Desperation (Where Go the Boats?)

November 14, 2015, 11:35 pm

≫ Next: Stevie Smith: Songe d’Athalie (Vision prémonitoire)

≪ Previous: Mario Vargas Llosa: The horror that is called Hebron / Hashem Azzeh: Holdout in H2

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Migrants and refugees keep warm around a bonfire as they wait to enter a registration camp after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija. The flow of refugees and other migrants from Turkey to Greece is expected to continue at a rate of 5,000 daily this winter, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said: photo by Robert Atanasovski / AFP, 8 November 2015

Where Go the Boats?

 Dark brown is the river.   
  Golden is the sand.   
It flows along for ever,   
  With trees on either hand.   

Green leaves a-floating,        
  Castles of the foam,   
Boats of mine a-boating --   
  Where will all come home?   

On goes the river   
  And out past the mill,   
Away down the valley,   
  Away down the hill.   

Away down the river,   
  A hundred miles or more,   
Other little children   
  Shall bring my boats ashore.

Robert Louis Stevenson(1850 - 1894): Where Go the Boats?

#Refugees and #migrants. Arrived. #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 6 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive at #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 6 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive at #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 6 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive at #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 6 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive at #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 6 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive in #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 7 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive in #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 7 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive in #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 7 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants. It doesn't stop. #Lesbos beaches: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 7 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive in #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 8 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive in #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 8 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive in #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 8 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive in #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 8 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive at #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 9 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive at #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 9 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive at #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 9 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive at #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 9 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants Moria "camp". #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 10 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants Moria "camp". #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 10 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants Moria "camp". #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 10 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants Moria "camp". #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 10 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive at #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 10 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive at #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 10 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive at #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 10 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants arrive at #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 10 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants Live in Moria "camp" #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 12 November 2015

#Refugees and #migrants Live in Moria "camp" #Lesbos: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 12 November 2015

Witnessing and intervention amidst the great migrant wave: Aris Messinis, AFP Correspondent, 6 November 2015

 

Children huddle under emergency blankets after arriving in Lesbos in October: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

Lesbos, Greece, Nov 6, 2015 -- The most shocking thing for me about covering this story is that you constantly realize that you’re not in a warzone. That you’re working in a place where there is peace. But the emotions that you’re capturing with your lens are the same.

I’ve worked in Syria and Libya. I know what a warzone looks like. You expect to see things like this there. You don’t expect to see them on Lesbos.

The human pain is the same as in a war, but just knowing that you are not in a warzone makes it much more emotional. And much more painful.

A drowned child lies on a Lesbos beach: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

It’s also hard because you have to capture the difficulties of these people, and the pain of these people, but it’s not dangerous for you. When you’re at a war, there are dangers for you, too, so somehow you’re on a more equal footing with the people you’re covering.

But here, there are no dangers for you. That’s why there are many times when I drop my camera and I help people. Because you need to.

Aris Messinis carries a child ashore in Lesbos: photo courtesy of Petros Tsakmakis

 

There are so many boats, sometimes you’re working in a boat alone. Sometimes the weather is bad, the approaches to the shore are difficult, there are lots of rocks. You may be near the shore, but the danger is still there. Many of these people don’t know how to swim. Especially the babies.

A boat filled with migrants sinks off Lesbos in late October: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

The babies get to me the most. Maybe it’s because I have a six-month-old daughter at home. My worst moment of this story so far was the last big shipwreck, when I went to the port and they brought the first babies that had drowned and they were trying to bring them back to life.

Medics try to revive a baby who was on a boat that sunk near Lesbos in late October: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

I cannot even think about those scenes anymore. I try to erase them from my mind. We’re talking about babies. It’s just something that you can’t accept.

The body of a drowned baby is placed in a body bag in early November: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

 
The body of a dead boy who washed up on Lesbos's shores in late October: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

Water drips off the hand of a dead man whose body washed up on Lesbos's shore in early November: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

 
The body of a drowned man washes up on Lesbos's shore in early November: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

The body of a man who washed up on Lesbos in late October: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

The body of a baby that washed up on Lesbos's shores: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

Another bad thing are the sounds. This is something that you don’t get from looking at my pictures. The complete panic. You hear people screaming when they try to come ashore. The local residents are trying to help them. There is pain all around them. There is complete panic. Just complete panic.

A woman falls into the water with her child at a Lesbos beach after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey in October: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

I try to capture this in the picture and you get some of the shock, some of the complete panic in the picture. But the reality is much more shocking when you live it. When you hear the cries.

A girl cries as she holds on to her baby bottle after arriving in Lesbos in late October: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

A few days ago, I carried a dead baby for hours. We scrambled to a remote, rocky beach with some colleagues. It was impossible to reach, we had to climb over many rocks and cliffs to get there. And when we got there, we saw this baby, lying alone in the rocks. It had been there for a few days, so it had started to smell. It was all alone in the rocks.

We decided to bring it back. So we put it in a bag and brought it up the cliff, so it could at least be buried.

When you see and live things life that, you think of your daughters and you think of how lucky they are.

The body of a drowned baby lies on Lesbos's beach in early November: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

I have three daughters. One is nine, one is seven and the six-month-old. I think of them all the time as I’m covering this story. I think of how lucky they are. When I see people drowning and I see dead babies on the shore, I think of how lucky they are to be alive, to have a roof over their heads, to live in peace.

An Afghan girl is comforted after arriving on Lesbos in late September: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

I will probably end up being more strict with them because of what I’ve seen. 

Because when they start whining about something silly, like a toy, I will think of how lucky they are that they don’t have to go through this. I will try and teach them this. Of course I will do everything I can for them, but I will try to teach them more things now, things that I may not have taught them if I hadn’t covered this story.

They need to learn that happiness is breathing, seeing the sun, having somewhere to sleep.

Refugees and migrants wake up after spending a night in a Lesbos field in early October: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

This story has made me think differently when it comes to my personal life. When you see things like this every day, you realize how lucky you are that you live in the West, that you were born in the West.

A Syrian couple waits with other migrants for a train in Macedonia in late August: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

Every day, in the early morning, I drive my car from the hotel to the coastal zone. Lesbos has many, many beaches and cliffs. I use my binoculars to try and spot the boats in the sea. Once I spot one, I try and see where it will land and I go there and wait for it to come.

The boats come all day and all night. There are days that 80 boats can come.

Dinghies filled with migrants approach the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean Sea in early October: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

There are 45 to 60 people in a small boat, in bigger ones, there can be 100 or more, so you get the idea. One day a ship came. A ship.

Of course there are happy moments, too. When they reach the shore, many of the refugees are happy.

A man falls to his knees as he gets to Lesbos in late October: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

But for me, the bad moments overshadow the good ones. Plus I know what lies ahead for these people. I followed refugees this summer as they made their way from Greece to northern Europe. I did the trip, I know what they will face. 

There is no welcome for them in Europe. They may be happy to reach the beach, but it’s only the beginning.

A soaked family arrives on the shores of Lesbos in late September: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP
 

Sometimes they ask me, what’s going to be next and I tell them: This is only the beginning. Maybe it’s gotten a bit better since this summer, at least they’re not facing the smugglers and the process has been smoothed out a bit. But still, they have a long road ahead of them. 

Syrian refugees walk near the Hungarian town of Horgos in early September: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP
 

No one has ever told me to my face, but sometimes I feel it unsaid from colleagues, that when I drop my camera and help, I shouldn’t be doing so, because I’m not doing my job, I might miss a shot.

 Aris Messinis carries a child ashore in Lesbos in early October: photo by AFP

I don’t think I miss anything. But even if I do miss something, I don’t care. Go ahead and judge me. I would like for there to be many more hands here so I don’t have to stop working and help, so I can just do my job. But there aren’t. And when I see a baby in the water, about to drown, well I just stop shooting and I pluck it out.

A baby is passed from hand to hand after arriving in Lesbos in early October: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP

 

Some colleagues do the same thing. Some choose not to. I don’t judge. It’s a choice. We still live in a free country and you decide for yourself. But I have to say that I don’t like it when someone needs your help and you don’t help them.

A man swims toward the shore of Lesbos in early October: photo by Aris Messinis / AFP
 

I’ve been here a few weeks this time around. I will stay one more week, then go home and rest and then will come back.

This is something that we have to show to the world. This is something that will not stop. 

These people will keep coming, risking everything. The weather will soon get worse and it will become much worse as the winter sets in. 

Maybe if we keep showing these things, maybe something will change. I hope so.

#Refugees and #migrants  Winter is coming. #Lesbos, Moria: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 12 November 2015

Out in the Cold

A Syrian man plays a string instrument while #migrants and #refugees cross border near Gevgelija. #AFP @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 13 November 2015

A #Syrian man plays music while other #migrants and #refugees cross the Greek-Macedonian border: image via Christophe Delattre @chrisdelattre7, 13 November 2015

 #migrants and #refugees cross the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija. #AFP @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 13 November 2015

 #migrants and #refugees cross the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija. #AFP @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 13 November 2015

 #migrants and #refugees cross the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija. #AFP @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 13 November 2015

 #migrants and #refugees wait to enter a registration camp near Gevgelija. #AFP #Photo by @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 12 November 2015

 #Macedonia: Migrants and refugees walk to catch a bus to Serbia near Gevgelija  by @RAtanasovski: image via Talar Kalajian @TalarKala, 10 November 2015

 #migrants and #refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija. #AFP #Photo by @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 10 November 2015

 #migrants and #refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija. #AFP #Photo by @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 10 November 2015

 #migrants and #refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija. #AFP #Photo by @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 10 November 2015

 #migrants and #refugees cross the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija. #AFP #Photo by @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 10 November 2015



Migrants and refugees wait for a bus to Serbia after visiting a registration center in southern Macedonia: photo by Robert Atanasovski/Agence France-Presse, 11 November 2015

#migrants and refugees crossing the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija. #AFP @dilkoff: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 13 November 2015

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Stevie Smith: Songe d’Athalie (Vision prémonitoire)

November 16, 2015, 11:04 pm

≫ Next: Things Fall Apart

≪ Previous: Desperation (Where Go the Boats?)

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Skies above Aleppo: photo by Baraa Al-Halabi, 16 November 2015

I'm muslim, ISIS also killed my Muslim friends ISIS against Humanity Pray for the French people who stood with the Syrian Revolution: baraa al halabi @baraaalhalabi, 14 November 2015

Baraa Al-Halabi, photographer: photo courtesy Baraa Al-Halabi, 16 November 2015

.........................From Racine

It was a dream and shouldn't I bother about a dream?

But it goes on you know, tears me rather.

Of course I try to forget it but it will not let me.

Well it was an extraordinarily dark night at midnight

My mother Jezebel appeared suddenly before me

Looking just as she did the day she died, dressed grandly.

It was her pride you noticed, nothing she had gone through touched that

And she still had the look of being most carefully made up

She always made up a lot she didn't want people to know how old she was.

She spoke: Be warned my daughter, true girl to me, she said,

Do not suppose the cruel God of the Jews has finished with you,

I am come to weep your falling into his hands, my child.

With those appalling words my mother,

This ghost, leant over me stretching out her hands

And I stretched out my hands too to touch her

But what was it, oh this is horrible, what did I touch?

Nothing but the mangled flesh and breaking bones

Of a body that the dogs tearing quarrelled over.

Florence Margaret "Stevie" Smith (1902-1971): Songe d’Athalie, from Not Waving But Drowning, 1957

Chrom o chocolat besnier -- mme sarah bernhardt dans athalie -- verger: photo by patrick.marks, 10 August 2015

Reflets des palmiers Jaguar XK120 Roadster -- chez Tante Athalie -- Mon Repos -- Pamplemousses -- Ile Maurice [Mauritius]]: photo by Richard Burger, 1 August 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

Queen Elizabeth II greets actor Angelina Jolie to present her with the insignia of an Honorary Dame Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George, in the 1844 room at Buckingham Palace, London: photo by Anthony Devlin / PA via The Guardian, 11 October 2014

A migrant sits next to his family's tent at a camp set near Calais, northern France, Wednesday. Thousands of migrants have been scaling fences near the Channel Tunnel linking the two countries and boarding freight trains or trucks destined for Britain: photo by Emilio Morenatti/AP, 5 August 2015

A migrant climbs a security fence of a Eurotunnel terminal in Coquelles near Calais, northern France. One man died on July 29 in a desperate attempt to reach England via the Channel Tunnel as overwhelmed authorities fought off hundreds of migrants, prompting France to beef up its police presence.: photo by Philippe Hugen/AFP, 30 July 2014

City workers crossed the Millennium Bridge over the River Thames on a foggy morning in London: photo by Toby Melville/Reuters, 2 November 2015

 

Photographe "de guerre" dans les rues de Paris: témoignage sur @AFPMakingof @afpfr, 16 November 2015

ATHALIE. ACTE II, SCÈNE V.

MATHAN

Grande reine, est-ce ici votre place?
Quel trouble vous agite, et quel effroi vous glace?
Parmi vos ennemis que venez-vous chercher?
De ce temple profane osez-vous approcher?
Avez-vous dépouillé cette haine si vive...

ATHALIE

Prêtez-moi l'un et l'autre une oreille attentive.
[…]
Un songe (me devrais-je inquiéter d'un songe?)
Entretient dans mon cœur un chagrin qui le ronge.
Je l'évite partout, partout il me poursuit.
C'était pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit.
Ma mère Jézabel devant moi s'est montrée,
Comme au jour de sa mort pompeusement parée.
Ses malheurs n'avaient point abattu sa fierté;
Même elle avait encor cet éclat emprunté
Dont elle eut soin de peindre et d'orner son visage,
Pour réparer des ans l'irréparable outrage.
«Tremble, m'a-t-elle dit, fille digne de moi.
Le cruel Dieu des Juifs l'emporte aussi sur toi.
Je te plains de tomber dans ses mains redoutables,
Ma fille.» En achevant ces mots épouvantables,
Son ombre vers mon lit a paru se baisser;
Et moi, je lui tendais les mains pour l'embrasser.
Mais je n'ai plus trouvé qu'un horrible mélange
D'os et de chair meurtris, et traînés dans la fange,
Des lambeaux pleins de sang, et des membres affreux

Que des chiens dévorants se disputaient entre eux.

Jean Racine (1639-1699): from Athalie, 1691

[L]e songe d'Athalie [...] avec son vécu indéniablement chargé, rapporté par une conscience traumatisée, vaut sans doute mieux que le simple morceau de rhétorique conventionnelle et ornementale à quoi il est parfois ramené. Mais cela ne constitue pas encore en soi une preuve d'enracinement du rêve dans la profondeur posychologique de la rêveuse, dans ce qui serait, en langage moderne, son ‹subconcient›. L'angoisse de la narratrice semble relever davantage de l'‹horreur sacrée› que de la découverte des forces obscures qui l'animent en profondeur.

-- J.-D. Gollut, Conter les rêves, Paris, 1993

Protesters throw muddy water on Vale headquarters in Rio de Janeiro: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 16 November 2015

Protesters throw muddy water on Vale headquarters in Rio de Janeiro: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 16 November 2015

Protesters throw muddy water on Vale headquarters in Rio de Janeiro: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 16 November 2015

Rio de Janeiro -- Protest against Brazilian mining firm Samarco which pledged Monday to pay $260 million in damages related to a deadly torrent of mud from burst dams that killed at least 10, flattened a village and polluted a river: photo by AFP, 16 November 2015

When a double suicide bombing rocked Beirut, there was no global outpouring of sympathy: image via New York Times Verified account @nytimes, 16 November 2015 

The relatives of one of the victims of the twin suicide attacks in Beirut mourned during a funeral procession in the city's Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood: photo by Wael Hamzeh/European Pressphoto Agency, 15 November 2015


 

The site of Thursday's twin suicide bombings in the Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood of Beirut, Lebanon: photo by Bilal Hussein/Associated Press, 15 November 2015

URGENT: Multiple reports say 'Jungle' refugee camp in #Calais set on fire (Pic MartaClinco): image via RT @RT Verified account @RT_com, 13 November 2015

Nie wiadomo czy pożar Dżungli to celowe podpalenie. Warunki bezpieczeństwa w obozie są tragiczne #PoProstu: image via Tomasz Sekielski @sekielski, 13 November 2015

Aftermath of a #France airstrike in #Raqqa dozens of killed Civilians reported: image via Nidal @Nidalgazaui, 15 November 2015

A girl walks through the water as other migrants and refugees are helped by volunteers to disembark from a small boat after their arrival from the Turkish coast on the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos on Monday: photo by Santi Palacios/AP, 16 November 2015

Residents inspect a house demolished by Israeli troops in Qalandia between the occupied West Bank town of Ramallah and East Jerusalem: photo by Abbas Momani/AFP, 16 November 2015

 A Palestinian stone thrower stands near burning tyres during clashes with the Israeli army near the Israeli settlement of Beit El, neighboring Ramallah, on Monday: photo by Atef Safadi/EPA, 16 November 2015

A plane crosses contrails as it prepares to land at the airport in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany, on Monday: photo by Frank Rumpenhorst/DPA/AFP, 16 November 2015

It was a dream and shouldn't I bother about a dream?

UK fans try to push Eagles of Death Metal to No. 1: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 16 November 2015

οἵη περ φύλλων γενεὴ τοίη δὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν.
φύλλα τὰ μέν τ᾽ ἄνεμος χαμάδις χέει, ἄλλα δέ θ᾽ ὕλη
τηλεθόωσα φύει, ἔαρος δ᾽ ἐπιγίγνεται ὥρη:
ὣς ἀνδρῶν γενεὴ ἣ μὲν φύει ἣ δ᾽ ἀπολήγει.

-- Homer, Iliad VI, 147 ff

Even as are the generations of leaves, such are those also of men. As for the leaves, the wind scattereth some upon the earth, but the forest, as it bourgeons, putteth forth others when the season of spring is come; even so of men one generation springeth up and another passeth away.

-- the above, trans. A.T. Murray (1920)

The Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights illuminate the night sky near the town of Kirkenes in northern Norway: photo by Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP, 13 November 2015

NORWAY - The Aurora Borealis illuminates the night sky near the town of Kirkenes. By @jnackstrand #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department AFPphoto, 12 November 2015

DSCT 6245. A submarine-launched Trident II missile lights up the sky. [Mendenhall Springs, California]: photo by Robert Sexton, 7 November 2015

Missile Test over the Sheep Range. Trident II (D5) missile launched from the USS Kentucky submarine. Observed from Desert National Wildlife Range, Nevada: photo by Dominic Gentilcore, 7 November 2015

Rocket launch over the Bay Area. #rocket #missile #rocketlaunch #missilelaunch #lightshow: image via Phil Thompson @psth, 7 November 2015

Saw the #tridentmissile #Missilelaunch in #Scottsdale, AZ. Pretty darned cool. Now looking for #TauridsMeteorShower: image via Gaurav Parekh @gpar2000, 7 November 2015

It's not a #UFO. My mother-in-law had the transmission on her broom serviced. #ufosighting @#Navy #Missilelaunch: image via Real Truth @hardtruth4real, 7 November 2015

One Twitter user was doing a time lapse pic and happened to catch the #Missilelaunch #SanDiego #meteor on film: image via o=AREA-82=o @Surveillance911, 7 November 2015

Saw the #lightinthesky #missile while driving through @YubaCityCA tonight, now I can say I've seen a #Missilelaunch: image via Amber @Amberrae85, 7 November 2015

Thermonuclear #Missilelaunch near Los Angeles is final sign of World War III on the precipice #SanDiego #meteor on film: image via Noemi Iliff @Nmlff931, 79 November 2015



A Navy missile is seen flying over downtown Los Angeles from the 4th Street bridge over 110 freeway: photo by Preston Newman via Los Angeles Times, 9 November 2015

 
Trident missile launch seen above Golden Gate Bridge: photo by Abe Blair / Caters News Agency, 9 November 2015 

Un songe (me devrais-je inquiéter d'un songe?)

A tree stands in the morning fog in Dresden, Germany: photo by Arno Burgi / EPA, 6 November 2015


Cold War Bunker. Harrington Airfield [UK].: photo by Nicholl of the Yard, 8 October 2015
 

Cold War Bunker 2. Harrington Airfield [UK].: photo by Nicholl of the Yard, 8 October 2015

Cold War Bunker 3. Harrington Airfield [UK].: photo by Nicholl of the Yard, 8 October 2015

Cold War Bunker 4. Harrington Airfield [UK].: photo by Nicholl of the Yard, 8 October 2015

A fighter from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which includes Kurds, Arabs and Syriac Christians, monitors the countryside of the northeastern town of Al-Hol, in the Syrian Hasakeh province, at sunset: photo by Delil Souleiman/AFP, 6 November 2015

Things Fall Apart

November 18, 2015, 10:37 pm

≫ Next: The Sky Is Crying

≪ Previous: Stevie Smith: Songe d’Athalie (Vision prémonitoire)

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Jamileh Heydari breastfeeds her son Matin as she and her family of five try to enter Austria after traveling from Afghanistan: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

Principalities usually come to grief when the transition is being made from limited power to absolutism. Princes taking this step rule either directly or through magistrates. In the latter case, their position is weaker and more dangerous, because they rely entirely on the will of those citizens who have been put in office; and these, especially in times of adversity, can very easily depose them either by positive action or by not obeying them. And when danger comes, the prince has no time to seize absolute authority, because the citizens and subjects, accustomed to taking orders from the magistrates, will not take them from him in a crisis. In disturbed times, also, men whom the prince can trust will be hard to find. So such a prince cannot rely on what he has experienced in times of tranquility, when the citizens have need of his government. When things are quiet, everyone dances attendance, everyone makes promises, and everybody would die for him so long as death is far off. But in times of adversity, when the state has need of its citizens, there are few to be found. And this test of loyalty is all the more dangerous since it can only be made once. Therefore a wise prince must devise ways by which his citizens are always and in all circumstances dependent on him and on his authority, and then they will always be faithful to him.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527): from Il Principe (The Prince), 1513, translated by George Bull, 1961

Syrian refugee Dania poses for a portrait at the Sacramento, California apartment complex where she lives. Dania and her family fled violence in Syria three and a half years ago and arrived in Sacramento in September after living in Jordan. Her face is excluded from the photo to protect her identity: photo by Max Whittaker / Reuters, 18 November 2015

A pedestrian passes by graffiti in honour to the victims of the Paris terrorist attacks made by Kazakhstani artist called ‘ChemiS’ in Prague, Czech Republic on Wednesday: photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP, 18 November 2015

World unites after IS terror attacks but air strikes may backfire, experts say: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 18 November 2015

Small epoxy "frowny-face" figure found walking in a field mumbling incoherently to itself offered help for wandering attention disorder at EU politicians' emergency relief centre near Paris: photo by NPA, 18 November 2015

Saint-Denis raid. Public transportation was closed and some residents were evacuated during the French police raid, which lasted through the morning of Nov. 18.: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 18 November 2015

FOOD LINE: Hundreds of recent immigrants line up to receive a small amount of food on the island of Lesbos, Greece: image via Carolyn Cole @Carolyn_Cole, 8 November 2015

Immigrants arrive by train en route to the Slovenia border, where they hope to cross into Austria: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

Thousands of men, women and children have been camping for several days on the Slovenian border as they wait to cross into Austria: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

Branches from surrounding trees are used for fires to keep people warm: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

An Iranian family stays warm by a fire as they wait to cross the Slovenia-Austria border: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

More than 3,000 immigrants arrived at the border of Austria and Germany on Thursday, Oct. 29, as talks on the war in Syria were being held in Vienna: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

More than 3,000 immigrants arrived at the border of Austria and Slovenia on Thursday, Oct. 29, where they boarded buses for a six-hour ride to the border of Germany.: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

Thousands of immigrants push to get across the border into Austria from Slovenia, where they were held up for days: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

Thousands of people wait to cross the border into Austria from Slovenia while Austria border guards try to keep control of the situation: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

Narges Heydari, 15, of Afghanistan, catches her brother as he is lifted over the fence at the Austrian border.: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

A young Syrian girl tries to get help for her mother after she was separated from her in the immigration line: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

A Syrian man holds his son's hand through the fence as the father waits to get through to the Austrian side of the border. Small children were separated from their parents as they waited in the crush of immigrants.: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

Omar Saman of Iraq holds his son Awyn as he and his family wait to cross the border from Slovenia to Austria: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

Photog's journal: Europe's #migrantcrisis - @Carolyn_Cole from the Austria-Slovenia border: image via L.A. Times Photos @latimesphotos, 10 November 2015

 Afghan refugee prays at a Lesbos, Greece camp. Despite all efforts, many refugees are without shelter or bathrooms.: image via CarolynCole @Carolyn_Cole, 12 November 2015



Saint-Denis raid. A woman trying to take her children to school is turned back at a police cordon in the Paris neighborhood of Saint-Denis.: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 18 November 2015

 #Paris woman and her children turn back from police line on way to school as operation goes on for terrorists: image via Carolyn Cole @Carolyn_Cole, 18 November 2015



French soldiers guard as people run after a suspicious car was found: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 15 November 2015

French soldiers guard as people run when a suspicious car was found. Tension remains high after #ParisAttacks.: image via CarolynCole @Carolyn_Cole, 15 November 2015



Paris shopkeeper remains in her shop as French soldiers stand guard: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 15 November 2015

#Paris shopkeeper remains in her shop as French soldiers stand guard. Tension remains high after #ParisAttacks.: image via CarolynCole @Carolyn_Cole, 15 November 2015

Love will always win. #Paris, 15/11/2015.: image via Andrea Favaro @GrouchoMac, 18 November 2015

A wounded Syrian boy cries at a makeshift hospital following an air strike by government forces in the rebel held area of Douma, east of the capital Damascus: photo by Abd Doumany/AFP, 18 November 2015

 

An Afghan worker walks next to coal blocks to be crushed and sold as fuel source during winters in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Wednesday: photo by Hefayatullah Amid/EPA 18 November 2015

 Graffiti in honour to the victims of the Paris terrorist attacks made by Kazakhstani artist called ‘ChemiS’ in Prague, Czech Republic on Wednesday: photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP, 18 November 2015

 

Migrants and refugees enter a registration camp after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija: photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP, 18 November 2015
 

Migrants and refugees enter a registration camp after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija: photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP, 18 November 2015
 

A woman bathes her child after worshipping the sun god Surya in the polluted waters of Yamuna river during the Hindu religious festival of Chatt Puja in New Delhi: photo by Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters, 18 November 2015
 

Syrian children walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings in the rebel-held area of Douma, east of the Syrian capital Damascus: photo by Abd Doumany/AFP, 18 November 2015

Immigrants arrive at the German border, where they are processed before boarding trains to points throughout the country: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

 
Police forces operate in Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris: photo by Francois Mori/AP, 18 November 2015

 Indian Hindu devotees offer prayers during the ‘Chhat Puja’ on the banks of the Brahmaputra River in Guwahati on Tuesday. Devotees pay obeisance to both the rising and the setting sun during the Chhath Festival, expressing thanks and seeking the blessings of the forces of nature, mainly the sun and rivers: photo by Biju Boro/AFP, 17 November 2015

An Afghan refugee girl peers through the curtain of her temporary home on the outskirts of Kabul: photo by Rahmat Gul/AP, 17 November 2015

Abdul Rahman, a Syrian immigrant from Aleppo, tries to get into a holding area with his family of 12 at the last stop in Austria before crossing into Germany: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

Migrants and refugees receive help after their arrival on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey: photo by Bulent Kilic/AFP, 17 November 2015

Immigrants arriving from the Croatian border walk from the train station to the Slovenia border, where they will cross into Austria: photo by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2015

The sun rises over Whitley Bay, Northumberland. Weather experts warned that roaring winds could down trees, cause power cuts and lead to flooding as Storm Barney is due to sweep through the UK this week: photo by Owen Humphreys/PA, 17 November 2015

The Sky Is Crying

November 21, 2015, 11:17 pm

≫ Next: Unspeakable

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Every. Single. Day. Thankful for this. #berkeleyside: image via Jeanie Choe @jeajea, 21 November 2015

Alors oui, le Ciel est profondément en pleurs, on dirait encore mieux, le Monde est en Larmes
but that was just a thought had by someone on an unfamiliar planet always disappearing

into a future of which no one had ever thought

as the sun went down

An Indian girl walks under an umbrella along a waterlogged street following heavy rain in Chennai. #AFP: image via Sophie Chauveau @s_chauveauAFP, 13 November 2015

 

