet when Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (a member of the Czech Social Democratic Party, the country’s largest party) appointed Babis finance minister in 2014 without requesting a lustration certificate as he was supposed to, a Prague court merely announced its intention to fine him -- and the fine was annulled on Sobotka’s appeal.

Babis denies reports that his family, too, cooperated with the StB, arguing that they -- like many families -- were victims of the communist regime. But the archives suggest otherwise. Documents say that Babis’s diplomat father, Stefan (who allegedly ran a Vienna-based black-market arms trade business under the protection of the StB), and his brother, Alexander, voluntarily cooperated with the agency. When contacted for comment, Babis’s office said that he had cleared his name, while Babis himself has called all such allegations about his past “bullshit.”

Andrej Babiš – Czech oligarch: imagevia Politico/European Voice, 11 September 2014

Babis’s business success -- which translated into a monthly salary of $1.4 million before he entered government -- is often attributed to the contacts he made during the late communist period. During the Velvet Revolution of November 1989, Babis was based in Morocco as a representative for Petrimex, Czechoslovakia’s state-controlled trade company. He returned home to see his country split in two. In 1993, Babis, helped by his former director at Petrimex, founded the fertilizer giant Agrofert, currently the Czech Republic’s fourth-largest company and a near-monopoly in several sectors of the economy.

Along the way, Agrofert acquired state-owned companies using state-backed loans on which Babis ultimately defaulted. (The Czech anti-corruption police eavesdroppped on Babis on the suspicion that he had participated in fraud at one of the companies.) In 2006, after Babis’s main business rival, Frantisek Mrazek, was found dead under mysterious circumstances, some suggested that Babis was to blame. Mrazek, it was alleged, had compromising material on Babis that he was planning to make public. No charges, however, were brought against Babis.

Babis’s businesses continue to benefit from his connections with the Czech political elite, in particular with President Milos Zeman. As prime minister in 2001, Zeman oversaw the sale of Unipetrol, a state-owned chemical company, to Babis. The deal was evidence of a strategic partnership between the two men that continues to this day. Although Babis pulled out of the sale a year later, he oversaw the sale of Unipetrol to a Polish company in 2005. Afterwards, high-ranking Polish officials reported that 42 million euros ($53 million) had been handed out in bribes on both sides of the border. In Warsaw, the scandal shook the Polish political scene. In Prague, however, the Czech Parliament failed to open an investigation, allegedly because of Babis’s close with then Prime Minister Stanislav Gross. (In an email exchange with the authors, Babis’s office insisted that “no bribes” had been paid.)

Alarmingly, Babis’s approach to governing the country was, until recently, based on the notion that he would “govern the state like a business.”

A refrigerated truck, in which bodies of 71 migrants have been found on the A 4 Austrian highway, is parked in a facility which used to be a veterinary station at the border in Nickelsdorf, Austria on August 28, 2015. Austrian police said Friday that three people were in custody in Hungary over the discovery of 71 dead migrants in an abandoned truck with Hungarian number plates. AFP PHOTO / VLADIMIR SIMICEK

Lorry found to contain the bodies of 71 dead refugees on an Austrian motorway, still bearing brand logo of the chicken meat processing firm Hyza, a subsidiary of Agrofert, the vast holding company owned by Czech Finance Minister and oligarch Andrej Babis. The Czech Republic will not take any extraordinary security measures in reaction to the uncovering of 71 dead refugees in a lorry in Austria, Interior Minister Milan Chovanec told journalists today. He said the system of tightened checks of immigrants, applied by Prague since mid-June and also focusing on lorries and coaches, is sufficient.: photo by Czech News Agency, 28 August 2015

As in neighboring Slovakia and nearby Hungary, the rich and powerful are consolidating their control over the Czech media. In Prague, Babis is leading the way in what has been dubbed the “oligarchization” of the media. When the global financial crisis struck, long-term international investors began pulling out. Babis, who already owned a number of influential newspapers, expanded his media holdings: he acquired MAFRA Media Group, which controls the best-selling Czech broadsheet newspaper Mlada fronta DNES, and bought Radio Impuls, which has the largest listenership in the Czech Republic. These outlets regularly feature sympathetic coverage of Babis -- and criticism of his opponents. Since becoming finance minister, Babis has recruited senior police officers, state security agents, and former communist informers to help him consolidate power. This alliance of security forces, business, and the media is currently constrained by independent judges -- though such checks seem increasingly fragile.

Babis’s multiple media outlets have launched investigations into alleged corruption involving Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, whose position Babis craves. After years of genuine media independence, many Czechs are talking of a return to the 1970s, when journalists aligned themselves with the political order. Babis wants to control, not just change, Czech politics.

The rise of Andrej Babis represents a new era in Czech politics -- one that is more preoccupied with business interests than safeguarding democracy. Prague was once a focal point for change in Central Europe, home to the former Eastern Bloc’s strongest dissident traditions. But in 2015, the Czech capital is in a very different place than what was envisaged by those who stood on Wenceslas Square in November 1989.

Corrections, April 23, 2015: Agrofert is the Czech Republic’s fourth-largest company, not the largest, as the article earlier stated. The Czech police conducted wiretaps on Andrej Babis in conjunction with a fraud investigation; his company did not obtain information on rivals through eavesdropping, as originally claimed. And Mlada fronta Dnes is the Czech Republic’s best-selling broadsheet newspaper, not the best-selling newspaper overall.

Czech Finance Minister Andrej Babis is seen casting his vote in the European Parliament elections at an elementary school in this file photo taken in Prague May 23, 2014. REUTERS/David W Cerny/Files

Czech Finance Minister Andrej Babis is seen casting his vote in the European Parliament elections at an elementary school in Prague: photo by David W Cerny/Reuters, 23 May 2014

Governing a state like a business (II): The E-Commerce Solution to the Immigration Problem

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said the regional climate initiative “does nothing more than tax electricity, tax our citizens, tax our businesses, with no discernible or measurable impact upon our environment.”: photo by Mel Evans/Associated Press, 26 May 2011

Chris Christie:I would track immigrants like FedEx packages: Republican presidential contender revives lagging campaign by telling New Hampshire crowd he would ask FedEx to devise an immigrant tracking system: Reuters 29 August 2015

New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie, said on Saturday he would combat illegal immigration by tracking foreign visitors like FedEx packages.

Christie, who is well back in the pack seeking the Republican nomination for president, told a campaign event in the early-voting state of New Hampshire that, if elected president, he would ask FedEx’s chief executive officer, Fred Smith, to devise the tracking system.

Immigration has become a top issue in the Republican campaign, with front-runner Donald Trump vowing to deport all the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants and to build a wall along the southern border.

“At any moment, FedEx can tell you where that package is. It’s on the truck. It’s at the station. It’s on the airplane,” Christie told the crowd in Laconia, New Hampshire. “Yet we let people come to this country with visas, and the minute they come in, we lose track of them,” he said.

FEDEX E-COMMERCE SOLUTIONCOMPONENTS OF THE E-COMMERCE SOLUTIONAccording to me some information systems/processes involved ...

Fedex E-Commerce Solution: graphic by Aabhas Rastegi: image by Aabhas Rastogi via Fed Ex Corporation (MIS)

Christie has been lagging in recent opinion polls and is in danger of not making the top 10 candidates who will participate in the next official Republican debate, on 16 September.

