Malaparte: An Aeolian Greyhound

February 14, 2018, 3:52 am

≫ Next: What Happened to Ten Villagers Who Were Minding Their Own Business in Inn Din / The Postman of Gloucester

≪ Previous: Report on Progress of Poetic Research (by the dock of the bay of the prehistoric catskills)

Untitled | Dhaka, Bangladesh: photo by Md. Enamul Kabir, 9 April 2016

#8 | Dhaka, Bangladesh: photo by Md. Enamul Kabir, 15 June 2017

Untitled | Dhaka, Bangladesh: photo by Md. Enamul Kabir, 14 July 2017

#13 | Dhaka, Bangladesh: photo by Md. Enamul Kabir, 14 August 2017

Self Portrait | Dhaka, Bangladesh: photo by Md. Enamul Kabir, 8 January 2017

Jorge Luis Borges: Un lobo

Post 13: of dogs and dystopia @WennerGrenOrg @AmericanAnthro @drmfirdosi @Evilsickularist: image via Ather Zia @aziakashmir, 13 August 2016

Jorge Luis Borges: Un lobo

Furtivo y gris en la penumbra última,
va dejando sus rastros en la margen
de este río sin nombre que ha saciado
la sed de su garganta y cuyas aguas
no repiten estrellas. Esta noche,
el lobo es una sombra que está sola
y que busca a la hembra y siente frío.
Es el último lobo de Inglaterra.
Odín y Thor lo saben. En su alta
casa de piedra un rey ha decidido
acabar con los lobos. Ya forjado
ha sido el fuerte hierro de tu muerte.
Lobo sajón, has engendrado en vano.
No basta ser cruel. Eres el último.
Mil años pasarán y un hombre viejo
te soñará en América. De nada
puede servirte ese futuro sueño.
Hoy te cercan los hombres que siguieron
por la selva los rastros que dejaste,
furtivo y gris en la penumbra última.

A keeshond sits on a grooming table before competing at the Westminster Kennel Club in New York. The nation’s top dog show attracts almost 2,900 dogs to New York, where judging started on Monday, Feb. 12, 2018.: photo by Ben Walker/AP, 12 February 2018

Jorge Luis Borges: A Wolf

Grey and furtive in the final twilight,
he lopes by, leaving his spoor along the bank
of this nameless river that has quenched the thirst
of his throat, the water that repeats no stars.
Tonight, the wolf is a shade who runs alone
and searches for his mate and feels cold.
He is the last wolf in all of Angle-land.
Odin and Thor know him. In a commanding
house of stone a king has made up his mind
to put an end to wolves. The powerful
blade of your death has already been forged.
Saxon wolf, your seed has come to nothing.
To be cruel isn’t enough. You are the last.
A thousand years will pass and an old man
will dream of you in America. What use
can that future dream possibly be to you?
Tonight the men who followed through the woods
the spoor you left are closing in on you,
grey and furtive in the final twilight.

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986): Un Lobo (A Wolf), fromLos conjurados, 1985, English version by Robert Mezey

These dogs were abandoned in crisis-hit Venezuela: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 7 September 2016

Struggling to feed families, crisis-hit Venezuelans are abandoning their pets: image via Reuters Pictures @ReutersPictures, 7 September 2016

PHOTOS: Struggling to feed their families, some Venezuelan owners are abandoning their dogs: image via Reuters Top New @Reuters, 7 September 2016

In Venezuela, dogs lives are getting harder. Venezuelans struggling to feed their families let alone pets amid an unprecedented economic crisis are increasingly dumping scrawny animals in streets, parks and makeshift shelters. At one dilapidated sanctuary in the hills outside Caracas, hundreds of skinny dogs bark and claw through wire mesh to scavenge for food in the streets and forest nearby."The crisis has hit hard," said Maria Arteaga, 53, who began looking after stray dogs in her own home before founding the shelter in Los Teques.."People are abandoning their dogs because they can't afford food and because they're leaving the country." Venezuelans themselves are suffering shortages of food and medicines, and are finding salaries wrecked by triple-digit inflation. A 20 kilogram bag of dog food costs around $50 at the black market exchange rate, nearly double its price in the United States and out of reach for many in Venezuela where the minimum wage is $23-a-month. Enfermera (nurse), seen above, was given that name because she was rescued by a nurse outside a hospital. "She suffered a stroke and although she never recovered completely, she is a very good guard dog. She lives outside of the shelter and when someone approaches, she starts barking," said Maria Silva, who takes care of dogs at the shelter.: photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins via Reuters PIctures @reuterspictures, 7 September 2016

Mancha (stain) was given that name because of the black spot on her face. "She has bitten almost everybody in the shelter. She was not loving, on the contrary, she fought everyone and at mealtime nobody could be near her," said Maria Silva. Mancha died the following week after the photo was taken.: photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins via Reuters PIctures @reuterspictures, 7 September 2016

Pichurra is very old and has been at the shelter for a long time. "She is extremely calm, never fights with anyone, nor does she bark. In fact, at mealtimes the volunteers have to be very alert, because if any other dog steals her food she would not complain," said Maria Silva.: photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins via Reuters PIctures @reuterspictures, 7 September 2016

Pintica (spotty) was given that name because of her skin. "She was the posh girl of the shelter, she didn't like to get her feet wet. All dogs used to attack her and because of that, she did not like to come out of her home," said Maria Silva. Pintica died the following week after the photo was taken.: photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins via Reuters PIctures @reuterspictures, 7 September 2016

Best In Toy

The Latest: Slick show for border collie at Westminster: Photo @maltaffer: image via AP Images @AP_Images, 13 February 2018

Handler Jamie Clute shows Slick, a border collie, in the ring during the herding group competition during the 142nd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018, at Madison Square Garden in New York. Slick won best in the herding group.: photo by Mary Altaffer/AP, 12 February 2018

Bill McFadden shows Flynn, a bichon frise, in the ring during the non-sporting group during the 142nd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Monday, Feb. 12, 2018, at Madison Square Garden in New York. Flynn won best in the non-sporting group.: photo by Mary Altaffer/AP, 12 February 2018

Biggie, a pug, is shown in the ring during the Toy group competition during the 142nd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Monday, Feb. 12, 2018, at Madison Square Garden in New York. Biggie won best in group.: photo by Mary Altaffer/AP, 12 February 2018

Handler Esteban Farias hugs Biggie, a pug, after he won the Toy group competition during the 142nd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Monday, Feb. 12, 2018, at Madison Square Garden in New York. Biggie won best in group.: photo by Mary Altaffer/AP, 13 February 2018

Esteban Farias waves the blue ribbon after Biggie, a pug, wins best in Toy group during the 142nd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Monday, Feb. 12, 2018, at Madison Square Garden in New York. Biggie won best in group.: photo by Mary Altaffer/AP, 13 February 2018

Lucy, a borzoi, is shown in the ring during the Hound group competition during the 142nd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Monday, Feb. 12, 2018, at Madison Square Garden in New York. Lucy won best in group.: photo by Mary Altaffer/AP, 12 February 2018

Canine competitors assemble on the first day of judging at the #WestminsterDogShow Photo @drewangerer: image via Getty Images News, 12 February 2018

Pooches Get Pampered: Almost 3,000 dogs from all 50 states made an appearance at the 142nd Westminster Dog Show in New York City on Monday.: photo by DrewAngerer/Getty Images, 12 February 2018

Canine competitors assemble on the first day of judging at the #WestminsterDogShow Photo @drewangerer: image via Getty Images News, 12 February 2018

Pooches Get Pampered: Almost 3,000 dogs from all 50 states made an appearance at the 142nd Westminster Dog Show in New York City on Monday. Photo Timothy A. Clary: image viaGetty Images @GettyImages, 12 February 2018

Canine competitors assemble on the first day of judging at the #WestminsterDogShow Photo @drewangerer: image via Getty Images News, 12 February 2018

Secret pep talk? Vulcan Mind Meld? Or just smoosh face kisses? #WestminsterDogShow2018 #WKCDogShow #wirehairedvizsla Photo @drewangerer: image via Getty Images News, 12 February 2018

I just screamed inordinately loudly at the joy of the Norfolk Terrier winning#WestminsterDogShow2018 #goodpups: image via Josh Friedman @yoshfriedman, 13 February 2018

Lucky for strategically placed flowers! Newfie at Junior handling competition at #WestminsterDogShow2018 needs a restroom break NOW!: image via Katherine Leask @katherineleask, 13 February 2018

Shaun White wins gold, I’m at the #WestminsterDogShow2018, and dogs now look like goats. Life is good. #olympicsanddogs #Bedlingtonterrier: image via Dr. Holly Hunsberger @hhunsber, 13 February 2018

@TmarTn @ChelseaKreiner Coopy and Koda r here! #westminsterdogshownyc #westminsterdogshow2018 #dogloversunite #dogloversunitewestand: image via Jeff @IntheLifeofJeff, 13 February 2018

@TmarTn @ChelseaKreiner Koda’s relative is misbehaving! #westminsterdogshownyc #westminsterdogshow2018 #dogloversunite #dogloversunitewestand: image via Jeff @IntheLifeofJeff, 13 February 2018

@TmarTn @ChelseaKreiner Koada just started a scuffle and is in timeout... #westminsterdogshownyc #westminsterdogshow2018 #dogloversunite #dogloversunitewestand: image via Jeff @IntheLifeofJeff, 13 February 2018

A dog's life

'Mad Max' violence stalks Venezuela's lawless roads: With hunger widespread amid a fifth year of economic implosion, Venezuela has seen a frightening surge in attacks on increasingly lawless roads Photo Carlos Garcia Rawlins: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 9 February 2018

Just days earlier, trucker Humberto Aguilar said he sat terrified when hundreds of looters swarmed a convoy, carting off milk, rice and sugar from other trucks but leaving his less-prized vegetables alone Photo Carlos Garcia Rawlins: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 9 February 2018

Sometimes gunmen on motorbikes surround a truck, slowing it down before pouncing, or attackers wait for a vehicle to slow down before jumping on and hurling goods onto the ground: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 9 February 2018

Truckers say assailants are often more akin to Robin Hood than Mad Max - they don’t harm drivers or their vehicles provided they do not resist. 'The best protection is to be submissive, hand things over ... When people are hungry, they are dangerous' Photo Carlos Garcia Rawlins: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 9 February 2018

The dystopian attacks in a country with one of the world's highest murder rates are pushing up transport and food costs in an already hyperinflationary environment Photo Carlos Garcia Rawlins: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 9 February 2018

'The government gives us no security. It's madness ... But if we stop, how do we earn a living for our families? How do Venezuelans eat? And how do the peasant farmers sell their produce? We have no choice but to keep going': image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 9 February 2018

Curzio Malaparte: An Aeolian Greyhound

Head of a Greyhound, right profile: Antonio Puccio Pisano (Pisanello) (c. 1395-c.1455), 15th c. (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

During the winter of 1940 I had sought refuge in a deserted house, situated at the end of one of the most beautiful and most deserted streets in the exquisitely beautiful, deserted city of Pisa. I had done so in order to escape from the war and from men, and to cure myself of that loathsome malady to which war exposes the human heart.

Panoramic view of the River Arno from Ponte di Mezzo, Pisa, Italy: photo by Lucarelli, 2008

With me was Febo, my dog Febo, whom I had picked up, dying of hunger, on the beach at Marina Corte, on the island of Lipari. I had tended him, reared him, brought him up in my lonely house on Lipari, and he had been my sole companion during my years of exile on that sad island, which is so dear to my heart.

Vulcano and Lipari, Aeolian islands, at sunset; seaview from Milazzo: photo by Carmen Privitera, 1 January 2009

I have never loved a woman, a brother, a friend, so much as I loved Febo. There was an affinity between us. It was in his honor that I wrote the tender pages of Un cane come me. He was a noble creature, the noblest I have ever come across in my life. He belonged to that breed of greyhounds -- a rare and delicate breed today -- which came long ago from the shores of Asia with the first Ionic immigrants, and which are known to the shepherds of Lipari as cerneghi.

Filicudi ("Scolgio della Fortuna") and Alicudi ("Faraglione La Canna"), Aeolian Islands, Italy, North of Sicily: photo by Wolfgang H. Wödere, 2006

His coat was the color of the moon, between pink and gold; it was the color of moonlight on the sea, the color of moonlight on the dark leaves of lemon and orange trees, on the scales of the dead fish which the sea used to throw up on the shore outside the door of my house after a storm. He was the color of the moonlight on the Grecian sea that laps the shores of Lipari, the color of moonlight in the poetry of the Odyssey, the color of the moonlight on that wild Liparian sea which Ulysses sailed in the course of his voyage to the lonely shore of the realm of Aeolus, ruler of the winds. He was of a pale color, like the moon just before dawn. I used to call him Caneluna.

Stromboli, Aeolian archipelago, Sicily: photo by Mac9, 2006

He never strayed so much as a yard from my side. He followed me like a dog. He followed me, I say, like a dog. There was something wonderful about his presence in my wretched house on Lipari, a house lashed without respite by the wind and the sea. At night the darkness of my bare room was lit by the bright warmth of his moon-eyes. His eyes were pale blue, the color of the sea when the moon sets. I was conscious of his presence, as one is conscious of the presence of a shadow, of one's own shadow. He was, as it were, the mirror of my soul. His mere presence helped me to acquire that contempt for mankind on which the serenity and wisdom of a human being primarily depend. I felt that he resembled me, that he was in truth the very image of my conscience, of my secret life -- a portrait of myself, of all that is deepest, most intimate and most characteristic in me. I felt that he was my subconscious and, so to say, my ghost.

File:Pisanello - Codex Vallardi 2433.jpg

Standing Greyhound, right profile: Antonio Puccio Pisano (Pisanello) (c. 1395-c.1455), 15th c. (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

From him, far more than from men, with their culture and their vanity, I learned that virtue is its own reward, that it is an end in itself, and that it does not even aspire to save the world (not even that!), but only to invent every new justification for its disinterestedness and its liberty of action. The relationship of a man and a dog is always a relationship of two free spirits, of two forms of dignity, of two types of virtue each of which is its own reward. It is the most disinterested and the most romantic of relationships, one of those relationships which death illuminates with its own radiance -- a radiance tinged with the color of the pale moon that hangs above the sea at dawn, when the sky is green.