Flood victims walk through a residential area after days of heavy rain in the southern Indian city of Chennai: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 18 November 2015

We Don't Go Back

 #migrant sits by a tree in a field on the Tabanovce border. #AFP Photo by  @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 19 November 2015

#Greece: Migrants & refugees wait to cross the Greek-Macedonian border near Idomeni. By @SakisMitrolidis: image via Talar Kalajian @TalarKala, 20 November 2015

 Le passage des migrants filtré par nationalité dans les Balkans #AFP: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 19 November 2015

Migrants and refugees wait to cross the Greek border: image via Sakis Mitrolidis @SakisMitrolidis, 20 November 2015

Migrants and refugees wait to cross the Greek border: image via Sakis Mitrolidis @SakisMitrolidis, 20 November 2015

Migrants and refugees wait to cross the Greek border: image via Sakis Mitrolidis @SakisMitrolidis, 20 November 2015

Migrants and refugees wait to cross the Greek border: image via Sakis Mitrolidis @SakisMitrolidis, 20 November 2015

MACEDONIA - A boy waits along with other migrants & refugees to cross the border near Gevgelija. By @dilkoff #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 20 November 2015

 #migrants and refugees demonstrate in front of Macedonian policemen near Gevgelija. #AFP @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 21 November 2015

 #migrants and refugees demonstrate in front of Macedonian policemen near Gevgelija. #AFP @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 21 November 2015

 #migrants and refugees demonstrate in front of Macedonian policemen near Gevgelija. #AFP @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 21 November 2015

 #migrants and refugees demonstrate in front of Macedonian policemen near Gevgelija. #AFP @RAtanasovski: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 21 November 2015

GREECE - A man hugs his daughter and son as migrants and refugees arrive on the island of Lesbos. By @Kilicbil #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 21 November 2015

MACEDONIA - 2 migrants try to stop another from attempting to hang himself near Gevgelija. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 21 November 2015

Fear

 #Paris police remain on high alert and highly visible with suspects still on the loose from last week #ParisAttacks: image via Carolyn Cole @Carolyn_Cole, 19 November 2015

SAINT DENIS, PARIS--Policeman Cedric Folliot guards site where swat raid killed terrorist ringleader and 2 others: image via Carolyn Cole @Carolyn_Cole, 20 November 2015

SAINT DENIS, PARIS: Friday prayers are attended by many at the main mosque in St. Denis: image via Carolyn Cole @Carolyn_Cole, 20 November 2015

SAINT DENIS, PARIS: Friday prayers are attended by many at the main mosque in St. Denis: image via Carolyn Cole @Carolyn_Cole, 20 November 2015


 

A soldier in central Brussels on Saturday, after the government raised the country’s threat level to its highest: photo by Francois Lenoir/Reuters, 21 November 2015


 

The police detained a man on Saturday in Brussels after stopping and searching a car with French license plates: photo by Virginia Mayo/Associated Press, 21 November 2015



A closed subway station in Brussels on Saturday: photo by John Thys/Agence France-Presse, 21 November 2015

Wary Parisians vow to keep party going one week after attacks: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 21 November 2015

Brussels closes metro system, shutters shops and public buildings as terror alert raised: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 21 November 2015

AFGHANISTAN - An Afghan man offers prayers on the Nadir Khan hilltop overlooking Kabul. By @kohsar #AFP: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 21 November 2015

Brussels on lockdown in fear of Paris-style attacks: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 21 November 2015

From Dusk till Dawn

#Russian heavy bombers are hammering #Syria -- and it's practice for bigger fights: image via Cold War 2.0 @coldwar20_en, 21 November 2015

 Russian Jet Fighters Target Civilians in Central Aleppo - Our reporter on the ground #Syria: image via ANA Press @ANA_Feed, 21 November 2015

 Russian Jet Fighters Target Civilians in Central Aleppo - Our reporter on the ground #Syria: image via ANA Press @ANA_Feed, 21 November 2015

 Russian Jet Fighters Target Civilians in Central Aleppo - Our reporter on the ground #Syria: image via ANA Press @ANA_Feed, 21 November 2015

 Russian Jet Fighters Target Civilians in Central Aleppo - Our reporter on the ground #Syria: image via ANA Press @ANA_Feed, 21 November 2015

From dusk till dawn: Russian round-the-clock retaliatory attacks in #Syria: image via Sputnik Verified account @Sputnikint, 21 November 2015

France leads rapprochement with Russia in @UN vote on #Syria: image via Sputnik Verified account @Sputnikint, 21 November 2015

He isn’t looking for mercy from the merciless world but watching out for Assad’s & Putin’s warplanes & bombs. #Syria: image via leena sahloul @Leenaaaa, 21 November 2015

#Russian fleet in the Caspian Sea launched 18 cruise missiles, hitting 7 targets in #Syria: image via IraqiSuryani @ IraqiSuryani1leena sahloul @Leenaaaa, 21 November 2015

#Russian fleet in the Caspian Sea launched 18 cruise missiles, hitting 7 targets in #Syria: image via IraqiSuryani @ IraqiSuryani1leena sahloul @Leenaaaa, 21 November 2015

#Russian fleet in the Caspian Sea launched 18 cruise missiles, hitting 7 targets in #Syria: image via IraqiSuryani @ IraqiSuryani1leena sahloul @Leenaaaa, 21 November 2015

#Russian fleet in the Caspian Sea launched 18 cruise missiles, hitting 7 targets in #Syria: image via IraqiSuryani @ IraqiSuryani1leena sahloul @Leenaaaa, 21 November 2015

A man kisses his wife as she holds their children just after their arrival on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey on Friday: photo by Bulent Kilic/AFP, 20 November 2015

The Sky Is Crying

Volcanic activity at the Tungurahua volcano in Cotalo, Ecuador, on Thursday. An increase in volcanic activity has been seen at the Tungurahua volcano in recent days: photo by Jose Jacome/EPA, 19 November 2015

  
An elderly Yazidi man walks through the town of Sinjar, Iraq. Before it was overrun by Islamic State, Sinjar and the surrounding villages were home to about 200,000 people, mainly Kurdish and Arab Muslims, as well as Christians and Yazidis: photo byAzad Lashkari / Reuters, 19 November 2015

  
Forensics of the French police at work on Thursday outside a building in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, where French Police special forces raided an apartment the day before, hunting those behind the attacks that claimed 129 lives in the French capital five days ago: photo by Kenzo Tribouillard / AFP, 19 November 2015

Armed Kurdish women militants, man a barricade, on Thursday in the Sur district of Diyarbakir. Tensions rose when pro-Kurdish MP Leyla Zana began her oath with “Biji Asiti”, or “Long live peace” in Kurdish. The phrase triggered a storm that recalled her memorable swearing-in 24 years ago when she also spoke the language that was then still taboo in public: photo by Ilyas Akengin/AFP, 19 November 2015

A man walks on a street between buildings at a business district in Tokyo, Japan: photo by Yuya Shino / Reuters, 19 November 2015

Destroyers of Worlds

Night photo [El Cerrito, California]: photo by efo, October 2015

Awaiting Orders: photo by Mark Knobil, 26 July 2012

2014 Global Day of Action Against Drones. Protest against an exhibition glorifying drone warfare, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, National Mall, Washington, DC.: photo by Stephen Melkisethian, 4 October 2011

Creech AFB Nevada October 2011 Anti-drone campaign. Outside the home of killer drones Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas located on the Western Shoshone and Paiute lands: photo by codepinkphoenix, 10 October 2011

Aerial Kidnapping: #Drone stolen by #eagles mid-flight: image via Sputnik Verified account @Sputnikint, 17 November 2015

 #Drone whistleblowers say they witnessed “gross waste, mismanagement, abuses of power”: image via Anonymous @AnonyOps, 19 November 2015

Obama's #drone war a 'recruitment tool' for #Daesh, say US air force whistleblowers: image via Nancy Kricorian #nancykric, 18 November 2015

Air Force Vets Speak Out for First Time on Why They Want the Drone War to Stop: Democracy Now! 20 November 2015

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Stephen Lewis, I wanted to ask you -- you made one kill, and then you immediately appealed to your superiors about -- about what you were doing. Could you talk about your experience, who you killed?

STEPHEN LEWIS: It was late 2009, and I was tasked to go support a troop in contact. And that’s whenever our troops are taking fire.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this was in which country?

STEPHEN LEWIS: Oh, this is in Afghanistan. And during this troops in contact, we were told to go to this specific location. It was four guys walking down a mountain path. And I didn’t see any weapons. I didn’t see anything. About five minutes goes by, and two Hellfires come in, and they kill three people. And there was one wounded guy left. I was given clearance to -- we were given clearance to fire the missile. And that guy just -- he just wasn’t there anymore.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: This is -- you were given clearance to fire at the wounded guy on the ground.

STEPHEN LEWIS: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: So what did you do next?

STEPHEN LEWIS: Seriously re-evaluated my life. Shortly after that, I ended up writing a very, very convincing letter to my leadership and told them that I didn’t belong there, I didn’t want to do it anymore, and I wanted out.

AMY GOODMAN: And what was their response?

STEPHEN LEWIS: Six months later, I was out of the Air Force.

AMY GOODMAN: How are you chosen as a drone operator?

STEPHEN LEWIS: I was chosen basically at random. I went to imagery analysis school, which I -- I wanted to look at satellite photos. That’s what I wanted to do. And about halfway through it, they come up and they say, "You’re going to Las Vegas. You’re going to go to sensor operator school, and you’re going to do this." There’s --

AMY GOODMAN: Did they say why?

STEPHEN LEWIS: They don’t have to. There is no argument there. It’s "Yes, sir, yes, ma’am, I’ll do whatever you tell me to."

AMY GOODMAN: And now that you’re out of the Air Force, how has what you did in the Air Force, being a drone operator, engaging in that kill, affected you?

STEPHEN LEWIS: It makes any kind of relationship difficult. I can’t -- I can’t communicate properly with my friends. I have to preface it with "I’m sorry, guys. I can’t hang out with you tonight. There’s too much going on right now." It’s, in effect, killed every single relationship that I’ve had afterwards. I can’t --

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What about this issue that you raise in your letter, how the drone program is actually helping to fuel or create more terrorism?

STEPHEN LEWIS: Well, it’s been noted in the film, Drone, that kids are afraid to go outside and play, or go to school during the day, whenever the sun is out, whenever the sun is shining, because they’re afraid that they’re going to get struck by a drone. You’re creating an atmosphere of fear. And there’s an old saying in Texas: You don’t back a scared animal up against the wall. And if you do that, he’s going to come out fighting. And that’s exactly, I think, what’s happening now.

AMY GOODMAN: Has the VA provided mental help to you as you suffer?

STEPHEN LEWIS: I’ve been to the VA, but it seems useless. It seems useless for me. It’s been six months. They’ve said, "Hey, you need an MRI." It’s been six months without an MRI. It’s "Hey, you need medication to manage this pain." It’s been six months without medication to manage pain. If they’re not going to take care of you, then why should you even go?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Cian, I wanted to ask you -- you were a technician in the drone program. Could you talk about what specifically you did and how your duties differed from the operators?

CIAN WESTMORELAND: Right, so we built a site that was used as a relay station while we were there. The --

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: While you were in Afghanistan?

CIAN WESTMORELAND: While I was in Afghanistan, yes, at Kandahar. And we were taking in signals from all over Afghanistan, 250,000 square miles, like, essentially. And we were relaying it and sending it long haul, so from there to the Combined Air Operations Center. And, you know --

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Which is located where?

CIAN WESTMORELAND: In Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, and then to Ramstein. And pretty much, we had been building, you know, the site, and one day my boss came to me and everybody else, and he handed us a headset, and we were listening to, you know, an airplane talking to -- it was an A-10 talking to a battle manager. And they -- he smiled, and he said, "We’re killing bad guys now, boys."

And I think -- I think why it was so significant for me was my father was actually working at a headquarters in Kuwait during 9/11, and he was ordering the missile parts, too, for the initial bombing. And he was telling me some of the culture that was there and the people making command decisions. They would go after certain targets, and then they would have missiles left over, and they would find targets, which was essentially anybody who was wearing white. That was my first thought whenever he said, "We’re killing bad guys now, boys."

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you mean by anyone wearing white.

CIAN WESTMORELAND: Anyone wearing white.

AMY GOODMAN: Why white?

CIAN WESTMORELAND: Because of the stigma that people who wore white were Taliban. So, those were the thoughts that were running through my head while I was there. I started having nightmares about what I did, hurting children, and me trying to help them and not being able to.

AMY GOODMAN: What year was this?

CIAN WESTMORELAND: It was in 2009. And whenever -- whenever we got back, we got a piece of paper. It was the enlisted performance report. And it said on it that we had supported 2,400 close air support missions and assisted in 200-plus enemy kills, which I knew was wrong, because anybody in the Air Force knows that an airstrike has collateral damage, you know, a significant amount of the time.

AMY GOODMAN: So you’re saying you knew it was much more.

CIAN WESTMORELAND: Well, I’m saying that it wasn’t all enemies. It was civilians, as well. And when I looked at the UNAMA report that came out early the next year, it was saying somewhere upward of 350 civilian kills. So, it’s kind of -- it’s made me sort of re-evaluate what I was doing there, and try and figure out, you know, exactly how we -- we got that on our piece of paper.

And we -- well, I guess I’ve come to the conclusion that, you know, these are the people that were actually administering the strikes. You had pilots that pulled the trigger, you had imagery analysts that picked the targets, and the -- you know, the decision maker. And all within the system, it’s -- the responsibility for killing the person is divided, so nobody feels the full responsibility of what they’re doing. And I think that we’re moving towards a world where -- in aerial warfare, where increasingly there’s going to be more technicians and less decision makers. And I think we should open up a new paradigm of, you know, ethics and what it means to do your duty as a technician. And I think one of the more influential voices for me was Oppenheimer, the --

AMY GOODMAN: J. Robert Oppenheimer.

CIAN WESTMORELAND: J. Robert Oppenheimer, yeah, exactly, who developed the atomic bomb. And, I mean, to see the effects of that must have been devastating. He must have felt like a destroyer of worlds. And I think, for me, that’s kind of how I feel, because all the signals were coming through there, and everybody who was making that system work was responsible. And I think how this applies to Germany is that the air base in Ramstein housing that data relay station, the people there are responsible for whatever signals that are going through there. And the German government, not communicating to the public or not knowing what we were doing, it was a big disrespect on America’s part and potentially the German government’s part. I’m not saying that they knew.

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US Air Force drone operators on the job: photo by Rui Vieira/PA Wire/AP via The Intercept, 19 November 2015

This image from NOAA shows the satellite sea surface temperature for the month of October 2015, where orange-red colors are above normal temperatures and are indicative of El Niño: photo by NASA / AFP, 19 November 2015

Volcanic activity at the Tungurahua volcano in Cotalo, Ecuador, on Thursday. An increase in volcanic activity has been seen at the Tungurahua volcano in recent days: photo by Jose Jacome/EPA, 19 November 2015



An elderly Yazidi man walks through the town of Sinjar, Iraq. Before it was overrun by Islamic State, Sinjar and the surrounding villages were home to about 200,000 people, mainly Kurdish and Arab Muslims, as well as Christians and Yazidis: photo byAzad Lashkari / Reuters, 19 November 2015

A Syrian refugee, who agreed to be photographed on condition of anonymity because of fear of retaliation against family living in Syria, poses for a portrait with her child at the Muslim Association of Lehigh Valley in Whitehall, Pennsylvania. Dozens of Syrian refugee families are being resettled in the Allentown, Pennsylvania. The city is already home to one of the nation’s largest population of Syrians, who began settling here in the late 1800s: photo by Matt Rourke/AP, 20 November 2015 

Unspeakable

November 23, 2015, 10:19 pm

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≪ Previous: The Sky Is Crying

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Stranded Iranian migrant Hamid, 34, an electrical engineer from the Iranian town of Sanandij, sits on rail tracks in front of Macedonian riot police guarding the borderline between Greece and Macedonia near the Greek village of Idomeni on Monday: photo by Yannis Behrakis / Reuters, 23 November 2015

"Every day, two Alan Kurdis die on this journey"

Greece: 703,374 arrived by sea in 2015. 101,736 in November. image via Melissa Fleming Verified account @melissarfleming, 22 November 2015

 

Peter Bouckeart, Emergencies Director, Human Rights Watch, interviewed by Amy Goodman for Democracy Now! 23 November 2015

PETERBOUCKAERT: Several of the attackers have come from a marginalized suburb of Brussels, called Molenbeek. Where the attack appears to have been planned, and where many other prior terrorist attacks were also planned. It’s also a weapons shipment -- a place where weapons are very easily available. And I think there’s two lessons to be drawn from this aspect. The first is that it’s -- and that’s an important lesson for the United States. When we do take refugees -- or migrants, for that matter -- it’s very important to integrate them into our societies, to give them the language skills and the support they need to become productive members of our societies. And one of the gravest mistakes that Europe has made, several decades ago, is to put people in these marginalized ghettos, basically, where extremism has built. So that’s why it’s so dangerous, the policies that U.S. governors are adopting, because they cannot stop these refugees from coming to their states -- that’s a federal decision -- but they can stop them from having the support they need to be integrated into their communities, and that could actually present a threat in the future.

AMYGOODMAN: Talk more about Molenbeek.

PETERBOUCKAERT: So it is a neighborhood where weapons are easily available.

AMYGOODMAN: Why?

PETERBOUCKAERT: Because Belgium has been a center for the illegal weapons trade for decades. It’s where shipments to conflicts like Angola, traditionally, have taken off. And that commerce has led to the easy availability of weapons. And that is a very dangerous development, because for just a few thousand dollars, you can buy Kalashnikovs and other weapons of war on the black market in Belgium.

AMYGOODMAN: Were you surprised when you heard about this connection between the Paris attackers, some of them, and Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium?

PETERBOUCKAERT: I was not really surprised, because I’ve been working on the Syrian conflict for many years, and we have seen many people from these areas of Belgium and France heading to fight in Syria. And, you know, there’s been this focus on this fake passport, when Europe really should be focusing more on the marginalized Muslim communities at home and try to better meet their needs, make sure that young people are educated and have jobs available, because the reality is that the majority of these people who carried out the Paris attacks were French citizens -- some of them resident in Molenbeek -- who have been living in France all of their lives.

AMYGOODMAN: Tell us the stories of people. I don’t think people care about refugees when you say one million, when say 1000, until you hear the story of one person.

PETERBOUCKAERT: I have met so many people with their own tragic and at times inspiring stories. I have met many Syrians who made this boat journey and then actually stayed in Greece to help their fellow Syrians when they arrived. But one person who touched me quite a bit is a doctor from Syria, Dr. Ali Jabour. He made this journey and I met him about two months ago in Hungary where he was sleeping on the streets. And just imagine you’ve spent four years in Syria, digging people out of the rubble and saving their lives at the hospital -- you're a hero, really, and you end up on this journey of utter humiliation. I wrote about him, and my last line of the piece I wrote said he’s now in Austria, one step closer to achieving his dream of continuing his medical studies in Germany. And he contacted me from Germany and said, actually, the last line is not right, because my dream is to be back in Syria.

AMYGOODMAN: Tell us the journey he took. Explain how people go from Syria.

PETERBOUCKAERT: So for most of these people, they have to sell their land and their house and borrow very heavily from neighbors and from family to make this journey because they have to pay smugglers incredible amounts of money. Then they have to cross the border into Turkey, often illegally, over razor wire fences, and then they have to make their way to the smugglers, who they pay about $1200 at least, sometimes much more, to be pushed onto these boats. And all of them are being told the journey will be safe, there will be 30, 35 people on the boat. But when they arrive on the coast, up to 55, 60 people are pushed onto these boats. And the smugglers have guns to force people to take off. There’s nobody to guide these boats. One of the refugees is given the handle of the engine on this rubber boat, and then they set out at sea. Many of the boats break down at sea and drift for hours. We’ve talked to people who have been at sea for as long as two days. Sometimes the boats are attacked by vigilantes.

AMYGOODMAN: And where do they go in this boat journey?

PETERBOUCKAERT: They go from Turkey, from the Turkish coast to the Greek islands. And the numbers have been growing exponentially. In July, 24,000 people arrived on the island of Lesbos. In August, it was up to 50,000. And by September, it was 111,000.

AMYGOODMAN: So how many a day?

PETERBOUCKAERT: It can be up to 5000, 8000 people a day. So that means 100 boats.

AMYGOODMAN: A hundred boats.

PETERBOUCKAERT: And you just do the math. I did the math, and the smugglers are making over $100 million off the plight of these people.

AMYGOODMAN: And then what happens when they end up in Lesbos? What happens then?

PETERBOUCKAERT: You know, for many, they think that their journey -- the worst part of their journey is over when they arrive in Lesbos. But actually, their suffering is just about to begin. When they get on the beach, wet and often cold, they’re helped by the volunteers. They are given dry clothes if dry clothes are available. And then they end up in these horrible camps, completely overcrowded with very little shelter and food, where they have to wait for days just to get a registration paper to get onto the boat to Athens. And then they continue, sleeping out in the open with their children -- it’s stunning to see how many babies are on this journey, and toddlers -- for day after day after day until they ultimately reach Germany.

And, you know, I think the real scandal is that we’re now five months, a year into this crisis, that keeps growing, but there still is no organized EU response, both in terms of coherent refugee policies, but also in terms of saving lives at sea and meeting the humanitarian needs of these people. This is not an insurmountable task. I mean, OK, we’re talking about a maximum of 8000 people a day, which seems like a huge number, but we handle those kind of crowds every day at rock concerts, at soccer matches. We do have the capacity to address these people’s needs and to make this journey a lot more humane, but we’re not.

AMYGOODMAN: How have the Paris attacks complicated this whole situation, the horror for refugees? I wanted to turn just in the United States to Donald Trump, the repub -- one of the leading presidential candidates, Republican candidates, speaking Monday after the Paris attacks.

Fear throws its hat into the ring for 2016 race: image via Reuters Opinion @ReutersOpinion, 23 November 2015

DONALDTRUMP: With all of the problems -- and you probably heard that at least one, and probably more, of the killers, the animals, that did what they did in Paris, came out of the migration, right? They came out of the migration. So we have a president that wants to take hundreds of thousands -- hundreds of thousands of people and move them into our country. And we don’t -- no, think of it. And we don’t even know who they are. There’s no paperwork. There’s no anything.

AMYGOODMAN: That’s Donald Trump. Peter Bouckaert?

PETERBOUCKAERT: Well, I normally make a policy not to respond to such idiotic statements. But in reality, every Syrian refugee who reaches the United States has gone through four levels of security review. These are the most carefully screened refugees anywhere in the world. And there have been no incidents with the hundreds of thousands of refugees that the U.S. has taken in over the years. The United States’ values are built about being welcoming to refugees. And it’s our most powerful tool in the war against Islamic extremism, are our values. It’s not our military planes and our bombs. The only way we can fight against this brutality, this barbarism, is with our values. And if we’re going to shut the door on these refugees, we’re giving a propaganda victory to ISIS. And I think that’s exactly why they left a fake Syrian passport at the scene of their attacks, because they would love it if we shut the door on the people who are fleeing their so-called Islamic caliphate.

AMYGOODMAN: What happens to Afghan refugees?

Just taking the bus is an increasingly deadly enterprise for Afghanistan's Shia Hazara: image via Kenneth Roth @KenRoth, 23 November 2015

Severe persecution in Afghanistan explains why so many Afghans arriving in Lesbos are Hazara: image via Kenneth Roth @KenRoth, 23 November 2015

PETERBOUCKAERT: You know, I think a lot of the focus has been on the Syrian refugees and their plight. But as one Afghan refugee told me, the Syrians have had four years of war, now coming onto five. We’ve had 40. And we should not ignore the plight of the people fleeing Afghanistan. The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan. The Islamic State is also targeting people there. And there’s many abuses being committed by the Northern Alliance. But the Afghan refugees also are fleeing from Iran. There’s millions of Afghans who live in Iran, and one of the reasons they’re fleeing from Iran, which is a very little-known fact, is that Iran is actually forcibly recruiting them to go fight in Syria. They’re rounding up Afghan refugees and giving them the choice between being deported back to Afghanistan, a country many have not lived in for decades and fear, or being forced to go fight for Assad in Syria.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to continue on this track, this idea of what has caused people to flee and what our responsibility is, not just as human beings that are not attached except that we’re humans and care about other human beings, but our responsibility for the cause of the refugee crisis.

PETERBOUCKAERT: You know, I do think it’s important for people to understand that the 2003 Iraq invasion, and especially the very irresponsible policies which were put in place by the Bush administration, played a very direct role in creating the Islamic State. It ripped apart Iraqi state and allowed for the rise of Islamic extremism. The only way we can respond to that is not just with a military strategy, and certainly not with brutality. I mean, we’ve seen that the kind of brutal policies pursued by the Bush administration and Rumsfeld and Cheney utterly failed. They failed on the ground. They achieved nothing in terms of stabilizing Iraq or dealing with the threat of Islamic extremism. So, you know, I totally understand in the aftermath of the Paris attacks people want to respond, they want to go strike against the Islamic State, but we have to be smart and learn from our own history. And actually, our values, respect for human rights and welcoming refugees is an important part of fighting against the kind of Islamic extremism that the Islamic State represents.

AMYGOODMAN: Peter Bouckaert, you were one of the first to tweet the picture of the three-year-old boy. Talk about his case, Alan Kurdi.

In Aylan's wake, 4-yr.-old Syrian refugee girl found dead off Turkey's Bodrum coast. #Sena: image via Melissa Fleming @melissarfleming, 23 November 2015  Vienna, Austria

PETERBOUCKAERT: You know, Alan Kurdi came from the city of Kobani, which is completely destroyed, partly by the Islamic State, but also by U.S. airstrikes in response to their takeover of the city. He set off --

AMYGOODMAN: The city of Kobani --

PETERBOUCKAERT: Of Kobani.

AMYGOODMAN: In Syria.

PETERBOUCKAERT: In Syria. And he set off on one of these rubber boats and drowned alongside his mother and his brother. Every day, two Alan Kurdis die on this journey. And, you know, the picture of Alan Kurdi certainly drew a lot of attention. It horrified us all. And for a brief moment, it united us in a sense that we have to do something about this crisis. Well, we still have to do something about this crisis. And part of what we need to do about this crisis, the most important part, is making safe and legal ways for people to seek asylum, to get out of the horrors of war, to provide them with the opportunity to educate their children because those children represent the future of Syria. And there -- just in Turkey, there are 400,000 children, Syrian children, out of school --

AMYGOODMAN: Explain.

PETERBOUCKAERT: -- missing out on an education, having fled from Syria. So we need to address this real crisis in the region. You know, even with the projections of the European Union for 2015, 2016 and 2017, the refugees reaching Europe would represent 0.4 percent of the population of Europe. That’s one out of 250 people. You know, in Lebanon, one out of four people is a refugee, a Syrian refugee. So Europe is not being flooded by refugees and certainly the world is not being flooded by Syrian refugees. We can -- this is not a capacity problem. It’s a political problem.

AMYGOODMAN: Explain what the U.S. should do. What are the numbers of refugees the U.S. has taken and should take?

PETERBOUCKAERT: Well, the U.S. takes 70,000 refugees a year, and many of them come from places like Syria and Somalia and Iraq. President Obama has now promised to take 10,000 more Syrian refugees a year. Those people will be carefully screened, and I am certain that they will contribute to American society. You know, I’ve been stunned by the number of doctors and engineers and business leaders that I’ve met on this journey. These people are not coming to take welfare. They want to come and contribute to our societies. They want to build a new future for themselves and for their children. And even in Germany today, the people in the camps, the one thing they ask me for is language books. They want to learn the German language, get out of these camps, and start their new lives.

Remember the excuse that Nazi spies would try to enter the United States as Jewish refugees?: image via Kenneth Roth @KenRoth, 23 November 2015

AMYGOODMAN: More than two dozen U.S. state governors have refused to accept Syrian refugees after the Paris attacks. This is one of them. This is Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

GOV. GREGGABBOTT: The database on the Syrian side simply does not exist. As a result, to the extent any Syrian refugee is allowed into the country, we are playing the same game of risk that Europe played with regard to the individual who entered Europe, who then participated in the terroristic bombing of Paris. As governor of the state of Texas, I will not roll the dice and take the risk on allowing a few refugees in simply to expose Texans to that danger.

AMYGOODMAN: That’s Governor Abbott of Texas. Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch?