With real estate mogul Trump taking a hard line on illegal immigration, other Republican candidates in the 2016 White House race have sought to toughen their stances as well.

Christie did not say specifically how the system he proposes would track people the same way packages are tracked by FedEx, which scans a bar code on the package at each step in the delivery process.

A FedEx spokeswoman declined to comment on Christie’s remarks.

There were long lines at the local approaches to the George Washington Bridge from Fort Lee, N.J., because all but one, right, had been closed: photo by Amy Newman/Northjersey,com, 12 September 2013

Palestinians figth to free a Palestinian boy held by an Israeli soldier during clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinian protesters following a march against Palestinian land confiscation to expand the nearby Jewish Hallamish settlement on Friday in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh near Ramallah

Palestinians fight to free a Palestinian boy held by an Israeli soldier during clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinian protesters following a march against Palestinian land confiscation to expand the nearby Jewish Hallamish settlement on Friday in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh near Ramallah: photo by Abbas Momani/AFP, 28 August 2015

Mahmoud Darwish: The Girl / The Scream

There is a girl on a sea shore
And the girl has a family
And the family has a house
And the house has two windows and a door.
And at sea there's a warship playing a game
of targeting those taking a stroll on the shore.
Four five seven drop to the sand.
The girl is spared by a sleeve of mist
a certain celestial sleeve came to rescue her.
She calls out: Dad, my Dad, let's go home, this sea is not for us.
And the father does not reply.
He lies there in an agony of absence, wrapped in his shadow in an agony of absence.
Blood in her palms blood in the clouds,
Her scream flies away with her far from the sea shore and higher.
She screams in the night of a wilderness
The echo has no echo
And the girl becomes the eternal scream of a breaking news event made obsolete by the planes' return
to bomb a house with two windows and a door.

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008): The Girl / The Scream, 2006, from The Trace of The Butterfly, 2008, translated from the Arabic by Tania Nasir and John Berger

Protesters from Nabi Saleh fleeing from tear gas launched by the Israel Defense Forces. In the background, the Israeli settlement of Halamish: photo by Peter van Agtmael for The New York Times, 15 March 2013

An Israeli soldier seizes a Palestinian boy during clashes near Ramallah on August 28, 2015. AFP Photo / Abbas Momani: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 30 August 2015

#Israeli soldier trying to arrest a #child! In the village of #NabiSaleh #Ramallah: image via Elia Ghorbieh @Elia_gor, 28 August 2015

Photo by @SamerNazzal from #NabiSaleh today. Tying to prevent an attack on a boy, a girl bit the soldier a lesson.: image via Fati Abdul @FatiAbdul, 28 August 2015

zionist IOF attacked #NabiSaleh protest in brutal way today with tear gas, rubber coated steal bullets & live ammo: image via manal tamimi @screaming tamimi, 21 August 2015

Muhammad Tamimi from #NabiSaleh sustained a broken arm in clashes with the IOF today: image via The Baking Anthro @NotOccupying, 25 August 2015

Unmasked: the oh-so-brave Israeli soldier who tried - and failed - to arrest a Palestinian child. #NabiSaleh: image via Ben White @benabyad, 28 August 2015

How can you say you did not know this was a child, @IDFSpokesperson? Are you blind AND deaf? #nabisaleh #BDS: image via Pucci D @adpucci, 28 August 2015

#WestBank: Palestinian women who got detained child away from Israeli soldier to be arrested. #NabiSaleh,: image syndicalist @syndicalisms, 29 August 2015

Ahed Tamimi, the 14-y-o Palestinian who bit an Israeli soldier to free her brother #NabiSaleh: image via Ben White @benabyad, 30 August 2015

Israeli teacher under fire for participating in Nabi Saleh… #ArabIsraeliConflict: image via The Jerusalem Post @JerusalemPost, 31 August 2015

Italian activist [Vittorio Fera] beaten up while arrested by #Israel 4 joining #NabiSaleh peaceful protests via ISMPalestine: image via Omar Ghraieb @Omar_Gaza, 31 August 2015

Brave Tamimi women of Nabi Saleh take down Israeli soldier assaulting injured child: image via Mondoweiss @Mondoweiss, 29 August 2015

Mahmoud Darwish: It's the duty of tragedy to change the gaze of eloquence and to reflect upon the life of Things, for in everything there's a being that suffers

Mahmoud Darwish visiting London: photo by Eamonn McCabe, 2002, via The Guardian, 11 August 2008

Mahmoud Darwish in Beirut, Lebanon: photographer unknown, early 1970s, via The Guardian, 11 August 2008

Palestinian man watchs Israeli troops during clashes which followed an Israeli army operation at the Jenin refugee camp, in the West Bank, on Monday.

Palestinian man watches Israeli troops during clashes which followed an Israeli army operation at the Jenin refugee camp, in the West Bank on Tuesday: photo by Alaa Badarneh/EPA, 1 September 2015

Mahmoud Darwish: Murdered Houses

Palestinian man watches Israeli troops during clashes which followed an Israeli army operation at the Jenin refugee camp, in the West Bank on Tuesday: photo by Alaa Badarneh/EPA, 1 September 2015

Mahmoud Darwish: Murdered Houses

In one minute the lifetime of a house is ended. When a house is killed, it is a serial killing, even if the house is empty: a mass grave of all the things once used to give a home to Meaning, or, in times of war, to
a marginal poem.

A slaughtered house is the severing of things from what they meant, from the feelings they inspired. It's the duty of tragedy to change the gaze of eloquence and to reflect upon the life of Things, for in everything
there's a being that suffers: a memory of fingers, a memory of a smell, a memory of a picture. Houses are murdered just as their inhabitants are killed and the memories of things are slaughtered: stones, wood,
glass, iron, mortar -- scattered like human limbs. Cotton silk, linen, exercise books, books -- torn apart like the unsaid words of people who did not have the time to say them. Dishes broken, spoons, toys, old
records, pipes, doorknobs, the refrigerator, the washing machine, pots, jars of olives and pickles, cars -- all broken, like their owners. The two whites -- sugar and salt -- are trod upon along with matchboxes,
medicines, birth control pills, steroids, strings of garlic and onions, dried okra, tomatoes, rice and lentils -- all are trod upon as are their owners.

Land-deeds and marriage certificates torn apart with birth papers, water and electricity bills, identity cards, passports, love letters -- torn apart like the hearts of their owners.

Photographs are swept away with combs, make-up, brushes, shoes, lingerie, sheets, towels, swept away like family secrets betrayed to others and to devastation. All these things are the memories of people

deprived of things, and the memory of things deprived of people .... Everything ends in one minute. Things die like we do, but they are not buried with us.