Pumice mine on the island of Lipari, west of the town of Acquacalda: photo by Herandar, 2005

I saw reproduced in him my most mysterious impulses, my doubts, my fears, my hopes. The dignity of his attitude toward mankind was mine, the courage and pride of his attitude to life were mine, his contempt for the fickle passions of men was mine. But he was more sensitive than I to the obscure portents of nature and to the invisible presence of death, which ever lurks about us, silent and suspicious. He sensed the approach of the sad spirits that haunt our dreams as they come from afar through the night air, like dead insects that are borne on the wind, none knows whence. And on some nights, as he lay curled up at my feet in my bare room on Lipari, he followed with his eyes an obscure phantasm as it hovered around me, advancing and receding, and lingering long hours watching me through the windowpane. Every so often, if the mysterious presence came so close that it brushed my forehead, Febo would snarl menacingly, the hair on his back would bristle; and I would hear a mournful cry receding into the night, and gradually dying away.

Islands in Aeolian archipelago: in foreground the Gran Cratere on Vulcano Island, in middleground the Vulcanello, in background Lípari: photo by Man77, 2006

He was the dearest of brothers to me, a true brother, one who betrays not, nor humiliates. He was a loving, a helping, an understanding, a forgiving brother. Only the man who has suffered long years of exile on a desert island, and who, on his return to the haunts of men, finds himself shunned and avoided as if he were a leper by all those who one day, when the tyrant is dead, will pose as the heroes of freedom -- only he knows what a dog can mean to a human being. Often Febo would gaze at me with a sad, noble expression of reproach in his loving eyes. At such times my sadness made me feel strangely ashamed, almost remorseful, and I was conscious as I faced him of a kind of heightened moral susceptibility. I felt that at those moments Febo despised me. True, he grieved for me, he was tender and loving; yet his eyes certainly held a suggestion of pity and, simultaneously, of contempt. He was not only my brother, but my judge. He was the guardian of my dignity, and at the same time, to use the expression of the old Greeks, he was my δορυφσρημα.

He was a sad dog, with grave eyes.Every evening we used to spend long hours on the high windswept threshold of my house, looking at the sea. Ah! the Grecian sea of Sicily, ah! the red crags of Scylla, yonder, facing Charybdis. and the snow-capped peak of Aspromonte, and the white shoulder of Etna, the Olympus of Sicily! Truly, as Theocritus sings, life offers no more beautiful experience than to contemplate the Sicilian sea from a vantage point on the shore. We used to see the shepherds' fires flaring up on the mountain, and the boats sailing forth into the deep to meet the moon; we used to hear the mournful wail of the sea shells, through which the fishermen call to one another over the water, receding into the silvery moonlit haze. We used to see the moon rising over the crags of Scylla, and Stromboli, the high, inaccessible volcano that stands in the middle of the sea, blazing like a solitary pyre within the deep blue forest of the night. We used to look at the sea, inhaling the pungent salt air, and the strong, intoxicating perfume of the olive groves, and the smell of goats' milk and of juniper branches burning in the hearths, and that warm, heavy scent of women which pervades the Sicilian night when the first stars climb wanly above the horizon.

Then one day I was taken with handcuffs on my wrists from Lipari to another island, and from there, after long months, to Tuscany. Febo followed me at a distance, hiding among the casks of anchovies and the coils of rope on the deck of the Santa Marina, the little steamer which crosses every so often from Lipari to Naples, and among the hampers of fish and tomatoes on the motorboat that plies between Naples, Ischia and Ponza. With the courage that is peculiar to cowards -- it is the only positive claim that slaves have to share the privileges of the free -- the people stopped to look at me with reproving, contemptuous expressions, hurling insults at me though clenched teeth. Only the lepers who lay in the sun on the beaches in Naples harbor smiled at me surreptitiously, spitting on the ground between the shoes of the carabinieri. I looked now and again to see if Febo was following me, and I saw him walking with his tail between his legs, hugging the walls, through the streets of Naples, from the Immacolatella to the Molo Beverello, a wonderfully sad look in his bright eyes.

...When, a few months later, I was transferred to Lucca, I was shut up in the prison, where I remained for many weeks. And when I came out, escorted by my guards, to my new place of banishment, Febo was waiting for me outside the door to the jail. He was thin and mud-stained, and there was a horribly gentle expression in his eyes, which shone brilliantly.

Two more years my exile lasted, and for two years we lived in a little house at the heart of a wood. One room was occupied by Febo and myself, the other by the carabinieri who were my warders. At last I regained my freedom, and to me it was like going from a room without windows into a narrow room without walls. We went to live in Rome, and Febo was sad -- he seemed to be humiliated by the spectacle of my freedom. He knew that freedom is alien to humanity, that men cannot and perhaps do now know how to be free, and that in Italy and in Europe freedom is discredited no less than slavery.

Lungarno, Pisa, Toscana, Italy: photo by Eric Perrone, 2006

Throughout our stay in Pisa we used to remain indoors nearly all day. Not until noon or thereabouts did we go out for our walk by the river, the fair river of Pisa, the silver Arno, strolling along the beautiful Lungarni, so light and cold... Toward evening we would go and sit on the parapet overlooking the Arno (that narrow stone parapet along which Lord Byron, in the days in which he was an exile in Pisa, used to gallop every morning on his beautiful alezan, amid the terrified shouts of the peaceful citizens). We used to watch the river as it flowed along, carrying with it in its bright career leaves blighted by the frosts of winter and mirroring the silver clouds that drift across the immemorial sky of Pisa.

Fiume Arno nella città di Pisa fotografato dal lungarno Pacinotti verso ponte Solferino: photo by William Domenichini. 2004

Febo used to spend long hours curled up at my feet, and every so often he would get up, walk over to the door and turn and look at me. I would go and open the door for him, and he would go out, coming back after an hour or two, breathless, his coat smoothed by the wind, his eyes bright from the cold winter sunshine. At night he used to lift his head and listen to the voice of the river, to the voice of the rain beating down on the river; and sometimes I would wake up, and feel his warm eyes resting gently upon me, feel his vital, affectionate presence there in the dark room, and his sadness, his desolate foreboding of death.

One day he went out and never came back. I waited for him until evening, and when night fell rushed through the streets, calling him by name...

Curzio Malaparte (Kurt Erich Suckert) (1896-1957): from La Pelle (The Skin), 1949; English version by David Moore, 1952

Felixstowe, England: photo by Alison Adcock, 4 March 2017

↧

What Happened to Ten Villagers Who Were Minding Their Own Business in Inn Din / The Postman of Gloucester

February 15, 2018, 4:56 am

≫ Next: Table for One

≪ Previous: Best In Toy / Borges: Un lobo (A wolf) / A dog's life (of dogs and dystopia) / Malaparte: An Aeolian Greyhound

EXECUTION: This photo was taken on the day the 10 Rohingya men were killed. Paramilitary police officer Aung Min, left, stands guard behind them. The picture was obtained from a Buddhist village elder, and authenticated by witnesses.

A Reuters Special Report: Massacre in Myanmar: How Myanmar forces burned, looted and killed in a remote village: Wa Lone, Kyaw Soe Oo, Simon Lewis and Antoni Slodkowski, 8 February 2018

On Sept. 2, Buddhist villagers and Myanmar troops killed 10 Rohingya men in Myanmar's restive Rakhine state. Reuters uncovered the massacre and has pieced together how it unfolded. During the reporting of this article, two Reuters journalists were arrested by Myanmar police.

INN DIN, Myanmar – Bound together, the 10 Rohingya Muslim captives watched their Buddhist neighbors dig a shallow grave. Soon afterwards, on the morning of Sept. 2, all 10 lay dead. At least two were hacked to death by Buddhist villagers. The rest were shot by Myanmar troops, two of the gravediggers said.

“One grave for 10 people,” said Soe Chay, 55, a retired soldier from Inn Din’s Rakhine Buddhist community who said he helped dig the pit and saw the killings. The soldiers shot each man two or three times, he said. “When they were being buried, some were still making noises. Others were already dead.”

The killings in the coastal village of Inn Din marked another bloody episode in the ethnic violence sweeping northern Rakhine state, on Myanmar’s western fringe.

Nearly 690,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled their villages and crossed the border into Bangladesh since August. None of Inn Din’s 6,000 Rohingya remained in the village as of October.

The Rohingya accuse the army of arson, rapes and killings aimed at rubbing them out of existence in this mainly Buddhist nation of 53 million. The United Nations has said the army may have committed genocide; the United States has called the action ethnic cleansing. Myanmar says its “clearance operation” is a legitimate response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents.

Reuters has pieced together what happened in Inn Din in the days leading up to the killing of the 10 Rohingya – eight men and two high school students in their late teens.

Until now, accounts of the violence against the Rohingya in Rakhine state have been provided only by its victims. The Reuters reconstruction draws for the first time on interviews with Buddhist villagers who confessed to torching Rohingya homes, burying bodies and killing Muslims.

This account also marks the first time soldiers and paramilitary police have been implicated by testimony from security personnel themselves. Members of the paramilitary police gave Reuters insider descriptions of the operation to drive out the Rohingya from Inn Din, confirming that the military played the lead role in the campaign.

The slain men’s families, now sheltering in Bangladesh refugee camps, identified the victims through photographs shown to them by Reuters. The dead men were fishermen, shopkeepers, the two teenage students and an Islamic teacher.

Three photographs, provided to Reuters by a Buddhist village elder, capture key moments in the massacre at Inn Din, from the Rohingya men’s detention by soldiers in the early evening of Sept. 1 to their execution shortly after 10 a.m. on Sept. 2. Two photos – one taken the first day, the other on the day of the killings – show the 10 captives lined up in a row, kneeling. The final photograph shows the men’s bloodied bodies piled in the shallow grave.

The Reuters investigation of the Inn Din massacre was what prompted Myanmar police authorities to arrest two of the news agency’s reporters. The reporters, Burmese citizens Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were detained on Dec. 12 for allegedly obtaining confidential documents relating to Rakhine.

Then, on Jan. 10, the military issued a statement that confirmed portions of what Wa Lone, Kyaw Soe Oo and their colleagues were preparing to report, acknowledging that 10 Rohingya men were massacred in the village. It confirmed that Buddhist villagers attacked some of the men with swords and soldiers shot the others dead.

The statement coincided with an application to the court by prosecutors to charge Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo under Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act, which dates back to the time of colonial British rule. The charges carry a maximum 14-year prison sentence.

But the military’s version of events is contradicted in important respects by accounts given to Reuters by Rakhine Buddhist and Rohingya Muslim witnesses. The military said the 10 men belonged to a group of 200 “terrorists” that attacked security forces. Soldiers decided to kill the men, the army said, because intense fighting in the area made it impossible to transfer them to police custody. The army said it would take action against those involved.

Buddhist villagers interviewed for this article reported no attack by a large number of insurgents on security forces in Inn Din. And Rohingya witnesses told Reuters that soldiers plucked the 10 from among hundreds of men, women and children who had sought safety on a nearby beach.

Scores of interviews with Rakhine Buddhist villagers, soldiers, paramilitary police, Rohingya Muslims and local administrators further revealed:

• The military and paramilitary police organized Buddhist residents of Inn Din and at least two other villages to torch Rohingya homes, more than a dozen Buddhist villagers said. Eleven Buddhist villagers said Buddhists committed acts of violence, including killings. The government and army have repeatedly blamed Rohingya insurgents for burning villages and homes.

• An order to “clear” Inn Din’s Rohingya hamlets was passed down the command chain from the military, said three paramilitary police officers speaking on condition of anonymity and a fourth police officer at an intelligence unit in the regional capital Sittwe. Security forces wore civilian clothes to avoid detection during raids, one of the paramilitary police officers said.

• Some members of the paramilitary police looted Rohingya property, including cows and motorcycles, in order to sell it, according to village administrator Maung Thein Chay and one of the paramilitary police officers.

• Operations in Inn Din were led by the army’s 33rd Light Infantry Division, supported by the paramilitary 8th Security Police Battalion, according to four police officers, all of them members of the battalion.

Michael G. Karnavas, a U.S. lawyer based in The Hague who has worked on cases at international criminal tribunals, said evidence that the military had organized Buddhist civilians to commit violence against Rohingya “would be the closest thing to a smoking gun in establishing not just intent, but even specific genocidal intent, since the attacks seem designed to destroy the Rohingya or at least a significant part of them.”

Evidence of the execution of men in government custody also could be used to build a case of crimes against humanity against military commanders, Karnavas said, if it could be shown that it was part of a “widespread or systematic” campaign targeting the Rohingya population. Kevin Jon Heller, a University of London law professor who served as a legal associate for convicted war criminal and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, said an order to clear villages by military command was “unequivocally the crime against humanity of forcible transfer.”

In December, the United States imposed sanctions on the army officer who had been in charge of Western Command troops in Rakhine, Major General Maung Maung Soe. So far, however, Myanmar has not faced international sanctions over the violence. Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has disappointed many former supporters in the West by not speaking out against the army’s actions. They had hoped the election of her National League for Democracy party in 2015 would bring democratic reform and an opening of the country. Instead, critics say, Suu Kyi is in thrall to the generals who freed her from house arrest in 2010.

Asked about the evidence Reuters has uncovered about the massacre, government spokesman Zaw Htay said, “We are not denying the allegations about violations of human rights. And we are not giving blanket denials.” If there was “strong and reliable primary evidence” of abuses, the government would investigate, he said. “And then if we found the evidence is true and the violations are there, we will take the necessary action according to our existing law.”