PETERBOUCKAERT: Well, I think the facts speak for themselves. There’s 70,000 refugees coming to the United States every year, and not a single one has been involved in a terrorist incident. The situation in Europe is different. There is chaos right now in terms of the procedures, and Europe does need to put together a coherent refugee policy to deal with these people and to screen them for security reasons. But the reality is that the U.S. has screening procedures in place and a coherent refugee policy, and that these people present no threat to the United States.

AMYGOODMAN: This is Governor Bentley of Alabama.

GOV. ROBERTBENTLEY: And I think the thing that I want to do as governor is to make sure the people of Alabama are safe. And if there is any -- if there’s even the slightest risk that the people who are coming in from Syria are not the types of people that we would want them to be, then we can’t take that chance.

AMYGOODMAN: That’s Alabama Governor Robert Bentley. Peter Bouckaert?

PETERBOUCKAERT: Look, I can assure the governor that the people who are going to come from Syria to the United States are exactly the kind of people that we will want to welcome to the United States. I’ve met many people on this journey who I would have loved to have as neighbors. They’re people who are fleeing from conflict. And it’s part of a long-standing U.S. tradition to welcome people who need refuge.

AMYGOODMAN: What do you think is the solution to the conflict in Syria?

PETERBOUCKAERT: The conflict in Syria is a very difficult conflict to resolve. It ultimately needs a political solution. And one of the aspects which is really important is to reassure various minority communities, including the Christians and the Assyrians and the Yazidis, as well as the Alawites, who are the power base of President Bashar al-Assad, that there is a future for them in Syria because many of them are supporting the Syrian government not because they like the policies of Assad, but because they’re fearful for the future. And they have every reason to be because if we look at what happened in Iraq, many of these communities were wiped out. The Yazidis and the Christians just in the last year lost most of their villages.

But there’s other aspects as well. You know, two years ago, I helped organize a conference for women from Syria in Geneva, together with women’s rights activist Madeleine Rees. And it was really the first time that women had had a voice in the peace process. You know, we brought this proposal to the diplomats, and they were like, that’s a great idea.

AMYGOODMAN: And what was the proposal?

PETERBOUCKAERT It was to have a conference of women to talk about what their vision was for the future of --

AMYGOODMAN: And what was their vision?

PETERBOUCKAERT: Their vision was that women had to be around the table, that we could not just have men with guns around the table. But up to that stage, 50 percent of the population of Syria, their voice had been completely ignored in the peace process for Syria. And that happens time and time again. We need to make sure that not just the people with guns are around the table, that they don’t just buy their chair at the table with blood, but that the moral voices from the community and women, civil society leaders who have such much more of a vision for the future of Syria -- and the Congo and all of these other conflicts -- are around the table with a voice.

AMYGOODMAN: You have said that you believe that this fake passport that was planted next to one of the gunmen in Paris, that said they were from Syria but in fact they weren’t, was actually, you believe, a plan of ISIS to make the link.

PETERBOUCKAERT: Yes. You know, ISIS wants people to flock towards its Islamic caliphate. So it really is a rejection of the ideology of ISIS when people are fleeing from the Islamic caliphate. And I’ve met many people from Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa and Mosul who are fleeing the terror of ISIS. So ISIS does want to get Europe to shut the door in the face of these refugees. It really helps ISIS a lot when Muslims are being seen humiliated on the streets of Europe.

AMYGOODMAN: And the response of France and the United States to bomb Raqqa after the Paris attacks, the incessant now bombing, and now Russia is joining in bombing, after the Russian jetliner, it’s been shown, had a bomb on board. Raqqa, hundreds of thousands of civilians live there still.

PETERBOUCKAERT: Yes. You know, there certainly, unfortunately, has to be probably a military component to confronting ISIS. But I think we constantly need to remind ourselves that we have a lot more in our arsenal than just planes and bombs. And it’s very important to understand that our values as a society, values which are radically opposed to the barbarity of ISIS, values of human rights and respect for people’s dignity and their lives, are our most important tool to fight against this kind of extremism. And what concerns me is that there’s been so much focus on a military response, when actually this is a fight for the hearts and minds of people. And respect for human rights and dignity are fundamental to that.

Hunger strike on the #Macedonia / #Greece border. Harrowing photo shared by Fedja Grulovic of @Reuters: image via Valerie Hopkins @VALERIEin140, 23 November 2015

Stranded migrants block railway, call hunger strike: Yannis Behrakis, Reuters, 23 November 2015

Moroccans, Iranians and Pakistanis on Greece’s northern border with Macedonia blocked rail traffic and demanded passage to western Europe on Monday, stranded by a policy of filtering migrants in the Balkans that has raised human rights concerns.

One Iranian man, declaring a hunger strike, stripped to the waist, sewed his lips together with nylon and sat down in front of lines of Macedonian riot police.

Asked by Reuters where he wanted to go, the man, a 34-year-old electrical engineer named Hamid, said: "To any free country in the world. I cannot go back. I will be hanged."

Hundreds of thousands of migrants, many of them Syrians fleeing war, have made the trek across the Balkan peninsula having arrived by boat and dinghy to Greece from Turkey, heading for the more affluent countries of northern and western Europe, mainly Germany and Sweden.

Last week, however, Slovenia, a member of Europe’s Schengen zone of passport-free travel, declared it would only grant passage to those fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and that all others deemed "economic migrants" would be sent back.

That prompted others on the route -- Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia -- to do the same, leaving growing numbers stranded in tents and around camp fires on Balkan borders with winter approaching.

Rights groups have questioned the policy, warning asylum should be granted on merit, not on the basis of nationality.

"To classify a whole nation as economic migrants is not a principle recognized in international law," said Rados Djurovic, director of the Belgrade-based Asylum Protection Center. "We risk violating human rights and asylum law," he told Serbian state television.

The new measure coincides with rising concern, particularly on the political right in Europe, over the security risk of the chaotic and often unchecked flow of humanity into Europe in the aftermath of the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris by Islamist militants in which 130 people died.

It has emerged that two suicide bombers involved in the attacks took the same trail, arriving by boat in Greece and then traveling north across the Balkans. Most of the attackers, however, were citizens of France or Belgium.

On the Macedonian-Greek border, crowds of Moroccans, Iranians and others blocked the railway line running between the two countries, halting at least one train that tried to cross, a Reuters photographer said.

A group of Bangladeshis had stripped to the waist and written slogans on their chests in red paint. "Shoot us, we never go back," read one. "Shoot us or save us," read another.

Discrimination within Chaos

 

Balkan border fence: image via Lydia Gall @LydsG, 23 November 2015

#refugees stuck on #Greece #Macedonia border continue their protest to get border open. Some here 4-5 days: image via Lydia Gall @LydsG, 22 November 2015

#refugees chanting "open border!" on #Greece border with #Macedonia. Stuck for days.: image via Lydia Gall @LydsG, 22 November 2015

#refugees chanting "open border!" on #Greece border with #Macedonia. Stuck for days.: image via Lydia Gall @LydsG, 22 November 2015

#refugees chanting "open border!" on #Greece border with #Macedonia. Stuck for days.: image via Lydia Gall @LydsG, 22 November 2015

1000s #Refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq waiting for hours to access Gevgelija camp in #Macedonia image via Lydia Gall @LydsG, 22 November 2015

Dawn at #Greece #Macedonia border. 1000s #refugees stuck, sleeping on tracks bc cascading border closures: image via Lydia Gall @LydsG, 21 November 2015

 

About 5000 #refugees expected 2day in Idomeni #Greece. Only Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans 2 pass. Others 4 days in cold.: image via Lydia Gall @LydsG, 21 November 2015

Segregation @ borders in full swing. Only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans let through 2  #Macedonia ##refugeesGR.: image via Lydia Gall @LydsG, 21 November 2015

"We prefer to die here bc in #Iran govt will kill us." 1000s ppl stuck @ #Greece #Macedonia border##refugeesGR @hrw: image via Lydia Gall @LydsG, 21 November 2015

New discriminatory border practices by 3EU & other Western Balkans govts put people at risk:: image via Lydia Gall @LydsG, 20 November 2015

 

Unspeakable

"I cannot go back. I will be hanged." Stranded migrants block railway, call hunger strike.: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 23 November 2015

 

Stranded migrants block railway, call hunger strike: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 23 November 2015

 #Eidomeni #FortressEurope #refugeesGr [photo Sakis Mitrolidis #AFP]: image via dromografos @dromografos, 23 November 2015

MACEDONIA - Migrants wait to enter a registration camp after crossing border near Gevgelija. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffard, 22 November 2015

 

MACEDONIA - Migrants wait to enter a registration camp after crossing border near Gevgelija. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffard, 22 November 2015

MACEDONIA - A migrant & his baby cross the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 22 November 2015

MACEDONIA - A migrant woman and her baby cross the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 22 November 2015

 #migrants refugees from Iran with their mouths sewn shut sit on railway tracks, near Gevgelija.#AFP @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 23 November 2015

 

 #migrants refugees from Iran with their mouths sewn shut sit on railway tracks, near Gevgelija.#AFP @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 23 November 2015

 #migrants refugees from Iran with their mouths sewn shut sit on railway tracks, near Gevgelija.#AFP @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 23 November 2015

 #migrants refugees from Iran with their mouths sewn shut sit on railway tracks, near Gevgelija.#AFP @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Aurelia BAILLY Verified account @AureliaBAILLY, 23 November 2015

Joseph Ceravolo: Starvation

 

........................................   December 6, 1987

For the new crusaders tired and dusty

from the trek across the Dardanelles

felt diseased and lost

abandoned and tricked

by the Holy of the Empire.

Empire upon empire
death upon death
Lord upon Lord
the holy children wept.
While an ailanthus tree crushes
its way between close buildings
the space between an alley and a dream.
Saints martyred
find their way through dead forests

Holy bridges span the straits

bound for the change

and the chance to begin another life.

A drunken crusader, lost

for the past years,

abandoned his children, his woman,

winds along the street

looking for wine, the harvest

and the abandoned salvation.

The taxes in the land

drive him further away, no sword

no word, no control while wine fills the veins.

He must get off and sleep.

 

The garbage of the city speaks,
"You are all eternal."

Charge the sudden dream with breath

The armor tears down

the muscles of the lofty body

now worn and skeletal, starved

of food, love and the home.

Cruelty, plots, destruction of innocent souls

and the body of the city weeps.

The seasons end.

We must get off and sleep.

 

Sleep forever in a divine swoon

that ends the hope of the gods. Thin

in the dirt of the deserts, death

like a kiss upon the abdomen.

Suffering takes place in gold

as well as excrement,

and so the journey ends

and poison begins its hold

on limpid flesh, the rattles shake

ugliness chortles in joy

The song of death perspires in

the Warsaw of the eyes.

Good tidings good food good holyday, goodbye

The boat that leaves Golgotha

is in the Charon of dreams.

They must get off and sleep.

Joseph Ceravolo (1934-1988): Starvation (December 6, 1987), from Collected Poems, 2012

Syrians fleeing Russia airstrikes pushed back at Turkish border @HRW: image via Gerry Simpson @Gerry Simpson, 23 November 2015  Vienna, Austria

Battle Stations

Syrians fleeing Russia airstrikes pushed back at Turkish border @HRW: image via Gerry Simpson @Gerry Simpson, 23 November 2015  Vienna, Austria

Russian bombers reportedly killed 403 Syrian civilians since Sept, including 97 children: image via Kenneth Roth @KenRoth, 23 November 2015

 

Russian carpet bombing in Syria with these dumb bombs is no way to avoid civilian casualties: image via Kenneth Roth @KenRoth, 23 November 2015

Russian carpet bombing in Syria with these dumb bombs is no way to avoid civilian casualties: image via Kenneth Roth @KenRoth, 23 November 2015

As Islamic State threat looms, NYPD will be out in full force for Thanksgiving parade: image via Reuters Top News

France launches missions over Syria, Iraq from newly deployed carrier: military: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 23 November 2015

#UPDATE  Cameron says offered France use of British airbase in Cyprus: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 23 November 2015

A police officer and soldiers stand guard in the ‘Rue des Bouchers’ street, famous for its restaurants, following the terror alert level being elevated to 4/4, in Brussels, Belgium: photo by Stephanie Lecocq/EPA, 23 November 2015

There must be something

November 24, 2015, 8:01 pm

≫ Next: Ray Bradbury: There Will Come Soft Rains

≪ Previous: Unspeakable

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P. Ballantine and Sons advertisement for Ballantine's Beer: Life, 30 November 1953 (Gallery of Graphic Design)

We'll be doing the traditional Thanksgiving thing this year, Mother will stuff the bird

while the boys toss a football around

out back of the barn protecting the freedoms which are more precious than ever this year

and we know we've got to be holding on to them even more fiercely
than might be considered healthy on the dusty playing fields of Mars

and here we are on the dry playing fields of Mars, with the cold dusty winds

blowing ceaselessly through our bones

as we toss the football around with our grossly distorted limbs clanking in the strange bluish light

after the last rockets have departed for the smouldering orange remains of Earth

to which a strange fealty is reluctantly acknowledged

around the table as we say grace and the flag is saluted
inadvertently perhaps due to the low ceiling over the flatscreen where it proudly still waves reminding us
there must be somethingwe were trying to protect

Soldiers patrol in the streets in Brussels on Tuesday as the Belgian capital remains on the highest possible alert level. Brussels began a fourth consecutive day in lockdown under a maximum terror alert: photo by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP, 24 November 2015

A burning trail a seen on a Russian fighter jet after it was shot down over Syrian-Turkish border on Tuesday. The Defense Ministry in Moscow said The Sukhoi Su-24 was reportedly downed by Turkish forces: photo by Haberturk Tv Channel/EPA, 24 November 2015

A man claiming to be from Iran, with his mouth sewn shut, takes part in a demonstration with fellow refugees and migrants as they wait to cross the Greek-Macedonian border near Idomeni: photo by Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP, 24 November 2015

The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company advertisement for A & P Coffee: William Oberhardt, Woman's Day, 1 November 1938 (Gallery of Graphic Design)

Garbage (Higashizu-cho, Shizuoka Prefecture): photo by efo, September 2015

Two Chinese J-10 aircraft from the People’s Liberation Army Air Force cross each other during the combined exercise ”Falcon Strike 2015” at the Wing 1 Korat air base in Korat on Tuesday. Thailand and China have been conducting their first ever joint air force drill, a symbol of the blossoming military and political ties between junta-run kingdom and its huge northern neighbour: photo by Nicolas Asfouri/AFP, 24 November 2015

nighttime entryway no. 5: photo by efo, 15 November 2015

Ray Bradbury: There Will Come Soft Rains

November 27, 2015, 8:30 pm

≫ Next: Wallace Stevens: Of Mere Being

≪ Previous: There must be something

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Global Thermonuclear War: photo by Delyth Angharad, 25 July 2013

In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o'clock! as if it were afraid nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness.Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine! 

In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.

"Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, "in the city of Allendale, California." It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. "Today is Mr. Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills."

Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes.

Operation Plumbbob Shot Diablo Ionization Glow. 15 kilotons, 15 July 1957, Nye, Nevada. Damaged photo restored in photoshop: photo by Kelly Michals, 15 July 1957

Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one! But no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels. It was raining outside. The weather box on the front door sang quietly: "Rain, rain, go away; rubbers, raincoats for today..."

And the rain tapped on the empty house, echoing.

Corely Services, M6 North. This is indeed thermonuclear: photo by Nik Stanbridge, 2 October 2008

Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. After a long wait the door swung down again.

At eight-thirty the eggs were shriveled and the toast was like stone. An aluminum wedge scraped them down a metal throat which digested and flushed them away to the distant sea. The dirty dishes were dropped into a hot washer and emerged twinkling dry.

 Waiting for News: photo by Delyth Angharad, 7 August 2013

Ten o'clock. The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.

Ten-fifteen. The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air with scatterings of brightness. The water pelted windowpanes, running down the charred west side where the house had been burned evenly free of its white paint. The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hand raised to catch a ball which never came down.The five spots of paint -- the man, the woman, the children, the ball -- remained. The rest was a thin charcoaled layer. The gentle sprinkler rain filled the garden with falling light.

Until this day, how well the house had kept its peace. How carefully it had inquired, 'Who goes there? What's the password?" and, getting no answer from the lonely foxes and whining cats, it had shut up its windows and drawn shades in an old-maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia.

It quivered at each sound, the house did. If a sparrow brushed a window, the shade snapped up. The bird, startled, flew off! No, not even a bird must touch the house!

The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.

Hughes Aircraft Company advertisement for Communications Satellites: Time, 4 October 1963 (Gallery of Graphic Design)

Twelve noon.
A dog whined, shivering, on the front porch.

The front door recognized the dog voice and opened. The dog, once large and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores, moved in and through the house, tracking mud. Behind it whirred angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience.

For not a leaf fragment blew under the door but what the wall panels flipped open and the copper scrap rats flashed swiftly out. The offending dust, hair, or paper, seized in miniature steel jaws, was raced back to the burrows. There, down tubes which fed into the cellar, it was dropped like evil Baal in a dark corner.

The dog ran upstairs, hysterically yelping to each door, at last realizing, as the house realized, that only silence was here.It sniffed the air and scratched the kitchen door. Behind the door, the stove was making pancakes which filled the house with a rich odor and the scent of maple syrup.The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its eyes turned to fire. It ran wildly in circles, biting at its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died. It lay in the parlor for an hour.

[Christmas morning, Kitchen of the Future]: photo by princesskoko, 27 September 2012

Two-fifteen.
The dog was gone.

In the cellar, the incinerator glowed suddenly and a whirl of sparks leaped up the chimney.

Chance Vought Aircraft advertisement for Regulus II Nuclear Missiles: Time, 5 May 1958 (Gallery of Graphic Design)

Two thirty-five.
Bridge tables sprouted from patio walls. Playing cards fluttered onto pads in a shower of pips. Martinis manifested on an oaken bench with egg salad sandwiches. Music played.

But the tables were silent and the cards untouched.

At four o'clock the tables folded like great butterflies back through the paneled walls.

Boeing Aircraft Company advertisement for Dyna-Soar Space Glider: Time, 17 November 1961 (Gallery of Graphic Design)

Four-thirty.  
The nursery walls glowed.

Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance. The walls were glass. They looked out upon color and fantasy. Hidden films clocked though the well-oiled sprockets, and the walls lived. The nursery floor was woven to resemble a crisp cereal meadow. Over this ran aluminum roaches and iron crickets, and in the hot still air butterflies of delicate red tissue wavered among the sharp aroma of animal spoors! There was the sound like a great matted yellow hive of bees within a dark bellows, the lazy bumble of a purring lion. And there was the patter of okapi feet and the murmur of a fresh jungle rain, like other hoofs falling upon the summer-starched grass. Now the walls dissolved into distances of parched weed, mile on mile, and warm endless sky. The animals drew away into thorn brakes and water holes.

It was the children's hour.

Five o'clock. The bath filled with clear hot water.

Borg-Warner advertisement for Automated Electronics: Life, 24 June 1957 (Gallery of Graphic Design)

Six, seven, eight o'clock. The dinner dishes manipulated like magic tricks, and in the study a click. In the metal stand opposite the hearth where a fire now blazed up warmly, a cigar popped out, half an inch of soft gray ash on it, smoking, waiting.

Nine o'clock. The beds warmed their hidden circuits, for nights were cool here.

Nine-five.  A voice spoke from the study ceiling:"Mrs. McClellan, which poem would you like this evening?"

The house was silent.

The voice said at last, "Since you express no preference, I shall select a poem at random." Quiet music rose to back the voice. "Sara Teasdale. As I recall, your favorite...

Meet Walk-Man, the humanoid robot designed to fit into a human-shaped world: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 27 November 2015

"There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn

Would scarcely know that we were gone."

The “Hello Kitty” balloon proceeds high above spectators along 6th Ave during the 89th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in the Manhattan borough of New York on Thursday: photo by Carlo Allegri/Reuters, 26 November 2015

The fire burned on the stone hearth and the cigar fell away into a mound of quiet ash on its tray. The empty chairs faced each other between the silent walls, and the music played.

North American Aviation advertisement for X-15 Research Vehicle: Time, 11 March 1966 (Gallery of Graphic Design)

At ten o'clock the house began to die.

The wind blew. A falling tree bough crashed through the kitchen window. Cleaning solvent, bottled, shattered over the stove. The room was ablaze in an instant!"Fire!" screamed a voice. The house lights flashed, water pumps shot water from the ceilings. But the solvent spread on the linoleum, licking, eating, under the kitchen door, while the voices took it up in chorus: "Fire, fire, fire!"

General Dynamics Corporation advertisement for nuclear-powered naval vessels: Time, 17 September 1956 (Gallery of Graphic Design)

The house tried to save itself. Doors sprang tightly shut, but the windows were broken by the heat and the wind blew and sucked upon the fire.

The house gave ground as the fire in ten billion angry sparks moved with flaming ease from room to room and then up the stairs. While scurrying water rats squeaked from the walls, pistoled theirwater, and ran for more. And the wall sprays let down showers of mechanical rain.

It went so far, it was so bad (that the best thing was that you were not like them): photo by y Coyhand, 15 November 2015

But too late. Somewhere, sighing, a pump shrugged to a stop. The quenching rain ceased. The reserve water supply which filled the baths and washed the dishes for many quiet days was gone.

The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls, like delicacies, baking off the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings.

 

Bombeiro/Bento Rodrigues/Barragem. Accidente Mariana/MG: photo by Portal Emergencia On Line, 7 November 2015

Now the fire lay in beds, stood in windows, changed the colors of drapes!

And then, reinforcements.

[GE: "Progress Is Our Most Important Product"]: photo by princesskoko, 27 September 2012

From attic trapdoors, blind robot faces peered down with faucet mouths gushing green chemical.

The fire backed off, as even an elephant must at the sight of a dead snake. Now there were twenty snakes whipping over the floor, killing the fire with a clear cold venom of green froth.

 

Chernobyl. Toys that were left due to having to quickly exit: photo by tootie2rue, 8 April 2012

But the fire was clever. It had sent flames outside the house, up through the attic to the pumps there. An explosion! The attic brain which directed the pumps was shattered into bronze shrapnel on the beams.

The fire rushed back into every closet and felt of the clothes that hung there.

In the rural district of Gesteira, the local church is a symbol of the community. The mud doesn't respect even the sacred temples: photo by Cai Santo, 7 November 2015

The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air. Help, help! Fire! Run, run! Heat snapped mirrors like the first brittle winter ice. And the voices wailed, Fire, fire, run, run, like a tragic nursery rhyme, a dozen voices, high, low, like children dying in a forest, alone, alone. And the voices fading as the wires popped their sheathings like hot chestnuts. One, two, three, four, five voices died.

Men try to extinguish a fire at a farm in Rio Pardo next to Bom Futuro National Forest, in the district of Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil: photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters, 30 August 2014

In the nursery the jungle burned. Blue lions roared, purple giraffes bounded off. The panthers ran in circles, changing color, and ten million animals, running before the fire, vanished off toward a distant steaming river...

Ten more voices died. In the last instant under the fire avalanche, other choruses, oblivious, could be heard announcing the time, playing music, cutting the lawn by remote-control mower, or setting an umbrella frantically out and in the slamming and opening front door, a thousand things happening, like a clock shop when each clock strikes the hour insanely before or after the other, a scene of maniac confusion, yet unity; singing, screaming, a few last cleaning mice darting bravely out to carry the horrid ashes away! And one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry aloud all in the fiery study, until all the film spools burned, until all the wires withered and the circuits cracked.

Cows roam on a deforested plot of the Amazon rainforest near Rio Pardo, in the district of Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil: photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters, 3 September 2014

The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke.

In the kitchen, an instant before the rain of fire and timber, the stove could be seen making breakfasts at a psychopathic rate, ten dozen eggs, six loaves of toast, twenty dozen bacon strips, which, eaten by fire, started the stove working again, hysterically hissing!

The crash. The attic smashing into the kitchen and parlor. The parlor into cellar, cellar into sub-cellar. Deep freeze, armchair, film tapes, circuits, beds, and all like skeletons thrown in a cluttered mound deep under.

Smoke and silence. A great quantity of smoke.

Tham Piu cave, on the outskirts of Muang Khoun. Laos. Here, on 24 November 1968, a US strike killed 374 civilians who were sheltering in the cave in order to find refuge from the American bombardments: photo by Matilde Gattoni/Tandem Reportage via The Observer, 31 January 2015

Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam:

"Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is..."

Ray Bradbury (1920-2012): There Will Come Soft Rains, first published in Collier's, 6 May 1950; included in The Martian Chronicles, 1950

Three million tons of ordnance was dropped on Laos over a nine-year period. Craters such as these in Xieng Khouang province scar the landscape in many areas: photo by Sean Sutton/MAG via The Guardian, 2 December 2008

Kampuang Dalaseng lies on the ground demonstrating how he would hide from the bombs during the Secret War in Laos. ‘I hate Americans to this date. They bombed, burned and destroyed everything. If their president was here, I would slap him in the face.’ A former professor of French, 84-year-old Kampuang lived under the American bombardments for five years: photo by Matilde Gattoni/Tandem Reportage via The Observer, 31 January 2015

 

There will come soft rains III... here, where nothing grows.  Former Krejci Dump site. Cuyahoga Valley, Ohio.: photo by wood_owl, 10 August 2012

Wallace Stevens: Of Mere Being

December 1, 2015, 7:07 pm

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≪ Previous: Ray Bradbury: There Will Come Soft Rains

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Chinese man wears a protective face mask as he passes by the CCTV building on a day of heavy pollution on Monday in Beijing, China. China’s capital and many cities in the northern part of the country recorded the worst smog of the year with air quality devices in some areas unable to read such high levels of pollutants: photo by Kevin Frayer, 1 December 2015

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

Wallace Stevens (1879-1957): Of Mere Being (1954), from Opus Posthumous, 1957

Vehicles pass on a road as smog covers #China's capital #BeijingSmog REUTERS/Jason Lee: image via Reuters Paris Pix @ReutersParisPix, 1 December 2015

Aiyaa! Another day of chunky air in China. The People's Republic is polluting the motherland. #BeijingSmog: image via Mo Fei Chen @DynaMoChen, 1 December 2015

 Beijing factories shut amid smog nightmare: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 1 December 2015

 #Beijing escalates smog warning, orders factories to shut down and trucks off the road: image via Jim Roberts @nycjim, 29 November 2015

 You can taste the GDP today #Beijing: image via Robert Foyle Hunwick @MrRFH, 30 November 2015

Beijing today. PM 2.5 in office: 67 ("Fresh Air"). Outside: 966. #beijing #beijingair #beijingsmog: image via Martijn Herrman @Martijn Herrman, 30 November 2015

#Smog covers area of 530,000 sqkm around Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, as heavy air pollution hits 31 cities: image via CCTVNEWS @cctvnews, 29 November 2015

#Smog covers area of 530,000 sqkm around Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, as heavy air pollution hits 31 cities: image via CCTVNEWS @cctvnews, 29 November 2015

#Smog covers area of 530,000 sqkm around Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, as heavy air pollution hits 31 cities: image via CCTVNEWS @cctvnews, 29 November 2015

#Smog covers area of 530,000 sqkm around Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, as heavy air pollution hits 31 cities: image via CCTVNEWS @cctvnews, 29 November 2015

Choking smog blankets Beijing just as climate talks begin in #Paris: image via Jim Barnett @JimBarnettNews, 30 November 2015

Choking smog blankets Beijing just as climate talks begin in #Paris: image via Jim Barnett @JimBarnettNews, 30 November 2015

“So what's the difference between #Beijing and Mars?""We have better food, they have better traffic.": image via Zijing Wu @zijing, 30 November 2015

 #Beijing issues severe smog warning: image via BBC Weather @bbcweather, 30 November 2015

 Reports of the worst #smog of the year in parts of China. This is Tiananmen Square in #Beijing: image via BBC Weather @bbcweather, 30 November 2015

So yeah, mask definitely on #BeijingSmog: image via Kyle Alcott @KyleJAlcott, 30 November 2015
 

#BeijingSmog so hard to breathe today. #Beijing under the dome: image via Esseté @EssetiYapi, 30 November 2015 
 

Smog chokes Beijing as Paris climate talks get under way #China #climatechange #BeijingSmog: image via Gulf-Times GulfTimes_QATAR, 30 November 2015  Doha, Qatar

#TheWiderImage: #Smog chokes #Beijing REUTERS/damirsagoli #BeijingSmog #COP21: image via Reuters Paris Pix @ReutersParisPix, 30 November 2015

Shijiazhuang, AQI 360, China 2014. This panoramic shot shows a city barely visible through thick fog. Only the title -– AQI 360 –- suggests there is something sinister here. AQI stands for ‘Air Quality Index’. The index runs from 1-500, where 0-50 is ‘good’ and 301-500 indicates a hazardous level of pollution. AQI 301-500 can aggravate heart or lung disease, lead to premature mortality in the elderly and cause serious respiratory problems in the general population: photo by Benedikt Partenheimer via The Guardian 18 November 2014

 

Great Wall cloaked in smog, Beijing: photo by Vicky (vicky tricky), 10 October 2005

Great Wall cloaked in smog, Beijing: photo by Vicky (vicky tricky), 10 October 2005

Great Wall cloaked in smog, Beijing: photo by Vicky (vicky tricky), 10 October 2005

Great Wall cloaked in smog, Beijing: photo by Vicky (vicky tricky), 10 October 2005

 

China World Trade Centre Tower III (C), one of the tallest buildings in the city at 330m (1083ft), in the heavy haze in Beijing. Beijing and broad swaths of six northern provinces have spent the past week blanketed in a dense pea-soup smog that is not expected to abate until Thursday. Beijing’s concentration of PM 2.5 particles –- those small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream –-hit 505 micrograms per cubic metre on Tuesday night. The World Health Organisation recommends a safe level of 25: photo by Jason Lee / Reuters via The Guardian, 25 February 2014

 


China World Trade Centre Tower III (C), one of the tallest buildings in the city at 330m (1083ft), in the heavy haze in Beijing: photo by Jason Lee / Reuters via The Guardian, 25 February 2014

 
A big screen flashes commercials on the exterior of an office building in Xi'an on 15 December 2012: photo by Mayi Wong / EPA via The Guardian, 25 February 2014
     


A big screen flashes commercials on the exterior of an office building in Xi'an on 15 December 2012: photo by Mayi Wong / EPA via The Guardian, 25 February 2014



The Jinshanling Great Walls in Chengde, north of Beijing: photo by ChinaFotoPress via The Guardian, 25 February 2014



The Jinshanling Great Walls in Chengde, north of Beijing: photo by ChinaFotoPress via The Guardian, 25 February 2014

Chinese tourists walk on a slippery section of ice as snow is seen on the Great Wall after a snowfall on Monday near Beijing, China: photo by Kevin Frayer, 23 November 2015

   
Performers wearing effigies of world leaders gather for breakfast on the eve of #COP21.  By Eric Feferberg #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department #@AFPphoto, 30 November 2015

A Chinese tourist walks in the tongue of Glacier 1 at the base of the 7,556 m (24,790 ft) Mount Gongga, known in Tibet as Minya Konka. Hailuogou is one of China’s 8,500 monsoonal glaciers and the longest of 71 glaciers on the eastern slope of Mt. Gongga: photo by Kevin Frayer, 25 November 2015

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Stevie Smith: Oblivion

December 4, 2015, 3:52 pm

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Two life-size Victorian style dolls ride the London tube this morning. The creepy pair popped up at commuter hotspots across the capital to mark the launch of the world's first psychological theme park ride created by illusionist Derren Brown.: photo by PA via FT Photo Diary 3 December 2015

It was a human face in my oblivion

A human being and a human voice

That cried to me, Come back, come back, come back.