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008): Murdered Houses, 2006, from The Trace of The Butterfly, 2008, translated from the Arabic by Tania Nasir and John Berger

Israeli bulldozers demolished the house of Majdi Abu al-Haija in #Jenin camp at dawn today: image via Palestine Social @Palestine Social, 31 August 2015

This is not Gaza, This is #Jenin The same destruction, the same destroyer, and also the same victim!: image via Mhmmd Abu Oweimer @vic2pal, 1 September 2015

Israeli bulldozers demolished the house of Majdi Abu al-Haija in #Jenin camp at dawn today: image via Palestine Social @Palestine Social, 31 August 2015

Jenin Now

#Jenin now... More of Israeli Forces storming the camp ..: image via Said Shoaib / Gaza @saidshouib, 31 August 2015

#Israeli Occupation soldiers while storming #Jenin camp shortly before ... #WestBank #Palestine: image via Said Shoaib / Gaza @saidshouib, 31 August 2015

Currently happening in #Jenin Resist to Exist!!: image via Abbs Winston @Abbs Winston, 31 August 2015

From #Jenin now...: image via Said Shoaib / Gaza @saidshouib, 31 August 2015

#WestBank: Palestinian youths burning an Israeli army bulldozer during clashes with IOF in #Jenin tonight: image via syndicalist @syndicalisms, 31 August 2015

Currently happening in #Jenin Resist to Exist!!: image via Abbs Winston @Abbs Winston, 31 August 2015

#BREAKING | Several suffocated after Israeli Forces fired gas bombs at "Oweis" family home in #Jenin .. : image via Said Shoaib / Gaza @saidshouib, 31 August 2015

@JaneVoter @rk70534 @heavyde65 #Jenin tonight: image via nessreen @nzayed07, 31 August 2015

#Jenin now... More of Israeli Forces storming the camp ..: image via Said Shoaib / Gaza @saidshouib, 31 August 2015

Israel aggression on Palestinian city during the night #jenin_under_attack #JeninResists: image via nessreen @nzayed07, 31 August 2015

Migrants storm into a train at the Keleti train station in Budapest...Migrants storm into a train at the Keleti train station in Budapest, Hungary, September 3, 2015 as Hungarian police withdrew from the gates after two days of blocking their entry. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh

Migrants storm into a train at the Keleti train station in Budapest. Hungarian police withdrew from the gates after two days of blocking their entry: photo by Laszlo Balogh/Reuters, 3 September 2015

#humanitywashedashore

This image of the body of a Syrian boy drowned today on a Turkish beach is emblematic of the world's failure in Syria: image via Liz Sly @LizSly, 2 September 2015

Photo of drowned boy a reminder of human toll of migrant crisis (WARNING: Disturbing Images): image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 2 September 2015

@GulwaliP #humanitywashedashore new tag for #migrantcrisis child died in the hope of safety. #refugeeswelcome: image via Aneela Ahmed @ahmed_aneela, 2 September 2015

Family of children found on Turkish beach were trying to come to Canada: Terry Glavin. Ottawa Citizen, 2 September 2015

The two small boys whose bodies washed up on a Turkish beach Wednesday were Kurdish refugees from Kobane, Syria, whose family had been desperately trying to emigrate to Canada.

Galip Kurdi, five, and his three-year-old brother Aylan died along with their mother Rehan and eight other refugees when their boat overturned in a desperate flight from Turkey to the Greek island of Kos.

The boys’ father, Abdullah, survived. His family says his only wish now is to return to Kobane with his dead wife and children, bury them, and be buried alongside them.

“I heard the news at five o’clock in this morning,” Teema Kurdi, Abdullah’s sister, said Wednesday. The telephone call came from Ghuson Kurdi, the wife of another brother, Mohammad. “She had got a call from Abdullah, and all he said was, my wife and two boys are dead.”

Teema, a Vancouver hairdresser who emigrated to Canada more than 20 years ago, said Abdullah and Rehan Kurdi and their two boys were the subject of a “G5” privately sponsored refugee application that was rejected by Citizenship and Immigration in June, owing to the complexities involved in refugee applications from Turkey.

The family had two strikes against them –- like thousands of other Syrian Kurdish refugees in Turkey, the UN would not register them as refugees, and the Turkish government would not grant them exit visas.

“I was trying to sponsor them, and I have my friends and my neighbours who helped me with the bank deposits, but we couldn’t get them out, and that is why they went in the boat. I was even paying rent for them in Turkey, but it is horrible the way they treat Syrians there,” Teema said.

Fin Donnelly, the MP for Port Moody-Coquitlam, said he’d hand-delivered the Kurdis’ file to Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander earlier this year. Alexander said he would look into it, Donnelly said, but the Kurdis’ application was rejected in June. Alexander could not be reached for comment.

“This is horrific and heartbreaking news,” Donnelly said. “The frustration of waiting and the inaction has been terrible.”

Canada and Turkey have long been at loggerheads over the bottleneck blocking Syrian refugees in Turkey from finding their way to Canada. It is not uncommon for Kurds in Syria to be arbitrarily denied passports, and to have great difficulty registering as refugees with the UNHCR.

The Turkish government refuses to issue exit visas to unregistered refugees not holding valid passports.

Refugee child's body on beach shocks the world #KiyiyaVuraninsanlik: image via dw news @dwnews, 3 September 2015

A Turkish police officer carries the lifeless body of Aylan Kurdi off the shores in Bodrum, southern Turkey, on September 2, 2015 after a boat carrying refugees sank while reaching the Greek island of Kos. Thousands of refugees and migrants arrived in Athens on September 2, as Greek ministers held talks on the crisis, with Europe struggling to cope with the huge influx fleeing war and repression in the Middle East and Africa.

A Turkish police officer carries the lifeless body of Aylan Kurdi off the shores in Bodrum, southern Turkey, after a boat carrying refugees sank while reaching the Greek island of Kos. Thousands of refugees and migrants arrived in Athens on September 2, as Greek ministers held talks on the crisis, with Europe struggling to cope with the huge influx fleeing war and repression in the Middle East and Africa: photo by AFP, 2 September 2015

The world must find a way to end the suffering of so many in War. Syrian baby washed up on the shore #migrantcrisis: image via Jargalsaikhan @SJJargalsaikhan, 2 September 2015

Attempts to deter migrants don’t work. Why Europe should embrace them instead: image via Reuters Opinion @ Reuters Opinion, 2 September 2015

Leap of Faith

Zebra thinking about crossing. @AFPPhoto by @CarldeSouza1, currently shooting the migration in #Kenya's Masai Mara: image via Stefan Smith @StefanASmith, 2 September 2015

Awful images #migrantcrisis in Europe, man [from Guinea] wrapped up inside engine of car [at Spanish border]. Utterly heartbreaking, awful: image via Yalda Hakim @BBCYaldaHakim, 2 September 2015

Des migrants tentent de traverser la frontière entre la Serbie et la Hongrie #AFP via @AureliaBAILLY: image via AFP Photo Department @AFP, 31 August 2015

Sakir Khader on Twitter: @Hungary-#Serbia: I don't think words can describe her feelings." #migrant crisis: image via Refugee Studies Bot @RefugeeStudyBot, 2 September 2015

Station to Station

Des réfugiés débarquent par milliers au Pirée, pression accrue sur le nord de l’Europe #AFP: image via Agence France-Presse @afpfr, 2 September 2015

#migrants Hungary Protest rally to demand to travel to Germany today in Budapest. #AFP photo by Ferenc Isza: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 2 September 2015

#migrantcrisis Hungarian police officers face a group migrants in Kispest station, Budapest. #AFP Photo by @afpattila: image via aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAIlLY, 2 September 2015

#MigrantCrisis Chaos in Hungary as Europe migrant crisis escalates. Photo @afpattila #AFP #Hungary via SBeaugeAFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFP, 1 September 2015

#migrantcrisis Migrants rest on a platform at Vienna's Westbahnhof train station on September 1. #AFP by Joe Klamar: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 1 September 2015

#Migrants rest on train from Budapest to Munich at Austrian-Hungarian border in Hegyeshalom. By @vladimirsmicek #AFP: image via Sophie Chauveau @s_chauveauAFP, 1 September 2015