When told that paramilitary police officers had said they received orders to “clear” Inn Din’s Rohingya hamlets, he replied, “We have to verify. We have to ask the Ministry of Home Affairs and Myanmar police forces.” Asked about the allegations of looting by paramilitary police officers, he said the police would investigate.

He expressed surprise when told that Buddhist villagers had confessed to burning Rohingya homes, then added, “We recognize that many, many different allegations are there, but we need to verify who did it. It is very difficult in the current situation.”

Zaw Htay defended the military operation in Rakhine. “The international community needs to understand who did the first terrorist attacks. If that kind of terrorist attack took place in European countries, in the United States, in London, New York, Washington, what would the media say?”

Neighbor turns on neighbor

Inn Din lies between the Mayu mountain range and the Bay of Bengal, about 50 km (30 miles) north of Rakhine’s state capital Sittwe. The settlement is made up of a scattering of hamlets around a school, clinic and Buddhist monastery. Buddhist homes cluster in the northern part of the village. For many years there had been tensions between the Buddhists and their Muslim neighbors, who accounted for almost 90 percent of the roughly 7,000 people in the village. But the two communities had managed to co-exist, fishing the coastal waters and cultivating rice in the paddies.

In October 2016, Rohingya militants attacked three police posts in northern Rakhine – the beginning of a new insurgency. After the attacks, Rohingya in Inn Din said many Buddhists stopped hiring them as farmhands and home help. The Buddhists said the Rohingya stopped showing up for work.

On Aug. 25 last year, the rebels struck again, hitting 30 police posts and an army base. The closest attack was just 4 km to the north. In Inn Din, several hundred fearful Buddhists took refuge in the monastery in the center of the village, more than a dozen of their number said. Inn Din’s Buddhist night watchman San Thein, 36, said Buddhist villagers feared being “swallowed up” by their Muslim neighbors. A Buddhist elder said all Rohingya, “including children,” were part of the insurgency and therefore “terrorists.”

On Aug. 27, about 80 troops from Myanmar’s 33rd Light Infantry Division arrived in Inn Din, nine Buddhist villagers said. Two paramilitary police officers and Soe Chay, the retired soldier, said the troops belonged to the 11th infantry regiment of this division. The army officer in charge told villagers they must cook for the soldiers and act as lookouts at night, Soe Chay said. The officer promised his troops would protect Buddhist villagers from their Rohingya neighbors. Five Buddhist villagers said the officer told them they could volunteer to join security operations. Young volunteers would need their parents’ permission to join the troops, however.

DETAINED: Reuters journalists Wa Lone (foreground) and Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested on Dec. 12 for allegedly obtaining confidential documents related to Rakhine. Here they are seen arriving for a court hearing in Yangon earlier this month. REUTERS/Jorge Silva

The army found willing participants among Inn Din’s Buddhist “security group,” nine members of the organization and two other villagers said. This informal militia was formed after violence broke out in 2012 between Rakhine’s Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, sparked by reports of the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman by three Muslim men. Myanmar media reported at the time that the three were sentenced to death by a district court.

Inn Din’s security group built watch huts around the Buddhist part of the village, and its members took turns to stand guard. Its ranks included Buddhist firefighters, school teachers, students and unemployed young men. They were useful to the military because they knew the local geography, said Inn Din’s Buddhist administrator, Maung Thein Chay.

Most of the group’s 80 to 100 men armed themselves with machetes and sticks. They also had a handful of guns, according to one member. Some wore green fatigue-style clothing they called “militia suits.”

In the days that followed the 33rd Light Infantry’s arrival, soldiers, police and Buddhist villagers burned most of the homes of Inn Din’s Rohingya Muslims, a dozen Buddhist residents said.

Two of the paramilitary police officers, both members of the 8th Security Police Battalion, said their battalion raided Rohingya hamlets with soldiers from the newly arrived 33rd Light Infantry. One of the police officers said he received verbal orders from his commander to “go and clear” areas where Rohingya lived, which he took to mean to burn them.

The second police officer described taking part in several raids on villages north of Inn Din. The raids involved at least 20 soldiers and between five and seven police, he said. A military captain or major led the soldiers, while a police captain oversaw the police team.

The purpose of the raids was to deter the Rohingya from returning.

“If they have a place to live, if they have food to eat, they can carry out more attacks,” he said. “That’s why we burned their houses, mainly for security reasons.”

AFTERMATH: Reuters obtained this picture of the slain Rohingya men from a Buddhist elder. Reuters shared the photo with Luis Fondebrider, a forensic anthropologist. He said injuries on two of the bodies were consistent with “the action of a machete or something sharp.”

“I want to be transparent on this case. I don’t want it to happen like that in the future.”
- A Rakhine Buddhist elder, explaining why he chose to speak to Reuters about the killings

Soldiers and paramilitary police wore civilian shirts and shorts to blend in with the villagers, according to the second police officer and Inn Din’s Buddhist administrator, Maung Thein Chay. If the media identified the involvement of security personnel, the police officer explained, “we would have very big problems.”

A police spokesman, Colonel Myo Thu Soe, said he knew of no instances of security forces torching villages or wearing civilian clothing. Nor was there any order to “go and clear” or “set fire” to villages. “This is very much impossible,” he told Reuters. “If there are things like that, it should be reported officially, and it has to be investigated officially.”

“As you’ve told me about these matters now, we will scrutinize and check back,” he added. “What I want to say for now is that as for the security forces, there are orders and instructions and step-by-step management, and they have to follow them. So, I don’t think these things happened.”

The army did not respond to a request for comment.

A medical assistant at the Inn Din village clinic, Aung Myat Tun, 20, said he took part in several raids. “Muslim houses were easy to burn because of the thatched roofs. You just light the edge of the roof,” he said. “The village elders put monks’ robes on the end of sticks to make the torches and soaked them with kerosene. We couldn’t bring phones. The police said they will shoot and kill us if they see any of us taking photos.”

The night watchman San Thein, a leading member of the village security group, said troops first swept through the Muslim hamlets. Then, he said, the military sent in Buddhist villagers to burn the houses.

“We got the kerosene for free from the village market after the kalars ran away,” he said, using a Burmese slur for people from South Asia.

A Rakhine Buddhist youth said he thought he heard the sound of a child inside one Rohingya home that was burned. A second villager said he participated in burning a Rohingya home that was occupied.

Soe Chay, the retired soldier who was to dig the grave for the 10 Rohingya men, said he participated in one killing. He told Reuters that troops discovered three Rohingya men and a woman hiding beside a haystack in Inn Din on Aug. 28. One of the men had a smartphone that could be used to take incriminating pictures.

RETICENT: Myanmar's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has disappointed many former supporters in the West by not speaking out against the army’s actions in Rakhine. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

The soldiers told Soe Chay to “do whatever you want to them,” he said. They pointed out the man with the phone and told him to stand up. “I started hacking him with a sword, and a soldier shot him when he fell down.”

Similar violence was playing out across a large part of northern Rakhine, dozens of Buddhist and Rohingya residents said.

Data from the U.N. Operational Satellite Applications Programme shows scores of Rohingya villages in Rakhine state burned in an area stretching 110 km. New York-based Human Rights Watch says more than 350 villages were torched over the three months from Aug. 25, according to an analysis of satellite imagery.

In the village of Laungdon, some 65 km north of Inn Din, Thar Nge, 38, said he was asked by police and local officials to join a Buddhist security group. “The army invited us to burn the kalar village at Hpaw Ti Kaung,” he said, adding that four villagers and nearly 20 soldiers and police were involved in the operation. “Police shot inside the village so all the villagers fled and then we set fire to it. Their village was burned because police believed the villagers supported Rohingya militants – that’s why they cleaned it with fire.”

A Buddhist student from Ta Man Tha village, 15 km north of Laungdon, said he too participated in the burning of Rohingya homes. An army officer sought 30 volunteers to burn “kalar” villages, said the student. Nearly 50 volunteered and gathered fuel from motorbikes and from a market.

“They separated us into several groups. We were not allowed to enter the village directly. We had to surround it and approach the village that way. The army would shoot gunfire ahead of us and then the army asked us to enter,” he said.

“Muslim houses were easy to burn because of the thatched roofs. You just light the edge of the roof.”
- Buddhist villager Aung Myat Tun

After the Rohingya had fled Inn Din, Buddhist villagers took their property, including chickens and goats, Buddhist residents told Reuters. But the most valuable goods, mostly motorcycles and cattle, were collected by members of the 8th Security Police Battalion and sold, said the first police officer and Inn Din village administrator Maung Thein Chay. Maung Thein Chay said the commander of the 8th Battalion, Thant Zin Oo, struck a deal with Buddhist businessmen from other parts of Rakhine state and sold them cattle. The police officer said he had stolen four cows from Rohingya villagers, only for Thant Zin Oo to snatch them away.

Reached by phone, Thant Zin Oo did not comment. Colonel Myo Thu Soe, the police spokesman, said the police would investigate the allegations of looting.

By Sept. 1, several hundred Rohingya from Inn Din were sheltering at a makeshift camp on a nearby beach. They erected tarpaulin shelters to shield themselves from heavy rain.

Among this group were the 10 Rohingya men who would be killed the next morning. Reuters has identified all of the 10 by speaking to witnesses among Inn Din’s Buddhist community and Rohingya relatives and witnesses tracked down in refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Five of the men, Dil Mohammed, 35, Nur Mohammed, 29, Shoket Ullah, 35, Habizu, 40, and Shaker Ahmed, 45, were fishermen or fish sellers. The wealthiest of the group, Abul Hashim, 25, ran a store selling nets and machine parts to fishermen and farmers. Abdul Majid, a 45-year-old father of eight, ran a small shop selling areca nut wrapped in betel leaves, commonly chewed like tobacco. Abulu, 17, and Rashid Ahmed, 18, were high school students. Abdul Malik, 30, was an Islamic teacher.

According to the statement released by the army on Jan. 10, security forces had gone to a coastal area where they “were attacked by about 200 Bengalis with sticks and swords.” The statement said that “as the security forces opened fire into the sky, the Bengalis dispersed and ran away. Ten of them were arrested.”

Three Buddhist and more than a dozen Rohingya witnesses contradict this version of events. Their accounts differ from one another in some details. The Buddhists spoke of a confrontation between a small group of Rohingya men and some soldiers near the beach. But there is unanimity on a crucial point: None said the military had come under a large-scale attack in Inn Din.

Government spokesman Zaw Htay referred Reuters to the army’s statement of Jan. 10 and declined to elaborate further. The army did not respond to a request for comment.

The Rohingya witnesses, who were on or near the beach, said Islamic teacher Abdul Malik had gone back to his hamlet with his sons to collect food and bamboo for shelter. When he returned, a group of at least seven soldiers and armed Buddhist villagers were following him, these witnesses said. Abdul Malik walked towards the watching Rohingya Muslims unsteadily, with blood dripping from his head. Some witnesses said they had seen one of the armed men strike the back of Abdul Malik’s head with a knife.

Then the military beckoned with their guns to the crowd of roughly 300 Rohingya to assemble in the paddies, these witnesses said. The soldiers and the Rohingya, hailing from different parts of Myanmar, spoke different languages. Educated villagers translated for their fellow Rohingya.

“I could not hear much, but they pointed toward my husband and some other men to get up and come forward,” said Rehana Khatun, 22, the wife of Nur Mohammed, one of the 10 who were later slain. “We heard they wanted the men for a meeting. The military asked the rest of us to return to the beach.”

Soldiers held and questioned the 10 men in a building at Inn Din’s school for a night, the military said. Rashid Ahmed and Abulu had studied there alongside Rakhine Buddhist students until the attacks by Rohingya rebels in October 2016. Schools were shut temporarily, disrupting the pair’s final year.

“I just remember him sitting there and studying, and it was always amazing to me because I am not educated,” said Rashid Ahmed’s father, farmer Abdu Shakur, 50. “I would look at him reading. He would be the first one in the family to be educated.”

A photograph, taken on the evening the men were detained, shows the two Rohingya students and the eight older men kneeling on a path beside the village clinic, most of them shirtless. They were stripped when first detained, a dozen Rohingya witnesses said. It isn’t clear why. That evening, Buddhist villagers said, the men were “treated” to a last meal of beef. They were provided with fresh clothing.

On Sept. 2, the men were taken to scrubland north of the village, near a graveyard for Buddhist residents, six Buddhist villagers said. The spot is backed by a hill crested with trees. There, on their knees, the 10 were photographed again and questioned by security personnel about the disappearance of a local Buddhist farmer named Maung Ni, according to a Rakhine elder who said he witnessed the interrogation.

Reuters was not able to establish what happened to Maung Ni. According to Buddhist neighbors, the farmer went missing after leaving home early on Aug. 25 to tend his cattle. Several Rakhine Buddhist and Rohingya villagers told Reuters they believed he had been killed, but they knew of no evidence connecting any of the 10 men to his disappearance. The army said in its Jan. 10 statement that “Bengali terrorists” had killed Maung Ni, but did not identify the perpetrators.

Two of the men pictured behind the Rohingya prisoners in the photograph taken on the morning of Sept. 2 belong to the 8th Security Police Battalion. Reuters confirmed the identities of the two men from their Facebook pages and by visiting them in person.

One of the two officers, Aung Min, a police recruit from Yangon, stands directly behind the captives. He looks at the camera as he holds a weapon. The other officer, police Captain Moe Yan Naing, is the figure on the top right. He walks with his rifle over his shoulder.

The day after the two Reuters reporters were arrested in December, Myanmar’s government also announced that Moe Yan Naing had been arrested and was being investigated under the 1923 Official Secrets Act.

Aung Min, who is not facing legal action, declined to speak to Reuters.

Three Buddhist youths said they watched from a hut as the 10 Rohingya captives were led up a hill by soldiers towards the site of their deaths.

One of the gravediggers, retired soldier Soe Chay, said Maung Ni’s sons were invited by the army officer in charge of the squad to strike the first blows.

The first son beheaded the Islamic teacher, Abdul Malik, according to Soe Chay. The second son hacked another of the men in the neck.