But I would not. I said I would not come back.

It was so sweet in my oblivion

There was a sweet mist wrapped me round about

And I trod in a sweet and milky sea, knee deep,

That was so pretty and so beautiful, growing deeper.

But still the voice cried out, Come back, come back,  
Come back to me from sweet oblivion!
It was a human and related voice
That cried to me in pain. So I turned back.

I cannot help but like Oblivion better

Than being a human heart and human creature,

But I can wait for her, her gentle mist

And those sweet seas that deepen are my destiny

And must come even if not soon. 

Florence Margaret (Stevie) Smith (1902-1971): Oblivion,from Scorpion and Other Poems, 1972

Migrants run as police fired tear gas into the entrance to the camp known as the ‘New Jungle’ in Calais, France: photo by Jeff J Mitchell, 2 December 2015

Cars drive past during the first snowfall of the season in Ankara on Wednesday: photo by Adem Altan/AFP, 2 December 2015

 Analyzing impact of UK Syria airstrikes: image via Reuters TV @ReutersTV, 3 December 2015

San Bernardino shooting. FBI investigators inside the suspects' Redlands home on Thursday morning: photo by Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times, 2 December 2015

San Bernardino shooting. Investigators search the suspected assailants' SUV in San Bernardino on Thursday morning.: photo by Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times, 2 December 2015

San Bernardino shooting. A body lies across the street from a black SUV that is suspected to be involved in a mass shooting in San Bernardino on Wednesday.: photo by KTLA / Los Angeles Times, 2 December 2015

  
San Bernardino vigil. Angel Meler-Baumgartner 11, who was a member of the Inland Regional Center, where the shooting occurred, attends a vigil at San Manuel Stadium for the victims: photo by Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times, 4 December 2015


  
San Bernardino vigil. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA held a press conference and prayer vigil at Baitul Hameed Mosque in Chino. The group denounced the massacre.: photo by Michael Robinson Chávez / Los Angeles Times, 4 December 2015

A boy prays at a mosque in Chino. Muslim community quick to condemn the tragedy in #sanbernardino @latimesphotose.: image via M Robinson Chávez @chavismophoto, 4 December 2015

Night seems too beautiful for the sadness that's about to overcome this stadium. #SanBernardinoShooting: image via Blake McCoy @BlakeNBC, 3 December 2015  San Bernardino, CA

A view of the kitchen inside the Redlands townhome where Syed Rizwan Farook and Tafsheen Malik, suspects in the deadly the recent mass shootings in San Bernardino, lived: photo by Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times, 4 December 2015

This is above the toilet in the upstairs bathroom: image via Kate Mather @katemather, 4 December 2015

#migrants protest behind a fence at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. #AFP Photo by @armend_nimani: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY 1 December 2015

#migrants protest behind a fence at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. #AFP Photo by @armend_nimani: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 1 December 2015

Migrants protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija, on Tuesday.Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees: photo by Armend Nimani/AFP, 1 December 2015

 

#migrants protest behind a fence at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. #AFP Photo by @armend_nimani: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 1 December 2015



A man carrying a baby cries after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border with other migrants and refugees, near the town of Gevgelija. Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Over 1,500 people are stuck on the border: photo by Armend Nimani/AFP, 4 December 2015

A lenticular cloud forms as white streaks from airplanes mark the blue sky, in a rare atmospheric phenomena above the town of Gevgelija, Macedonia. Lenticular clouds have been regularly confused for UFOs throughout history due to the their smooth, round or oval lens-shaped structure: photo by Armend Nimani/AFP, 4 December 2015

Alice Meynell: Parentage

December 7, 2015, 5:58 pm

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Civilians photographed in a damaged building in Syria's northern city of Aleppo following a reported air strike by government forces on Monday: photo by Karam Al-Masri/AFP, 7 December 2015

..."When Augustus Caesar legislated against the unmarried citizens of Rome, he declared them to be, in some sort, slayers of the people.''

    Ah! no, not these! 
These, who were childless, are not they who gave 
So many dead unto the journeying wave, 
The helpless nurslings of the cradling seas; 
Not they who doomed by infallible decrees 
Unnumbered man to the innumerable grave.

    But those who slay 
Are fathers. Theirs are armies. Death is theirs -- 
The death of innocences and despairs; 
The dying of the golden and the grey. 
The sentence, when these speak it, has no Nay. 
And she who slays is she who bears, who bears.
Alice Meynell (1847-1922): Parentage, from Later Poems (1902)

Russian aviation bombed the city of Aleppo: image via baraa al halabi @baraaalhalabi, 28 November 2015

 
Civilians photographed in a damaged building in Syria's northern city of Aleppo following a reported air strike by government forces on Monday: photo by Karam Al-Masri/AFP, 7 December 2015

 Not a place to despair Aleppo: image via baraa al halabi @baraaalhalabi, 30 November 2015

 Syria Aleppo now: image via baraa al halabi @baraaalhalabi, 7 December 2015

People look at the devastation caused by a fire that broke out at slums in Kadivali area of Mumbai, India. Hundreds of homes were reportedly destroyed as fire tenders laboured to reach the source in the heavily congested area: photo by Raianish Kakade/AP, 7 December 2015

Pakistani women walk along a street on a foggy day in Lahore: photo by Arif Ali/AFP, 7 December 2015

French riot police push back protestors during a demonstration in front of the Grand Palais in Paris, France, on Friday: photo by Yoan Valat/EPA, 4 December 2015

#Idomeni, Greece: "We are not terrorists. We want peace. Thank you for your help. Let us go". Photo: Nasim_Lomani: image via Revolución Real Ya @RRYrevolucion, 28 November 2015 

  

A woman stands in the remains of burnt out shacks following a devastating fire in the slums of Damu Nagar in the Kandiwali area, in Mumbai, India, Monday: photo by Divyakant Solanki/EPA, 7 December 2015



Romanian special forces servicemen wait on a bus before the beginning of the national day celebrations in Bucharest, Romania, Tuesday: photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP, 1 December 2015



French riot police push back protestors during a demonstration in front of the Grand Palais in Paris, France, on Friday: photo by Yoan Valat/EPA, 4 December 2015

Marine Le Pen, French National Front political party leader and candidate for the regional elections in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie region, speaks during a news conference in Lille, northern France after the far-right National Front (FN) made sweeping gains across France in a first round of voting on Sunday.: photo by Pascal Rossignol/Reuters, 7 December 2015


 
Sotheby's staff carry the painting ‘The Lock’ by John Constable. It is estimated to sell between £8-12 million at Sotheby’s London, Old Masters and British Paintings Evening sale on December 9: photo by Charlie Bibby/PA, 7 December 2015

A crow accompanies a group of Pakistani women as they walk along a street on a foggy day in Lahore: photo by Arif Ali/AFP, 7 December 2015

Hovering in a cage over fog

December 10, 2015, 11:20 pm

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Trotton Common. The whole common is covered in spider's webs and in the early morning light the dew-laden threads look almost frost like, a truly magical sight: photo by John Dominick, 19 August 2012

Anne Ridler: Now Philippa Is Gone

Now Philippa is gone, that so divinely

Could strum and sing, and is rufus and gay,

Have we heart to sing, or at midday

Dive under Trotton Bridge? We shall only

Doze in the yellow spikenard by the wood

And take our tea and melons in the shade.

Anne Ridler (1912-2001): Now Philippa Is Gone, from Collected Poems (1994)

LOST DUCK @ Trotton Bridge following AM training session Please Help us find Eric to race next week @southdownsvg2: image via Trotton Ducks @TrottonDucks, 31 August 2015

Manzanar cemetery: photo by Amanda Tomlin, 27 January 2009

       

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, in 2004.The granddaughter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt assailed Donald J. Trump on Thursday for citing internment camps set up by the Roosevelt administration in defending his proposal to ban foreign Muslims from entering the United States.“For Donald Trump to cite my grandfather and internment as a defense of his own intolerant and divisive agenda is reprehensible,” said Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.“Japanese-Americans, who were loyal citizens and who served bravely in the U.S. military, were scarred not only by the physical deprivation of internment but by the denial of the dignity and respect of their own country. As a nation, internment weakened us all. It is a tragic reminder of what happens when we allow fear and hysteria to trump our values.": photo by John Amis/Associated Press via The New York Times, 10 December 2015

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

 

Donald J. Trump has also gained some support in Britain, and a counterpetition titled “Don’t Ban Trump From the United Kingdom” has more than 10,000 signatures: photo by John Locher/Associated Press, 10 December 2015

W. H. Auden: Epitaph on a Tyrant

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

 W. H. Auden (1907-1973):Epitaph on a Tyrant, January 1939, from Another Time (1940)

 

A Donald J. Trump rally in Davenport, Iowa, last week. More than four in 10 Republican primary voters say the quality most important to them in a candidate is strong leadership, and those voters heavily favor Mr. Trump: photo by Scott Olson/The New York Times, 10 December 2015

Donald J. Trump, in Raleigh N.C., last Friday, has caused the Democrats to try to figure out the roots of his appeal: photo by Ray Whitehouse for The New York Times, 10 December 2015

Tyskland (Berlin) (camera: Leica / film: Agfa Color Neu): photo by Thomas Neumann, 1937 (National Archives of Norway)

Andrei Codrescu: A Play For The Chinese Theatre

Are you running away from China, Hsi?
 
Where should I put these flowers, Wong? The guns
are in the vase.
 
Put them here. No. Put them here. No. Not there. Here.
No Hsi. Here. Here Hsi. No. Not here. Here no Here no
Here Hsi.
 
Wong, these flowers are for you.
 
For me? For me? No. Not for me. Not for me no. No
Hsi. No. Not for me. Thank you, Hsi. Bless you, Hsi.
May God bless you, Hsi. He has blessed you Hsi. He
bless you again Hsi.
 
It is nothing, Wong. When one friend needs another
a vase is any good as other, as Lin Yee said.
 
Did Lin Yee say so? Did he? No Hsi he did not. He
could not Hsi. Did he? Did he Hsi? Did he? He did
he did Hsi. How good that he did Hsi. How happy I
am Hsi. He did Hsi. How happy that he did Hsi.
 
Yes, I agree. Now quickly, get behind the rock and
start calling Lee.
 
Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee!
Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee! Lee!

Andrei Codrescu: A Play For The Chinese Theatre, from Strange Faeces #17 (1974)

After the Beijing government sounded a red alert over air pollution, sales of masks and air purifiers soared: photo by Kevin Frayer /The New York Times, 10 December 2015

People in Beijing wearing face masks on Wednesday. Such masks have become an increasingly common sight in China in recent years.: photo by Kevin Frayer/ The New York Times, 10 December 2015

A coal-fired power plant on the outskirts of Beijing. Industrial coal use is a critical component of the nation's rapid economic growth, but it has also contributed to air pollution.: photo by Kevin Frayer / The New York Times, 10 December 2015

Refugees and migrants wait for buses leading them to the city centre, after disembarking from a government chartered ferry in a port of Piraeus near Athens on Thursday: photo by Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP, 10 December 2015

Evan Jayne, of France, competes in the bareback riding event during the seventh go-round of the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas: photo by John Locher/AP, 10 December 2015

Demonstrators from NGO Oxfam wear big heads of world leaders, US President Barack Obama, Chinese President Xi Jinping, French President Francois Hollande, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in front of the COP21 conference center in Le Bourget, north of Paris, France on Thursday: photo by Yoan Valat/EPA, 10 December 2015

A paramilitary policeman wearing a mask stands guard in front of the giant portrait of Chinese late chairman Mao Zedong, amid heavy smog after the city issued its first ever “red alert” for air pollution in Beijing, China: photo by Reuters, 10 December 2015

Glenridding after the river in the town in Cumbria burst its banks again following continued rainfall overnight on Thursday: photo by Danny Lawson/PA, 10 December 2015

A building with a screen on it in Beijing on Tuesday was obscured by smog that led to the city’s top level of air pollution warning: photo by  Damir Sagolj/Reuters, 8 December 2015

 Members of the Syrian government forces sit in a tower at a military base, as hundreds of civilians and Syrian rebel forces began evacuating the last opposition-held district of Waer in the central city of Homs: photo by Louai Beshara/AFP, 9 December 2015

An Indian Sikh devotee takes a dip in the holy sarover (water tank) during dense fog at the Golden Temple in Amritsar: photo by Narinder Nanu/AFP, 9 December 2015

Palestinians run to take cover after Israeli security forces fires tear gas during clashes at the main entrance of the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Tuesday after the funeral of Palestinian Malek Shahin in the Dheisheh refugee camp: photo by Musa Al Shaer/AFP, 8 December 2015

A man sits on rail tracks as migrants and refugees wait to cross the Greek-Macedonian border near Idomeni on Thursday. Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees: photo by Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP, 8 December 2015

 
Donald J. Trump speaking at a rally on Monday on the aircraft carrier Yorktown in South Carolina: photo by Sean Rayford / The New York Times, 8 December 2015

 Donald J. Trump, in Macon, Ga., last week: photo by Kevin D. Liles for The New York Times, 5 December 2010 

Donald J. Trump on Monday aboard the aircraft carrier Yorktown in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina: photo by Mic Smith/AP, 7 December 2015

 Donald J. Trump, in Macon, Ga., last week, uses a harsh tone: photo by Kevin D. Liles for The New York Times, 5 December 2010

 

May 1st parade, Germany, 1930s: photo by Paul Walde; image by Andreas Praefcke, 2005

Journalists hover in a cage over fog covered Frankfurt am Main to watch the construction site of the Henninger tower in Frankfurt am Main, central Germany, on Tuesday: photo by Arne Dedert/DPA/AFP, 8 December 2015
 

Heavy smog surrounding the West Lake in Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province in China on Tuesday. Because of industrial coal burning, Chinese cities regularly have among the world's worst air quality.: photo by China Daily via Reuters, 8 December 2015

On the happy side, Beijing is pioneering fashion for the late anthropocene era: image via Chris Buckley @ChuBailiang, 8 December 2015

Maybe Beijing should consider augmenting traffic lights with fog horns, relocated lighthouses: image via Chris Buckley @ChuBailiang, 8 December 2015

Beijing haiku: A man on a bench in code red smog / pulls down his mask / to drag on a cigarette: image via Chris Buckley @ChuBailiang, 8 December 2015

 
Two women take a photograph in heavy smog in Beijing: photo by Kevin Frayer/The New York Times, 8 December 2015
 

A video display on the side of a building shows a map of China amid heavy pollution and fog in Beijing. Schools were ordered to keep students indoors Tuesday after record-breaking pollution in the Chinese capital soared to 36 times the safety levels.: photo by Mark Schielfelbein, 1 December 2015

Cripes, that's cool. "TV tower rises above fog in Budapest; taken from the top of Tubes Mountain" (Tamas Soki/MTI): image via pourmecoffee @pourmecoffee, 8 December 2015 

It's Pearl Harbor Day and this photo of exploding USS Shaw with palm tree in foreground always knocks me back: image via pourmecoffee @pourmecoffee, 7 December 2015

Wow wow. Tomorrow's Philadelphia Daily News.: image via Daniel Dale @ddale8, 7 December 2015 

Why do they always have funny haircuts? #TrumpOnCNN: image via miracle ninja @MiracleNinja777, 8 December 2015

In the streets of Berlin (camera: Leica / film: Agfa Color Neu): photo by Thomas Neumann, 1937 (National Archives of Norway)

Children play football on the bank of the Ayeyarwaddy river in Mandalay, Myanmar on Tuesday: photo by Hkun Lat/AP, 8 December 2015

 A Muslim man writes out verses from the Koran on a wooden tablet to be used at a local Madrassa while sitting at a camp for displaced persons hosted at the Central Mosque in Bangui on Thursday: photo by Marco Longari/AFP, 3 December 2015

Lorenzo Thomas: The Universe

What shines is your black body.

This is all truth. Reflected

in the dark space of my dark eyes

Or can it be the lighting in the room?

And thunder. If thunder says

"Listen, I am the Thunder.

I am the Solomon of a small space

And a sun blazing"

This is a hieroglyph.

Lorenzo Thomas (1944-2005): The Universe, from Sound Science (1978)

Tyskland (Berlin) (camera: Leica / film: Agfa Color Neu): photo by Thomas Neumann, 1937 (National Archives of Norway)

Large crowds and decorated streets with Nazi banners, Labour Day (May 1st) in Berlin (camera: Leica / film: Agfa Color Neu): photo by Thomas Neumann, 1937 (National Archives of Norway)

Large crowds and decorated streets with Nazi banners, Labour Day (May 1st) in Berlin (camera: Leica / film: Agfa Color Neu): photo by Thomas Neumann, 1937 (National Archives of Norway)

Mount Fuji is seen behind cranes and buildings during sunset at a port in Tokyo, Japan, on Wednesday. Japan’s core machinery orders unexpectedly jumped in October by the most since March 2014: photo by Toru Hanai/Reuters, 9 December 2015

Mount Fuji is seen between cranes and buildings during sunset at a port in Tokyo, Japan, on Wednesday. Japan’s core machinery orders unexpectedly jumped in October by the most since March 2014: photo by Toru Hanai/Reuters, 9 December 2015

The old country

December 13, 2015, 5:37 pm

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Boy with pudding bowl haircut, St Stephen's Green, Dublin: photo by Elinor Wiltshire, 1964 (National Library of Ireland)

They never tired of talking of it

the way one might talk about not another country

but another world.

It was where they'd come from. There, things

had not been the way they are here

oh soft and easy like this

as they would explain

grinding their large strong fists

into your small weak arm. 

House in Tippermore in aftermath of raid by tans -- boy boarding up window and small child with deflated ball: photo by W.B. Hogan, 1921 (Hogan-Wilson Collection, National Library of Ireland)

Boats moored by the harbour, Schull, County Cork: photo by Fergus O'Connor, c. 1910 (Fergus O'Connor Collection, National Library of Ireland)

Young England's Floral Alphabet. Edith (1878-1964) and Ethel Dillon (1880-1978) outside the Photograph House at Clonbrock Estate, Ahascragh, County Galway: photo by a member of the Dillon family, c. 1884 (National Library of Ireland)

Neoteny / Privilege

December 16, 2015, 11:06 pm

≫ Next: Philip Larkin: Aubade

≪ Previous: The old country

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96-foot Christmas tree burns down at Westin South Coast Plaza: image via The Daily Pilot @The Daily Pilot, 14 December 2015

Neoteny

the mad 96 foot christmas tree of the destiny of the species burns

and the entire school district is evacuated out of an abundance of brain gumbo

Monkey Mind by Squirrelly Logic out of Random Unfolding of Events
goes off at 8-5 spurred by Incurably Talkative Inner Tongues
tell you the cosmic giggle is not your friend
the plasticity of time language eats up
cold and so clear white boat wakes churn visible outside the Gate

Fire destroys 90-foot Christmas tree outside Costa Mesa hotel (pics @cdavidsonger): image via KTLA @KTLA, 14 December 2015

Fire destroys 90-foot Christmas tree outside Costa Mesa hotel (pics @cdavidsonger): image via KTLA @KTLA, 14 December 2015

 

Fire destroys 90-foot Christmas tree outside Costa Mesa hotel (pics @cdavidsonger): image via KTLA @KTLA, 14 December 2015

 

Fire destroys 90-foot Christmas tree outside Costa Mesa hotel (pics @cdavidsonger): image via KTLA @KTLA, 14 December 2015

A maintenance crew gets to work after an early morning fire destroyed the 96-foot white fir Christmas tree at the Westin South Coast Plaza on Monday: photo by Don Leach / Daily Pilot, 14 November 2015

A maintenance crew cleans the area around the Westin South Coast Plaza Christmas tree which was destroyed in an early morning fire Monday morning. The 96-foot white fir tree is an annual holiday tradition in Town Center Park.: photo by Don Leach / Daily Pilot, 14 November 2015

South Coast Plaza's Christmas tree as seen from the eighth floor of Westin South Coast Plaza during the 34th annual tree lighting on Thursday, November 19: photo by Scott Smeltzer / Daily Pilot, 15 December 2015

It's Beginning To Feel a Lot Like... Day 336 of 2015. Christmas lights are now officially acceptable.: photo by Eugene Kim, 2 December 2015

Palm frond, San Pablo Avenue, Oakland: photo by Mike Linksvayer, 15 November 2015

Commuters were evacuated from a Metro in #DTLA on Tuesday after smoke was detected. @LANow: image via barbara davidson @photospice, 15 December 2015  Los Angeles, CA

Commuters were evacuated from a Metro in #DTLA on Tuesday after smoke was detected. @LANow: image via barbara davidson @photospice, 15 December 2015  Los Angeles, CA

Commuters were evacuated from a Metro in #DTLA on Tuesday after smoke was detected. @LANow: image via barbara davidson @photospice, 15 December 2015  Los Angeles, CA

Commuters were evacuated from a Metro in #DTLA on Tuesday after smoke was detected. @LANow: image via barbara davidson @photospice, 15 December 2015  Los Angeles, CA

 

All #LAUSD schools closed by 'credible threat' of violence: image via L.A. Times Photos @latimesphotos, 15 December 2015

All #LAUSD schools closed by 'credible threat' of violence: image via L.A. Times Photos @latimesphotos, 15 December 2015

All #LAUSD schools closed by 'credible threat' of violence: image via L.A. Times Photos @latimesphotos, 15 December 2015

All #LAUSD schools closed by 'credible threat' of violence: image via L.A. Times Photos @latimesphotos, 15 December 2015

 LAPD School Police check on the officials at the LAUSD bus yard in Gardena after complete closure of the district: image via Mark Boster @MarkBoster, 15 December 2015

 

 Its locked down tighter than Darth Vader's strangle grip at #StarWarsPremiere @jlclendenin: image via Hal Wells @lahalw, 15 December 2015  West Covina, CA



Carrie Fisher, who reprises the iconic Leia, plays with the photographers at the red-carpet premiere of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" in Hollywood.: photo by Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times, 15 December 2015

George Lucas, left, creator of the "Star Wars franchise, and director J.J. Abrams chat at the red-carpet premiere of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" in Hollywood: photo by Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times, 15 December 2015

PK's PICKS #GoldenGate, #GGFRacing, with our #SpeedRatingsProjections JUST SIGN UP (FREE): image via peter karam @Peterkaram729, 12 December 2015

 

Actor Harrison Ford and his wife, actress Calista Flockhart, arrive at the red-carpet premiere of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" in Hollywood: photo by Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times, 15 December 2015

 

#arson suspected in fire at Coachella mosque, Islamic Society of Palm Springs, #Molotov cocktail #BreakingNews: image via Gina Ferazzi @Gina Ferazzi 14 December 2015

Watch: What's your first #StarWars memory? @latimesent: image via LA Times Video @latimesvideo, 16  December 2015

Parents dropping off their children at Gardner Street Elementary School in Hollywood, a day after a threat prompted officials to shut down all public schools in Los Angeles: photo by Monica Almeida/The New York Times, 16 December 2015

Schools were back in session in Los Angeles on Wednesday, but many parents are still on edge: image via The New York Times @nytimes, 16 December 2015

 

 Prayer candles glow where a 17-year-old student was killed in LA while on his way to a closed school yesterday.: image via Mark Boster @MarkBoster, 16 December 2015

 

Emotions run high at the Highland Park memorial site where a 17-year-old student was killed in a traffic accident: image via Mark Boster @MarkBoster, 16 December 2015


Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor of political science at Wheaton College, wore a hijab at a church service in Chicago. Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian institution in Illinois, has disciplined Hawkins, putting her on administrative leave after she wore a head scarf in solidarity with Muslims and said they worship the “same God” as Christians.: photo by Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune, via Associated Press, 16 December 2015

 

Malala Yousafzai, the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, in Birmingham, England, on Monday. Ms. Yousafzai, 18, denounced Donald J. Trump’s contentious policies toward Muslims in an interview with Agence France-Presse on Tuesday. “Well, that’s really tragic that you hear these comments which are full of hatred, full of this ideology of being discriminative towards others,” Ms. Yousafzai said: photo by Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse, 16 December 2015

Helicopters. Unnecessary. #FreddieGray: image via Chuck Modi @ChuckModi1, 16 December 2015

 

"This is what the justice system looks like for Black people" #FreddieGray#WilliamPorter Trial: image via Chuck Modi @ChuckModi1, 16 December 2015

"Do you know what this police lineup is? It's an act of power" #FreddieGray#WilliamPorter Trial: image via Chuck Modi @ChuckModi1, 16 December 2015

 

"You are no different than the gang members you lock up. And you know this." #FreddieGray#WilliamPorter Trial: image via Chuck Modi @ChuckModi1, 16 December 2015

 

Don't trust her. #FreddieGray#WilliamPorter Trial: image via Chuck Modi @ChuckModi1, 16 December 2015

 

"A lot of concerns about all the 'rioting' in the past" She asks. Fox took as long as 2nd Q to ask. #FreddieGray: image via Chuck Modi @ChuckModi1, 16 December 2015

 

Hitting streets now. #FreddieGray#WilliamPorter Trial: image via Chuck Modi @ChuckModi1, 16 December 2015

 

ICYMI: The highlights from last night's #GOPDebate: image via Reuters Politics @ReutersPolitics, 16 December 2015

 

 

Will Donald Trump make America great again? Have your say #BVpredictions 2016: image via ReutersBreakingViews @BreakingViews, 16 December 2015

 

 

Members of German federal police Bundespolizei demonstrate their skills during a presentation of the new unit for arrests and securing evidence (BFE) in Ahrensfelde near Berlin, Germany on Wednesday: photo by Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters, 16 December 2015

 

 A man consults a mobile phone outside a clothes store in Salamanca an upscale neighbourhood of Madrid: photo by Gerard Julien/AFP, 16 December 2015

A Filipino villager burns debris in the typhoon-hit town of Donsol, Sorsogon province, southern Manila, Philippines on Wednesday: photo by Francis R. Malasig/EPA, 16 December 2015

An armed Kurdish militant walks in the Okmeydani district of Istanbul during a demonstration against recent curfews imposed on Kurdish towns: photo by Cagdas Erdogan 16 December 2015

Privilege: Elizabeth Daryush: Children of wealth in your warm nursery

German Chancellor Angela Merkel holds a toy wolf she got as a present during a party convention of the Christian Democrats (CDU) in Karlsruhe, Germany: photo by Michael Probst/AP, 14 December 2015

Children of wealth in your warm nursery,
Set in the cushioned window-seat to watch
The volleying snow, guarded invisibly
By the clear double pane through which no touch
Untimely penetrates, you cannot tell
What winter means; its cruel truths to you
Are only sound and sight; your citadel
Is safe from feeling, and from knowledge too.
 