Hundreds of migrants protest in Budapest, demanding they be allowed to travel to Germany: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 1 September 2015

Hundreds of migrants protest in front of Budapest train station for second straight day: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 2 September 2015

Angry protests erupt as #Hungary again blocks path of refugees. #migrantcrisis: image via CBC News Alerts @CBCAlerts, 2 September 2015

#MigrantCrisis Migrants burst into Budapest station. Photo by Peter Kohalmi #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 3 September 2015

Migrants coming from Budapest arrested by police in Bicske. #AFP photo by Istvan Bielik: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 3 September 2015

Hungarian police watch over migrants outside Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary: photo by Bernadett Szabo/Reuters, 2 September 2015

Following the Tracks

In #Iceland, 13,000 ask the government to take in more #refugees from #Syria #migrantcrisis: image via The Age @theage, 2 September 2015

Syrian refugees and migrants on their way from Serbia to Hungary as they walk on a railway line: photo by Aris Messinis @ArisMessinis, 2 September 2015

#MigrantCrisis Syrian refugees and migrants try to cross from Serbia into Hungary near Horgos. By @ArisMessinis #AFP: image via Stephanie Beauge @sbeaugeAFP, 2 September 2015

#migrantcrisis Along a railway line to cross Serbia into Hungary near Horgos on September 1 #AFP @ArisMessinis: image via AureliaBAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 2 September 2015

The refugee crisis is polarizing the European Union.: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 2 September 2015

ATTENTION EDITORS - REUTERS PICTURE HIGHLIGHT...ATTENTION EDITORS - REUTERS PICTURE HIGHLIGHTMDJ200A migrant, hoping to cross into Hungary, plays with a child along a railway track outside the village of Horgos in Serbia, towards the border it shares with Hungary, August 31, 2015. REUTERS/Marko Djurica TPX IMAGES OF THE DAYREUTERS NEWS PICTURES HAS NOW MADE IT EASIER TO FIND THE BEST PHOTOS FROM THE MOST IMPORTANT STORIES AND TOP STANDALONES EACH DAY. Search for "TPX" in the IPTC Supplemental Category field or "IMAGES OF THE DAY" in the Caption field and you will find a selection of 80-100 of our daily Top Pictures.REUTERS NEWS PICTURES.

A migrant, hoping to cross into Hungary, plays with a child along a railway track outside the village of Horgos in Serbia: photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters, 1 September 2015

Boundary Issues: My Personal Robotic Spider Dress

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

My little white 3-D printed personal robotic spider dress marks out, establishes and defends my personal animatronic arachnidal boundaries

mapping the perimeters and suggesting the dangers that lie in store for those who attempt to cross

over the border into my personal space -- the zones of prohibition are protected

by the nine retractable tentacular plates in

the assistive adaptive autonomous environment of

My Personal Robotic Spider Dress, which,

guided by emotional monitoring, body temperature readout, brain scan

and hormonal disturbance early warning

systems implanted, sewn on my CNC mill, and soldered into chips,

snap out to capture any intruder in the moment

of transgression, stun, disarm and instantly kill

and so now I can couple my body with an EEG

to protect me from

........................YOU

I can record my respiration

I can calibrate each beat of my heart

I can make a 3-D holographic simulation

I can continually cartographically display my biosignals and store them in the computer brain of

My Personal Robotic Spider Dress

where all the data gets transferred so that I can create an interface

allowing me to be here in Silicon Valley in my little white badass

personal robotic animatronic spider dress

...................................................while YOU

remain always on the other side of the border maintained and guarded with vigilance by

My Personal Robotic Spider Dress

I can use my emotions

as a weapon

as a tool

as a barrier

as a menu for methods of torture

I wouldn't get caught dead without my little white 3-D printed

personal robotic spider dress

...................................and if YOU

come too close

the penetration

of my personal space

will be immediately detected and

set off my personal alarm system

and my personal robotic spider dress will automatically extend its tentacular plates toward

..............................YOU

but don't think you're the first capture

but don't think you're the first to be consumed by

My Personal Robotic Spider Dress

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht modeled at Las Vegas International Computer Electronics Show: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht (close-up detail): photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

A young child waits in line at a migrant reception center in Brussels on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2015. Hundreds of migrants are arriving every day in Belgium, some making perilous journeys through Europe

A young child waits in line at a migrant reception centre in Brussels on Tuesday. Hundreds of migrants are arriving every day in Belgium, some making perilous journeys through Europe: photo by Virginia Mayo/AP, 1 September 2015

_SD_DSC5384_smallweb

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht (detail showing retractable "protection" plates, r.): photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht, seen metamorphosing for the industry: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

I haz a sad 2010-05-27 002 | by susan402

I haz a bad day. Just one of those days when everything is going wrong: photo by susan402, 27 May 2010

Today I went out and broke the sugar bowls

in the restaurants in the city. I moved

the furniture from one side of town

to the other, till all was to my liking.

I took all the overstuffed easy chairs

and put them out on the sidewalks

and on Tuesday they will be carted off

to the dump. In their place I put lovely

small green couches, enough for everyone.

I did all this because the migrants are

crawling under barbed wire, refugees are starving

in makeshift camps, the men who are forced to dig

the tunnels for the Sinaloa cartel are all

being murdered with their shovels in their

hands, and the woman who hired a hitman

to kill her cousin in the park for the $100K

insurance policy she took out on him

was just found not guilty.

8/28/2015 8:46 PM

The little green comfy couch | by dc3fr2

The little green couch. It's small but comfy. Caution, may cause napping! photo by dc3fr2, 25 August 2009

Migrants Refuse To Leave Train Stopped By Police At Hungarian Station...BICSKE, HUNGARY - SEPTEMBER 04: Migrants protest outside a train that they are refusing to leave for fear of being taken to a refugee camp from the train that has been held at Bicske station since yesterday on September 4, 2015 in Bicske, near Budapest, Hungary. According to the Hungarian authorities a record number of migrants from many parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia are crossing the border from Serbia. Since the beginning of 2015 the number of migrants using the so-called Balkans route has exploded with migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey and then travelling on through Macedonia and Serbia before entering the EU via Hungary. The massive increase, said to be the largest migration of people since World War II, led Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban to order Hungary's army to build a steel and barbed wire security barrier along its entire border with Serbia, after more than 100,000 asylum seekers from a variety of countries and war zones entered the country so far this year. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Migrants protest outside a train that they are refusing to leave for fear of being taken to a refugee camp from the train which has been held at Bicske station since yesterday in Bicske, near Budapest, Hungary. According to the Hungarian authorities a record number of migrants from many parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia are crossing the border from Serbia. Since the beginning of 2015 the number of migrants using the so-called Balkans route has exploded with migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey and then travelling on through Macedonia and Serbia before entering the EU via Hungary. The massive increase, said to be the largest migration of people since World War II, led Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban to order Hungary’s army to build a steel and barbed wire security barrier along its entire border with Serbia, after more than 100,000 asylum seekers from a variety of countries and war zones entered the country so far this year: photo by Matt Cardy via FT Photo Diary, 4 September 2015

Herds of wildebeest cross the river in Masai Mara on Friday. Every year hundreds of thousands of wildebeest make the crossing from the Serengeti to Masai Mara game reserve to graze during the migration: Photo by Carl de Souza/AFP, 4 September 2015