In its Jan. 10 statement, the military said the two brothers and a third villager had “cut the Bengali terrorists” with swords and then, in the chaos, four members of the security forces had shot the captives. “Action will be taken against the villagers who participated in the case and the members of security forces who broke the Rules of Engagement under the law,” the statement said. It didn’t spell out those rules.

Tun Aye, one of the sons of Maung Ni, has been detained on murder charges, his lawyer said on Jan. 13. Contacted by Reuters on Feb. 8, the lawyer declined to comment further. Reuters was unable to reach the other brother.

In October, Inn Din locals pointed two Reuters reporters towards an area of brush behind the hill where they said the killings took place. The reporters discovered a newly cut trail leading to soft, recently disturbed earth littered with bones. Some of the bones were entangled with scraps of clothing and string that appeared to match the cord that is seen binding the captives’ wrists in the photographs. The immediate area was marked by the smell of death.

Reuters showed photographs of the site to three forensic experts: Homer Venters, director of programs at Physicians for Human Rights; Derrick Pounder, a pathologist who has consulted for Amnesty International and the United Nations; and Luis Fondebrider, president of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, who investigated the graves of those killed under Argentina’s military junta in the 1970s and 1980s. All observed human remains, including the thoracic part of a spinal column, ribs, scapula, femur and tibia. Pounder said he couldn’t rule out the presence of animal bones as well.

The Rakhine Buddhist elder provided Reuters reporters with a photograph which shows the aftermath of the execution. In it, the 10 Rohingya men are wearing the same clothing as in the previous photo and are tied to each other with the same yellow cord, piled into a small hole in the earth, blood pooling around them. Abdul Malik, the Islamic teacher, appears to have been beheaded. Abulu, the student, has a gaping wound in his neck. Both injuries appear consistent with Soe Chay’s account.

Fondebrider reviewed this picture. He said injuries visible on two of the bodies were consistent with “the action of a machete or something sharp that was applied on the throat.”

Some family members did not know for sure that the men had been killed until Reuters returned to their shelters in Bangladesh in January.

“I can’t explain what I feel inside. My husband is dead,” said Rehana Khatun, wife of Nur Mohammed. “My husband is gone forever. I don’t want anything else, but I want justice for his death.”

In Inn Din, the Buddhist elder explained why he chose to share evidence of the killings with Reuters. “I want to be transparent on this case. I don’t want it to happen like that in future.”

The victims: Abul Hashim, 25 (far left). One of the wealthier villagers in the west hamlet of Inn Din - a neighborhood known to the Rohingya as Fosinpara - Abul Hashim ran a store selling machine parts and fishing nets and also stored rice for a nongovernmental organization. He owned a 3-acre plot of trees in the hills near Inn Din that were used as firewood and as construction material. He also had 16 buffalos, which were left behind. “I can’t think why these men were taken. They were all good men,” said his wife of five years Hasina Khatun. They have three children together, including Abdu Majid, born in November in Tenkhali refugee camp in Bangladesh.

Abdul Malik, 30 (second from left). A religious teacher or mullah, he was made the imam at the west hamlet’s mosque in his early 20s in recognition of his teaching ability, according to several residents. The mosque was an old building in the center of the hamlet, but in recent years villagers said they were restricted from using loudspeakers to announce the call to prayer. In addition to teaching, the father of five children ran a small stall where he served tea from a flask, and sold kerosene to fishermen, according to his wife, Marjan, 25. Some villagers remember the stall as a place men would gather to share local news and gossip.

Nur Mohammed, 29 (third from left). He was known by the affectionate nickname “Bangu.” He sold fish and had a small rice paddy field and would grow vegetables and beans in a small garden, according to his wife, Rehana Khatun. “He was only interested in looking after his family. He was hardworking and eager to improve our lot by farming and selling fish,” she recalled.

Rashid Ahmed, 18 (fourth from left). He was a bright student at Inn Din’s high school, excelling in Burmese and English, according to his parents, father Abdu Shakur and mother Subiya Hatu. His father said he had hoped Rashid Ahmed would go on to become the first person in the family to receive a higher education. “His report card was good. I looked after everything so that he could concentrate on his studies,” said Abdu Shakur, 50.

Habizu, 40 (fifth from left). He sold fish and kept a small rice field and 15 goats. His wife, Shuna Khatu, 30, is now living in the Balukhali refugee camp in Bangladesh, where she said she has dreamt of Habizu’s return. She gave birth to their third child, baby boy Mohammed Sadek, after she arrived in Bangladesh. Habizu was working and saving toward buying a cow, Shuna Khatu said, and he hoped that he could provide for his children so that they could be educated.

Abulu, 17 (sixth from left). A student who was about to go into his final year at Inn Din’s high school before violence broke out in October 2016, disrupting daily life across northern Rakhine state. The student, whose full name was Abul Hashim, would go fishing with a net in a pond near their house in the west hamlet, said his mother, Nurjan, 40. He was planning to open up a pharmacy in Inn Din after he finished school, she said. “He was a good boy, always polite,” Nurjan said, breaking into a smile as she recalled an exception: “He liked meat, but he didn’t like dried fish. Whenever I prepared dried fish, he would run off and have dinner that night at a relative’s house."

Shaker Ahmed, 45 (seventh from left). He would make about 5,000 kyat ($3.70) each day selling fish, said his wife, Rahama Khatun, 35. “That was good for us. We were well off even with nine kids,” she said. His son and ninth child, Sadikur Rahman, was born in November, after Rahama Khatun arrived at the Kutapalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. “When the kids say where is Dad, I don’t know how to reply,” she said. “Now, I’m feeling very scared. It’s difficult for me to manage everything with nine kids and my husband is not here to help.”

Abdul Majid, 45 (eighth from left). He ran a small shop selling, among other goods, areca nut wrapped in betel leaves. His wife, Amina Khatun, 40, is now staying in the Tenkhali refugee camp in Bangladesh with their eight children, aged from 1 to 19. "We had to leave six cattle and 3 acres of land, our house and all our belongings," she said. "It was all lost. I saw it myself – it was burned when we came back to the shore."

Shoket Ullah, 35 (second from right). He moved to the west hamlet three years ago from Inn Din main village to live with his in-laws after he married his wife, Settara. He was a fisherman and also collected firewood to make extra cash. He was partially deaf since childhood, according to fellow west hamlet residents.

Dil Mohammed, 35 (far right). He was widely known in Inn Din as “Dilu," and made a living buying the catch from fishermen who went out into the Bay of Bengal and selling it in Inn Din’s market. He’s known as a sickly man with gastric problems. His wife and 15-year-old son now live in the Balukhali camp in Cox’s Bazar district in Bangladesh, according to fellow former Inn Din residents.

Sequence of events

Inn Din lies between the Mayu mountain range and the Bay of Bengal, about 30 miles (50 km) north of state capital Sittwe. It is made up of hamlets around a school, clinic and Buddhist monastery. For years, there had been tensions between the Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims. The Rohingya accounted for almost 90 percent of the roughly 7,000 villagers. On Aug. 25, Rohingya insurgents attacked 30 police posts and an army base in Rakhine. Several hundred of Inn Din’s Buddhist villagers took refuge in the monastery.

Buddhist portion of village not burned; Inn DinBurned areas, Rohingya fleeWest Hamlet

August 27-28 army arrives, Rohingya begin to flee

About 80 soldiers arrived in Inn Din on Aug. 27. The army officer in charge told Buddhist villagers they could volunteer to join security operations, five of the villagers said. In the days that followed, soldiers, paramilitary police and Buddhist villagers burned most of the homes of Inn Din’s Rohingya Muslims, a dozen Buddhist residents said. Buddhist homes remained intact.

On Aug. 28, Muslims of the west hamlet, which was where the 10 victims lived, took refuge in the mountains in the east, said more than a dozen of the hamlet’s former residents now in Bangladesh camps.

School building, Men arrested photographed here

September 1 Day of the arrests

Running out of supplies in the hills, several hundred Rohingya came down to the beach, including the 10 men who would be slain, family members and neighbours of the men said. They planned to set off in the coming days toward Bangladesh. A group of soldiers and armed Rakhine Buddhists arrived. The soldiers picked out 10 men and said they were taking them away for a meeting, Rohingya witnesses said.

The 10 men were photographed near the village school building after 5 p.m. They were kneeling in a line with their hands on their heads. Most of them had been stripped to the waist. Later they were taken into the school building, given fresh shirts and fed, according to Buddhist witnesses.

Grave site. Men photographed herebefore execution

September 2 The killings

In the morning, the men were taken out and photographed on scrubland near a graveyard for Buddhist villagers. Three Buddhist witnesses said they watched from a hut as soldiers led the 10 Rohingya captives up a hill towards the site of their deaths.

In a statement on Jan. 10, Myanmar’s military acknowledged that 10 Rohingya men were massacred in the village. They confirmed that Buddhist villagers attacked some of the men with swords and soldiers shot the others dead.

Government spokesman Zaw Htay referred Reuters to the army’s statement of Jan. 10 and declined to elaborate further. The army did not respond to a request for comment.

The Grave

Reuters showed photographs of the grave site, some taken by reporter Wa Lone, to three forensic experts. They identified human remains including part of a spinal column and ribs.

String possibly usedto tie up the men: photo REUTERS

Skull with hair: photo REUTERS

Portion of spine, Cloth: photo REUTERS

Piece of cloth resemblingShoket Ullah’s clothes: photo REUTERS

Reuters was not able to establish what happened to Maung Ni. According to Buddhist neighbors, the farmer went missing after leaving home early on Aug. 25 to tend his cattle. Several Rakhine Buddhist and Rohingya villagers told Reuters they believed he had been killed, but they knew of no evidence connecting any of the 10 men to his disappearance.
The army said in its Jan. 10 statement that “Bengali terrorists” had killed Maung Ni, but did not identify the perpetrators.

Aung Min, who is not facing legal action, declined to speak to Reuters.

Three Buddhist youths said they watched from a hut as the 10 Rohingya captives were led up a hill by soldiers towards the site of their deaths.

One of the gravediggers, retired soldier Soe Chay, said Maung Ni’s sons were invited by the army officer in charge of the squad to strike the first blows.

The first son beheaded the Islamic teacher, Abdul Malik, according to Soe Chay. The second son hacked another of the men in the neck.

“After the brothers sliced them both with swords, the squad fired with guns. Two to three shots to one person,” said Soe Chay. A second gravedigger, who declined to be identified, confirmed that soldiers had shot some of the men.

Reuters showed photographs of the site to three forensic experts: Homer Venters, director of programs at Physicians for Human Rights; Derrick Pounder, a pathologist who has consulted for Amnesty International and the United Nations; and Luis Fondebrider, president of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, who investigated the graves of those killed under Argentina’s military junta in the 1970s and 1980s. All observed human remains, including the thoracic part of a spinal column, ribs, scapula, femur and tibia.

Pounder said he couldn’t rule out the presence of animal bones as well.

Fondebrider reviewed this picture. He said injuries visible on two of the bodies were consistent with “the action of a machete or something sharp that was applied on the throat.”

Some family members did not know for sure that the men had been killed until Reuters returned to their shelters in Bangladesh in January.

In Inn Din, the Buddhist elder explained why he chose to share evidence of the killings with Reuters. “I want to be transparent on this case. I don’t want it to happen like that in future.”

–––––––––––-–
The Postman of Gloucester

View of the Town of Gloucester, Mass.: Fitz Henry Lane, 1836, lithograph on paper, hand colored. Drawn by F. H. Lane. Lithograph byPendleton’s Lithography, Boston (Cape Ann Museum)

Frederick William Buck II passed away at home on February 12, 2018 at the age of 69, surrounded by his family.

He was born on October 29, 1948 in Ypsilanti, MI, the eldest child of David Buck and Helene (Helmers) Buck. As a child he traveled and lived in the Western states with his mother, siblings, and step-father Edward Dorn, including a year spent at Black Mountain College, NC. When he was a teenager he and his family moved to England where he attended Jesus College, Cambridge, obtaining an MA in English Literature.

He married Stephanie Chick on July 11, 1970, and they moved from England to Gloucester that August, where he obtained a 'temporary' job in the local Post Office. He faithfully delivered the mail in his neighborhood in snow, sleet, rain, heat and the gloom of night, for more than 30 years, retiring in 2003.

In his youth he was a classical guitarist and was awarded a scholarship to the Montana State University music camp in Missoula, where he studied the cello. When in 9th grade he was the only member of the Snake River Valley Orchestra under the age of 21 and held the position of First Chair cello. He later took up the acoustic bass, even jamming a few times with Charles Mingus. As an adult he continued to play the 'stand up' bass in local bands, most notably Old Cold Tater, playing bluegrass, and later the electric bass in the blues band the Megawatt Blues Crushers.

Fred was also a poet, co-editing and publishing several small poetry and literary magazines with friends, including "Bezoar" which was awarded a grant by the National Endowment for the Arts. He was an amateur photographer, developing his black and white images in his own basement darkroom. This evolved into a love of historic photographs and led to him spending the last 12 years of his life working as the Photo Archivist at the Cape Ann Museum.

He was the family historian and an invaluable resource for authors of several recent books about his step-father, the poet Edward Dorn, and his artist mother Helene Dorn.

Frederick W. Buck October 29, 1948 - February 12, 2018. Gloucester, Massachusetts | Age 69

Fred was seventeen when he moved in with his family to the Tudor house on the old Roman Road from Colchester to London; I remember him as a sweet smart gangly kid in horn rims who could play the cello surprisingly well and who in the past few years growing up and moving around the western US with his mother and stepfather had already conned more than a bit of the world text, much of that, somewhat unusually for a white kid of that age at that time, from the cocked viewing anglesurvival requires of those loitering at or near the as it was then called poverty line;child of wandering itinerant intellectual second family he'd been through unsettled often precarious times in the wake of the breakup of his mother's marriage, this now his academically unlicensed stepfather's first "respectable" job, big step up in amenities for whole family after a series of embarrassed situations most recent the pinched matchbox prefab railroad town side street austerity of windswept central Pocatello,previous jerkwater teaching job stop.