Go down, go out to elemental wrong,
Waste your too round limbs, tan your skin too white;
The glass of comfort, ignorance, seems strong
To-day, and yet perhaps this very night

You'll wake to horror's wrecking fire -- ­your home
Is wired within for this, in every room.

 

Elizabeth Daryush (1887-1977): Children of wealth in your warm nursery, from Collected Poems (1976)

A boy carries a basket of laundry as another child follows him inside Eleonas refugee camp near central Athens Monday. Financially stricken Greece is the main entry point for asylum-seekers trying to enter the 28-nation European Union: photo by Thanassis Stavrakis/AP, 14 December 2015

Labourers unload sacks of rice from a handcart at a wholesale market in Kolkata, India, on Monday: photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters, 14 December 2015

Children playing front of a brick factory on the outskirts of the Myanmar city of Mandalay: photo by Phyo Hein Kyaw / AFP, 14 December 2015

A Syrian man escorts his injured wife following reported air strikes by regime forces on the town of al-Nashabiyah in the eastern Ghouta region, a rebel stronghold east of the capital Damascus, on Monday: photo by Amer Almohibany/AFP, 11 December 2015

 

A Palestinian woman supporting Hamas attends a rally in Gaza City on Monday, to mark the ruling Islamist movement’s 28th birthday: photo by Mahmud Hamsa/AFP, 11 December 2015

Palestinian protesters carry an injured comrade during clashes with Israeli soldiers that followed a protest against the Israeli settlements in Qadomem, in the Kofr Qadom village near the West Bank city of Nablus, on Friday: photo by Alaa Badarneh/EPA, 11 December 2015

Young Moroccans pray for rain, Marrakesh, Morocco, on Friday. The King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, called on the faithful to pray for rain in the Kingdom, which is suffering from a severe drought as a result of the depletion of the water table, severely affecting agriculture in the country: photo by Abdelhak Senna/EPA, 11 December 2015

Residents walk by damage at a site hit by one of three explosive trucks, in the YPG-controlled town of Tel Tamer, Syria on Friday: photo by Rodi Said/Reuters, 11 December 2015

The Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz TMA-19M space ship carrying a new crew to the International Space Station, ISS, blasts off at the Russian leased Baikonur in Kazakhstan. The Russian rocket carries British astronaut Tim Peake, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and U.S. astronaut Tim Kopra: photo by Dmitry Lovetsky/AP, 15 December 2015

Vladimir Mayakovsky: Anent the Deeference o Tastes

A cuddy,

goavin at a camel,

......................laughit:

'Whit

kinna cuddy's yon,

...............aa bim-bam-bauchlt?'

The camel shrieked:

...............'Ye caa yirsel a cuddy?

Ye're naethin

but a scrunty

...............shilpit camel!''

-- Ach ,

lat auld Frosty-Pow abune unscrammle

the twa puir craturs;

..he

.....kens the brose frae the gundy.

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930): Anent the Deeference o Tastes, from Wi the haill voice: 25 poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky, translated into the Scots by Edwin Morgan, 1972

Droid BB-8 arrives at the world premiere of the film “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood, California last night: photo by Mario Anzuoni/Reuters, 15 December 2015

Filipinos evacuate the typhoon-hit town of Juban, Sorsogon province, southern Philippines, on Tuesday: photo by Francis R Malasig/EPA 15 December 2015

A mural is seen with a slum in the background on the bank of the Rio Negro (Black River), in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil: photo by Christophe Simon/AFP, 15 December 2015


 
Mack Weldon, shown here, offers well-constructed though low-key products pitched online to a prosperous imaginary Everyman: photo by New York Times, 24 November 2015

Stamford Five-Bedroom • $1,499,000 • FAIRFIELD • 200 Fifth Street TAXES $22,530 a year: photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times, 11 December 2015

Stamford Five-Bedroom • $1,499,000 • FAIRFIELD • 200 Fifth Street TAXES $22,530 a year: photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times, 11 December 2015


Stamford Five-Bedroom • $1,499,000 • FAIRFIELD • 200 Fifth Street TAXES $22,530 a year: photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times, 11 December 2015
 
Stamford Five-Bedroom • $1,499,000 • FAIRFIELD • 200 Fifth Street TAXES $22,530 a year: photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times, 11 December 2015
 
Stamford Five-Bedroom • $1,499,000 • FAIRFIELD • 200 Fifth Street TAXES $22,530 a year: photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times, 11 December 2015
 
Stamford Five-Bedroom • $1,499,000 • FAIRFIELD • 200 Fifth Street TAXES $22,530 a year: photo by Douglas Healey for The New York Times, 11 December 2015

The designers of Valentino were honored Monday night at the Lincoln Center Corporate Fund’s gala at Alice Tully Hall. Guests included Debbie Harry, who performed later in the night, and Giancarlo Giammetti: photo by Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times, 7 December 2015

She closed her set with one of her solo songs, “In Love With Love.”: photo by Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times, 7 December 2015

l“Oui” (Yes) is seen written on the walls of a polling station in Bangui, where a soldier of the UN peacekeeping force MINUSCA contingent is on guard on Monday: photo by Marco Longari/AFP, 14 December 2015

An Indian roadside traditional ear cleaner cleans the ear of a customer in New Delhi, India, on Tuesday: photo by Rajat Gupta/EPA, 15 December 2015

 

 
 “Oui” (Yes) is seen written on the walls of a polling station in Bangui, where a soldier of the UN peacekeeping force MINUSCA contingent is on guard on Monday: photo by Marco Longari/AFP, 14 December 2015

 

 
An Indian roadside traditional ear cleaner cleans the ear of a customer as another customer waits for his turn in New Delhi, India, on Tuesday: photo by Rajat Gupta/EPA, 15 December 2015

 

 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel holds a toy wolf she got as a present during a party convention of the Christian Democrats (CDU) in Karlsruhe, Germany: photo by Michael Probst/AP, 14 December 2015

 

 A man consults a mobile phone beside a woman begging on the pavement outside a clothes store in Salamanca an upscale neighbourhood of Madrid: photo by Gerard Julien/AFP, 16 December 2015

Children playing front of a brick factory on the outskirts of the Myanmar city of Mandalay: photo by Phyo Hein Kyaw / AFP, 14 December 2015

Mt. Diablo is silhouetted as the sun rises above the Sacramento River delta: photo by Melinda Welsh/Los Angeles Times, 11 December 2015

Philip Larkin: Aubade

December 21, 2015, 10:01 pm

≫ Next: Joseph Ceravolo: A Piece of Glass / Stephen Ratcliffe: 12.20

≪ Previous: Neoteny / Privilege

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An elevation in the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, covered in a thick layer of fog, on Monday. Due to high levels of NO2 (nitrogen dioxide) in the air over the city and a certain meteorological condition, residents of Sarajevo were recommended to reduce their movement in the streets and to reduce car traffic: photo by Fehim Demir/EPA, 21 December 2015

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
-- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused -- nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear -- no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Philip Larkin (1922-1985): Aubade, drafted 1974, completed 29 November 1977, first published in Times Literary Supplement, 23 December 1977; also appears in Poems 1946-1983, from Collected Poems (1988)

 

It went so far, it was so bad (that the best thing was that you were not like them): photo by y Coyhand, 15 November 2015

Many thanks for writing so kindly about my mother. It has been a depressing year since about March, when she began to deteriorate (she had been in a nursing home for nearly six years), and the last few months of her life were scarcely livable. She would have been 92 in January! Yesterday my sister and I went to Lichfield (where my branch of Larkins come from) and saw her ashes interred next to my father's, in what the Rector said would be the last burial at the Old Churchyard, wch wd now be handed over to the Council to be 'landscaped' into a vandals' playground, or some such nonsense.  I expect I shan't see all the old Larkin graves again (one of 'Phillip Larkin', d. 1879), as they will all be levelled and the stones taken away.

I don't know whether it's a result of all this but I feel very disinclined to observe Christmas even in the few rudimentary ways I usually do. Depression hangs over me as if I were Iceland. A succession of duties have occupied me... I can't imagine how I ever found time to write poems, let alone had the inclination, though I did round off an old one lately and it will appear in the TLS called Aubade.

Philip Larkin to Winifred Bradshaw (née Arnott), 13 December 1977, in Selected Letters of Philip Larkin 1940-1985 (1992)

 

Very good of you to write about 'Aubade' and the feelings that inspired it... several people have said they liked it as a poem, but avoided mentioning its subject... It's hard to say whether fear of death is a neurotic condition (of course, I don't know what a neurotic condition is, but still). My first impulse is to say that it is simply seeing things clearly... or that it's simply being more sensitive (like worrying about cruelty to animals (I do that too). But does one's fear increase in direct ratio to the nearness of death? Is an adolescent less frightened than an old age pensioner? Is a man in an air raid more frightened still? Is a mortally sick man more frightened than any? Not, I think, necessarily. A lady of 70 wrote to me about the poem 'When I was 50 I felt as you do; now I don't bother.' So perhaps we can comfort ourselves with the thought that when death is really near, it won't worry us. We shall become as thickskinned as everyone else.

... You might like Llewellyn Powys's Love and death, an autobiographical novel that ends with death in the first person, quite a tour de force. But nothing really expunges the terror: it remains a sort of Bluebeard's chamber in the mind, something one is always afraid of -- and this is bad for one. It certainly doesn't feel like egocentricity!

 

Philip Larkin to W. G. Runciman, 26 November 1978, in Selected Letters of Philip Larkin 1940-1985 (1992)

 A Muslim man prays while people shout slogans against U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump outside of his office in Manhattan, New York: photo by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters, 21 December 2015

Druze women mourn their relatives Farhan al-Shaalan and Samir Kantar, who were killed from an Israeli airstrike near the Syrian capital, in the Druze village of Ein Kinya in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights, near the border with Syriak: photo by Ariel Schalit/AP, 21 December 2015

SYRIA - A Syrian photographer carries injured girl following air strikes on al-Nashabiyah. By Amer Almohibany By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgffardAFP, 15 December 2015

#floods in Manila, Philippines #AFP Photo by @afp_noel: photo by Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 19 December 2015

 

Christmas decorations for sale in the Shia holy city of Najaf on Thursday: photo by Haidar Hamdan/AFP, 17 December 2015

Palestinian women mourn as they take the last look at the body of Yahya Taha, 21, who was killed during clashes with Israeli troops following an Israeli army raid, at the family house during his funeral in the West Bank village of Qattana, near Ramallah, Thursday: photo by Nasser Nasser/AP, 26 November 2015

Filipino, Fil Binay battles to contain a fire in Mandaluyong City, east of Manila, Philippines: photo by Mark R. Cristino/EPA, 25 November 2015

 
Filipinos search for salvageable materials following a fire in Manila: photo by Mark R. Cristino/EPA, 17 December 2015

A man walks past steam rising from underground heating pipes outside a shopping mall in Beijing: photo by Greg Baker/AFP, 17 December 2015

 

 An Israeli soldier during a demonstration in front of a gate along the Israeli controversial separation wall in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, on Friday: photo by Musa Al Shaer/AFP, 18 December 2015

 Siberian gulls hover over Sangam, the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers, in Allahabad, India. The gulls travel thousands of miles to India during the Siberian winter in October and return home in March: photo by Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP, 17 December 2015



An elevation in the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, covered in a thick layer of fog, on Monday. Due to high levels of NO2 (nitrogen dioxide) in the air over the city and a certain meteorological condition, residents of Sarajevo were recommended to reduce their movement in the streets and to reduce car traffic: photo by Fehim Demir/EPA, 21 December 2015

 

Filipinos search for salvageable materials following a fire in Manila: photo by Mark R. Cristino/EPA, 17 December 2015

 

A Palestinian dressed up as Santa Claus talks to an Israeli soldier during a demonstration in front of a gate along the Israeli controversial separation wall in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, on Friday: photo by Musa Al Shaer/AFP, 18 December 2015

Joseph Ceravolo: A Piece of Glass / Stephen Ratcliffe: 12.20

December 23, 2015, 11:20 pm

≫ Next: The Lie Behind the Timeline: How 2015 Was Framed

≪ Previous: Philip Larkin: Aubade

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Kashmiris peel the bark off wicker sticks on the outskirts of Srinagar, India, the largest city in the Kashmir Valley. The sticks are used to make traditional fire pots for warmth: photo by Farooq Khan/European Pressphoto Agency, 22 December 2015

Joseph Ceravolo: A Piece of Glass

Staring on the ground

for one reason

except looking into a piece of glass

in the winter among the leaves.

Now you know the grassy field

is clocked for winter

while in the rooms of a house

shadows of trees, as lives

inhabit autumn and blossoms.

On the top branch of a wiry tree

a bird sits and looks

against the sky,

but is really some distance

from the great look in your eyes

that tenders pity, irony

innocence and love.
Why go on looking

when the sparse groups walking

on the island desert

where groups of cormorants and ibises

make their last nest

within the survival key.

The light flashes on the giant thermometer

timed to infinity.

Ah, if the infinite particles

would be your touch.

But, from a piece of glass

shines the soul

on the veins of an arm

that tears away

my eyes from you

as the night tears away

from the sun.

......Without a sound a plane

......follows a bird

......in the rapturous distance

......next to my eyes,

......to the dark raising of the earth,

......as the disappearance

......of darkness and light

......deepens the agony of sparks

......of that look in your eyes.

Joseph Ceravolo (1934-1988): A Piece of Glass, 23 December 1984, from Collected Poems (2013)

Afghan children watch as laborers produce sugar cane juice in a factory in Jalalabad: photo by Mohammad Anwar Danishyar/Associated Press, 21 December 2015

South Korean workers are seen from a crane as they work on the 123rd floor during the framing completion ceremony of the ‘Lotte World Tower’ in Seoul, South Kora, on Tuesday. The building’s exterior was completed in a final height of 550 meters, and 123 floors.: photo by Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA, 22 December 2015

 

A Chinese woman wearing a mask walks in a shopping street during a hazy day in Beijing city, China, on Tuesday. Beijing issued a red alert for smog, urging schools to close and residents to stay indoors for the second time in 10 days.: photo by Wu Hong/EPA, 22 December 2015

 

A Kashmiri Muslim woman peels off the bark of wicker sticks on the outskirts of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir, on Tuesday. Wicker sticks are used to make Kangir, the traditional Kashmiri firepot, which is used to keep warm during cold winters: photo by Farooq Khan/EPA, 21 December 2015

A Palestinian wood carver works on a figurine of an angel at an olive wood factory next to the Church of the Nativity, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem today: photo by Majdi Mohammed/AP, 23 December 2015

 The child of Kurdish migrants stands outside a tent at the Grande Synthe migrant camp near Dunkirk in northern France on Wednesday: photo by Denis Charlet/AFP, 23 December 2015
 

Zookeepers dressed in Santa Claus costumes feed penguins during a Christmas event as part of a promotion for the upcoming Christmas at the Everland amusement park in Yongin, South Korea today: photo by Lee Jin-Man/AP 23 December 2015

Carbon dioxide enveloped vehicles in Mainz, Germany, after a gas leak. A police spokeswoman said the source was probably a gas-tank wagon.: photo by Interior Ministry Rhineland-Palatinatet/European Pressphoto Agency, 22 December 2015

Kurdish boys ran from Turkish police officers during clashes in the southeastern Turkish city of Sirnak: photo by Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse, 21 December 2015

An African migrant wrapped in a blanket after his rescue by the Libyan Coast Guard west of Tripoli, Libya. He was among 100 people trying to reach Italy on an inflatable raft.: photo by Mohamed Ben Khalifa/Associated Press, 21 December 2015
 

 #Kurds clash with police in Diyarbakir #Turkey #AFP Photo by @pironic2121: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 14 December 2015

People chant slogans during a protest against security operations against Kurdish rebels in southeastern Turkey cities Cizre and Silopi, in Sirnak on Tuesday: photo by Bulent Kilic/AFP,  22 December 2015

A #Kurdish boy looks on during a demonstration in #Sirnak against #Turkish operations. By @Kilicbil @AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 21 December 2015

Kashmiri protesters, engulfed in teargas smoke, throw stones at Indian security personnel in Srinagar, Indian-controlled Kashmir, Friday: photo by Dar Yasin/AP, 18 December 2015

Kashmiri Muslim women wail as they watch the funeral procession of suspected rebels, at Barhama, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Monday: photo by Mukhtar Khan/AP, 5 October 2015

Kashmiri Muslim women wail as they watch the funeral procession of suspected rebels, at Barhama, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Monday: photo by Mukhtar Khan/AP, 5 October 2015

A Kashmiri villager cries for his missing relative after a cloud burst at Kullan village in Ganderbal district, on Friday. At least four people were killed in a series of cloud bursts that were reported from several parts of Kashmir during heavy rainfall: photo by Danish Ismail/Reuters, 18 July 2015

lifted

An Afghan boy plays in the ruins of a house that at one point belonged to the 13th-century Persian poet, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, on the 
 outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif: photo by Farshad Usyan/AFP, 26 November 2015

 
#Afghanistan An Afghan boy plays in the ruins of a house on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif. By @Farshad Usyan/AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFP Photo, 26 November 2015

 

Whirling dervish during a ceremony commemorating the death of Sufi poet Rumi in Aleppo: image via baraa al halabi @baraaalhalabi, 15 December 2015

In a whirl. Inside the Rumi festival in Konya. The 13th-century Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi (Mevlâna) is all but considered a saint. One of the world’s great mystic philosophers, his poetry and religious writings are among the most beloved and respected in Islam and well beyond.Since the death of Jalaluddin Rumi in 1273, the Mevlevi order has commemorated his life: photo by Kashfi Halford via the Guardian, 18 December 2015

Sema is the inspiration of Rumi as well as a part of Turkish custom, history, beliefs and culture. The Sema ceremony represents a mystical journey of man's spiritual ascent through mind and love to perfection.: photo by Kashfi Halford via The Guardian, 18 December 2015

Gathering for music. After the Sema people come together at one of the many Dargahs in Konya to do Zikrs and sing, people from many different countries gather here.: photo by Kashfi Halford via The Guardian, 18 December 2015

Finale. On the final night of the festival, the Rumi ceremony takes place at a different venue, and the Seb-i Arus or wedding night ritual is attended by dignitaries.: photo by Kashfi Halford via The Guardian, 18 December 2015

sunk

 Rescue workers search for survivors in the aftermath of a landslide in Shenzhen in southern China’s Guangdong province Monday. The massive landslide buried dozens of buildings when it swept through an industrial park in the Chinese city.: photo by China Photo/AP, 21 December 2015

Rescuers search for potential survivors following a landslide at an industrial park in Shenzhen, in south China’s Guangdong province, Tuesday.: photo by Andy Wong/AP, 21 December 2015

Excavators are seen during rescue operations at an industrial estate hit by a landslide in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China: photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters, 23 December 2015

A gymnasium in Shenzhen, China, served as a shelter for evacuees after a landslide hit a nearby industrial park: photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters, 22 December 2015

Construction equipment was used to dig out buildings in the city of Shenzhen in Guangdong Province, southern China, after a mudslide left dozens missing: photo by European Pressphoto Agency, 21 December 2015

A seguir luchando

Music in the rubble of the bombing aleppo AFP Photo: image via baraa al halabi @baraaalhalabi, 12 December 2015

Syrian men remove a toddler from the rubble following airstrikes on #Aleppo #Syria photo @baraaalhalabi @AFPphoto: image via SundayTimesPictures @STPictures, 8 December 2015

There is hope here Syria Aleppo: image via baraa al halabi @baraaalhalabi, 8 December 2015

Winter in the city of Aleppo: image via baraa al halabi @baraaalhalabi, 25 November 2015

Afghan children displaced from Faryab, Badghis and Ghor province, stand outside a temporary shelter at an Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in Herat, Afghanistan, on Thursday: photo by Jalil Rezayee/EPA, 25 November 2015
 

Greek police sprayed stranded #migrants near the village of Idomeni. #AFP Photo by @armend_nimani: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 3 December 2015

Migrants and refugees wait to cross the Greek border near Idomeni: image via Sakis Mitrolidis @SakisMitrolidis, 25 November 2015

 

A seguir luchando #Diaenimagenes @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Agence France-Presse @AFPespanol, 10 December 2015

MACEDONIA - Police escort migrants without valid documentation back to the Greek-Macedonian border. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgffardAFP, 30 November 2015

MACEDONIA - Migrants walk in the rain after crossing Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija.. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgffardAFP, 27 November 2015

MACEDONIA - A migrant walks with his children after crossing the border near Gevgelija.  By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgffardAFP, 27 November 2015

.MACEDONIA - A migrant with his child walks in the rain after crossing the border near Gevgelija. By @RAtanasovski #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 27 November 2015

Migrants and refugees wait to cross the Greek border near Idomeni: image via Sakis Mitrolidis @SakisMitrolidis, 25 November 2015

A helmet belonging to a Islamic State militant is seen on the ground at the 121 Regiment base after Fighters from the Democratic Forces of Syria took control of the base in the town of al-Melabiyyah, south of Hasaka city, Syria: photo by Rodi Said/Reuters, 25 November 2015

A migrant carries her child after crossing the border from Greece into Macedonia, near Gevgelija, Macedonia on Friday: photo by Stoyan Nenov/Reuters, 27 November 2015

An Iraqi man disembarks from a dinghy on a beach after his trip with other refugees and migrants from the Turkish coast to the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos on Friday: photo by Santi Palacios/AP, 18 December 2015

Migrants lining up to receive food in Greece, near the Macedonian border: photo by Tomas Munita for The New York Times, 15 December 2015

 

little people

Migrants who arrived on buses from Athens waiting in line to enter a temporary camp on the border between Greece and Macedonia: photo by Rocco Rorandelli via New York Times, 10 December 2015
 

Migrants entering Serbia by walking from Macedonia: photo by Rocco Rorandelli via New York Times, 10 December 2015
 

Migrants reaching a police checkpoint in Serbia, on the border with Macedonia: photo by Rocco Rorandelli via New York Times, 10 December 2015

Migrants entering Serbia by walking from Macedonia: photo by Rocco Rorandelli via New York Times, 10 December 2015

 Migrants walking in an area known as no man’s land, between Serbia and Macedonia: photo by Rocco Rorandelli via New York Times, 10 December 2015

After Hungary closed its border in October, Slovenia decided to do the same, creating a domino effect that left migrants stuck in various parts of Serbia: photo by Rocco Rorandelli via New York Times, 10 December 2015


Migrants traveling between Serbia andMacedonia: photo by Rocco Rorandelli via New York Times, 10 December 2015

Traveling between Serbia andMacedonia: photo by Rocco Rorandelli via New York Times, 10 December 2015

 

Migrants leaving trains that brought them from the border with Greece to the one with Serbia.: photo by Rocco Rorandelli via New York Times, 10 December 2015

 

Several people recording some migrants as they rested at a camp at the Austrian border with Slovenia.: photo by Rocco Rorandelli via New York Times, 10 December 2015

Stephen Ratcliffe: 12.20

 

shadowed / plane of ridge: photo by Stephen Ratcliffe via Temporality, 20 December 2015

light coming into clouds above shadowed

plane of ridge, motionless black branch

in foreground, sound of wave in channel

      in letters appears related

      to one, in stands as

      that each time, past being

      let into, this loose

grey white clouds above shadowed ridge,

white line of wave breaking in channel

 

Stephen Ratcliffe: 12.20, from Temporality, 20 December 2015

 

#Berkeley Sunset @berkeleyside: image via Janet Rudolph @JanetRudolph, 23 December 2015

Stunning sunset at #Berkeley Marina @Berkeleyside: image via Jeremiah Crowe @CroweRadio, 23 December 2015

#Palestinians watch the sunset on the coast of Gaza City. #AFP Photo by @m55baba: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 25 November 2015

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The Lie Behind the Timeline: How 2015 Was Framed

December 26, 2015, 7:05 pm

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≪ Previous: Joseph Ceravolo: A Piece of Glass / Stephen Ratcliffe: 12.20

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  Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Union President Donald Tusk, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, Jordan's Queen Rania, Jordan's King Abdullah II, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and other guests march during the Unity rally, Paris: photo by Dominique Faget/AFP, 11 January 2015 

RWB condemns presence of "predators" in Paris march, calls for solidarity with "all Charlies": Reporters Without Borders, 11 January 2015 

Reporters Without Borders welcomes the participation of many foreign leaders in today’s march in Paris in homage to the victims of last week’s terror attacks and in defence of the French republic’s values, but is outraged by the presence of officials from countries that restrict freedom of information.

On what grounds are representatives of regimes that are predators of press freedom coming to Paris to pay tribute to Charlie Hebdo, a publication that has always defended the most radical concept of freedom of expression?

Reporters Without Borders is appalled by the presence of leaders from countries where journalists and bloggers are systematically persecuted such as Egypt (which is ranked 159th out of 180 countries in RWB’s press freedom index), Russia (148th), Turkey (154th) and United Arab Emirates (118th).

“We must demonstrate our solidarity with Charlie Hebdo without forgetting all the world’s other Charlies,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.

“It would be unacceptable if representatives of countries that silence journalists were to take advantage of the current outpouring of emotion to try to improve their international image and then continue their repressive policies when they return home. We must not let predators of press freedom spit on the graves of Charlie Hebdo.”

The authorities have announced the presence of Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, Algerian foreign minister Ramtane Lamamra, UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Gabonese President Ali Bongo.

 Unity March, Paris: photo by Associated Press, 11 January 2015

Deconstructing the Photograph of World Leaders at the Paris March: Marco Bohr, Photoworks, 26 January 2015

In the aftermath of the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo office and a kosher supermarket in Paris, the coming together of world leaders at the unity march in the French capital constituted a remarkable event in world history.

Rarely before have so many heads of state been at the same place at the same time for an event other than a meeting at the UN or for the G7/8 and G20 summits. Photographs of the world leaders standing literally and figuratively shoulder-to-shoulder with Françoise Hollande attempt to emphasize a sense of solidarity with the French people. Behind this group of powerful leaders, or so the viewer assumes, were millions of people marching in remembrance of the victims and to honor the tripartite motto that underpins the French Republic.

On that day photography played a crucial function in not just documenting the march and the almost unique coming together of world leaders, but also by creating a visual rhetoric for freedom of speech and against terrorism. The photograph of world leaders is meant to suggest that they stand up against terrorism and that they are willing to defend the values of a democracy. In that sense the photograph of world leaders is in itself a ‘document’ for democratic values -– a document signed by Françoise Hollande positioned in the centre of the image and counter-signed by the heads of state and dignitaries standing behind and next to him.

The symbolic importance of this photograph could be measured as soon it was shared online and in the media. In particular, the absence of a representative from the United States (other than the ambassador to France) was interpreted as a ‘snub’ by the global media. Let's not forget that France is the oldest ally of the United States. In the following days The White House effectively admitted that it was caught off guard for not sending a higher ranked person if not President Obama himself. Not even the US Attorney General Eric Holder, who was in Paris at the time, attended the march.

Though, is this furore based on the fact that Obama should have been at the march, or is it, more accurately, a question of whether he should have been at a photo opportunity? The latter should not be conflated with the former even if both are directly related to each other. The furore surrounding America’s ‘snub’ alludes to the power of photography in this type of context: that it provides a form of irrefutable evidence for non-attendance. One must wonder whether the same questions would have emerged if the world leaders were not photographed at all -– if they just quietly and discreetly participated in the march. In the absence of a group photograph would anyone have really noticed Eric Holder missing?