Hungarian policemen stand by the family of migrants protesting on the tracks at the railway station in the town of Bicske, Hungary on Thursday: photo by Laszlo Balogh/Reuters, 3 September 2015

Migrants raise hands to catch bottles of...Migrants raise hands to catch bottles of waters thrown by volunteers of humanitarian organizations as they wait to cross the Greek-Macedonian border near the vilage of Idomeni, northern Greece, on 4 September, 2015. Europe is facing an "unprecedented humanitarian and political crisis" as it struggles with the huge influx of refugees and migrants, the European Commission's vice-president Frans Timmermans said Thursday. "We must find European responses to a problem that cannot be resolved by countries individually," Timmermans said ahead of talks with Greek Prime Minister Vassiliki Thanou on a crisis that has seen more than 230,000 people land on Greek shores this year. AFP PHOTO /Sakis MitrolidisSAKIS MITROLIDIS/AFP/Getty Images

#migrants raise their hands to catch bottles of water near Idomeni. #AFPPhoto @SakisMitrolidis: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 5 September 2015

Migrants reach out for food and water distributed on Greek-FYR Macedonia border near Idomeni #AFP Photo by @lgouliam: image via Uta Tochtermann @utatoc, 5 September 2015

Migrants raise hands to catch bottles of water thrown by volunteers of humanitarian organisations as they wait to cross the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, northern Greece: photo by Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP, 4 September 2015

#migrantcrisis Border between Greece and Macedonia near Gevgelija today. #AFP @RAtanasovski image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 3 September 2015

#migrantcrisis Border between Greece and Macedonia near Gevgelija today. #AFP@RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 3 September 2015

#migrants at the Greek-FYR Macedonian borders near Idomeni on September 5. #AFP Photo by @lgouliam: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 5 September 2015

#migrants on their way to cross the Greek-Macedonian border near Idomeni. #AFP Photo @SakisMitrolidis: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 4 September 2015

#migrants make their way towards the Greek-FYR Macedonian borders. #AFP Photo by @lgouliam: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 5 September 2015

William Blake: Europe a Prophecy, 1794

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 1, 23 x 16.9 cm (Glasgow University Library)

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 2, 23.9 x 17.3 cm

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 3, 23.6 x 17.1 cm (Glasgow University Library)

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 4, 23.6 x 17.3 cm (Glasgow University Library)

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 5, 23.6 x 15.7 cm (Glasgow University Library)

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 6, 23.1 x 16.4 cm (Glasgow University Library)

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 7, 23.6 x 17.2 cm (Glasgow University Library)

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 8, 23.7 x 17.1 cm (Glasgow University Library)

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 9, 23.6 x 16.7 cm (Glasgow University Library)

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 10, 23.4 x 16.6 cm (Glasgow University Library)

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 11, 23.4 x 16.7 cm (Glasgow University Library)

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 12, 23.4 x 16.9 cm (Glasgow University Library)

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 13, 23.4 x 17.0 cm (Glasgow University Library)

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 14, 23.4 x 17.3 cm (Glasgow University Library)

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 15, 23.3 x 16.9 cm (Glasgow University Library)

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 16, 23.3 x 16.5 cm (Glasgow University Library)

Europe a Prophecy: William Blake, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 17, 23.4 x 16.6 cm (Glasgow University Library)

A Journey to the unknown

#migrantcrisis #Hungary Migrants on a train at a railway station in Budapest yesterday. #AFP @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 4 September 2015

A journey to the unknown on the Balkan migrant route, day 2: Ghost train through Macedonia #AFP: image via AFP Correspondent @AFPblogs, 3 September 2015

A journey to the unknown, day 3: Belgrade, refugees' respite ahead of looming Hungary #AFP: image via AFP Correspondent @AFPblogs, 4 September 2015

#Hungary #migrants held by police near the train station of Nagyszentjanos, yesterday. #AFP Photo by Joe Klamar: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 4 September 2015

#migrantcrisis #Greece Refugees wait to be registered in the port of Mytilene, on Lesbos yesterday. #AFP @atzortzinis: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 4 September 2015

A woman refugee collapses as she waits to be registered by police in Mytilene, on the Greek Aegean island of Lesbos: image via Anthony Wallace @AntAFP, 5 September 2015

#migrants before boarding a train in the village of Nickelsdorf #Austria #AFPPhoto by Joe Klamar: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 5 September 2015

AUSTRIA - Migrants wait before boarding a train in Nickelsdorf in early hours to head to Salzburg. By Joe Klamar #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 5 September 2015

Refugees arrive in Austria after crossing the border from Hungary: image via The Telegraph @Telegraph, 5 September 2015

MACEDONIA - Children look out the window from a train heading to Serbia near Gevgelija. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 5 September 2015

UK - Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and Prince Charles attend the annual Braemar Gathering. By @acbphoto #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffard, 6 September 2015

Good morning. Yesterday The Queen attended the 200th #Braemar gathering. I use to also enjoyed attending the games: image via The Royal Butler @TheRoyalButler, 6 September 2015

Who joined the #RoyalFamily at the 200th #Braemar Gathering today?: image via StaaG @StaaGfashion, 5 September 2015

Completely in love with my Foreigner Band Tee from @shoplittlelies super comfy for my night in #Braemar Gathering today: image via Sarah L. Ferguson @Brass_ButtonsC, 4 September 2015

Abdullah Kurdi, father of three-year old Aylan Kurdi, cries as he leaves a morgue in Mugla, Turkey. The family of Aylan, a Syrian toddler whose body washed up on a Turkish beach, had been trying to emigrate to Canada after fleeing the war-torn town of Kobani. His 5-year-old brother Galip and mother Rehan, 35, also died after their boat capsized while trying to reach the Greek island of Kos. His father, Abdullah, was found semi-conscious and taken to hospital near Bodrum: photo by Murad Sezer/Reuters, 3 September 2015

#AylanKurdi's father plans to return to #Kobane to bury his two sons and wife: image via Gissur Simonarson CN @GissiSim, 3 September 2015

Men stand in front of a makeshift restaurant in a street of #kobane on September 6.#AFP Photo by Yasin Akgul: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 7 September 2015

A man tries to clear the rubble on September 6, 2015 in #kobane on September 6.#AFP Photo by Yasin Akgul: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 7 September 2015

SYRIA - Children look at weapons seized from IS (Islamic State) in Kobane. By Yasin Akgul #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffard, 7 September 2015

SYRIA - A man carries a weapon seized from IS (Islamic State) in Kobane. By Yasin Akgul #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffard, 7 September 2015

#migrantcrisis Abdullah Kurdi, father of Aylan Kurdi stands in front of a house in Kobane. #AFP Photo by Yasin Akgul: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 6 September 2015

#migrantcrisis Abdullah Kurdi, father of Aylan Kurdi inside a house in Kobane. #AFP Photo by Yasin Akgul: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 6 September 2015

#AlanKurdi has finally been laid to rest in his hometown of #Kobane: image via Barzani Hussein @Barzani_HN, 4 September 2015

Pics from #Kobane. People are shocked, sad as they say farewell to #AlanKurdi & family. @akhbar: image via Jenan Moussa @Jenan Moussa, 4 September 2015

#AylanKurdi's father to return to #Kobane to bury his two sons and wife: image via Gissur Simonarson CN @GissiSim, 3 September 2015