The following year the family moved again to a large stolid Victorian on Victoria Road in the genteel section of what was historically a barracks town, its military prison the first bit of British soil set bootless toe upon by German troops arriving ragged in defeat as they surrendered en masse at the end of the War -- when halfstarved teenage boys, pressgang'd into decimated German army units for want of ablebodied men, and dressed in discarded women's lingerie for want of proper uniforms, ran forward unarmed, pleading to be captured, wavingwhite flags made of more tattered lingerie, to begratefully taken off to the comparative safety of a British gaol (all they would ever see of England).

As a sometime overnight guest in those two houses I got to know Fred well enough to recognize his gifts and his independence and his seriousness.Later on a lot of things happened, and Fred became a musician and the postman of Gloucester. Much later on I got to know him all over again when he volunteered his expertise as a photo archivist -- photo archivist of Cape Ann, he would become -- for a project his mother was also helping out with, a biography of his late stepfather.Fred threw himself and his formidable skills into that work, the story of those years of small clan wanderings, as a labor of love, turned up,scanned and sent along many of the photos that appear in the book, and we were very grateful. He stayed a friend.A strong and brave man, his courage, his love, his music, will be remembered, and the affection remains.

Gloucester Harbor from Rocky Neck: Fitz Henry Lane, 1844, oil on canvas (Cape Ann Museum)

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Table for One

February 16, 2018, 5:31 am

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DSC06978: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 6 February 2018

Residents of Raqa, once the IS group's de facto Syrian capital, are desperate to return home, but many are being maimed and killed by unexploded and sometimes insidiously hidden mines Photo Delil Souleman: image via AFP news agency @AFP, 15 February 2018

Table for One (Raqa 2018)

An exploding cabbage

growing in your back

yard ruins is a hard

thing to love

without reservations

Residents of Raqa, once the IS group's de facto Syrian capital, are desperate to return home, but many are being maimed and killed by unexploded and sometimes insidiously hidden mines Photo Delil Souleman: image via AFP news agency @AFP, 15 February 2018

#Syria Life so full of blood. #EasternGhouta Photo @abdfree2 #AFP: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 15 February 2018

19-year old Nikolas Cruz has confessed to killing 17 people at his former high school in Florida as the FBI admitted it had received a tip-off about the gunman yet failed to stop him.: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 15 February 2018

Meet the North Korean fans! #PyeongChang2018 #winterolympics2018 #SouthKorea: image via Aris Messinis @ArisMessinis, 15 February 2018

#Egypt Women wearing veils look at the Great Pyramids of Giza. #Cairo #Archaeology Photo Khaled Desouki #AFP: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 15 February 2018

#goodnight A Sri Lankan street vendor sells prawns at the Galle Face Beach in Colombo. Photo Oshara S. Kodikara: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 15 February 2018

Like a village (PyeongChang 2018)

Much
as in Brueghel the rink n
all, like a tale of olde
told by an idiot
an olympic village
full of village idiots
named shaun and Kimi

is a hard

thing to love

without reservations
but at least no mass
school shootings so far
in this commercial break
on this zero visibility morning
it's very windswept here on the course this morning carol
we'll be having the lost in the snow event
today
maybe
where is tarkovsky

Ladies' Slalom Race- CANCELED- High winds blow on the course as the Slalom skiers have their morning inspection at the Yongpyong Alpine Center in PyeongChang, Korea. The race has been rescheduled for Friday. (Thursday night in USA). #Olympics @nytimes @NYTSports: image via Doug Mills @dougmillsnyt, 13 February 2018

I don't see anything about this in the manual #ua1175: image via Erik Haddad @erikhaddad, 13 February 2018

A Geoffroy's Monk Saki is seen at a zoo in Lima, Peru Photo Guadalupe Pardo: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 15 February 2018

[Untitled]: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 8 February 2018

[Untitled]: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 8 February 2018

2018-02-08_12-26-18 [Jakarta]: photo by Chris Tuarissa, 6 February 2018

Apprehension

But honey badger don't care
Sniffing the air

Mellivora capensis (Honey Badger) (Prague Zoo): photo by Matej Bat'ha, 2007

Mellivora capensis (Honey Badger) (Prague Zoo): photo by Matej Bat'ha, 2007

Honey Badger

Honey badger (Mellivora capensis): photo by Jaganath, 2006

Most fearless Animal In world Eats Everything
Has a sweet tooth

And the sharpest sense of smell
On the savannah

Honey badger
So courageous so dangerous nothing

On the savannah will come

Within a thousand yards

For dread of being ripped to pieces

Honey badger fears no other natural creature

Honey badger is skilled with tools

Honey badger will log-roll delicately balancing
On hind legs standing
On spinning log patiently fishing
With long scimitar claws
A choice kingfisher fledgling

From dark ceiling rafters
Of subterranean cave

In Basra

It is said honey

Badger having already eaten will kill you anyway

Not in order to eat you

But for simple animal joy

Of tearing off your testicles

With exquisitely

Sharp honey

Badger teeth
To honey badger

World is a snack

Waiting to happen

An hors d'oeuvre

A canapé

And your red remains but so much biped

Splat

On a rock

Solitary and nomadic

Roaming a 300 mile radius beneath the Southern Cross

Thinking only

Eat bite tear rip

Eat few

Things more terrible than the sight

Of honey badger trapped and sniffing and pacing about within the blind

Walls of the zoo enclosure

Honey badger rages against this confinement and goes half mad but is subdued

And waits

And bides his time as though it were not time but freedom

A different kind of freedom A freedom in raging against the condition waiting staying alert

Being ready for The time of Return

The biped will be gone from the savannah

Again

Reading the hours as though back on the savannah

As on a sundial

A lizard waiting on a rock

Another kind of time

Honey Badger reading the hours

By the falling shadow crawling slowly across the zoo dirt

Of the bars of the tall cage

That confines him

Mellivora capensis (Honey Badger) (Prague Zoo): photo by Matej Bat'ha, 2007

Private Lives of Celebrity Lookalikes | by J. Ward

Private Lives of Celebrity Lookalikes | #98 Antonio, aka Prince, Apartment, Sherman Oaks: photo by J Ward, 12 January 2015

L1001544-leshukonskoe2017 | by Emil Gataullin

L1001544-leshukonskoe2018 | Leshukonskoe, Arkhangelsk region, Russia, 2018: photo by Emil Gataullin, 11 February 2018

[Songkhla, Hat Yai, Thailand]: photo by Sakulchai Sikitikul, 13 February 2018

[Solna, Stockholm]: photo by Dimitris Makrygiannakis, 24 January 2018

valentine's day muricasm: and the blind shall lead them (angel wings optional)

It's only February, and there have already been at least four shootings at middle and high schools in the United States so far this year: image via CNN @CNN, 14 February 2018

In this frame grab from video provided by WPLG-TV, students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., evacuate the school following a shooting there on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018.: photo by WPLG-TV via AP, 14 February 2018

Students are evacuated by police from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018, after a shooter opened fire on the campus.: photo by Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP, 14 February 2018

Shooting At High School In Parkland, Florida Injures Multiple People

Police officers led students out of the school after the shooting on Wednesday.: photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images, 14 February 2018

Shooting At High School In Parkland, Florida Injures Multiple People

Police officers led students out of the school after the shooting on Wednesday.: photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images, 14 February 2018

The shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, is now among the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern US history: image via CNN @CNN, 14 February 2018

Students released from a lockdown embrace are overcome with emotion following a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018.: photo by John McCall/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP, 14 February 2018

Today, Florida and the rest of the country are in a state of mourning. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School will remain closed for the rest of the week.: photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images, 14 February 2018

Shooting At High School In Parkland, Florida Injures Multiple People

The day was almost over and students were puzzled because the fire alarm was going off a second time. Then the gunshots began, and students ran for their lives. Here are the words of some of those who went through the shooting in Parkland, Florida.: image via CNN @CNN, 14 February 2018

Students grieve outside Pines Trail Center where counselors are present, after Wednesday’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018. Nikolas Cruz was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder Thursday morning.: photo by Joel Auerbach/AP, 15 February 2018

Students released from a lockdown embrace following following a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018.: photo by John McCall/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP, 14 February 2018

Parents wait for news after a report of a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018.: photo by Joel Auerbach/AP, 14 February 2018

it takes ~1000 Joans to make a village

There's *always* a tweet: image via Shaun Usher @ShaunUsher, 5 February 2018

These @olsongetty pics from the market meltdown are like Renaissance art: image via Frank Chung @franks_chung, 6 February 2018

#DowJones plunged more than 1,000 points, the second-worst in history. Photo: @spencerplatt1: image via Getty Images News @GettyImagesNews, 14 February 2018

Fashion show inspired by #MeToo opens in New York with models sporting angel wings handcuffed to men in pig masks: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures,9 February 2018

Shot into the sun at a tremendous speed! (like Renaissance art)

You want to know whether it's ok to come strapped to lockdown? Or even like, required?
Absolulutely! That's like, a major yesss!
Mommy my teacher said angels' wings are kind of pinchy
and angels don't like wearing them on red carpets any more

because I forget why. Mommy can I do my nails blue for lockdown.
Mommy Juice! I want Juice! Juice!
Shut up and get in the back of the fucking SUV goddamit.
Mommy! Mommy! Jimmy Joe stole my AR again and thistime she won't even pretend to give it back!

Your AR is locked up in that cabinet where I put it. The ammo's in there too. The key
is right there on the table where I left it for you this morning. Just clean up
when you're done this time, OK? Don't come pouting back to me. We only bought itfor you
for your graduation because you're so special and you need something to protect yourself

and I'm your mom and I love you very much.

One of the 17 angel sculptures on display is shown before a candlelight vigil for the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018, in Parkland, Fla. The teenager accused of using a semi-automatic rifle to kill more than a dozen people and injuring others at a Florida high school confessed to carrying out one of the nation’s deadliest school shootings and carried extra ammunition in his backpack, according to a sheriff’s department report released Thursday.: photo by Wilfredo Lee/AP, 15 February 2018

Tang Lanfang and her husband Huang Fusheng have been married since 1958: ‘I think our marriage is still fresh because we believed in forgiving and understanding each other’: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 14 February 2018

‘On our first date, I waited at a meeting place for an hour. It turned out she had been advised by her mother and older sister to be late for an hour to see whether I was serious about her’: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 14 February 2018

Korea's Lee Jing-yu cries after her team lost to Japan at #PyeongChang2018 Photo Brian Snyder: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 14 February 2018

Flynn the bichon frise fetches the 'Best in Show' prize at the Westminster Dog Show #WKCDogShow: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 14 February 2018

Yuto Totsuka of Japan is assisted by medical staff after crashing during the men’s halfpipe final in #PyeongChang2018 Photo Brian Snyder: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 14 February 2018

This reaction tells you they knew they had done it #PyeongChang2018: image via AFP Sport @AFP_Sport, 14 February 2018

Broward Hospital Prepared For Shooting Vicitms

Broward hospital officials say they ‘run drills at their institutions to be ready for instances’ like the Florida school shooting that left 17 dead and many more injured.: photo by AP, 14 February 2018

GRAPHIC WARNING: Three photographs, provided to Reuters by a Buddhist village elder, capture key moments in the alleged massacre of 10 Rohingya Muslim captives in Myanmar: image via Reuters TV@ReutersTV, 9 February 2018

Children playing by road near school house, iowa or Kansas [?]: photo by John Vachon, c. 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)^{Three children playing "hide and seek" in a forest (Versteckspiel im Wald): Friedrich Eduard Meyerheim (1808-1879), n.d., oil on tinplate, 17 x 20 cm}

Children's Games (detail: "Hide and Seek"): Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559-60, oil on wood, 118 x 161 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vienna)

Children's Games(detail: "Blind Man's Buff"): Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559-60, oil on wood, 118 x 161 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vienna)

Children's Games: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559-60, oil on wood, 118 x 161 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vienna)

Blind-Man's Buff [sic]: artist unknown, before 1830, published by Paul Jarrard and Sons (London, England). Print made within the lifetime of King George IV of England (12 August 1762 – 26 June 1830); image by Daderot, 30 April 2008

Blind Man's Buff: Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, 1788-89, oil on canvas, 269 x 350 cm (Museo del Prado, Madrid)

Blindman's Buff (detail): Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1775-80, oil on canvas (National Gallery of Art, Washington)

Students hold their hands in the air as they are evacuated by police from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018, after a shooter opened fire on the campus.: photo by Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP, 14 February 2018

Shot into the sun at a tremendous speed! (like Renaissance art)

Summer was very great. No, summer... You want to know whether it's summer?