Another aspect that attracted scrutiny was the impression provided by the photograph that heads of state were leading the march. This impression is created by the vantage point of the camera at the same height of the people depicted in the image. In that sense the photograph alludes to the notion of égalité as the viewer assumes that the world leaders and the people were marching together -– as equals. Yet as TV footage of the gathering indicates, nothing could be further from the truth: world leaders were standing in a side street that was cordoned off from the main march. Quite clearly they are not equals, and they are not marching together with the people of France that day.

Further scrutiny at the world leaders who did attend the photo opportunity also raises question about what exactly the common cause is that they stand for. Daniel Wickham, a politics student at the London School of Economics, tweeted about the hypocrisy of a wide range of world leaders attending a march that is presumably fighting for the freedom of speech. Wickham highlighted the attendance of the prime minister of Turkey, which imprisons more journalists than any other country in the world, or the foreign minister of Bahrain, which has the second highest per capita rate of imprisoning journalists. Wickham’s series of tweets ends with pointing out the moral and ethical contradiction provided by the attendance of the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia –- a country where the human rights activist and blogger Raif Badawi is periodically flogged in public while serving a ten-year prison sentence.

The more the photograph of the world leaders gathering in Paris is analyzed the more it reveals itself as a deeply conflicted sign. The visual rhetoric it exercises has less to do with a stance for freedom of speech than it does with the PR machinations of individuals attending a photo opportunity. And what about that tripartite motto of the French Revolution that was so beautifully displayed by the masses that day? Of those heads of state attending the photo opportunity, how many of them lead deeply autocratic regimes where civil liberties are routinely ignored? How many of them lead nations where equality –- whether it is with regards to gender, religion or caste -– is actually considered illegal? How many of them lead nations that are involved in territorial disputes or even war with neighbors in, what is supposed to be, a brotherhood of nations? For that brief moment, while walking on a cordoned off street in Paris, world leaders where united, whereas business as usual will resume shortly.

Marco Bohr is a photographer, academic and researcher in visual culture

France Attacks Rally, 11 January 2015: photo by Associated Press via Photoworks, 26 January 2015

Pen-Ultimate Paris Unity March for Freedom 2015, Place de la République, Paris: photo by DB Young, 11 January 2015

 

Silent march of world leaders through Paris in honor of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo: photo by Kenji Tribouillard/AP, 11 January 2015; image via European External Action Service, 13 January 2015

 March of world leaders through Paris in honor of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, front row: image via European External Action Service, 11 January 2015

Silent march of world leaders through Paris in honor of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo: photo by Julien Warnand/European Pressphoto Agency, 11 January 2015; image via FuTurXTV, 30 January 2015

French President Francois Hollande is surrounded by heads of states as they attend the solidarity march (Marche Republicaine) in the streets of Paris: photo by Philippe Wojazer/Reuters, 11 January 2015

"Circus of Hypocrisy": Jeremy Scahill on How World Leaders at Paris March Oppose Press Freedom: Democracy Now! January 12, 2015

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk about this latest news out of France.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, you know, what we saw yesterday on display, on the one hand, was very heartening, to see so many people come into the streets. And, you know, one of the core issues of press freedom, if this is a moment where the whole world is saying we have to have a free press, and that no matter how controversial or hateful some of the speech is or may be interpreted in some communities, that we judge a free press by how we treat the journalists or the stories that we don’t like or that we’re offended by.

But on the other hand, this is sort of a circus of hypocrisy when it comes to all of those world leaders who were marching at the front of it. I mean, every single one of those heads of state or representatives of governments there have waged their own wars against journalists. You know, David Cameron ordered The Guardian to smash with a hammer the hard drives that stored the files of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Blasphemy is considered a crime in Ireland. You had multiple African and Arab leaders whose own countries right now have scores of journalists in prison. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel has targeted for killing numerous journalists who have reported on the Palestinian side, have kidnapped, abducted, jailed journalists. You know, there’s this controversy right now: Why didn’t President Obama go, or why didn’t Joe Biden go? You know, Eric Holder was there already and was representing the United States.

I think that we should remember -- and I was saying this on Twitter over the weekend -- that Yemen should have sent the Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye as their representative. He, of course, was in prison for years on the direct orders of President Obama for having reported on secret U.S. strikes in Yemen that killed scores of civilians. Or Sudan should have sent Sami al-Hajj, the Al Jazeera cameraman who was held for six years without charge in Guantánamo and repeatedly interrogated by U.S. operatives who were intent on proving that Al Jazeera had some sort of a link to al-Qaeda. So, you know, while there is much to take heart in, in terms of this huge outpouring of support for freedom of the press, hypocrisy was on full display in the streets of Paris when it came to the world leaders.

AMY GOODMAN: Reporters Without Borders issued a statement saying it, quote, "condemns [the] presence of 'predators' in [the] Paris march," and, quote, "is appalled by the presence of leaders from countries where journalists and bloggers are systematically persecuted such as Egypt ... Russia ... Turkey ... and United Arab Emirates." A Gabonese journalist covering the march expressed similar reservations about his president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, participating in the event.

GABONESE JOURNALIST: [translated] He banned demonstrations in his own country and is coming to a demonstration in France. That’s intolerable for us. It’s a complete hypocrisy. We’re here not only to show our outrage for what happened to Charlie Hebdo, but also to show our outrage over the fact that dictators like Ali Bongo Ondimba are present here in Paris, in a country that supports human rights, at an assembly that is in fact dedicated to freedom of expression, freedom of the press.

AMY GOODMAN: That, a Gabonese journalist covering the march, expressing reservations about his president participating in the march, Jeremy.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, and then you have—you know, you have General Sisi, the dictator of Egypt, who apparently is showing his solidarity for press freedom by continuing to preside over the imprisonment of multiple Al Jazeera journalists whose only crime was doing actual journalism and scores of other Egyptian journalists that never get mentioned in the news media.

Another thing that I think is really absent from a lot of the coverage of the aftermath of this horrific massacre is that France also is a surveillance state. And France has a very Islamophobic position toward their immigrant community, but also toward second- and third-generation Arabs or people from other Muslim countries who have settled inside of France. And there’s going to be an intense -- intensification of an already overreaching surveillance system inside of France.

You know, some months ago I was on the show talking about the U.S. watchlisting system, and one of the things that we heard when we were doing this report on how you end up on the no-fly list or on the watchlist was that people within the U.S. counterterrorism community, who are actually trying to prevent acts of terrorism from happening, say that they’re flooded in information and that if everyone is on the watchlist, effectively no one is on the watchlist when it comes to actually looking at who might be engaged in these kinds of terror plots.

A similar phenomenon is happening in Paris, France. You know, people talk about an intelligence failure, an intelligence breakdown. When you are putting people on these lists for monitoring or surveillance based on flimsy or circumstantial evidence, what that means is that you overload your own bureaucracy. So, on the one hand, you have a surveillance state that unfairly targets Muslims and immigrants, in both the United States and in France, and on the other hand, you have a system that is intended to stop acts of terrorism or to monitor people that are plotting acts of terrorism that has become its own hindrance, its own biggest obstacle to actually figuring out the reality of these plots.

And let’s remember, while horrifying and reprehensible, these incidents represent a relatively minor threat to Western society. You know, in terms of the actual threats facing our society, this doesn’t even rank in the top five. And so, you know, to have this kind of a reaction is not only a waste of a tremendous amount of money, but it is going to encourage, I think, future acts of terrorism.

Jeremy Scahill is co-founder of The Intercept. His books include Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army and Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield

In Lebanon, a Syrian girl stands behind a door at a refugee camp in the village of Ketermaya. A storm raged across the Middle East this week raising concerns for Syrian refugees facing freezing temperatures in makeshift shelters: photo by Ali Hashisho/Reuters, 10 January 2015

Palestinian children look out through holes in a sheet at their family’s house, which was damaged by Israeli shelling during the 50-day war last summer. Since the war, thousands are still living in UN shelters and damaged homes and power is on for only six hours a day: photo by Mohammed Salem/Reuters, 10 January 2015

Afghan refugee children gather their goats in heavy fog on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan: photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP, 10 January 2015

Hundreds of Muslims attend Friday prayers during the first day of the three-day long Muslim congregation at Tongi, Dhaka, Bangladesh: photo by Abir Abdullah/EPA, 10 January 2015

Fear spread in France after the country’s bloodiest attack in half a century. In Villefranche-sur-Saône, forensic police officers scour the scene at a kebab shop damaged following an explosion near a mosque: photo byJean-Philippe Ksiazek/AFP, 10 January 2015

There was a shoot-out between the two suspects of the Charlie Hebdo attack and the police on the N2 motorway. The gunmen eventually took refuge in a printing works on an industrial estate in Dammartin-en-Goële. In this photograph, smoke rises as a special forces soldier enters the building where the suspects had taken refuge. They were both killed during the raid by the special forces: photo by Christopher Furlong via The Guardian, 10 January 2015

Islam is as dangerous in a man as rabies in a dog. - Sir Winston Churchill #islam: image via 1ForHealth 1 @forhealth1, 9 January 2015

Horrendous oppression #Islam: While entering and leaving the mosque #Uyghurs are supposed to show their ‘mosque cards’: image via Voice of Uyghurs @VoiceUyghur, 6 January 2015 

Horrendous oppression #Islam: While entering and leaving the mosque #Uyghurs are supposed to show their ‘mosque cards’: image via Voice of Uyghurs @VoiceUyghur, 6 January 2015

Anti-Islamic marches are gaining support in Germany following the #CharlieHebdo attacks: image via VICE News @vicenews, 12 January 2015

  An anti-Islam rally in Germany drew 25,000 protesters in wake of the attack on #CharlieHebdo attacks: image via Fusion @ThisIsFusion, 12 January 2015 

White privilege is the ability to look at this #CharlieHebdo comic and somehow not understand that it’s deeply racist: image via Jonathan McIntosh @radicalbytes, 12 January 2015

A Bahraini protester stands in a cloud of teargas during a confrontation with police on the outskirts of Manama after a demonstration against the arrest of the head of the Shia opposition movement Al-Wefaq, Sheikh Ali Salman: photo by Mohammed Al-Shaikh/AFP, 10 January 2015

Eternal Youth

December 28, 2015, 9:02 pm

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Eternal Youth [Stoke Newington]: photo by duncan c, 2 November 2013

The dark side:The secret world of sports doping: Al Jazeera investigation raises questions about whether sports heroes are linked to performance enhancing drugs: Al Jazeera, 28 December 2015

Inside a hotel room in Austin, Texas, a pharmacist advises a professional athlete on taking performance-enhancing drugs.

"One anabolic, and I can give you something to use right now, is this Delta 2 stuff. It's a steroid. There's a bunch of football players who take this," he tells Liam Collins, a British hurdler reporting undercover.

In another conversation, a Vancouver pharmacist poses a question to the same athlete.

"Have I doped people? Oh yeah. And no one's got caught because the system is so easy to beat. That's the sad fact."

Later, a Naturopath doctor explains how he would destroy medical records if investigators came looking for them.

"I can just document everything not in this chart but on my own chart. And if somebody ever comes sniffing for it, it's very easy to just delete and say no, this is the real chart. If say, WADA [World Anti-Doping Agency] comes sniffing around."

Normally these conversations take place behind closed doors, but a new investigation by Al Jazeera is bringing them to light. Liam Collins, working on behalf of Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit, spent six months undercover investigating the murky world of performance-enhancing drugs -- what athletes refer to as "the dark side."

"For me, it was an opportunity to be the guy, to go undercover, and make a change," said Collins. At 37, he competes as a hurdler at an international level. For the investigation he claimed that he was making one last push for the Rio Olympics and was willing to do "whatever it takes" to get there. 

The investigation has exposed the crucial role of pharmacists and doctors in creating and prescribing programs of performance-enhancing drugs designed to cheat the testing system. It also raises questions about some well-known athletes in American football and baseball who the medical professionals claim to work with.

“I can take a guy with average genetics and I can make him world champion.” #DarkSideDopers: image via AJE News @AJENews, 28 December 2015

The athletes and medical professionals who responded to requests for comment denied any wrongdoing. This includes Peyton Manning, a football player for the Denver Broncos, whose wife, one pharmacist alleged, was supplied with human growth hormone.

That pharmacist, Charlie Sly, has disavowed his statements to Collins that were caught on hidden camera. In a follow-up email, he said that when he spoke with Collins "was in no state of mind to be making any coherent statements as I was grieving the death of my fiancée."

Manning in an interview Sunday on ESPN emphatically denied that he has ever used performance-enhancing drugs. He also said he is "sick" that his wife, Ashley, "is being brought into this."

Regarding his treatment in 2011 for a severe neck injury, the Denver Broncos player said: "I busted my butt to get healthy.

"Time and hard work was my best medicine," Manning said. "It stings me [that] whoever this guy is says that I cut corners, I broke rules to get healthy."

Manning said he used a hyperbaric chamber, received 35 days of treatment to enhance blood flow in his muscles, and had nutrient therapies. "All under coach authorization," he said. "Anything else this guy is insinuating is complete garbage."

Eternal Youth. The other side says, "The way I drive, I got to have faith!": photo by jan Tik, 6 February 2005

In a statement, the Broncos said, "Knowing Peyton Manning and everything he stands for, the Denver Broncos support him 100 percent. These are false claims made to Al Jazeera, and we don't believe the report."

Dr Dale Guyer, the head of the Guyer Institute in Indiana, where Manning received treatments, also denied the allegations in a statement to sports website Bleacher Report on Sunday.

Sly also named baseball players Ryan Zimmerman of the Washington Nationals and Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies, raising questions about whether they use the hormone supplement Delta 2. Both have denied the allegations.

In a statement to the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday, Zimmerman and Howard's lawyer William Burck said, "The extraordinarily reckless claims made against our clients in this report are completely false and rely on a source who has already recanted his claims." The Nationals also issued a statement in support of Zimmerman.

The Phillies subsequently issued a statement supporting Howard, calling him "an extremely well respected member of our team and an outstanding contributor to our community." The team said it will "fully cooperate with any investigation conducted by Major League Baseball and will refer all further questions to them concerning the Al Jazeera report."

Aging Peyton Manning Now Forced To Take Field With Assistance Dog: image via The Onion @TheOnion, 28 December 2015

Explosive Documentary Links Peyton Manning, Major Athletes To Doping Ring: The quarterback and his wife received human growth hormone in 2011, an alleged supplier asserts in a new undercover investigation: Travis Waldron and Ryan Grim, The Huffington Post, 28 December 2015

An Indianapolis anti-aging clinic supplied quarterback Peyton Manning with human growth hormone, a performance-enhancing drug banned by the NFL, a pharmacist who once worked at the clinic asserts in a new special report from Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit.

The report, “The Dark Side,” is the result of a monthslong investigation in which Liam Collins, a British hurdler, went undercover in an attempt to expose the widespread nature of performance-enhancing drugs in global sports. As a cover story, Collins tells medical professionals tied to the trade of performance-enhancing drugs that he is hoping for one last shot at glory at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Manning is just one of many high-profile players the report names and raises questions about.

Manning issued a statement Saturday night strongly denying the allegations, claiming that "whoever said this is making stuff up."

The Denver Broncos also responded to the allegations against Manning, releasing the following statement:

"Knowing Peyton Manning and everything he stands for, the Denver Broncos support him 100 percent. These are false claims made to Al Jazeera, and we don't believe the report.

Peyton is rightfully outraged by the allegations, which he emphatically denied to our organization and which have been publicly renounced by the source who initially provided them.

Throughout his NFL career, particularly during his four seasons with the Broncos, Peyton has shown nothing but respect for the game. Our organization is confident Peyton does things the right way, and we do not find this story to be credible."

As part of the investigation, Collins connected with Charlie Sly, a pharmacist based in Austin, Texas, who worked at the Guyer Institute, the Indiana-based anti-aging clinic, in 2011.

Manning missed the 2011 season, when he was a member of the Indianapolis Colts, after undergoing neck surgery. In the documentary, Sly tells Collins, who is taking secret video of his interactions, that he was “part of a medical team that helped [Manning] recover” from the surgery. Sly alleges that the clinic mailed growth hormone and other drugs to Manning’s wife, Ashley Manning, so that the quarterback’s name was never attached to them.

“All the time we would be sending Ashley Manning drugs,” Sly says in the video. “Like growth hormone, all the time, everywhere, Florida. And it would never be under Peyton’s name, it would always be under her name.”

Manning and his wife also came to the clinic after its normal business hours for intravenous treatments, Sly tells Collins on the undercover video.

Peyton-in-mah-hand. He had Peyton Manning in his hand yo.: photo by Justin Taylor, 23 May 2009

Manning left the Colts after the 2011 season to sign with Denver. The NFL banned human growth hormone in 1991, but did not begin testing for it until 2014. No player has ever tested positive.

Manning’s agent denied the details of the report to Al Jazeera, calling Sly’s assertions “outrageous and wrong.” But the statement does not deny that growth hormones were shipped to Manning's wife, only insisting that such matters were a matter of medical privacy.

Manning “has never done what this person is suggesting,” his agent told Al Jazeera. “The treatment he received at the Guyer Institute was provided on the advice of his physician and with the knowledge of team doctors and trainers.”

“Any medical treatment received by Ashley is a private matter of hers, her doctor, and her family,” the agent said.

The credibility of the report hinges largely on whether Sly should be believed, or whether he's simply concocting stories to impress Collins. Several details lend significant credibility to Sly's assertions.

First, Sly and the ring he is associated with do, in fact, obtain drugs for Collins, which the network says it retained as evidence.

In a stunning scene, Taylor Teagarden, an eight-year MLB veteran, appears in one of the undercover videos, openly discussing his use of performance-enhancing drugs during the previous season.

elixir of eternal youth: photo by David, 5 April 2011

Al Jazeera confirmed that Sly did work at the anti-aging clinic that treated Manning; it is difficult to imagine how Sly would have had knowledge of any arrangement to ship drugs to Manning's wife if he were not operating with genuine insider knowledge. (Sly also describes an interaction with Manning, telling Collins that the quarterback is “really cool if you just sit down with him.”)

Collins, in some ways, was the perfect athlete to put at the center of the operation. He's no stranger to the shade, having himself been tied up in a fraud scam in recent years.

Beyond the allegations against Manning, the report calls into question the effectiveness of testing regimes meant to prevent performance-enhancing drug use in professional sports, from American leagues to the Olympics. 

Collins’ undercover quest took him from the Bahamas, where he connected with a doctor who claimed to have supplied performance-enhancing drugs to Bahamian Olympic athletes, to Canada, where he met naturopathic physician Brandon Spletzer and pharmacist Chad Robertson, who devised a “cutting edge” drug program for Collins that included up to 10 injections each day.

Collins then connected with Sly, who has “taken smart drugs to a whole new level,” according to Spletzer.

 

Rejuvenator. This device I invented could rejuvenate any biological organism: photo by Doctor Who, 1 February 2009

“The Dark Side” paints a picture of an underground marketplace where athletes can easily obtain drugs that are hard to detect even with sophisticated drug tests like those implemented by MLB, the NFL and the Olympics. And it raises questions about how serious the owners of professional sports teams are about rooting out drug use, which can make the games more exciting and profitable, while doing damage to the bodies of players, not owners.

“No one’s got caught, because the system’s so easy to beat,” Robertson, the pharmacist, brags to Collins. “And it still is, that’s the sad fact. I can take a guy with average genetics and make him a world champion.”

Robertson designed a program for Collins that included prescription fertility and hormone drugs, other substances labeled as “not for human consumption” and illegal drugs. Sly, meanwhile, preached the effectiveness of Delta-2, a hormone supplement that is “steroidal in nature” but is not an anabolic steroid, according to online product descriptions.

“There's a bunch of football players who take this, and a bunch of baseball players who take it too," Sly tells Collins in the documentary.

“Delta-2 is not for use by anybody subject to performance-enhancing drug tests,” state online reviews for the product. Major League Baseball has banned the drug explicitly.

The report does not link Manning to Delta-2, but Sly and Robertson name multiple football players as customers, including Green Bay Packers linebacker Mike Neal. Neal, Sly says, connected him with multiple teammates, including defensive end Julius Peppers. 

Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison is another NFL player he has supplied, Sly says.

Sly also names Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard and Washington Nationals infielder Ryan Zimmerman as players who received the drug from him. He also claims in the report he gave drugs to Mike Tyson.

Mike Tyson in the ring, Las Vegas: photo by Octal, 2006

Delta-2 is designed to stay ahead of drug tests, Sly explains on video. He tells Collins that he provided the drug to Dustin Keller, a tight end who last played for the Miami Dolphins and allegedly used Delta-2 while in college at Purdue University and then before the NFL Combine, according to Sly. (Keller did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment).

“We just used Delta-2 because it wasn’t detectable,” Sly says.

Sly also says that he provided Clay Matthews, Green Bay’s Pro Bowl linebacker, with the prescription painkiller Percocet to help him deal with pain before at least one game. He also brags in one undercover video that Matthews texted him in an attempt to obtain Toradol, a powerful painkiller that is banned in many countries but not in the United States. 

Harrison, Zimmerman and Howard all denied using the drugs to the network.

The Philadelphia slugger Ryan Howard was among the baseball players an Al Jazeera report said had been a recipient of drugs: photo by Hunter Martin via The New York Times, 27 December 2015

Neal, Peppers, Matthews and Tyson did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Robertson, the pharmacist, and Spletzer, the neuropathic physician, did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment. 

Sly, when pressed by Al Jazeera, backtracked, saying that his claims about supplying the drugs to athletes were “false and incorrect.” 

In a subsequent statement to Al Jazeera, he walked back the comments even further, saying that Collins took advantage of him while Sly was grieving the death of his fiancée.

Peyton Manning has angrily denied that HGH was shipped to his wife, Ashley: photo by Cathy Knightlinger via New York Daily News, 28 December 2015

Upsetting Developments: Week 16: Peter King, Monday Morning Quarterback, 28 December 2015

Upset Sunday actually began with Upset Saturday Night. That’s when the Peyton Manning/Al Jazeera story broke. And if you thought you’d ever see “Peyton Manning” and “Al Jazeera” in the same hemisphere, never mind as neighbors in a sentence, well, you’re smarter than I am. (Sayeth an indignant Mike Ditka on ESPN: “Al Jazeera is not a credible news organization! They’re out there spreading garbage!”)

Upset Sunday. That was defined later by Pittsburgh losing in Baltimore, Seattle losing to the Rams for the fourth time in four seasons, and, of course, previously 14-0 Carolina losing in Atlanta. But earlier, on Sunday morning inside the Denver Broncos’ practice facility, Manning was the personification of it.

“Yeah, I’m upset,” a rehabbing Manning said after a spirited throwing session with receivers. “I’m pissed off. I was throwing so hard this morning I think I broke some fingers out there.”

In a 15-minute conversation from Denver, Manning was alternately angry and emotional and strident and impassioned and defensive about the investigative report by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera -- a quite credible and respected international news organization (contrary to Ditka’s assertion), the CNN of the Middle East spreading its news-gathering around the world in recent years. Al Jazeera used an undercover former Olympic hurdler to ferret out the use of performance-enhancing drugs in global sports. Part of the investigation connected the hurdler, Liam Collins, with a former intern at an anti-aging clinic in Indianapolis that Manning used in 2011 when he was rehabbing from neck surgeries. The intern, Charles Sly, said the clinic mailed HGH to Manning’s wife, Ashley Manning, to avoid connecting HGH to Peyton Manning. Sly last week recanted this admission, and there is so much smoke around Sly and the report and … well, we’ll get to an increasingly cloudy path to the truth.

Peyton Manning has been sidelined since mid-November with a foot injury: photo by Don Wright/AP via Monday Morning Quarterback, 28 December 2015

But first, Manning, blowing off steam.

“I can promise you this is a total fabrication,” he said over the phone, his voice rising and sometimes shaking. “I simply do not understand how somebody makes up something like this and it becomes a story. And then the guy admits he made it up and it’s still a story. How exactly does that work?”

It works because of Sly, and that could turn out to haunt the credibility of the story. The Al Jazeera reporter on the story -- a documentary called “The Dark Side: Secrets of the Sports Dopers” that aired on Al Jazeera on Sunday night -- told me Al Jazeera met with Sly for six days. Reporter Deborah Davies said the network had “approximately 20 hours of footage … hour upon hour of recordings” of Sly discussing the work of the Indianapolis clinic and of doping. Then, in the past several days, with the airing of the documentary looming, Sly recorded a statement recanting “any recordings or communication that Al Jazeera plans to air … there is no truth to any statement of mine that Al Jazeera plans to air.”

At the base of the dispute between the Manning camp and Al Jazeera is Sly’s employment history at the Guyer Institute in Indianapolis. When he recanted his testimony over the weekend, Sly said he worked for founder Dale Guyer of the anti-aging clinic in 2013, not in 2011, when Manning was a patient. Guyer, in a statement issued Sunday afternoon, said: “I would emphasize that Mr. Sly was never an employee of the Guyer Institute and his brief three-month internship occurred in 2013 during which time Peyton was not even being treated or present in the office.”

“That is not what the clinic told me,” Davies said after Guyer’s statement was issued. 

She called the clinic on Dec. 1, asking for employment verification dates for Sly, and the clinic said Sly began working there on Oct. 17, 2011, according to a transcript of the call.

I emailed Guyer, asking him for a response to Davies’ claim about the 2011 dates. On Sunday night, he responded thusly:

“The information you have been provided is incorrect. Charles Sly was never an employee of The Guyer Institute. At the relevant time, Mr. Sly was a pharmacy student in Nevada who emailed us a request for an internship. Arrangements for his internship, including the specific start and end dates, were made through his school advisor. Mr. Sly began his unpaid student internship with us on February 18th, 2013. He had no patient responsibilities at any time. Further, he had no affiliation with our office prior to February 18th, 2013, and has had none subsequent to the conclusion of his internship in May of 2013. Hope this helps to clarify the dates in question.”

Back to Davies. Late Sunday, I asked her if Al Jazeera stood by the 2011 dates for Sly at Guyer. “Absolutely,” Davies texted. “We have the transcript of the call I made.” 

These stories are never very easy. This one won’t be either.

Manning sat out the entire 2011 season while rehabbing from neck procedures: photo by AJ Mast/AP via Monday Morning Quarterback, 28 December 2015

 

Between February 2010 and September 2011, Manning underwent four neck procedures, the final one a single-level fusion. On Sunday, he said that soon after that he and the Colts began sifting through therapies that doctors and athletic trainers thought might speed up the healing process and the nerve regeneration.

“We didn’t really know what would work in addition to the regular rehab I was doing every day at the Colts,” Manning said. “We were looking at a lot of different things, and it turned out [the Guyer Institute] had some things we wanted to try.”

Manning said he did three things at Guyer: regular use of the hyperbaric chamber, with concentrated oxygen treatments; intravenous nutrient therapy, involving vitamins and minerals; and Enhanced External Counterpulsation therapy. As the Guyer website explains, EECP uses oversized blood-pressure cuffs strapped to the legs and buttocks that are synched to the pulse of the heart, helping push blood through the body, ideally to speed healing. Manning hoped it would expedite nerve regeneration.

“I was a good patient,” Manning said. “Basically, they told me I had to do this an hour a day, Monday through Friday, for 35 consecutive [week] days. Every day I’d start there before I went to the Colts facility. So that’s how long I did it, every day. I remember I watched a lot of Hoda and Kathie Lee.

“Every treatment I did, I did with the knowledge and cooperation of the Colts. Never did I do anything outside the rules. Damn straight I’d never do anything outside the rules. I know how hard I’ve worked to play in this league for 18 years. For this jerk [Sly] to insinuate I cut any corners, I cheated, I took shortcuts, is outrageous. Damn outrageous.

“I’m getting emotional now. But I know what I did. And I did nothing illegal.”

SAM_5334. PEYTON PEYTON PEYTON PEYTON: photo by arctic_whirlwind, 15 September 2012

Al Jazeera reported the transport of HGH was from Guyer to Ashley Manning, who has not commented on the allegations. Peyton Manning said the insinuation that HGH was shipped to his wife to disguise that he was getting it “sickens me.” He said her medical information was personal, and he would not discuss it.

Davies didn’t speculate on Peyton Manning’s HGH use. She said: “I feel confident in what we said in our program -- that HGH was shipped to Ashley Manning in Florida.”