A newly married couple arrive at home with relatives on September 6, 2015 in #kobane #AFP PHOTO by Yasin Akgul: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 7 September 2015

Wedding day in Kobane, Syria: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 7 September 2015

A Syrian refugee from Deir Ezzor, holding his son and daughter, breaks out in tears of joy after arriving via a flimsy inflatable boat crammed with about 15 men, women and children on the shore of the island of Kos in Greece: photo by Daniel Etter/The New York Times, 15 August 2015

Migrants and refugees at Macedonian border...epa04917925 Migrants break through the cordon of Macedonian police forces, near the town of Gevgelija, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, 07 September 2015. The Gevgelija-Presevo journey is just a part of the journey that the refugees, the vast majority of them from Syria, are forced to make along the so-called Balkan corridor, which takes them from Turkey, across Greece, Macedonia and Serbia to Hungary, the gateway to the European Union. EPA/NAKE BATEV

Migrants break through the cordon of Macedonian police forces, near the town of Gevgelija, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The Gevgelija-Presevo journey is just a part of the journey that the refugees, the vast majority of them from Syria, are forced to make along the so-called Balkan corridor, which takes them from Turkey, across Greece, Macedonia and Serbia to Hungary, the gateway to the European Union.: photo by Nake Batev/EPA, 7 September 2015

Photo from accident on Marin Avenue last night @berkeleyside: image via Big Hammer @UOHammer, 6 September 2015 Marin Circle Fountain (4 Bears Fountain)

the morning after
the remnants
the leavings

the traces of

the car crashes
under the dirty yellow leaves
of the dirty yellow trees
the broken glass
the car parts strewn
like bits of fairy dust
in the empty street

their meanings their feelings
their cultural markers
their speech patterns
their life style
their lunches
their brunches
their launches
their speeding vehicles
on the freeway feeder
their screaming children, their
celebrations
of their national holidays

going on all through the night

their barbeques
their meat
their beer
the morning after
the remnants
the leavings

the traces of

the car crashes
under the dirty yellow leaves
of the dirty yellow trees
the broken glass
the car parts strewn
like bits of fairy dust
in the empty street

76 degrees and rising in Berkeley! Happy Labor Day! @berkeleyside: image via Steven Fruhmoto @StevenFruhmoto, 7 September 2015

Embedded image permalink

Stuck in #construction on #Labor Day. Ugh!: image via Evgeni Malkin's Ego @EvgeniMalkinEgo, 7 September 2015

Freeway gone digital: Caltrans is testing its Integrated Corridor Mobility project on westbound I-80 near Berkeley.: image via Jonathan Bloom @BloomTV, 3 September 2015 Berkeley, CA

Ted Friedman shares this close-up of [NSA/Homeland Security] 'radiation' chopper over Berkeley. It's so low it's "mowing the lawn" he says!: image via Berkeleyside, September 3, 2015 Berkeley, CA

@berkeleyside Huey coming in close!: image via Brian Bednarz @brianbed, 3 September 2015

@berkeleyside seems to be doing figure 8s over eastern half of Berkeley incl base of hills: image via Fred Werner @SustainableFred, 2 September 2015 Oakland, CA

@berkeleyside still going, just flew right over lower Panoramic Hill: image via Fred Werner @SustainableFred, 2 September 2015

@berkeleyside just passed over the stadium a 3rd time: image via Fred Werner @SustainableFred, 2 September 2015 Oakland, CA

@berkeleyside 2 laps over the stadium, now over N.Berkeley: image via Fred Werner @SustainableFred, 2 September 2015 Berkeley, CA

@berkeleyside just flew over the stadium after 4 laps of Strawberry canyon: image via Fred Werner @SustainableFred, 2 September 2015

@berkeleyside did 4+ laps over Elmwood, Telegraph, Campus, N. Berkeley hills ~10:30: image via Fred Werner @SustainableFred, 2 September 2015

@berkeleyside spotted radiation helicopter flying low over university at the bike path: image via JP @JPCali411, 2 September 2015

@berkeleyside now going up Strawberry Canyon towards LBNL: image via Fred Werner @SustainableFred, 2 September 2015

@berkeleyside Is this the low-flying helicopter measuring radiation you reported recently?: image via Fred Werner @SustainableFred, 2 September 2015

Berkeley Police cruiser, Officer Jennifer Coats. Photo: Emilie Raguso

Berkeley Police cruiser, Officer Jennifer Coats. Photo: Emilie Raguso

Police are investigating a robbery at gunpoint at a Solano Avenue pharmacy over the weekend. The robbery took place at 5:10 p.m. Saturday at Pharmaca at 1744 Solano Ave., at Ensenada Avenue. According to Berkeley Police spokeswoman Officer Jennifer Coats, a man entered the North Berkeley business with a gun and demanded prescription medication from the pharmacist. The robber “jumped over the counter with a gun pointed at the employees and told them to fill his backpack,” according to unconfirmed scanner traffic. Coats said the man fled after the robbery. Police looked for the man but were unable to find him. According to scanner traffic, he ran down Ensenada to Marin Avenue, where he continued running “downhill.”: Officer Jennifer Coats is seen in a file photo: photo by Emilie Raguso via Berkeleyside, 3 September 2015

I am so honored to accept the National Humanities Medal from @POTUS Watch live 9/10 @ 3pm EDT 3 September: image via Alice WatersVerified account @AliceWaters, 3 September 2015

Guess where? Thanks to @grove for the @berkeleyside visit to @googlenewsweb: image via Tracey Taylor @tktaylor, 2 September 2015

Trump walks the rubberized walk of the shrieking dead at Yeehaw U.: photo via Politico, 6 September 2015

To the great relief of U.S. Republican leadership, #Trump signs loyalty pledge to GOP: image via China Xinhua News @XHNews, 3 September 2015

#Trump blasts @hughhewitt as "third-rate radio announcer" after "gotcha" questions: image via China Xinhua News @XHNews, 3 September 2015

The Pledge #MakeAmericaGreatAgain: image via Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump, 3 September 2015

Behind the scenes picture of my father signing the “pledge” --- I am very proud of him! @RealDonaldTrump: image via Eric Trump @Eric Trump, 3 September 2015

"@ryanamberwhite: Check it out, @realDonaldTrump, all the way from Wyoming! #MakeAmericaGreatAgain" Thank you.: image via Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump, 3 September 2015 New Jersey, USA

While speaking in tongues Sarah Palin calls on immigrants to speak 'American' #PalinOnCNN #Murica: image via Jade Helm Commander @Anomaly100, 7 September 2015

Sarah Palin Goes Full Potato: Calls On Immigrants To 'Speak American' #PalinOnCNN: image via Jade Helm Commander @Anomaly100, 7 September 2015

Sarah Palin says we need to stop them there Mexicans from crossing the ocean #PalinOnCNN: image via PoliticalGroove @PoliticalGroove, 6 September 2015

Palin: I’d Like To Be Trump’s Energy Secretary And ‘Get Rid’ Of Department: image via Jade Helm Commander @Anomaly100, 7 September 2015

The most American football player: image via 'MURICA @AMERICAFUCKYEAH, 6 September 2015

San Francisco Bay as seen from The Lawrence Hall of Science: image via Bay Viewer @SFBayViewer, 3 September 2015

@berkeleyside Still glowing and glowing: image via Fred Werner @SustainableFred, 4 September 2015