Sumer was OK. Sumeria was my favourite stop. We were there last year for Fashion Week. Autumn was very great. Winter, we got out our skis and...

six inches of powder

in the hills above the village, and the mothballs in the drawer are keeping

uour trusseau virginal

meant to say your trousseau virginal the neurology again

start again it's fashion week it takes

the tragedy of the victim is the foam on the lips of the gold medal winning village idiotwho can't get over it Ay where are the songs of sping*where are they

*sping JK To Autumn ms

Guests walk to their seats during the Marc Jacobs fashion show during Fashion Week in New York, Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018.: photo by Andres Kudacki/AP, 14 February 2018

↧

Bengali Cow-Wall (some time rain ruins the business)

February 17, 2018, 3:12 am

≫ Next: Winter trip to the land of Basura

≪ Previous: Table for One

some time rain ruins the business | by nayeemsiddiquee

some time rain ruins the business: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 1 July 2016

A Boy is riding her Horse(Bahadur) Around the sea shore.Though he loves him(Bahadur) very much.but he have to hit him to see the customer how Strong Bahadur is! People like to ride on Stonger horse | by nayeemsiddiquee

A Boy is riding her [sic] Horse (Bahadur) Around the sea shore. Though he loves him (Bahadur) very much, but he have to hit him to see the customer how Strong Bahadur is! People like to ride on St[r]onger horse: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

Bahadur (Horse) & His little master Loves each other... trying to have a good time in the break period | by nayeemsiddiquee

Bahadur (Horse) and His little master Loves each other... trying to have a good time in the break period: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

A man is sitting in the Boat, lots of boat had jus reached To the shore after catching fish | by nayeemsiddiquee

A man is sitting in the Boat, lots of boat had jus[t] reached To the shore after catching fish: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

Cow-Wall: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 9 February 2018

Chittagong | 17: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 19 January 2018

Every window has some story | by nayeemsiddiquee

Every window has some story: photo by nayeem siddiquee,25 January 2018

Cup Story _ : photo by nayeem siddiquee, 12 May 2016

Chittagong || 18: photo by nayeem siddiquee,19 January 2018

Chittagong || 17: photo by nayeem siddiquee,4 July 2017

The life in Bay of Bengal is always a matter of Adventure For the people around it but they love to live around it | by nayeemsiddiquee

The life in Bay of Bengal is always a matter of Adventure For the people around it but they love to live around it: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

But still these people are Love sea! | by nayeemsiddiquee

But still these people are Love sea!: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

Monsoon is always beautiful around Bay of Bengal, Collision of Rain & Ocen water makes an extraordinary feeling | by nayeemsiddiquee

Monsoon is always beautiful around Bay of Bengal, Collision of Rain and Oce[a]n water makes an extraordinary feeling: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

Monsoon is always beautiful around Bay of Bengal, Collision of Rain and Oce[a]n water makes an extraordinary feeling: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

This people Knows how to live with nature, how to live with Life around them | by nayeemsiddiquee

This people Knows how to live with nature, how to live with Life around them: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

The boat called Shampan Is the traditional Boat of the people around Bay of Bengal This place is always famous for coconuts | by nayeemsiddiquee

The boat called Shampan Is the traditional Boat of the people around Bay of Bengal This place is always famous for coconuts: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

A Electric pillar has been fallen Down to the building after q furious Tornado,People around bay of Bengal Have to face it every year, | by nayeemsiddiquee

A Electric pillar has been fallen Down to the building after [a] furious Tornado, People around bay of Bengal Have to face it every year.: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

The water of the sea came to thehe city,& makes Flood. A man is Bought some Dry food so that he couldn't Have to go out side Many times . | by nayeemsiddiquee

The water of the sea came to the city, and makes Flood. A man [has] Bought some Dry food so that he couldn't Have to go out side Many times.: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

The water of the sea came to the city, and makes Flood. A man [has] Bought some Dry food so that he couldn't Have to go out side Many times.: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

Two man are trying to rebuild their House which were totally Damaged In cyclone crossing by bay of Bengal | by nayeemsiddiquee

Two m[e]n are trying to rebuild their House which w[as] totally Damaged In cyclone crossing by bay of Bengal.: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 31 May 2017

The mangrove forests Makes a Barriers to the sea! So that Cyclone can't attack hardly to the coastal areas | by nayeemsiddiquee

The mangrove forests Makes a Barriers to the sea! So that Cyclone can't attack hardly to the coastal areas: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

The mangrove forests Makes a Barriers to the sea! So that Cyclone can't attack hardly to the coastal areas: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

A tree has been break down & Came to the sea beach after A furious Cyclone Named Mora | by nayeemsiddiquee

A tree has been break down and Came to the sea beach after A furious Cyclone Named Mora: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

After cyclone mora which crossed by Bay of Bengal Many trees has been fallen to the ground Like that.This Mangrove forest is protecting the cities around bay of Bengal.: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

Birds Love to Collect Food what The Fishermen left in the boat: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

Birds Love to Collect Food what The Fishermen left in the boat | by nayeemsiddiquee

Birds Love to Collect Food what The Fishermen left in the boat: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

Birds Love to Collect Food what The Fishermen left in the boat: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

The relation Between the Man & Sea Has been bonded | by nayeemsiddiquee

The relation Between the Man and the Sea Has been bonded: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

As the sea level Is Rising many of the lands are going under water by talking Many lives & habitant | by nayeemsiddiquee

As the sea level Is Rising many of the lands are going under water [by] ta[l]king Many lives and habitant[s]: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

Coxs Bazer is one of the most popular beach in the world situated in Bay of Bengal, People loves to spend their good times here, | by nayeemsiddiquee

Coxs Bazer is one of the most popular beach in the world situated in Bay of Bengal, People loves to spend their good times here.: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

During The season of Festival Lot of Religious People gathered To Send their God (Ganpati) to the Sea....A lot of People Of all religion gather to Enjoy the festival, People of all.religion like to Live like a B[r]other, and that's how brotherhood Increases.: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

A Crab hunter Is looking for crab around the canal which connect with the sea,,Crab recently a very popular food in Bangladesh, | by nayeemsiddiquee

A Crab hunter Is looking for crab around the canal which connect with the sea, Crab recently a very popular food in Bangladesh.: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 22 September 2017

Serenity: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 14 February 2018

The River Croas through Bay of Bengal is beautiful With Beautiful Water & Hilly track the Eco-system is Very fresh | by nayeemsiddiquee

naf River: photo by nayeem siddiquee, 5 May 2016

↧

Winter trip to the land of Basura

February 18, 2018, 2:53 am

≫ Next: foolhardy reckless and afraid

≪ Previous: Bengali Cow-Wall (some time rain ruins the business)

Slow walk to the Greenore Railway Saloon | by National Library of Ireland on The Commons

Slow walk to the Greenore Railway Saloon: photo by James P. O'Dea, 24 September 1960 (National Library of Ireland)

THE GREENORE TRAIN RIDES AGAIN!

The re-construction of the last journey of the old Greenore train as a fund-raising event for the "People In Need Telethon" is sure to bring a nostalgic tear to many an eye, as the train makes its journey from Greenore to Dundalk to-morrow.
The train, which has been built around a car, under the watchful eye of Declan Tinnelly, will be pushed by a crew of 40 staff and regulars of the Greenore Railway Saloon, Quay Street.

It won't be able to follow the exact route the last train took in 1951, as the railway line has since become overgrown or incorporated into surrounding fields. Instead the train will travel along the main road, with the crew collecting money for "People In Need" along the way... The train, which is a replica of the last engine to make the journey from Greenore to Dundalk, is 30ft long and 12 ft high.

Dundalk Democrat, 28 April 1990

New location | "2105 RARKER RIGHT @ NEXT CONER" (near Shattuck at Parker)[Le Conte, Berkeley]: photo by efo, sometime in 2017

Complete security | by efo

Complete security[DowntownBerkeley]: photo by efo, sometime in 2017

Churchill Downs[Louisville, Kentucky]: photo by Joey Harrison, 24 September 2016

Keeneland[Lexington, Kentucky]: photo by Joey Harrison, 22 October 2016

Old Trinity at night after my mother’s funeral | by efo

Old Trinity at night after my mother's funeral [Brooklyn, Connecticut]: photo by efo, 15 February 2018

021A4515[nebraska]: photo by alex matzke, 1 July 2016

021A5904 [control burn, nebraska]: photo by alex matzke, 1 July 2013

021A5904 | by a.matzke

021A5904 [control burn, nebraska]: photo by alex matzke, 1 July 2013

Manipulation | Monterey Highway. San Jose, CA 2015: photo by Josh Marcotte, 22 November 2015

You know how it is with them

Anything that doesn't kill them

Makes them stronger

Everything you do makes them stronger

They make you suffer then kill you

The Window Display [East Vancouver]| On East Hastings near Glen Drive. This was a dental supply business that's no longer there anymore.: photo by Photocatvan, 1 March 2012

You know how it is with them on other days

Anything that doesn't bother them

Makes them stronger

Everything you do bothers them

They make you suffer then kill you

Winter trip (Haute-Savoie): photo by Punkroyaltiger, 3 January 2016

Pink Centurion 2: photo by CarusoPhoto, 22 February 2016

Moving On | Monterey Highway. San Jose, CA 2015: photo by Josh Marcotte, 23 November 2015

O Rose, Rose

You used to be such a pretty little girl

O how you've let yourself go

It's horrible to behold, Rose

As though you were not really an Artist at all

But merely someone's tossed away plaything!

So did the operation hurt like

A lot, or only

A little, like a tiny bee bite

On a planet where there are no bees

Only special effects

But tremendous special effects?!

Don't Throw Me Away. San Jose, CA 2015 | by Lost San Jose

Don't Throw Me Away | San Jose, CA 2015: photo by Josh Marcotte, 12 May 2015

Today is James 'Blood' Ulmer's 77th birthday | by Joey Harrison

Today is James 'Blood' Ulmer's 77th birthday | I took this photo in 1979 at Hurrah in New York City. He was playing with Henry Threadgill and Calvin Weston. (Don't remember who the bass player was.): photo by Joey Harrison, sometime in 1979

Untitled: photo by Missy Prince, 2 February 2018

↧

foolhardy reckless and afraid

February 19, 2018, 4:53 am

≫ Next: escalation in eastern ghouta | all star wknd | of course i'm not wearing any clothes for the curling - im canadian! | Open Arms (Joseph Ceravolo: Hand Gun)

≪ Previous: Winter trip to the land of Basura

1984_9972: photo by Pierre Wayser, sometime in 1984

alfred e newman birthday holiday observation schools closed candy counter open dreams
and memes and things and bron and kd d'd up lil steffi in the corner
thick carstream all day at Colusa crows duelling traffic for scraps on Ave reckless unafraid
and getting away w/it flap off untouched, whereas deer and people
don't have wings Batty dame named ellen next block up's
huge demented german shep barks savage aggro @ passersby there are few passersby
though traffic passes and you can't dip a toe in same madness more than an infinite number of times
while savage hound froths calm batty unfazed Ellen sprinkles bird food on batty homemade feeder
balanced atop gate with sign In This House We BelieveScience Is Real for Betty imperious
crow queen who rules loudly swoops from treetop far above honking barking mad street

cold sharp NE wind blowing many a meaning down from Weed and away

Car drives off cliff, Sunset Boulevard, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, 1951 | by MichaelRyerson

Untitled [my black friends]: photo by Bakmak, 13 February 2018

DSC03654: photo by Sotiris Lamprou, 17 February 2018

DSC09643: photo by Sotiris Lamprou, 30 January 2018

Untitled: photo by Sakis Dazanis, 1 February 2018

Untitled [Heraklion, Crete]: photo by dirtyharrry, 17 April 2010

Untitled: photo by Yuro De Iuliis, 18 December 2017

cat under tropari [Tyoply Stan, Moscow]: photo by Pal Sol, 16 January 2018

Untitled [Lodz]: photo by Piotr Debinski, 15 February 2018

Tokyo, 2018: photo by Yota, Yoshida, 2 January 2018

Just resting.. : photo by Fredrik L., January 2018

Just resting...: photo by Fredrik L., January 2018

Valentine's day: photo by Nico Ferrara, 14 February 2018

Untitled [Las Vegas]: photo by Andrés Luciano, 13 February 2018

Untitled: photo by Yuro De Iuliis, 1 February 2018

L1002429-stary-gorodok2018 | by Emil Gataullin

L1002429-stary-gorodok2018 |Stary Gorodok, Moscow region, Russia, 2018: photo by Emil Gataullin, 9 February 2018

Swimming pool: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 29 July 2018

Swimming pool. | by noppadol.maitreechit

Swimming pool: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 29 July 2018

Madonna: photo by Nico Ferrara, 10 February 2018

A United States Air Force F-15 fighter jet speeds through the Dinas Pass, known in the aviation world as the 'Mach Loop', in Dolgellau, Wales. Photo: Christopher Furlong: image via Getty Images News @GettyImagesNews, 16 February 2018

People attend a candlelight vigil for the victims of the Wednesday shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Fla., Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018. Nikolas Cruz, a former student, was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder on Thursday.: photo byGerald Herbert/AP, 15 February 2018

German model Toni Garrn poses for photographers on the red carpet for the film "Isle of Dogs" during the 68th edition of the International Film Festival Berlin, Berlinale, in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018.: photo by Markus Schreiber/AP, 15 February 2018

Newly elected Leader of the opposition Movement For Democractic Change (MDC) party, Nelson Chamisa greets the crowd outside the party headquarters in Harare, Thursday, Feb, 15, 2018.. Zimbabwe's president is expressing condolences over the death of longtime opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and says upcoming elections must be free and fair "in tribute to him." Tsvangirai, who was the boldest opponent to longtime leader Robert Mugabe, died Wednesday in a Johannesburg hospital at age 65 after a long battle with cancer.: photo by Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP, 15 February 2018

Pyeongchang Olympics Figure Skating Pairs

North Korean supporters sing ahead of the pairs free skate figure skating final in the Gangneung Ice Arena at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Gangneung, South Korea, Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018.: photo by Bernat Armangue/AP, 15 February 2018

North Koreans perform to celebrate the birth anniversary of late leader Kim Jong Il at the swimming pool of the Changgwang Health Complex in Pyongyang, North Korea Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018.: photo by Jon Chol Jin/AP, 15 February 2018

A boat is seen grounded on the beach during a low tide in Puerto Real, a seaport in Andalusia, in the province of Cadiz, Spain, Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018.: photo by Emilio Morenatti/AP, 15 February 2018

↧

escalation in eastern ghouta | all star wknd | of course i'm not wearing any clothes for the curling - im canadian! | Open Arms (Joseph Ceravolo: Hand Gun)

February 20, 2018, 2:09 am

≫ Next: Dans l'enfer de la Ghouta, près de Damas | Life so full of blood: the wasting of Eastern Ghouta | Brecht: The God of War (Der Kriegsgott)

≪ Previous: foolhardy reckless and afraid

San Jose Sharks right winger Timo Meier, right, and Anaheim Ducks center Rickard Rakell, left, battle against the boards in the first period of an NHL hockey game in Anaheim, Calif., Sunday, Feb. 11, 2018. (AP Photo/: photo by Reed Saxon/AP, 11 February 2018