Although HGH (human growth hormone) is most commonly linked to illicit use in athletes to speed healing and create more efficient and powerful workouts, it has uses outside of athletics. A 2014 Redbookmagazine story called its use a possible “secret fertility weapon.”

Two other points to make: The NFL likely will look into the charges by Al Jazeera, though, as Pro Football Talk’sMike Florio reported on NBC Sunday night, because there was no agreement between the league and players on HGH testing until 2014, it’s unlikely the league could do anything unless it was proven Manning used the performance-enhancer. 

And on NBC Sunday night, I reported that Manning, asked if he would sue Al Jazeera over the report, said, “Yeah, I probably will. I’m that angry.”

But the threshold for public figures to prove defamation of character is very high, and Manning’s past will be pumped to the depths if he does choose to pursue legal action. He sounded intent on it Sunday, but who knows? With his recently hired crisis PR counselor, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, on board, it’s doubtful Manning will make any emotional moves dealing with this.

Finally, I asked Manning if he was worried about the effect of the charge on his legacy. Once stained, can a reputation, even one that is cleared of serious allegations, ever be fully clean?

“I’m not worried about that,” Manning said. “I’m not worried because this is a flat-out lie.”

Frustrated Manning. Four interceptions that day. At home. Ugh.: photo by spablab, 5 December 2010

El espejo de la juventud eterna. Sin palabras.: photo by A;fredo Cofré, 18 November 2010

corner of volunteer and peyton manning. [Volunteer Boulevard and Peyton Manning Pass, Circle Park, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.] Very few people came to work on Friday, due to the snow.: photo by Joel Kramer, 8 January 2010

Catch Them If You Can

December 30, 2015, 7:52 pm

≫ Next: John Clare: Clock-a-Clay

≪ Previous: Eternal Youth

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Martin Shkreli, in sunglasses, departs US federal court in Brooklyn after arraignment on Thursday: photo by Lucas Jackson/Reuters, 17 December 2015

"What whiteness, what candour?"

The disease of whiteness that kills everything

it touches, like the disease of money

that paints the headland and hills

across the Bay with the leukocytes

of the rich spoiled brats who get

to do what they like, because they've got

their moms waiting at the bar, and when

they get ready to cross over everything

in their path must die

 

 Ethan Couch and seven other teens piled into this pickup truck before the fatal crash: photo by Tarrant County Sheriff's Office, 15 June 2013 via ABC News, 15 October 2015 

The pick-up truck Ethan Couch was driving is pictured here after the accident that left four people dead.: photo by Tarrant County Sheriff's Office, 15 June 2013 via ABC News, 15 October 2015 

 Ethan Couch reportedly drove this pick-up truck 70 miles per hour before causing a fatal car crash.: photo by Tarrant County Sheriff's Office, 15 June 2013 via ABC News, 15 October 2015

Runaway Rich Kid Beer Pong Killer with Wing Mom

MORE: @APreports #EthanCrouch granted temporary stay against deportation: image via WFAA-TV Verified account @wfaachannel 8, 30 December 2015

'Affluenza' Teen Ethan Couch and Mom Will Not Be Sent to US Today: photo by Jalisco State Prosecutor's Office via ABC News. 30 December 2015

#RealWorldJediPowers Killing four people in a DUI and then avoiding prison, then disappearing. #Affluenza: image via TheValuesVoter @TheValuesVoter, 18 December 2015

Kills 4, still gets to party. That affluenza is crippling! Manhunt For '#Affluenza'Teen: image via KHARY PENEBAKER @kharyp, 19 December 2015

 #Affluenza teen mass-murderer Ethan Couch is on the run with his delinquent award-winning WORLDS'-WORST 'mommy'!: image via BeachMilk @BeachMilk, 18 December 2015

The news needs to be PLASTERING #TonyaCouch's face. Mother of #Affluenza teen #EthanCouch: image via FitHBIC @im_theHBIC, 19 December 2015

Well, Ethan Couch, now you'll be spending some time behind bars #affluenza: image via The Tico Times @TheTicoTimes. 29 December 2015

Police: #Affluenza teen #EthanCouch had "a going-away party" before skipping parole: image via The Seattle Times Verified account @seattletimes. 29 December 2015

The 'Affluenza Teen' Who Killed Four People While Drunk... @ue4 #affluenza: image via Daily Brew - Tech @DailyBrewTech, 19 December 2015

Q and A: The search for #Texas teen who claimed to be suffering from from #affluenza: image via KSNT News @KSNTNews, 19 December 2015

#Closer #Look at '#affluenza' teen's #Parents #00 #Teens: image via Best Videos Today @Best Videos Today, 20 December 2015

 Manhunt underway for #EthanCouch the terrorist who killed 4 ppl then set free by White Privilege. #affluenza: image via D @Delo_Taylor, 20 December 2015

Ethan Couch after he was taken into custody in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, on Monday: photo by Jalisco State Attorney General's Office via New York Times, 29 December 2015 

An undated photo of Tonya Couch, 48: photo by Jalisco State Attorney General's Office via New York Times, 29 December 2015 

The authorities have intensified their search for Ethan Couch, releasing new details and offering a $5,000 reward: photo by U.S. Marshals Service via Agence France-Presse / The New York Times, 22 December 2015


 
 Tonya Couch: photo by Tarrant County Sheriff's Office via The New York Times, 29 December 2015

 

Ethan Couch appeared in juvenile court in Fort Worth, Texas, last year: photo by LM Otero/Associated Press via the New York Times, 16 December 2015

 

Any Which Way You Can

Daniel S. Loeb, shown with his wife, Margaret, runs the $17 billion Third Point hedge fund. Mr. Loeb, who has owned a home in East Hampton, has contributed to Jeb Bush’s super PAC and given $1 million to the American Unity Super PAC, which supports gay rights. Mr. Loeb has invested in a Bermuda-based reinsurer -- an insurer to insurance companies -- that turns around and invests the money in his hedge fund. That maneuver transforms his profits from short-term bets in the market, which the government taxes at roughly 40 percent, into long-term profits, known as capital gains, which are taxed at roughly half that rate. It has had the added advantage of letting Mr. Loeb defer taxes on this income indefinitely, allowing his wealth to compound and grow more quickly: photo on left by Patrick McMullan Company/photo on right by Doug Kuntz via The New York Times, 30 December 2015

 

 Louis Moore Bacon, shown with his wife, Gabrielle, is the founder of a highly successful hedge fund and a leading contributor to Jeb Bush’s super PAC. Among his homes is one on Robins Island, off Long Island. “Our investment in Max Re was not a tax-driven scheme, but rather a sound investment response to investor interest in a more dynamically managed portfolio akin to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway,” said Mr. Bacon, who leads Moore Capital Management.: photo on left byAmanda Gordon/Bloomberg News/photo on right by Doug Kuntz via The New York Times, 30 December 2015

 

Steven A. Cohen, shown with his wife, Alexandra, is the founder of SAC Capital and owns a home in East Hampton. He is a prominent art collector and has focused his political contributions on a super PAC for Gov. Chris Christie.: photo on left byCarly Erickson/BFA/photo on right by Doug Kuntz via The New York Times, 30 December 2015

An exterior view of the headquarters of SAC Capital Advisors, L.P. in Stamford, Connecticut: photo by Michelle McLoughlin/Reuters, 25 July 2013

SAC Capital to pay $10 million in investors' insider trading lawsuit: Nate Raymond in New York for Reuters Business News, 24 December 2015

Billionaire Steven A. Cohen's former hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors LP has agreed to pay $10 million to resolve a lawsuit by shareholders of drugmaker Wyeth, who claimed they lost money because the fund engaged in insider trading in Wyeth's stock.The proposed settlement was disclosed in court papers filed on Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan and would resolve a class action launched following the arrest of a former SAC Capital portfolio manager, Mathew Martoma, for insider trading.
 
Martoma was sentenced in 2014 to nine years in prison after being convicted of engaging in insider trading based on confidential results of a clinical trial of an Alzheimer's drug being developed by Elan Corp and Wyeth.
 
Prosecutors said the trades enabled SAC Capital to make $275 million, making it the most lucrative insider trading case ever charged in the United States.
 
The $10 million class action accord, which requires court approval, follows earlier deals with U.S. authorities in which SAC Capital agreed to pay $1.8 billion and plead guilty following investigations into insider trading by its employees.
 
Those accords included a $602 million settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by an SAC Capital unit resolving claims related to insider trading in Elan and Wyeth.
 
Elan and Wyeth are now part of Perrigo Co Plc and Pfizer Inc, respectively.
 
City of Birmingham Retirement and Relief System and KBC Asset Management NV served as lead plaintiff in the Wyeth class action, which was filed in 2013 and sought to recover investor losses from the defendants, who included Cohen himself.
 
A separate case by Elan investors remains pending. SAC Capital has been in runoff mode, and Cohen's fortune is now traded through his family office, Point72 Asset Management.
 
"We are pleased to have resolved the Wyeth matter and are prepared to vigorously contest the remaining class action," Point72 spokesman Mark Herr said.
 
In total, six ex-SAC Capital employees have been convicted of insider trading. Prosecutors in October dropped charges against two others, including Michael Steinberg, who was convicted in 2013 and sentenced to 3-1/2 years in prison.
 
Cohen was never criminally charged. But the SEC filed an administrative action against him in 2013 for failing to supervise Martoma and Steinberg.
 
The SEC on Monday said that given the dismissal of charges against Steinberg, it would pursue a narrower case against Cohen over his supervision of Martoma.
 
Trial is scheduled for April 11. 

The case is Birmingham Retirement and Relief System v. SAC Capital Advisors LP, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 13-02459.

 

'Mao' by Andy Warhol: image by Sotheby's via Bloomberg Business, 11 November 2015

Steve Cohen Is Trading Art Like Stocks: Katya Kazikina, Bloomberg Business, 3 November 2015

Steven A. Cohen built a reputation as a fast trader with an uncanny ability to predict where stock prices are headed. He’s applying his investing style to an art collection that now accounts for about $1 billion of his $11 billion fortune.

Cohen is selling two paintings estimated at more than $65 million at New York auctions this month, according to people familiar with the matter, as the billionaire money manager is taking advantage of surging prices. The works are part of the bellwether semiannual auctions at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips that will target more than $2.1 billion in sales over 10 days starting Wednesday. 

The 59-year-old Cohen regularly sells pieces from his collection, both privately and at auction, and buys new ones, according to dealers and advisers. One of the works he’s consigned, according to one of the people, is a punctured, egg-shaped Lucio Fontana canvas estimated at more than $25 million at Christie’s. The piece may smash an auction record for the Italian artist that was set just last month in London.

Warhol’s Mao

Cohen also is selling a Mao portrait by Andy Warhol at more than $40 million at Sotheby’s, or 40 times its last auction price 19 years ago, said two people who asked not to be named because the information is private. Both of Cohen’s works are marked as guaranteed in the auction catalogs, meaning he will get an undisclosed price regardless of what happens in the salesrooms.

“He is a trader by mentality,” said John Good, a private art dealer in New York who knows Cohen and his collection, having spent 13 years as director at Gagosian Gallery and three years at Christie’s private sales division. “But he is also a great collector. As dealers, we love people like Stevie Cohen.”

The stakes are high for the auction houses: the sales are the art trade’s biggest test since the global stock market rout in August and September unnerved investors. To win consignments, the companies guaranteed about $1 billion of art to sellers, backing most of the works with their own money, a risky proposition should there be no takers.

Natural Evolution

Fontana’s 1964 “Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio,” will be offered at Christie’s postwar and contemporary evening sale on Nov. 10. Christie’s is financing the guarantee, according to the catalog. Warhol’s 1972 portrait of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong is for sale at Sotheby’s contemporary art evening auction on Nov. 11. An outside backer agreed to place an irrevocable bid for the work, according to Sotheby’s. Both auction houses put Cohen’s artworks on the covers of their weighty catalogs.

Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for Cohen at Sard Verbinnen & Co., declined to comment on the sales. Sotheby’s and Christie’s declined to comment on the auction sellers.

“He used to collect modernism. Now he’s into classic postwar and contemporary,” Good said of Cohen. “That’s a natural evolution. On the high-ticket things, if he likes them, he keeps them. If he doesn’t, he sells them.”

New Approach

Cohen’s approach, setting records as a buyer and seller with a changing taste, is fairly new in the collecting world. Traditionally, collectors spent decades building their holdings with a mix of superior and mediocre works, and they rarely sold. 

“They loved it. They lived with it,” said Wendy Cromwell, a New York-based art adviser. “That was the old-school way.”

An example of such a collection is on view at Sotheby’s, which is selling a 500-lot trove amassed by its former chairman A. Alfred Taubman, Cromwell said. “Masterworks,” the first sale from the collection, is on Wednesday.

New Record

Cohen’s style of collecting is different. In May, Cohen’s 1961 Jean Dubuffet painting “Paris Polka” fetched $24.8 million at Christie’s, more than three times the artist’s previous auction record of $7.4 million set six months earlier. A year ago, Cohen’s Franz Kline canvas, “King Oliver" (1958), fetched $26.5 million, also at Christie’s in New York, the second-highest price for the Abstract Expressionist painter.

The owner of Point 72 Asset Management, a family office that manages about $11 billion, in 2013 consigned a group of seven paintings to Sotheby’s. They tallied at least $77 million, led by Gerhard Richter’s 1986 abstract painting “A.B. Courbet" that fetched $26.5 million.

Cohen’s recent acquisitions include Alberto Giacometti’s 1950 painted-bronze sculpture “Chariot” that fetched $101 million at Sotheby’s in November 2014.

Fontana Record

Almost 7-feet-tall, “Mao” is one of 11 made in this height, according to Sotheby’s catalog. This painting fetched $1 million at Sotheby’s in 1996, when it last appeared at auction.

Fontana’s market has been on fire this year, surpassing the 2008 high when his works tallied $95.9 million at auction, according to research company Artprice.com. Last month in London, Sotheby’s and Christie’s sold 21 Fontana pieces for a total of 36.6 million pounds ($56.6 million). The artist’s auction record was established last month at Sotheby’s for a black egg canvas at $24.7 million.

It’s unclear how much Cohen paid for the Warhol and Fontana. Cohen bought “Mao” in a private transaction from Francois Pinault, the billionaire owner of Christie’s, in 2007. At Christie’s in 2006 another “Mao” painting from the same group fetched $17.4 million.

Cohen exemplifies a new breed of collectors who have a passion for art but also aren’t reluctant to switch up their holdings, Good said.

“A lot of people treat their art collections as one asset class and they trade within that asset class,” Good said. “If it’s not working for you anymore, why not turn it into cash and buy more art?”

Poker face: image via Dealbreaker, 28 December 2015

 

Steve CohenIs Writing Eight-Figure Checks To Make People Go Away: Jon Shazar, Dealbreaker, 28 December 2015

Even to people who are already splitting 602 million of his dollars. Be advised, Mary Jo White.

Billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s former hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors LP has agreed to pay $10 million to resolve a lawsuit by shareholders of drugmaker Wyeth, who claimed they lost money because the fund engaged in insider trading in Wyeth’s stock…. 

“We are pleased to have resolved the Wyeth matter and are prepared to vigorously contest the remaining class action,” Point72 spokesman Mark Herr said.

Steve Cohen: photo by Reuters via Page Six, 18 July 2015

Billionaire furious he can't sell "jinxed" Manhattan apartment: Emily Smith, Page Six, 18 July 2015

Hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen is back trying to offload the “jinxed” Manhattan apartment that just won’t sell.

The SAC Capital founder initially put his One Beacon Court duplex on East 58th Street on the market for a whopping $115 million in April 2013.

But the pricey penthouse atop the Bloomberg Tower didn’t attract any buyers, so he slashed $17 million off the pad in December 2013, offering the luxe four-bedroom for a bank-busting $98 million.

But still there were no takers for the 9,000-square-foot minimalist apartment, which boasts 24-foot-high walls of windows and offers sweeping views of Central Park and Downtown. So, after slashing it to $82 million, Cohen took it off the market and blamed his brokers.

One source told us at the time, “Cohen hasn’t had a buyer, and he blames his broker. Furious is not the word.” But another source sniffed, “The lack of a buyer might be because some feel the place might have some bad karma or be jinxed because of his SAC troubles.”

In November 2013, his firm SAC Capital pleaded guilty to securities fraud and paid a rec­ord $1.8 billion fine to settle insider-trading charges. Cohen, who was not charged with any crime and denied any wrongdoing, now runs Point72 Asset Management, which operates as a family office hedge fund.

Cohen has just put his princely penthouse back on the market -- reduced to $79 million. But a real-estate insider tells us, “It was way overpriced . . . There’s still a feeling from some big-money guys that the place is still jinxed.”

Despite any real-estate woes, Cohen continues to live large. Page Six exclusively revealed last month that he purchased the world's most expensive sculpture, Giacometti's "Pointing Man," for 141.3 million. He owns a sprawling Connecticut estate, bought an East Hampton mansion for $62.5 million in 2013, and also the same year splashed out on an apartment at the Abingdon in the West Village for $23.4 million. In January, Cohen bought a nine-bedroom Beverly Hills mansion that was listed for $35 million.

Giacometti's "Pointing Man", purchased by hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen for record $141.3 million at Christie's: image via Page Six, 8 June 2015

 

Man who bought the world's most expensive sculpture revealed: Emily Smith, Page Six, 8 June 2015

Hedge fund billionaire Steven Cohen is the secret buyer of the world’s most expensive sculpture, Alberto Giacometti’s “Man Pointing,” for $141.3 million at Christie’s, Page Six can exclusively reveal.
 
While much of the attention was on the sale of Picasso’s “Les Femmes d’Alger” for $179 million, setting a world record for the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction, Cohen quietly bought Giacometti’s 1947 masterpiece “Man Pointing,” or “L’Homme au doigt,” a life-size bronze sculpture of a thin man, at the same May 11 Christie’s auction.
Giacometti, who died in 1966, made six casts of the work; four are in museums, and the others are in private hands and a foundation collection.
 
While Cohen, 58, elected to remain an anonymous buyer, multiple sources have since confirmed to Page Six that the Point72 Asset Management founder made the record-breaking Giacometti purchase.
 
It is not the only piece Cohen owns by the artist. In November 2014, the hedge funder was the lone bidder for Giacometti’s 1950 sculpture “The Chariot,” spending $101 million at a Sotheby’s auction.
 
“It’s one of the great 20th-century sculptures,’’ said Manhattan art dealer William Acquavella at the time, adding of Cohen, “Steve is a very serious, very astute collector. He also has the right instincts, ones that can’t be learned from reading art-history books.”

Cohen has homes in Manhattan, East Hampton and Greenwich, Conn., where he has been building a private museum for his art collection, which includes Picasso’s “Le Rêve,” Edvard Munch’s “Madonna” and Damien Hirst’s iconic shark in formaldehyde piece, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.”

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (Tiger shark in formadehyde solution): DamienHirst, 1992 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

 

Cohen, worth an estimated $11.4 billion, closed his legendary hedge fund SAC Capital in 2014 following an insider-trading probe and created a new group of funds called Point72 Asset Management to manage his personal assets.
 
A spokesman for Cohen declined to comment.

Wall Street: photo by Reuters via New York Post, 25 December 2015

Adrift in New York

Cover of Adrift in New York, by Horatio Alger: image from Project Gutenberg e-text by Tagishsimon, 27 July 2006

 Demonstrators protested in October outside of the New York offices of Turing Pharmaceuticals, whose chief, Martin Shkreli, was arrested on Thursday: photo by Craig Ruttle/Associated Press via the New York Times, 18 December 2015

Martin Shkreli, in sunglasses, departs US federal court in Brooklyn after arraignment on Thursday: photo by Lucas Jackson/Reuters, 17 December 2015

Martin Shkreli was arrested at his Manhattan home Thursday morning: photo by Richard Perry/The New York Times, 18 December 2015

 

The handcrafted silver and nickel box that the Wu-Tang Clan's 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin' album will come in: photo by Scluzay/Warren Wesley Patterson via New York Daily News, 28 March 2014

The handcrafted silver and nickel box that the Wu-Tang Clan's 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin' album will come in: photo by Scluzay/Warren Wesley Patterson via New York Daily News, 28 March 2014

Martin #Shkreli resigns as #Turing CEO after securities fraud arrest (MGN): image via Local12/WKRC-TV Verified account @Local12, 18 December 2015

Breaking News: Martin Shkreli's lawyer said to have not ruled out Twinkie Defense. #Turing $KBIO $RTRX: image via William Gerber  @WilliamGerber, 18 December 2015

 

Martin Shkreli, chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, was arrested Thursday morning: photo by Andrew Burton via New York Times, 17 December 2015

"Most hated man in America" who raised HIV drug price to $750 arrested by FBI for securities fraud.#karma: image via Mike Sington @Mike Sington, 17 December 2015  Los Angeles, CA

Martin Shkreli is so lonely he spent 2 million on the new #WuTang album to hopefully buy friends: image via Mike Glazer @GlazerBooHooHoo 9 December 2015

#MartinShkreli: I should've "raised prices higher": image via CBS This Morning Verified account @CBSThisMorning, 4 December 2015

NEW THIS MORNING: Officials confirm to @CBSNews drug company CEO #MartinShkreli faces charges of securities fraud:: image via CBS This Morning Verified account @CBSThisMorning, 17 December 2015

@TheDomino on #MartinShkreli arrest: This has all the makings of a made-for-TV pay cable movie...:: image via Morning Joe Verified account @Morning Joe, 17 December 2015

Why does it not surprise me that #MartinShkreli is the type when situations are reversed would throw up on himself?: image via K Smith @Smithh83K, 17 December 2015

Buying the whole fucking float

Money, far from being the harmless arena of human emulation as its apologists hold, is a great destroyer. Because money is eminent desire, there is no satisfaction in the external world unless it is conveyed in money, until the world is possessed in monetary garb -- like an Indian bride in her finery, hair reeking of attar of roses, eyes stinging with kohl-- ; because money is all power and potential, the external world is a poor thing and may be exploited and altered without compunction.

El mundo es poco. Columbus sucked a thousand years of gold from the Caribbean in two or three, and then extinguished all its human life. The Conquest he not so much inaugurated as carried to the New World now rages all over the globe, including its polar regions. Woods are paved, mountains mined, seas eaten, species annihilated. All the large land and sea animals of the earth, and most of ts birds, are under sentence of extinction. They are being killed not by the rifle, but by a more lethal invention, money. Money is no longer, as Adam Smith thought in an excitable passage, 'a waggon-way through the air' that leaves the earth free for men, but is actually destroying it, in the sense of extirpating its most intimate and precious nature, as the cattle-money of the Masai is destroying the grasslands of East Africa. To say that human beings must accept these losses, and live among their parasites -- learn to love sparrows and magpies and no other birds, hold cockroaches to be the only insects -- in a world of perfect artifice is the final idolatry: that money is our ineluctable destiny, not  merely our life, but our death as well. Schopenhauer watched the old men of his age barricade themselves behind money against the siege engines of death. Now all people do that. Humanity itself is transforming into the dragon of the Nibelungen, squatting in a filthy cave amid heaps of dusty treasure. The Ego is satisfied at last, surrounded by annihilating possessions.

James Buchan: from Frozen Desire: The Meaning of Money, 1997

Every Day I'm Studying: image via Wu-Tang Financial @Wu_Tang_Finance, 12 December 2015

SANTAS ELVES SO SAVAGE: image via Wu-Tang Financial @Wu_Tang_Finance, 14 December 2015

MARTIN LOOK LIKE HE BOUT TO DROP THE HOTTEST MIXTAPE OF 2016: image via Wu-Tang Financial @Wu_Tang_Finance, 17 December 2015

best Bloomberg headline of the day. cc: @Wu_Tang_Finance @Wu_Tang_Clan: image via deuceocho @deuceocho28, 17 December 2015

When momma makes yo favorite cookies and the rest of ya fam eat them all before u get home from work: image via Wu-Tang Financial @Wu_Tang_Finance, 17 December 2015

LOL Martin $KBIO: image via Nathan Michaud @InvestorsLive, 19 November 2015

Turnaround in progress. $KBIO: image viaMartinShkreli @MartinShkreli, 23 November 2015

Exclusive: KaloBios CEO MartinShkreli on drug prices, criticism, and fighting leukemia. Tonight at 6pm $KBIO: image viascott budman @scottbudman, 24 November 2015

Had a wonderful evening with this young man: image viaMartin Shkreli @MartinShkreli, 4 December 2015

With my guy @MartinShkreli real cool dude: image viaLIL SHAUN  @lilshaun45, 5 December 2015

We found out who bought the only copy of Wu-Tang’s album: image viaBloomberg Business @business, 9 December 2015

Meet music's king of controversy Martin Shkreli, the man who bought the $2m Wu Tang album: image via NME, 11 December 2015

Wu-Tang loving Turing CEO Martin Shkreli is really good at short selling: image viaBloomberg Business @business, 16 December 2015

Our profile of Martin Shkreli, bad boy of pharmaceuticals, who was arrested this morning: image viaNYT Business @nytimesbusiness, 17 December 2015

It's the most wonderful time of the yearrr #MartinShrkeli: image via Jamie Smart @jamiesmart, 17 December 2015

#MartinShrkeli indicted in "Ponzi-like" securities fraud scheme, faces up to 20 years: image via Talking Points Memo Verified account @TPM, 17 December 2015

#MartinShkreli arrested by federal agents on fraud charges: image via HipHopDX Verified account @HipHopDX, 17 December 2015

SEC files a lawsuit contending that Martin Shkreli's empire was built on lies to investors: image via The New York Times @nytimes, 17 December 2015

Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager under fire for buying a pharmaceutical company and ratcheting up the price of a life-saving drug, is escorted by law enforcement agents in New York Thursday, after being taken into custody following a securities probe: photo by Craig Ruttle/AP, 17 December 2015

Martin Shkreli, center, and attorney Evan Greebel exit the federal building in Manhattan where the FBI is located: photo by John Taggart/Bloomberg, 17 December 2015

AIDS activists pour cat litter on an image of Shkreli in a makeshift cat litter pan during a protest highlighting pharmaceutical drug pricing, in front of the building that houses Turing's offices, in New York.: photo by Craig Ruttle/APJ via Bloomberg, 17 December 2015

A picture of the nature of Money

[To the gold:]
O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce
'Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler
Of Hymen's purest bed! thou valiant Mars!
Thou ever young, fresh, loved and delicate wooer,
Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow
That lies on Dian's lap! thou visible god,
That solder'st close impossibilities,
And mak'st them kiss! that speak'st with every tongue,
To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts!
Think, thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue
Set them into confounding odds, that beasts
May have the world in empire!

William Shakespeare: Timon of Athens, first performed 1607, from Act IV Scene III

Shakespeare paints a brilliant picture of the nature of money.

That which exists for me through the medium of money, that which I can pay for, i.e., that which money can buy, that am I, the possessor of money. The stronger the power of my money, the stronger am I. The properties of money are my, the possessor's, properties and essential powers. Therefore, what I am and what I can do is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy the most beautiful woman. Which means to say that I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness, its repelling power, is destroyed by money. As an individual, I am lame, but money procures me 24 legs. Consequently, I am not lame. I am a wicked, dishonest, unscrupulous and stupid individual, but money is respected, and so also is its owner. Money is the highest good, and consequently its owner is also good. Moreover, money spares me the trouble of being dishonest, and I am therefore presumed to be honest. I am mindless, but if money is the true mind of all things, how can its owner be mindless? What is more, he can buy clever people for himself, and is not he who has power over clever people cleverer than them? Through money, I can have anything the human heart desires. Do I not possess all human abilities? Does not money therefore transform all my incapacities into their opposite?

If money is the bond which ties me to human life and society to me, which links me to nature and to man, is money not the bond of all bonds? Can it not bind and loose all bonds? Is it therefore not the universal means of separation? It is the true agent of separation and the true cementing agent, it is the chemical power of society.

Shakespeare brings out two properties of money in particular:

(1) It is the visible divinity, the transformation of all human and natural qualities into their opposites, the universal confusion and inversion of things; it brings together impossibilities.

(2) It is the universal whore, the universal pimp of men and peoples.

The inversion and confusion of all human and natural qualities, the bringing together of impossibilities, the divine power of money lies in its nature as the estranged and alienating species-essence of man which alienates itself by selling itself. It is the alienated capacity of mankind.

What I, as a man, do –- i.e., what all my individual powers cannot do –- I can do with the help of money. Money, therefore, transforms each of these essential powers into something which it is not, into its opposite.