@berkeleyside thank you, Sun, see you tomorrow!: image via Fred Werner @SustainableFred, 4 September 2015

#Sunset tonight as seen from the #Berkeley hills @nbcbayarea @berkeleyside #smokey: image via Ariel Nava Photo @Cocolito23, 15 August 2015

San Francisco Bay as seen from The Lawrence Hall of Science: image via Bay Viewer @SFBayViewer, 3 September 2015

America a Prophecy: William Blake, 1793, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 8, 23.7 x 17.1 cm (Morgan Library and Museum/ William Blake Archive)

America a Prophecy: William Blake, 1793, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, object 1, 23.4 x 16.7 cm ((Morgan Library and Museum/ William Blake Archive)

Missing Tortoise. About this big. [Kensington, California.]: photo by efo, 7 August 2015

Helm and Sons No.5 [North and East, Richmond, California.]: photo by efo, 21 August 2015

RP (Rumrill). Wehman Field camera with Schneider G-Claron X-Ray film. [North Richmond, Richmond, California.]: photo by efo, 2015

Notice to Passengers. Earl Scenex with flipped lens. [North and East, Richmond, California.]: photo by efo, 21 August 2015

Home. Tent living in Oakland. [Clawson, Emeryville, California.] Iskra 1, T-Max 400 (400 TMY-2) Rodinal 1 + 50.: photo by efo, 7 September 2015

Art or junk. [South, Berkeley, California.]: photo by efo, 2015

Migrants rest on a bench as they wait for trains at Keleti station in Budapest...Migrants rest on a bench as they wait for trains at Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary September 9, 2015

Migrants rest on a bench as they wait for trains at Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary on Wednesday: photo by Bernadett Szabo/Reuters, 9 September 2015

I...Hungary: How To Stop the Refugee Invasion (Endarkenment)

Camerawoman for Hungarian TV channel fired after videos of her kicking, tripping migrants:: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 9 September 2015

A Hungarian camerawoman has been fired after video footage showed her kicking and tripping refugees running from police officers: image by Stephan Richter via the Independent, 8 September 2015

Petra László, who worked for N1TV and had reported links to nationalist political party Jobbik, put her leg out in front of, first, a man clutching a young child, and then a girl, causing them to trip over. After footage of the incident was uploaded to Twitter by a German reporter, N1TV confirmed that it had dismissed Ms László due to “unacceptable behaviour”: image by Stephan Richter via the Independent, 8 September 2015

#Hungary police look stunned witnessing how journalist tripped #refugee running w his child - journo fired: image via Lydia Gail @LydsG, 9 September 2015

Lots of emotions as refugees wait to see where police take them. #Hungary: image via Alexander Marquardt @MarquardtA, 9 September 2015

It looks more like an animal pound than a refugee camp. #Hungary cages refugees. More dehumanisation. #Syria: image via Joseph Willits @josephwillits, 9 September 2015

II...Bertolt Brecht: "This is the year which people will be silent about" (from Finland 1940)

Migrants rest on a bench as they wait for trains at Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary on Wednesday: photo by Bernadett Szabo/Reuters, 9 September 2015

This is the year which people will talk about.

This is the year which people will be silent about.

The old see the young die.

The foolish see the wise die.

The earth no longer produces, it devours.

The sky hurls down no rain, only iron.

Bertot Brecht (1898-1956): "This is the year which people will talk about", from In Finland (In Finnland), 1940, translated by Sammy McLean in Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956, ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim, 1976

III...In Obscurity

TOPSHOTS A picture taken on September 7,...TOPSHOTS A picture taken on September 7, 2015 shows a general view of damaged buildings in the rebel-held area of Douma, east of the capital Damascus as a sandstorm blows over the city. AFP PHOTO / SAMEER AL-DOUMY SAMEER AL-DOUMY/AFP/Getty Images

A general view of damaged buildings in the rebel-held area of Douma, Syria as a sandstorm blows over the city: photo by Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP, 8 September 2015

Sand storm in #Syria: image via Mete Sohtaoglu @metesohtaoglu, 7 September 2015

At least 12 people dead, thousands in hospitals, after sandstorm hits the Middle East: image via AJE News @AJENews, 9 September 2015

#Syria: PHOTOS: Dead #ISIS after being killed by #NDF in East Rif #Homs during #Sandstorm: image via Rook 2@Rook14, 9 September 2015

People swim at the public beach of Ramlet al Bayda during a sand storm in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2015. An unseasonal sandstorm has hit Lebanon and Syria, reducing visibility and sending dozens to hospitals with breathing difficulties. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

People swim at the public beach of Ramlet al Bayda during a sand storm in Beirut, Lebanon. An unseasonal sandstorm has hit Lebanon and Syria, reducing visibility and sending dozens to hospitals with breathing difficulties: photo by Hassan Ammar/AP, 8 September 2015

'Unprecedented' sandstorm envelops Lebanon and Syria, killing 12 and injuring hundreds: image via AJE News @AJENews, 9 September 2015

Migrants Continue To Arrive In Hungary...BUDAPEST, HUNGARY - SEPTEMBER 07: A young migrant boy tries on shoes donated by the people of Hungary at Keleti station in Budapest on September 7, 2015 in Budapest, Hungary. After days of confrontation and chaos, Hungary unexpectedly opened its borders with Austria, allowing thousands of migrants to leave the country and travel onto Germany. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

A young migrant boy tries on shoes donated by the people of Hungary at Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary. After days of confrontation and chaos, Hungary unexpectedly opened its borders with Austria, allowing thousands of migrants to leave the country and travel onto Germany: photo by Christopher Furlong via FT Photo Diary, 7 September 2015

The people who wanted the entomologists to die

wanted the Buddhists to live forever amid the ruins

of the industrial age.The people who wanted

the filmmakers to disappear wanted the trucks

full of dead people to drive all night to that point

where everything converges. The doctors who

brought the dead back to life wanted to spend

their days weeping at the poolside of the luxury

hotel that will be blown up later today. The men

who pour the concrete all day long into the holes

in the street in front of my house are the same

men who died before I was ever born, if I was

ever born. The prehistoric mountain of ice

wants the near-extinct African penguins

to stop saying goodbye. The bus terminal

wants the hitchhikers to end their journey.

The prayers want to stop providing answers.

9/1/2015 8:23 PM

Millennium Park, Chicago. | by Emigdio Salgado

Millennium Park, Chicago: photo by Millo Salgado, 17 September 2013

Here comes the GOP clown rodeo: Tea Party & ZOA team up with Trump & Cruz to oppose #IranDeal: image via Mondoweiss, 28 August 2015

IMG_8128 (ladder): photo by locaburg, 9 November 2010

Construction workers. | by Emigdio Salgado

Construction workers. Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 1999; posted 15 November 2013

Colima, México: photo by Millo Salgado, 7 July 2013

A Donald Trump supporter holds a copy of Time magazine, featuring the candidate on the cover: photo by Scott Eisen for the Guardian, 30 August 2015

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/MictlantecuhtliTemploMayor_B.jpg

Ceramicrepresentation of Mictlantecuhtli, Aztecgod of the dead and king of Mictlan (Chicunauhmictlan), lowest and northernmost section of the underworld, recovered during excavation of the House of Eagles in the Templo Mayor, now on display at the museum of the Templo Mayor, Mexico City: photo by Thelmadatter, 23 March 2008

¿Solo asi he de irme?

¿Como las flores que perecieron?