Don’t care the science behind this, this look is not OK (Photo by @rodger_sherman): image via Darren Rovell @darrenrovell, 19 February 2018

In 1988, Jack Nicholson paid $175 per seat per game to be front row at Lakers games. This year, he pays $3,000 per seat per game.: image via Darren Rovell @darrenrovell, 19 February 2018

Are these the new “Be On TV” seats?: image via Darren Rovell @darrenrovell, 19 February 2018

LeBron’s sneakers tonight (Photo by @natlyphoto): image via Darren Rovell @darrenrovell, 19 February 2018

All-Star Weekend: LeBron James (6’8”) and Kevin Hart (5’4”): image via Darren Rovell @darrenrovell, 18 February 2018

Odell at All-Star game with a Supreme man purse.: image via Darren Rovell @darrenrovell, 19 February 2018

Players faces during Fergie’s rendition of the National Anthem...: image via Darren Rovell @darrenrovell, 19 February 2018

My laptop froze at this exact moment #NBAAllStar2018 #Fergie: image via Darren Rovell @darrenrovell, 19 February 2018

Players faces during Fergie’s rendition of the National Anthem...: image via Darren Rovell @darrenrovell, 19 February 2018

The winning NBA All-Star team will get $100,000 this year, while the losers will get $25,000. The difference is supposed to motivate game to be more competitive. Only one starter (Joel Embiid) makes less than $100,000 per regular season game ($74,390).: image via Darren Rovell @darrenrovell, 19 February 2018

Team LeBron starters outearn Team Stephen starters, in salary, by more than $10 million.: image via Darren Rovell @darrenrovell, 19 February 2018

A member of the Unidos da Tijuca samba school performs on a float during Carnival celebrations at the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Monday, Feb. 12, 2018.: photo by Silvia Izquierdo/AP, 12 February 2018

Members from the Beija Flor samba school portray drug traffickers during Carnival celebrations at the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, early Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018. Brazil's most famous city has long struggled with violence, particularly in the hundreds of slums controlled by drug traffickers, with criminal assaults and increasing shootouts between drug traffickers and police.: photo by Silvia Izquierdo/AP, 13 February 2018

A farmer inspects the remains of a missile, which according to the Lebanon national news agency is part of a Syrian air defense missile targeting an Israeli warplane, in Hasbani village, southwest Lebanon, on Saturday, Feb. 10, 2018. Lebanon is protesting Israel's use of its airspace to target Syria, saying it will complain to the U.N. Security Council.: photo by AP, 10 February 2018

#Syria Toll in Syria bombardment of rebel enclave rises to 44 A man carries a child injured in government bombing in the rebel-held town of Hamouria, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta. Photo @abdfree2: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 18 February 2018

#Hamouria 19 Feb 2019: image via Abdulmonam Eassa @abdfree2, 19 February 2018

Smoke rises from buildings following bombardment on Kafr Batna, in the rebel-held #EasternGhouta. Heavy Syrian bombardment killed dozens of civilians in rebel-held Eastern Ghouta, as regime forces appeared to prepare for an imminent ground assault / Photo @amer_almohibany/AFP: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 19 February 2018

104 people have been killed by the bombing of the #Assad regime and Russia on the #EasternGhouta since the morning so far 1st day of escalation on #EasternGhouta - #Syria: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 19 February 2018

Until now, we can't sleep, Russian warplanes did not stop, they are bombing everything. No one is standing next to us in this besieged area.: tweet via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 19 February 2018

My message to all lovers and friends: Whoever had a dark face for me would forgive me for it. Whoever has once been wronged intentionally or unintentionally, I ask him to forgive me God has delivered us many times today from the air raids Besieged #EasternGhouta: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 19 February 2018

#EasternGhouta Al=Ghouta-Sharqiya 7 martyrs, including 5 children from one family, were killed in the attack on the town. Warplanes and rocket launchers do not subside.: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 19 February 2018

Are these the new “Be On TV” seats?: image via Darren Rovell @darrenrovell, 19 February 2018

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada deliver a gold medal-winning performance in the ice dance on Day 11 at #Pyeongchang2018: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 19 February 2018

Marines drink cobra blood in Thailand as part of Cobra Gold, Asia's largest annual multilateral military exercise Photo @Athit_P: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 19 February 2018

Do you #lovecurling? A Canada's fan arrives undressed at the #Pyeongchang2018 Curling Center for the men's round robin session between the US and Canada. Photo Wang Zhao: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 19 February 2018

#sunset behind the rebel-held besieged town of Harasta, in the Eastern Ghouta region. Photo amer_almohibany: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 12 February 2018

Open Arms: Joseph Ceravolo: Hand Gun

Barber and Coin, Guns and Ammo, Beaverton, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 5 February 2014

Joseph Ceravolo: Hand Gun

When I was a child
I thought a handgun in a holster
and the lead colored bullets on the belt
was one of the most beautiful things
made by man.
Of course at that time
I didn't consciously know
of the phallic significance or symbol,
but it doesn't really matter.
It's not the object now
but the feeling that accompanied,
which still remains and comes back,
but not for guns and bullets
but for eternity.
It must be the way Sumerians
felt for their Gilgamesh
and Jews for David
and Egyptians for Pharaoh
and anyone for heroes,
a hope of eternity
for ever and ever new.
A chance not for the object
but for the soul alone,
if that be possible.
But it's too easy
to love life too much
and all is gone away, alas,
like a shot from
the gun of childhood.

When I was a child
I thought of eternity.

Joseph Ceravolo (1934-1988): Hand Gun, 24 October 1986, from Collected Poems, 2012

We Sell Guns (Boston, Massachusetts): photo by Jim Rohan (LowerDarnley), 31 March 2013

Lots of Musk and camo hoodies in this place. #gunshop: image via Tracy Eckert @tracyeckert, 31 January 2015

Dead kids in a classroom - just good business for @NRA and gun industry #gunsense: image via US Gun Violence @usgunviolence, 12 March 2015

WATCH: Parents laugh at gun extremist who says guns in schools ‘just makes sense’ #gunsense: image via Shannon @shannonrwatts, 12 March 2015

Untitled [Pape Ave, Riverdale, Toronto]: photo by Dominic Bugatto, 16 February 2018

Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga,10 January 2018

Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga,11 January 2018

Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga,12 January 2018

West Mesa, Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga,17 February 2018

DEEP STATE | Las Vegas, Nv: photo by akahawkeyefan, 15 February 2018

Love Me - Baker, CA 11/15: photo by busrbrn, 25 November 2015

New Orleans: photo by Andrew Murr,17 February 2018

Foreboding and Forbidden. | by david grim

Foreboding and Forbidden [Larimer, Pittsburgh]: photo by David Grim, 18 January 2018

HH Franz Co. [Baltimore]: photo by Andrew Murr,, 8 February 2018

Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga,9 February 2018

↧

Dans l'enfer de la Ghouta, près de Damas | Life so full of blood: the wasting of Eastern Ghouta | Brecht: The God of War (Der Kriegsgott)

February 21, 2018, 3:31 am

≫ Next: انظروا إلى هذه العيون! | “Look into these eyes!”

≪ Previous: escalation in eastern ghouta | all star wknd | of course i'm not wearing any clothes for the curling - im canadian! | Open Arms (Joseph Ceravolo: Hand Gun)

#Al-Ghouta: image via Dr. Zaineddin @DrZaineddin, 18 February 2018

[airstrike, Eastern Ghouta]: image via Hamza Al-Ajweh @hamza_alajweh, 20 February 2018

[airstrike, Eastern Ghouta]: image via Hamza Al-Ajweh @hamza_alajweh, 20 February 2018

#Siria Más de 100 civiles murieron en Guta Oriental por segundo día consecutivo (OSDH) #AFP: image via Agence France-Presse @AFPespanol, 20 February 2018

#Syria Al menos 250 civiles mueren en Siria en bombardeos del régimen #AFP por @abddfree2: image via Agence France-Presse @AFPespanol, 20 February 2018

100 civilians dead in Syria bombardment of rebel enclave @AFP Smoke rises from buildings following bombardment on the village of Mesraba #Ghouta Photo Hamza Al-Ajweh: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 20 February 2018

#UPDATE A barrage of air strikes, rocket fire and artillery slammed into several towns across Eastern Ghouta, killing at least 77: image via AFP news agency @AFP, 19 February 2018

Injured children are treated at a hospital in rebel-held #Douma Eastern Ghouta, #Syria. At least 85 people were killed in heavy bombing by forces allegedly loyal to the Syrian government #ASSAD Photo @badramamet @eopaphotos: image via Sunday Times Pictures @STPictures, 20 February 2018

Aftermath of Assad regime airstrikes on Douma, eastern Ghouta. 103 people were killed in this besieged enclave today. Photos taken today, Feb 19 by @badramamet / EPA: image via ElizabethTsurkov @Elizrael, 19 February 2018

Heba Amouri, 20y, places her finger in her hungry two-months-old baby girl’s mouth, to calm her down, because she can’t feed her. Heba lost two children by regime bombing. photo was taken by @BassamKhabieh at a medical center in #Douma, #EasternGhouta, 08/01/18 #BreakGhoutaSiege: image via Siege Updates @SiegeUpdates, 13 January 2018

Horrific photos taken yest. in #Ghoutaby the brave @badramamet We reported for months like this on Aleppo. During that time hundreds of civilians were killed. How completely agonising and heartbreaking the same is unfolding in Ghouta #wecantsaywedidntknow: image via Sophie McNeill @sophiemcneill, 29 February 2018

Horrific photos taken yest. in #Ghouta by the brave @badramamet We reported for months like this on Aleppo. During that time hundreds of civilians were killed. How completely agonising and heartbreaking the same is unfolding in Ghouta #wecantsaywedidntknow: image via Sophie McNeill @sophiemcneill, 29 February 2018

A person inspects a damaged building in Douma, Syria, as pro-government forces pounded the rebel-held district in a surge of air strikes, rocket fire and shelling Photo @BassamKhabieh: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 20 February 2018

#Al-Ghouta: image via Dr. Zaimeddin @DrZaineddin, 18 February 2018

Do you imagine the horror that people are subjected to because of the air raids and the sounds of warplanes that do not leave our skies #GhoutaHolocaust Besieged #EasternGhouta - #Syria: tweet via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 20 February 2018

Dans l'enfer de la Ghouta, près de Damas, @abdfree2 photographe pour l'AFP suit les vivants sous les bombardements #AFP: image via Agence France-Presse @afpfr, 17 February 2018

A picture taken on February 8, 2018 shows smoke plumes rising following a reported regime air strike in the rebel-held enclave of Jisreen in the Eastern Ghouta near Damascus.

Air strike in Eastern Ghouta, February 8, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 8 February 2018

Life so full of blood: Abdulmonam Eassa, AFP, 15 February 2018

Eastern Ghouta, Syria -- Life has become so scary and so full of blood. Before, the shelling was concentrated in the areas where rebels and the government troops were clashing. But now, any place can be a target, day or night.

Air strike in Eastern Ghouta, February 8, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 8 February 2018

Eastern Ghouta, where I live, is the last area held by rebels on the doorstep of the Syrian capital Damascus. It’s a collection of towns home to around 400,000 people. But last week you would have never suspected as much -- the streets were deserted. Last week Syrian government forces unleashed an intense five-day campaign of air strike and artillery fire that killed some 250 civilians. Three times that were wounded.

A member of the Syrian civil defence carries a wounded child from the rubble after a reported regime air strike in the rebel-held town of Jisreen, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on February 8, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 8 February 2018

The roads completely emptied of women and children; there were just men in the streets. People resorted to sitting in the ground floors or basements of their buildings and schools. But the bombardments were so strong that sometimes even people cowering in cellars were killed or wounded.

Syrian children covered in dust walk out of a shop following reported Syrian air force strikes in the rebel-held town of Saqba, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on February 8, 2018.

After the air strike, Eastern Ghouta, February 8, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 8 February 2018

During the day, you could see some men in the streets, usually keeping close to the entrance of their houses. When the sound of an airplane pierced the air, everyone ran for shelter. But no place was truly safe -- the shelling targeted mosques, houses, schools, markets, main roads, even basements.

A member of the Syrian civil defence carries the body of a child out of the rubble of a house that was hit by a reported regime air strike in the rebel-held town of Jisreen, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on February 8, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 8 February 2018

How do you live in a situation like that? You adapt. Although markets emptied and most stores were shuttered, some remained open all day. Some people just got used to the shelling, it’s as if they were waiting for death in the streets.

The shelling was so omnipresent that people buried their dead as quickly as possible -- for fear that the cemetery would be targeted while they were there. Sometimes the dead would be buried at night.

More than 235 martyrs have been killed since the beginning of this month in #Douma, #EasternGhouta #SyriaCivilDef @ActForGhouta @epaphotos: image via Mohammed Badra@badramamet, 11 February 2018

Fear grips you often when you live through something like this, but you learn to deal with it. One day I was with some paramedics and rescuers, taking pictures, when an aircraft returned to target the same place with a missile. We were about 100 meters away. After the strike, we went into an old house, to take out two children and a woman from under the rubble. Just then, an artillery bombardment struck the area, sending everyone fleeing except for the rescuers and me. I could feel the fear creeping over me, but I realized that it won’t change anything to be scared. So I took my pictures and left as quickly as I could.

From besieged #EasternGhouta: The siege comes back to the forefront after the escalation of air and artillery bombardment and prices are rising in a crazy way The @UN and the world stand helpless against the tragedy of 400,000 people @NRC_Egelund Photo @amer_almohibany: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 15 February 2018

Goods have become scarce and prices for them have skyrocketed. Main meals consist of mostly rice or bulgur; breakfast is some olives and yogurt. Electricity is available for only about five hours per day and is very expensive. I need electricity for my work, so I have no choice but to use it. I pay about 100 US dollars per month -- that buys me just enough to send my pictures and charge the batteries for my cameras.