If I desire a meal, or want to take the mail coach because I am not strong enough to make the journey on foot, money can provide me both the meal and the mail coach -- i.e., it transfers my wishes from the realm of imagination, it translates them from their existence as thought, imagination, and desires, into their sensuous, real existence, from imagination into life, and from imagined being into real being. In this mediating role, money is the truly creative power.

Demand also exists for those who have no money, but their demand is simply a figment of the imagination. For me, or for any other third party, it has no effect, no existence. For me, it therefore remains unreal and without an object. The difference between effective demand based on money and ineffective demand based on my need, my passion, my desire, etc., is the difference between being and thinking, between a representation which merely exists within me and one which exists outside me as a real object.

If I have money for travel, I have no need -– i.e., no real and self-realizing need –- to travel. If I have a vocation to study, but no money for it, I have no vocation to study -– i.e., no real, true vocation. But, if I really do not have any vocation to study, but have the will and the money, then I have an effective vocation do to so. Money, which is the external, universal means and power –- derived not from man as man, and not from human society as society -– to turn imagination into reality and reality into more imagination, similarly turns real human and natural powers into purely abstract representations, and therefore imperfections and phantoms –- truly impotent powers which exist only in the individual's fantasy -– into real essential powers and abilities. Thus characterized, money is the universal inversion of individualities, which it turns into their opposites and to whose qualities it attaches contradictory qualities.

Money, therefore, appears as an inverting power in relation to the individual and to those social and other bonds which claim to be essences in themselves. It transforms loyalty into treason, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, nonsense into reason, and reason into nonsense.

Since money, as the existing and active concept of value, confounds and exchanges everything, it is the universal confusion and exchangeof all things, an inverted world, the confusion and exchange of all natural and human qualities.

He who can buy courage is brave, even if he is a coward. Money is not exchange for a particular quality, a particular thing, or for any particular one of the essential powers of man, but for the whole objective world of man and of nature. Seen from the standpoint of the person who possesses it, money exchanges every quality for every other quality and object, even if it is contradictory; it is the power which brings together impossibilities and forces contradictions to embrace.

If we assume man to be man, and his relation to the world to be a human one, then love can be exchanged only for love, trust for trust, and so on. If you wish to enjoy art, you must be an artistically educated person; if you wish to exercise influence on other men, you must be the sort of person who has a truly stimulating and encouraging effect on others. Each one of your relations to man -– and to nature –- must be a particular expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love unrequitedly –- i.e., if your love as love does not call forth love in return, if, through the vital expression of yourself as a loving person, you fail to become a loved person –- then your love is impotent, it is a misfortune.

Karl Marx:from Money, in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, translated by Gregor Benton, 1974

$$$ wallpaper 02 (Florence): photo by Prof Alex O Chevtchenko, 26 December 2013

The Bank of Japan announced an open-ended asset purchase program in January 2013 and an unexpectedly ramped-up version of the program was implemented in early April. Market commentary at that time suggested that flooding the economy with liquidity would lead to a “wall of money” flowing out of Japan in search of higher yields, affecting asset prices worldwide. So far, however, Japan’s wall of money remains missing in action, with no pickup in Japanese foreign investment since the April policy shift. Why is this?

fromJapan's Missing Wall of Money: Thomas Klitgaard, in Liberty Street Economics, blog of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 4 November 2013

$$$ wallpaper (Florence): photo by Prof Alex O Chevtchenko, 26 December 2013

In the work I did for the exhibition “Art, Price and Value”, at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, the destructive action on the banknote was accompanied by a different practice that I have been trying out in recent years: that of the free distribution of works. Displayed on a wall measuring 9 metres by 3 were 3,000 low denomination dollar notes, which I had treated individually with sulphuric acid. Every visitor could choose a banknote, detach it from the wall and take it away.

The idea that the aesthetic synthesis, represented by the united composition of 3,000 banknotes, can be corroded, piece after piece, until it is literally emptied, calls into question the work of art as an unchangeable museum piece, offered to the public’s fetishist contemplation. In a way, it is a second “destructive” level: after the attack on the banknote, the attack on the work. At the same time, however, the act of destruction also represents a multiplication of the work itself. That installation can no longer be held in a museum, while it can be carried in the pockets of 3,000 people. I’m not saying that a piece of a painting by Pollock should be taken away every time someone goes to the MoMA. I do think, though, that this work can express an alternative function to that of contemplation.

-- Cesare Pietroiusti: fromFrancesca Picchi: Methods for an irreversible alteration of money: An interview with Cesare Pietroiusti, in Domus, 18 February 2009

 

Chemical "preparation" of a banknote: photographer unknown,from Francesca Picchi: Methods for an irreversible alteration of money: An interview with Cesare Pietroiusti, in Domus, 18 February 2009

Whose Is the Money?

The Middle Ages also had practical questions about money. Whose is the money? What is it for? The questions became particularly acute with the defaults and debasements in England and France to finance their long war in the fourteenth century: Edward III defaulted on his Italian loans while his adversary used the mints as a form of taxation: the silver substituted by alloy became an additional revenue or seignorage. These monetary debasements were disastrous to those living on incomes fixed in money, such as absentee landlords and rentiers, but a boon to those who could pay their debts in the debased coin, such as the poor and above all the crown: thesegrandes alliances have been at it ever since. Oresme, writing in the middle of the fourteenth century,sets out the terms of this super-secular struggle with admirable clarity; but, in truth, there is no common psychological  ground between the adversaries. As a bishop and a landlord, Oresme comes down decisively on the side of hard money: money, he says, is not the property of the prince but of the community which uses it; and he argues, threateningly, that princes that abuse their money will lose their kingdoms.

It is fascinating to behold. Just at the moment when princes, through their control of money, gain the upper hand over their feudatories, so they fall prey to the bankers, who, murdered or mulcted or bankrupted by monarchs, will lend to them only at rates that incorporate those rather substantial risks. The advanced cites of Italy, such as Genoa and Florence, had already alienated themselves to their bankers, a process made manifest in Florence by the Medici dictatorship; while Machiavelli thought the creditors of Genoa, collected in the House of St George, should have taken over the whole city... Marx, worrying away at the nature of money in Rue Vaneau in Paris in the spring of 1844, was deeply skeptical about the liberty embodied in the use of money. For him, the rootless lord, insubordinate vassal and emancipated serf are now subject to a set of autonomous and superhuman relations, the rule of money: 'The medieval proverb nulle terre sans seigneur [there is no land without its master] is thereby replaced by that other proverb, l'argent n'a pas de maître [Money knows no master] which suggests the complete domination of living man by dead matter.' He saw money as the successor of medieval religion, as an amalgam of human fear and desire estranged from its originator and granted dominion over him: truly, a mortgaged crown of thorns. He sought to restore not religion, but humanity. He revived the medieval notion of the just price, appealing not to a divine standard but to a human: the real value of anything was the volume of human effort and misery that had gone into its making.

Marx, unfortunately, was no saint, and it is given only to saints to see into the nature of money: to look into its bland exterior, its absolute refusal to divulge its history in transaction, and unlock it from a merciless nature. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, St Francis of Paola attempted to restore the corrupted Franciscan teaching in a regime of extreme austerity and a total renunciation of money. Travelling through Naples, he was offered a bag of gold for his expenses by King Ferdinand I. He refused it because, he said, it was the price of the blood of the King's subjects. 'To prove it, he took one of the gold pieces and broke it in two, whereupon several drops of blood fell from the money.'
.

With the feudal system in ruins, there arose a spirited debate in the most advanced city in Europe, Florence, as to what actually constituted strength in the state: money or men. Machiavelli argued that anybody with soldiers could obtain money. He was contradicted flatly by his friend Francesco Guicciardini, whose nephew, Lodovico, helped make proverbial a comment of the condottiere Gian Giacomo di Trivulzio: asked by Louis II in 1499 what was needed to capture Milan, the great mercenary said: Money, money and once again money.

The dispute was, in reality, a first attempt to come to grips with the oppositions of capital and labour in the department then of greatest interest to states, the strategic.

James Buchan: from Frozen Desire: The Meaning of Money, 1993

 Mictlantecuhtli, god of the dead and king of Mictlan (Chicunauhmictlan), lowest and northernmost section of the underworld: Aztec, sculptor unknown, recovered during excavation of the House of Eagles in the Templo Mayor: photo by Thelmadatter, 23 March 2008 (Museum of the Templo Mayor, Mexico City

Looking back from the present, it cannot be denied that western capitalism in the long run created a new art of living, new ways of thinking: it developed side by side with them. Can one call this a new civilization? That would I think be putting it too strongly: a civilization is built up over a longer time scale.

But if change there was, when did it come? ... Werner Sombart locates it in fifteenth-century Florence.

There is no doubt in my mind: on this point Sombart is right... Thirteenth-century -- and a fortiori fourteenth-century Florence was a capitalist city, whatever meaning one attaches to the word. The precocious and abnormal picture it presented struck Sombart, quite understandably... Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), architect, sculptor, humanist, was the scion of a long-powerful family with an eventful history: members of the Alberti family had economically colonized England in the fourteenth century; indeed so ubiquitous were they that the English documents often refer to them as the Albertynes -- as if like the Lucchese or indeed the Florentines, they were a nation in themselves. Leon Battista spent many years in exile and with the intention of escaping the troubles of the world entered holy orders. He wrote the first of three Libri della Famiglia in Rome, in about 1433-1434; the fourth was completed in Florence in 1441. Sombart finds in these books a new climate: praise of money, recognition of the value of time, the need to live thriftily -- all good bourgeois principles in the first flush of their youth. And the fact that this cleric came from a long line of merchants respected for their good faith lent weight to his writings. Money is 'the root of all things'; 'with money, one can have a house or a villa, and all the trades and craftsmen will toil like servants for the man who has money. He who has none goes without everything, and money is required for every purpose.' This was a new attitude towards wealth: previously it had been regarded as a kind of obstacle to salvation. The same was true of time: in the past, time had been considered as belonging to God alone; to sell it (in the shape of interest) was to sell non suum, what did not belong to one. But now time was once more becoming a dimension of human life, one of man's possessions which he would do well not to waste. And there was a new approach to luxury: 'Always remember, my sons', writes Alberti, 'that your expenditure should never exceed your income ' -- a new rule which condemned the conspicuous luxury of the nobles. As Sombart says, 'this was introducing a spirit of thrift not into the wretched domestic budgets of humble people who could hardly get enough to eat but into the mansions of the rich'. In other words, the spirit of capitalism.

Fernand Braudel: from The Wheels of Commerce (Les jeux de l'echange), 1979, Volume 2 of Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th century (Civilisation materielle, économie et capitalisme); translated from the French by Sîan Reynolds, 1982

For the Love of God: sculpture by Damien Hirst, 2007, platinum cast of a human skull covered with 8,601 diamonds; displayed at White Cube Gallery, London, asking price 50 million pounds: photographer unknown, via Daily Telegraph

... the desire incarnate in money offered a reward to the imagination, as between two lovers; and that reward seemed at first to be guaranteed by rare and beautiful metals, of whose inner nature and capacity men could only dream. In time, that guarantee was unveiled as only the projected authority of a community... It was the community that authorised the wishes expressed in money or frustrated them. To use money was to submit to the state, and when states disintegrated their moneys vanished as completely as their laws...

James Buchan: from Frozen Desire: The Meaning of Money, 1993

Máscara de Xiuhtecuhtli: representation of Xiuhtecuhtli (Lord Turquoise), Central Mexican god of fire: Mixtec-Aztec, c. 1400-1521, mosaic of turquoise inlay and other materials; photo by Manuel Parada López de Corselas, 2007 (British Museum, London)

 

 

Martin Shkreli, chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, was arrested Thursday morning: photo via The New York Times, 17 December 2015

An image from Martin Shkreli’s live stream on YouTube: photo via The New York Times, 17 December 2015

An image from Martin Shkreli’s live stream on YouTube: photo via The New York Times, 17 December 2015

 Mictlantecuhtli, god of the dead: Aztec, sculptor unknown; photo by Jamie Dwyer, 19 August 2008 (Museum of the Templo Mayor, Mexico City)

Or the look of someone suffering from a terrible case of affluenza... #PharmaBro #TrumpIsEvil #Affluenza #GetCouch: image via Minerva Neryse @minervaneryse, 18 December 2015

John Clare: Clock-a-Clay

January 1, 2016, 9:26 pm

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Seven-spot Ladybird. As I cut the grass in our UK front garden I spot a ladybird crawling up the Contorted Hazel Tree to warm itself in the early Spring sun. An insect to strike fear into tiny Aphid minds. The name ladybird comes from the Middle Ages when the colourful insects were known as "the beetle of Our Lady". They were named after the Virgin Mary because in early religious paintings she was often shown wearing a red cloak. The seven spots symbolise seven joys and seven sorrows.: photo by Jason, 25 March 2007

 

                        1
In the cowslips peeps I lye
Hidden from the buzzing fly
While green grass beneath me lies
Pearled wi’ dew like fishes eyes
Here I lye a Clock a clay
Waiting for the time o’day
                        2
While grassy forests quake surprise
And the wild wind sobs and sighs
My gold home rocks as like to fall
On its pillars green and tall
When the pattering rain drives bye
Clock a Clay keeps warm and dry
                        3
Day by day and night by night
All the week I hide from sight
In the cowslips peeps I lye
In rain and dew still warm and dry
Day and night and night and day
Red black spotted clock a clay
                        4
My home it shakes in wind and showers
Pale green pillar top’t wi’ flowers
Bending at the wild wind’s breath
Till I touch the grass beneath
Here still I live lone clock a clay
Watching for the time of day

John Clare (1793-1864): Clock-a-Clay, composed at Northampton Asylum between 1842 and 1864, from John Clare:The Later Poems, edited by Eric Robinson and David Powell, 1984

 

John Clare, born in the rural village of Helpston, has been called the "greatest English poet ever to come from the labouring classes." A field worker from childhood, Clare nevertheless received a rudimentary education and became a great reader and writer of poetry and a brilliant nature writer. In this little poem, "Clock a Clay," he speaks in the voice of the insect you may know as a "ladybug" or "ladybird." The name "Clock a Clay" comes from the rural Northhamptonshire belief that you can tell time by counting the number of taps on the ground it takes to make a lady bug fly away. -- Susan Stewart

The ladybird’s name –- ‘Clock a Clay’ -– alludes to the idea that you can tell the time by her in much the same way as a dandelion-clock, as she sits on your hand while you count the hours before she flies away. There has always been a close story-telling link between the little beetle and her human observers, urging her away to save her house from fire and return her children to safety. Did this tale also inform Clare’s vision? No fire for him, either; she will be safe if it’s the last thing … ‘watching for the time of day’ (l. 24). Time for what; to be free, or to get on with everyday life? Is this the Last Trump? -- Sue Edney

Ladybirds. too, are ben trovato in my garden. Aristocrats among beetles are they, having, like queen bees, special post-office permits. More than once have I brought home in my handkerchief a colony of jeweled ladybirds to be reëstablished at the foot of some aphis- or scale-infested plant, sure that they will accomplish their modest mission on earth. -- Gilbert White (1720-1793): from My Garden Beasts

A 7-spot Ladybird (Coccinella septempunctata) on a Queen Anne's lace flower head. Probably the ladybird most frequently noticed in Britain, it is red with up to nine black spots and measures 5mm-8mm. Habitat: varied, but often low herbage. Overwinters in low herbage and in conifer foliage: photo by Jacky Parker/Alamy via The Guardian, 27 October 2015

Ladybirds -- lots of them! [Lincolnshire]  -- especially 7-spots :-). Check out all the aphids too!: photo by nutmeg66, 26 July 2009

Ladybird lovin' [Lincolnshire]. A pair of pine ladybirds (Exochomus quadripustulatus) get a bit of action. Their heart-shaped splodges were kind of appropriate for today's love-fest. Handheld, natural light.: photo by nutmeg66, 17 April 2007

 

 

"Ladybug Ladybird"[Ottawa]: photo by Stuart Williams, 10 June 2009

Ladybird pair [Lincolnshire].. The afternoon sun brought the ladybirds out today. This pair were nestled on a rock rose leaf in the garden. The purple background is my children's outgrown climbing frame thing. Handheld, natural light.: photo by nutmeg66, 11 March 2008

Transverse Ladybird (Coccinella transvwesalis), Austins Ferry, Tasmania: photo by JJ Harrison, 27 August 2009

A 22-spot yellow-punctuated ladybird (Psyllobora vigintiduopunctuata), Dresden, Lower Saxony: photo by Olaf Leillinger, 25 September 2005

 

 

Seven-spot Ladybird (Coccinella septempunctuata), Oxfordshire: photo by Charlesjsharp, 18 October 2013

 

The two-spot ladybird (Adalia bipunctata) has up to 16 black or red spots, which can be very variable – in splodges or in a grid pattern. It is the ladybird which most commonly overwinters in buildings: photo by Jacky Parker/Alamy via The Guardian, 27 October 2015

 

The pine ladybird (Exochomus qadripustulatus) is round in shape with a pronounced rim around the margin of the wing cases. It is black with between two and four red spots; the spots at the outer front margin of the wing cases are comma-shaped. Inhabits needled conifers, sallows and willows, and overwinters in leaf litter, foliage and bark crevices of evergreen trees and shrubs: photo by Stefan Rosengren/Alamy via The Guardian, 27 October 2015

The harlequin ladybird (Harmonia axyridis) is an alien species, which is expected to spread rapidly as it outcompetes other species and is a major threat to them and some other insect groups. It has a yellow-orange, orange-red, red or black body with up to 21 orange-red or black spots, and white or cream spots, lines or solid marking on its pronotum (front plate): photo by Alamy via The Guardian, 27 October 2015

A 22-spot Ladybird (Psyllobora vigintiduopunctata) on a curled stalk with a waterdrop. This species measures 3mm-4mm and is yellow or black with 20-22 black spots. The pronotum has five discrete black spots. Host plant: various, particularly hogweed. Overwinters in low herbage; feeds on mildews: photo by Jef Meul via The Guardian, 27 October 2015

she was often shown wearing a red cloak

San Zeno Polyptych (central panel): Andrea Mantegna, 1457-60, tempera on panel (San Zeno, Verona)



San Zeno Polyptych (central panel, detail): Andrea Mantegna, 1457-60, tempera on panel (San Zeno, Verona)


San Zeno Polyptych (central panel, detail): Andrea Mantegna, 1457-60, tempera on panel (San Zeno, Verona)

While green grass beneath me lies Pearled wi’ dew like fishes eyes

Three dew-dappled 7-spot ladybirds in @SheringhamNT this morning: image via Chris Doward @ChrisDoward, 28 December 2015

Dew-dappled 7-spot ladybirds in @SheringhamNT this morning. @UKLadybirds @BBCSpringwatch @insectweek: image via Chris Doward @ChrisDoward, 28 December 2015

Another view of same ladybirds. At least 12 there. @SheringhamNT @UKLadybirds @BBCSpringwatch @insectweek: image via Chris Doward @ChrisDoward, 28 December 2015

Two-spot ladybird awake in the house this afternoon. Wilden, TL0954 @UKLadybirds: image via Andrew Green @nature_spotter, 28 December 2015

At least something is hibernating as the squirrels aren't #ladybird @UKLadybirds: image via Paul Fisher @DrFishmarketing, 28 December 2015

At least something is hibernating as the squirrels aren't #ladybird @UKLadybirds: image via Paul Fisher @DrFishmarketing, 28 December 2015

Aristocrats among beetles are they, having, like queen bees, special post-office permits

 @UKLadybirds@iRecordWildlifespotted in my stepdaughters bedroom Christmas Eve.: image via Sue Reaper @ladybuglass, 24 December 2015

 @UKLadybirds two 7-spots yesterday in a brief glimpse of sunshine: image via ArnoldTortoise @arnoldtortoise, 24 December 2015

 

Some active 7-spots found today, top one in picture was on approach to @SheringhamNT from U.Sher @UKLadybirds: image via Chris Doward @ChrisDoward, 19 December 2015

7-spot ladybird found at Spring Beck, Weybourne today @UKLadybirds: image via Chris Doward @ChrisDoward, 19 December 2015

One of a few clusters of ladybirds found today. Spring Beck, Weybourne. @UKLadybirds: image via Chris Doward @ChrisDoward, 19 December 2015

 

''The holly and the ladybirds.'@SheringhamNT 13/12/15 @UKLadybirds: image via Chris Doward @ChrisDoward, 19 December 2015

''Frosty the ladybirds.'@SheringhamNT 13/12/15 @UKLadybirds: image via Chris Doward @ChrisDoward, 19 December 2015

Invert highlights 2015: Heather Ladybird (Chilocorus bipustulatus) swept from heather in August @UKLadybirds: image via Ciará Byrne @kiwibyrne, 19 December 2015

7-spots & Orange Ladybirds hibernating together 16/12@UKLadybirds: image via Gary snail @Garymysnail, 16 December 2015

Time for what; to be free, or to get on with everyday life?

Willy Lot's House: John Constable, c. 1810, oil on canvas, 25 x 30 cm (Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

Evictions

January 4, 2016, 9:46 pm

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"The Battering Ram has done its work". Eviction of Thomas Birmingham, tenant of the Vandeleur Estate, near Moyasta, County Clare. photo by Robert French, c. July 1888 (Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland)

 

Adonis: "houses left their walls behind"

They found people in bags:

              a person                                                 without a head 

              a person                                                 without hands, or tongue

              a person                                                 choked to death

              and the rest had no shapes and no names.

                              -- Are you mad? Please

                                                             don’t write about these things.

A page in a book

              bombs mirror themselves inside of it

              prophecies and dust-proverbs mirror themselves inside of it 

              cloisters mirror themselves inside of it, a carpet made of the alphabet

                             disentangles thread by thread

falls on the face of the city, slipping out of the needles of memory.

A murderer in the city’s air, swimming through its wound --

its wound is a fall

that trembled to its name -- to the hemorrhage of its name

and all that surrounds us --

houses left their walls behind

                                               and I am no longer I.

Adonis (b. 1930): from Desert in Selected Poems (2010), translated by Khaled Mattawa

fleeing death Aleppo today: image via baraa al halabi @baraaalhalabi, 24 December 2015 

 

A relative looks at the demolished house of Palestinian Bahaa Mohammed Halil Allyan in the Arab east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Jabel Mukaber on Monday: photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters. 4 January 2015

bombs mirror themselves inside of it

 

A Yemeni inspects his family’s apartment destroyed by airstrikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition targeting a neighborhood in Sanaa, Yemen on Monday: photo by Yahya Arhab/EPA, 4 January 2015

Saudi-led coalition announces end of cease-fire in #Yemen (AFP pic): image via China Xinhua News @XHNews, 2 January 2015

Mathias Magrath's house, Moyasta, County Clare, after destruction by the Battering Ram: photo by Robert French, 1888 (Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland)

A Yemeni inspects his family’s apartment destroyed by airstrikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition targeting a neighborhood in Sanaa, Yemen on Monday: photo by Yahya Arhab/EPA, 4 January 2015

 
Widow Macnamara in her fortress. The home of eighty-year-old widow Margaret Macnamara, of Bodyke, County Clare, who was evicted on 2 June 1887.: photo by Henry Norman, 2 June 1887 (Eblana Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland)

The Fire Brands, Bodyke, County Clare. The sign on the effigy reads: PRAISE THE LORD / FOR HERE / THE TYRANT'S ARM WAS / PARALYSED. Taken by Pall Mall Gazette journalist Henry Norman the day after Widow McNamara's eviction. The first sheriff, called McMahon, had turned up with a large force several days earlier but had an epileptic fit and withdrew. The tenants saw this as divine intervention and made this effigy of him.: photo by Henry Norman, Friday 5 June 1887 (Eblana Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland)

 

 

A relative looks at the demolished house of Palestinian Bahaa Allyan in Jabel Mukaber: photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters, 4 January 2015

Battering Ram. "Back with them, away with them". Eviction of Thomas Birmingham, tenant of the Vandeleur Estate, near Moyasta, County Clare. photo by Robert French, 1888 (Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland)

 

A relative looks at the demolished house of Palestinian Bahaa Mohammed Halil Allyan in the Arab east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Jabel Mukaber on Monday: photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters. 4 January 2015

 
Widow Macnamara in her fortress. The home of eighty-year-old widow Margaret Macnamara, of Bodyke, County Clare, who was evicted on 2 June 1887.: photo by Henry Norman, 2 June 1887 (Eblana Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland)

The Fire Brands, Bodyke, County Clare. The sign on the effigy reads: PRAISE THE LORD / FOR HERE / THE TYRANT'S ARM WAS / PARALYSED. Taken by Pall Mall Gazette journalist Henry Norman the day after Widow McNamara's eviction. The first sheriff, called McMahon, had turned up with a large force several days earlier but had an epileptic fit and withdrew. The tenants saw this as divine intervention and made this effigy of him.: photo by Henry Norman, Friday 5 June 1887 (Eblana Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland)

 

Eviction scene. "Ready for hot water". Eviction of Thomas Birmingham, tenant of the Vandeleur Estate, near Moyasta, County Clare. photo by Robert French, c. July 1888 (Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland)

via NLI

 

T.  Birmingham's house, Moyasta, County Clare, with Battering Ram and soldiers outside: photo by Robert French, c. July 1888 (Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland)

 

Dr Tully's House. A eviction on land of the Marquis of Clanricarde at Woodford, County Galway. Farmer and boat builder Francis Tully, known locally as "Dr Tully", was an activist for the Plan of Campaign in Galway. The Plan of Campaign was an attempt to gain lower rents through collective bargaining because prices on agricultural exports had fallen dramatically in the 1880s. Maud Gonne agitated for change by projecting images  like this one onto a building in Parnell Square, Dublin: photographer unknown, 1 September 1888 (National Library of Ireland)

"The only serious attempt at resisting the execution of the law was made by "Dr." Tully, one of the leading local "agitators," to the tendency of whose harangues judicial reference was made during the investigation into the case of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt. Tully had a holding of seventeen acres at a rent of L2, 10s., the Government valuation being L4. He earned a good livelihood as a boat-builder, and he had put up a slated house on his holding. But in November 1884 he chose to stop paying the very low rent at which he held his place, and he has paid no rent since that time. As is stated in a footnote on page 153, vol. ii. of this book, a decree was granted against Tully by Judge Henn for three years' rent due in May 1887, and his equity of redemption having expired July 9, 1888, this recourse was had to the law against him."

As the leading spirit of the agitation, Tully had put a garrison into his house of twelve men and two women. He had dug a ditch around it, taken out the window-sashes, filled up the casements and the doorways with stones and trunks of trees. Portholes had been pierced under the roof, through which the defenders might thrust red-hot pikes, pitchforks, and other weapons, and empty pails of boiling water upon the assailants. A brief parley took place. Tully refused to make any offer of a settlement unless the agent would agree to reinstate all the evicted tenants, to which Mr. Tener replied that he would recognise no "combination," but was ready to deal with every tenant fairly and individually. Finally the Sheriff ordered his men to take the place. Ladders were planted, and while some of the constables, under the protection of a shield covered with zinc, a sort of Roman _testudo_, worked at removing the earthern ramparts, others nimbly climbed to the roof and began to break in from above. In their excitement the garrison helped this forward by breaking holes through the roof themselves to get at the attacking party, and in about twenty minutes the fortress was captured, and the inmates were prisoners. Two constables were burned by the red-hot pikes, the gun of another was broken to pieces by a huge stone, and a fourth was slightly wounded by a fork. One of the defenders got a sword-cut; and Tully was brought forth as one too severely wounded to walk. Upon investigation, however, the surgeon refused to certify that he was unable to undergo the ordinary imprisonment in such cases made and provided.

The collapse of the resistance at this central point was followed by a general surrender.

After the capture of Tully's house, Mr. Tener writes to me, "I found it being gutted by his family, who would have carried it away piecemeal. They had already taken away the flooring of one of the rooms." Thereupon Mr. Tener had the house pulled down, with the result of seeing a statement made in a leading Nationalist paper that he was "evicting the tenants and pulling down their houses."
 

Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888)
 

He wasn't really a doctor but was called this because he prescribed "leaden pills" (bullets) for greedy landlords...
 

(Information courtesy of an insomniac researcher on the NLI website, Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse, 2012)

 

Mitchelstown Eviction Resistance at O'Sullivan's, County Cork. The plan of the campaign was an attempt to gain lower rents through collective bargaining because prices on agricultural exports had fallen dramatically in the 1880s: photographer unknown, c. June 1887 (National Library of Ireland)

 

[untitled]: image via baraa al halabi @baraaalhalabi, 30 December 2015