¿Nada quedara en mi nombre?

¿Nada de mi paso aqui en la tierra?

¡Al menos flores, al menos cantos!

Turquoise mosaic mask: Mixtec-Aztec, 1400-1521 CE: photo by Gryffindor, 17 January 2009 (British Museum)

Was it for this only that I came?

To die away like the flowers?

Nothing left of my name?

Nor of the days I have spent on earth?

At least my flowers, at least my songs!

from Cantos de Huexotzingo: Nahuatl, attributed to Ayocuan Cuetzpaltzin, aka Aguila Blanca de Tecamachalco (The White Eagle of Tecamachalco), early 16th c.: English translation TC

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Mictlantecuhtli_2.jpg

Statue of Mictlantecuhtli, Aztecgod of the dead, museum of the Templo Mayor, Mexico City: photo by Jamie Dwyer, 19 August 2008

Anaheim, California, USA 2013. | by Emigdio Salgado

Anaheim, California, USA: photo by Millo Salgado, 6 August 2013

No human being is "illegal" / Ningún ser humano es "ilegal": JORGE RAMOS @jorgeramosnews, 26 August 2015

Miami-based Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, left, asks Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump a question about his immigration proposal during a news conference Tuesday in Dubuque, Iowa. Ramos was later taken from the room: photo by Charlie Niebergall/AP, 25 August 2015

A security guard for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump removes Miami-based Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a news conference Tuesday in Dubuque, Iowa. Ramos stood up and began to ask Trump about his immigration proposal: photo by Charlie Niebergall/AP, 25 August 2015

A security guard for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump removes Miami-based Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, left, from a news conference Tuesday in Dubuque, Iowa. Ramos stood up and began to ask Trump about his immigration proposal: photo by Charlie Niebergall/AP, 25 August 2015

Light sabre. Richmond, California: photo by efo, 2015

The Puppet. Chicago, Illinois, United States: photo by Millo Salgado, 2011

Migrants wrap themselves in blankets to warm up as the sun rises at a collection point in the village of Roszke...Migrants wrap themselves in blankets to warm up as the sun rises at a collection point in the village of Roszke, Hungary September 9, 2015. REUTERS/Marko Djurica

Migrants wrap themselves in blankets to warm up as the sun rises: photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters, 9 September 2015

#migrants talk as sun rises at a collection point near Roszke village of the Hungarian-Serbian border. #AFP by @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September 2015

#Hungary #migrants walk on the railway tracks near Szeged. #AFP PHOTO by @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September 2015

#Hungary #migrants walk on the railway tracks of a train-bridge near Szeged. #AFP PHOTO by @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September 2015

#migrants cross a fence near a collection point of Roszke village at the Hungarian-Serbian border. #AFP @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September 2015

#migrants cross a fence near a collection point of Roszke village at the Hungarian-Serbian border. #AFP @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September

#migrants cross a fence near a collection point of Roszke village at the Hungarian-Serbian border. #AFP @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September 2015

Hundreds of migrants break through police lines in south Hungary [photo Csaba Segesvari]: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 9 September 2015

#migrants try to light a fire at sun rise near Roszke village on the Hungarian-Serbia border. #AFP PHOTO by @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 9 September 2015

#migrants walk on the railtracks along a make shift camp at sunset near Roszke. #AFP Photo by @afpattila: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 9 September 2015

#migrants and refugees board a train after crossing the Macedonian-Greek border near Gevgelija. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 9 September 2015

A Syrian boy walks past a pile of rubbish at a refugee camp in south Lebanon: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 9 September 2015

A journey to the unknown on the Balkan migrant route, day 6: "Welcome to Germany..." [photo Aris Messinis]: image via AFP Correspondent @AFPblogs, 9 September 2015

#migrants camp beds installed in an exhibition hall on the Munich fairground, yesterday. #AFP by Christof Stache: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 8 September 2015

Migrants and refugees wait under the rain to cross the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, in northern Greece onThursday. More than 10 thousands refugees and migrants arrived in Piraeus from the overcrowded Greek islands, especially the island of Lesbos , in the last 24 hours

Migrants and refugees wait under the rain to cross the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, in northern Greece on Thursday: photo by Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP, 10 September 2015

I...Smoke

II...Toast

Explosive Rocky fire defies odds -- and expectations: Joseph Serna, Chris Megarian and Corina Knoll, Los Angeles Times, 5 August 2015

III...Smoke Alarm

Hell is a city much like London -- A populous and a smoky city; There are all sorts of people undone, And there is little or no fun done; Small justice shown, and still less pity.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): from Part the Third: Hell, in Peter Bell the Third. By Miching Mallecho, Esq. (1839)

Socony-Vacuum Oil Company advertisement for Mobilgas: Life, 4 August 1941 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)

A map made entirely from Facebook connections : image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 9 August 2015

Greater Tokyo area superimposed over Great Britain: image via Amazing Maps @Amazing_Maps, 14 August 2015

Migrants cross unhindered into Macedonia; trains, busses await: Fatos Bytyci, Reuters, 22 August 2015

"I think @realDonaldTrump is a wrecking ball for the future of the Republican Party.” @lindseygrahamsc #trumpyourcoffee: image via Donald Purrump @trumpyourcat, 2 August 2015

Honest Chicken in Transit Zone Europe

Family of children found on Turkish beach were trying to come to Canada: Terry Glavin. Ottawa Citizen, 2 September 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

My little white 3-D printed personal robotic spider dress marks out, establishes and defends my personal animatronic arachnidal boundaries

mapping the perimeters and suggesting the dangers that lie in store for those who attempt to cross

over the border into my personal space -- the zones of prohibition are protected

by the nine retractable tentacular plates in

the assistive adaptive autonomous environment of

My Personal Robotic Spider Dress, which,

guided by emotional monitoring, body temperature readout, brain scan

and hormonal disturbance early warning

systems implanted, sewn on my CNC mill, and soldered into chips,

snap out to capture any intruder in the moment

of transgression, stun, disarm and instantly kill

and so now I can couple my body with an EEG

to protect me from

........................YOU

I can record my respiration

I can calibrate each beat of my heart

I can make a 3-D holographic simulation

I can continually cartographically display my biosignals and store them in the computer brain of

My Personal Robotic Spider Dress

where all the data gets transferred so that I can create an interface

allowing me to be here in Silicon Valley in my little white badass

personal robotic animatronic spider dress

...................................................while YOU

remain always on the other side of the border maintained and guarded with vigilance by

My Personal Robotic Spider Dress

I can use my emotions

as a weapon

as a tool

as a barrier

as a menu for methods of torture

I wouldn't get caught dead without my little white 3-D printed

personal robotic spider dress

...................................and if YOU

come too close

the penetration

of my personal space

will be immediately detected and

set off my personal alarm system

and my personal robotic spider dress will automatically extend its tentacular plates toward

..............................YOU

but don't think you're the first capture

but don't think you're the first to be consumed by

My Personal Robotic Spider Dress

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht modeled at Las Vegas International Computer Electronics Show: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht (close-up detail): photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht (detail showing retractable "protection" plates, r.): photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht, seen metamorphosing for the industry: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Hell is a city much like London --
A populous and a smoky city;
There are all sorts of people undone,
And there is little or no fun done;
Small justice shown, and still less pity.

**-- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): from Part the Third: Hell, in Peter Bell the Third. By Miching Mallecho, Esq. (1839)**