One day, I went out of the house without eating, as often the case. Three times I ended up photographing carnage that day, the bloody aftermath of air strikes. When I returned to the house, I couldn’t eat anything. I was too tired and too shaken by what I had seen. Tears were streaming down my face. I sent my pictures and went straight to bed. The next morning I woke to the sound of airplanes.

Bodies of children killed in a reported regime air strike in the rebel-held town of Hamouria, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on February 7, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 7 February 2018

As a photographer, you see more than most people, because you seek out the places of death. But everyone here has been touched by it. The people of Ghouta have been forgotten and I just hope that my images will serve as a reminder of the bloodshed that is happening here.

#Hamouria 19 Feb 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa @abdfree2, 19February 2018

AFP / Abdulmonam Eassa

Kaitlyn Weaver of Canada performs in the figure skating free dance at #PyeongChang2018 Photo Lucy Nicholson: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 20 February 2018

Amanda De La Cruz, left, is riding to Tallahassee to honor her friend Helena, a kid with "a galaxy of freckles." Helena died in the Feb. 14 shooting.: image via julieturkewitz @julieturkewitz, 20 February 2018

Untitled: image via Diário de torcedor @tweettorcidaas, 20 February 2018

Bertolt Brecht: The God of War (Der Kriegsgott)

The USS Arizona (BB-39) burning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941. USS Arizona sunk at Pearl Harbor. The ship is resting on the harbor bottom. The supporting structure of the forward tripod mast has collapsed after the forward magazine exploded.: photographer unknown; image by Cobatfor, 2 September 2011 (Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum / National Archives and Records Administration)

Der Kriegsgott

Ich sah den alten Kriegsgott stehen auf einem Sumpf zwischen Abgrund und Felswand.

Er roch nach Freibier und Karbol und zeigte Halbwüchsigen seine Hoden, denn er war von einigen Professoren verjüngt worden.

Er beteuerte mit heiserer Wolfsstimme seine Liebe zu allem Jungen. Dabei stand eine schwangere Frau und zitterte.

Und ohne Scham redete er weiter und stellte sich vor als großer Ordnungsmann. Und er schilderte, wie er die Scheunen überall ordnete, indem er sie leerte.

Und wie man Spatzen Brocken hinwirft, so fütterte er arme Leute mit Brotkrusten, die er armen Leuten weggenommen hatte.

Seine Stimme war bald laut und bald leise, aber immer heiser.

Mit lauter Stimme sprach er von kommenden großen Zeiten, und mit leiser Stimme lehrte er die Weiber, wie man Krähen und Möwen kocht.

Dabei hatte er einen unruhigen Rücken und sah sich immerfort um, als fürchtete er einen Dolchstoß.

Und alle fünf Minuten versicherte er dem Publikum, daß er nur ganz kurz aufzutreten gedenke.

Syrian civilians flee from reported regime air strikes in the rebel-held town of Jisreen, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on February 8, 2018.

Aftermath of an air strike, Eastern Ghouta, February 8, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 8 February 2018

The God of War

I saw the old god of war stand in a bog between chasm and rockface.

He smelled of free beer and carbolic and showed his testicles to adolescents, for he had been rejuvenated by several professors. In a hoarse wolfish voice he declared his love for everything young. Nearby stood a pregnant woman, trembling.

And without shame he talked on and presented himself as a great one for order. And he described how everywhere he put barns in order, by emptying them.

And as one throws crumbs to sparrows, he fed poor people with crusts of bread which he had taken away from poor people.

His voice was now loud, now soft, but always hoarse.

In a loud voice he spoke of great times to come, and in a soft voice he taught women how to cook crows and seagulls. Meanwhile his back was unquiet, and he kept looking round, as though afraid of being stabbed.

And every five minutes he assured his public that he would take up very little of their time.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956): The God of War (Der Kriegsgott), 1938, English version by Michael Hamburger, inBertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956 (1976)

Casualties of a mass panic; during Japanese air raid, 4,000 people were trampled or suffocated to death trying to return to shelters. Chungking, China, 5 June 1941: photo by Carl Mydans (National Archives and Records Administration)

Alofi, Futuna, 2017 | by Christian Neumüller

Alofi, Futuna, 2017 [Mata Utu, Hahake District, Wallis and Futuna]: photo by Christian Neumüller, 20 July 2017

Vaisei, Futuna, 2017 | by Christian Neumüller

Vaisei, Futuna, 2017 | Réfection collective de la couverture d'un toit de fale en feuilles de pandanus.[Mata Utu, Hahake District, Wallis and Futuna]: photo by Christian Neumüller, 30 June 2017

Marcha por el 11 de Septiembre | by alicia alondra

Marcha por el 11 de septiembre | Diablos rojos [santiago de chile]: photo by alicia alondra, 10 September 2017

Carnaval Spotted |Paris: photo by Taieb M, 11 February 2018

Elephant Man | Thaipusam Festival, Little India, Singapore: photo by Jetlag and A Camera Bag, 20 February 2018

Hard life in Mexico city | by eric_demers

Hard Life in Mexico City | A man sleeps in the street at lunch time: photo by Eric Demers, 17 December 2017

↧

انظروا إلى هذه العيون! | “Look into these eyes!”

February 22, 2018, 4:32 am

≫ Next: barrels and bombs (you've got to get over it) | listening session (for a better tomorrow)

≪ Previous: Dans l'enfer de la Ghouta, près de Damas | Life so full of blood: the wasting of Eastern Ghouta | Brecht: The God of War (Der Kriegsgott)

Harrowing images from Eastern #Ghouta show children caught up in the siege against the rebel-held area east of Syria's capital Photo @badramamet @epaphoto: image via Sunday Times Pictures @STPictures, 21 February 2018

انظروا إلى هذه العيون! “Look into these eyes!” The words of @Bild Zeitung magazine on their picture of the day which taken in #EasternGhouta two days ago Ph:Mohammed Badra @epaphotos: image via Mohammed Badra @badramamet, 21 February 2018

Washington Post: “The desperate images from one of Syria’s bloodiest days” Ph: Mohammed Badra @epaphotos @washingtonpost #EasternGhouta: image via Mohammed Badra @badramamet, 2 February 2018

Death has a soundtrack in Eastern Ghouta: The growing rumble of a jet ripping through the sky, punctuated by a low but loud thud. Then come screams and sirens NBC News #EasternGhouta: today, Then they said:Bombing intensifies in EasternGhouta, Syria; 190 killed people since Sunday.: image via bela kharpotly @belalkh16, 20 February 2018

This is in short #EasternGhouta: image via bela kharpotly @belalkh16, 20 February 2018

#SYRIA: At least 24 civilians killed in Eastern Ghouta this morning, bringing toll since Sunday to close to 300. More than 500 have been killed this month in two bouts of fierce bombing - via @AFP: tweet via Maya Gebelly @GebeilyM, 21 February 2018

Hamoria Today "A scene of hell" 21 Feb 2018 Photos by ABDULMONAM EASSA VIA @AFPphoto: image via Abdumonam Eassa @abdfree2, 21 February 2018

Hamoria Today "A scene of hell" 21 Feb 2018 Photoby ABDULMONAM EASSA VIA @AFPphoto: image via Abdumonam Eassa @abdfree2, 21 February 2018

Hamoria Today "A scene of hell" 21 Feb 2018 Photo by ABDULMONAM EASSA VIA @AFPphoto: image via Abdumonam Eassa @abdfree2, 21 February 2018

SYRIA - Syria, Russia pound rebel enclave, put clinic out of service Photo by hamza_alajweh #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 21 February 2018

This is Eastern Ghouta, where hundreds are being killed and injured by Assad's forces @SyriaCivilDef Photo @hamza_alajweh #AFP: image via Guardian photos @guardianphotos, 20 February 2018

SYRIA - Syria, Russia pound rebel enclave, put clinic out of service Photo by hamza_alajweh #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 21 February 2018

"We are waiting our turn to die. This is the only thing I can say." Terrified residents of #EastGhouta are facing the most intense, deadly onslaught of attacks since 2013. #SaveGhouta #Ghouta #GhoutaGenocide Photo @amer_almohibany: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 21 February 2018

I and my child Omar who [are in] solidarity with the child Karim's campaign we are still alive in the #EasternGhouta #Ghouta #Ghouta #GhoutaGenocide: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 21 February 2018

Here are some of the "terrorists" whom Assad and Putin are trying to kill in besieged #EasternGhoutaThe real terrorists are child killers #Assad and #Putin #GhoutaGenocide: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 21 February 2018

From inside a shelter We wish all the peoples of the world a happy and happy life We have a lot of love for you From the #EasternGhouta where [there is] the extermination of humans.: image via belal kharpotly @belalkh16, 21 February 2018

Now a new round of extermination Dozens of dead and hundreds wounded Drums [barrels], rockets, rockets#EasternGhouta: tweet via belal kharpotly @belalkh16, 21 February 2018

Because of the large numbers [of wounded] and the lack of supplies and tools and after the removal of most of the hospitals of #EasternGhouta from service the wounded are being treated on the ground.: image via belal kharpotly @belalkh16, 20 February 2018

Most of the field hospitals in the #EasternGhouta are currently out of service as a result of their targeting with Telegraph and guided missiles #EasternGhouta: image via belal kharpotly @belalkh16, 20 February 2018

We can not even breathe #EasternGhouta: image via belal kharpotly @belalkh16, 20 February 2018

The destruction of 380,000 civilians in the #EasternGhouta continues So far there are 80 dead and more than 400 injured.: image via belal kharpotly @belalkh16, 20 February 2018

What is this type of criminality? Is it reasonable to have this in the modern century? Where is the United Nations, human rights and the Security Council? #EasternGhouta: image via belal kharpotly @belalkh16, 20 February 2018

SYRIA - Fears and outrage over bloodshed in Syria enclave Photo @abdfree2 #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 21 February 2018

Lo cierto es que, los bombardeos sobre hospitales o escuelas, no suelen ser accidentes. Se trata de minar aún más al 'enemigo', de joderle hasta las trancas, sin piedad. Y de dejar claro que te la pelan los Derechos Humanos y esas gilipolleces @badramamet: image via Miguel A. Rodríguez @marodriguez1971, 21 February 2018

#EasternGhouta: image via bela kharpotly @belalkh16, 21 February 2018

#EasternGhouta: image via bela kharpotly @belalkh16, 21 February 2018

A man weeps over his child at a make-shift morgue in Douma who was killed in air strikes on the Syrian village of Mesraba in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus (AFP Photo/Hamza Al-Ajweh)

A man weeps over his child at a make-shift morgue in Douma who was killed in air strikes on the Syrian village of Mesraba in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus (AFP Photo/Hamza Al-Ajweh)

A man weeps at a make-shift morgue in Doumaover his child who was killed in air strikes on the Syrian village of Mesraba in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus: photo by Hamza Al-Ajweh/AFP, 19 February 2018

Dead or alive, parents in Syria's Ghouta search for children: Hasan Mohamed/AFP, 19 February 2018

Douma (Syria) (AFP) - Nidal had to unfold several little shrouds, all lined up on the concrete floor of the morgue of the hospital in Syria's Douma, before recognising the body of his daughter Farah.

She was among 54 civilians killed Monday in the latest wave of Syrian regime air strikes on the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta enclave, of which Douma is the main town.

At least nine of the victims were children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring organisation. More than 300 people were wounded.

As more bodies were brought in from the chaos of the emergency room, Nidal knelt down near his lifeless daughter and cried - not just for her but also for the five other children he lost track of in the bombardment.

Farah was killed in the town of Masraba and her body brought to Douma by paramedics, who have been completely overwhelmed since the regime intensified its strikes two weeks ago.

"I have five other children I know nothing about, all five of them and their mother," he sobbed, resting his hand on the black shroud his daughter was wrapped in.

"Is there a fridge to put her in?", he asked.

A volunteer for the civil defence, an organisation known as the White Helmets, awkwardly looked for something to tell the bereaved father and eventually said: "May God reward you."

Nidal later told AFP that he managed to find his other children.

Douma hospital was full of distraught civilians: one father slapped his forehead after finding his two dead children, another erupted into tears as he discovered the body of his newborn on a purple sheet next to a pool of blood.

Shellshocked children

Lost and wounded children also cried for their parents, others sat silently, rivulets of blood running down their faces whitened by dust from the strikes, as they received treatment.

Two of them sat next to each other on a cot, shellshocked and blood staining their fresh bandages.

They were left unattended because the scope of the disaster is such that the medical staff has to prioritise patients and five of them were busy treating a disfigured young boy who was screaming in pain.

Those scenes were repeated in hospitals across Eastern Ghouta, a semi-rural area which is controlled by Islamist and jihadist groups and has been besieged by government forces since 2013.

Air strikes have intensified and killed more than 300 people this month, in what appears to be a prelude to a ground offensive that could start any day.

In Hammuriyeh, another of the enclave's main towns, the hospital was also teeming with bloodied civilians looking for their relatives, dead or alive.

One man's heart was still beating but he had already been moved to the morgue, his head wounds so bad that his case was deemed hopeless.

Moments later, a man walked in looking for his son. As the sheets wrapping the bodies laid in front of him were lifted, he eventually identified his child and collapsed.

Syrian children cry at a makeshift hospital in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta town of Douma on February 19, 2018 after heavy regime bombardment that killed dozens of civilians: photo by Hamza Al-Ajweh/AFP, 19 February 2018

Map of Syria, where new raids on a rebel-held stronghold killed at least 54 civilians on Monday (AFP Photo/AFP)

Map of Syria, where new raids on a rebel-held stronghold killed at least 54 civilians on Monday: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 19 February 2018

Oh what a feeling! Emma is a badass. We won the dopey meaningless game. We are so badass. U-S-A!!!!!

Oh what a feeling. #gold #TeamUSA #PyeongChang2018: Image via FOX Sports @FOXSports, 21 February 2018

Gucci models carry replica heads in their arms, and more highlights from Milan Fashion Week: Photo @tonygentile64: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 21 February 2018

Trump holds his notes and prepared questions as he hosts a listening session with high school students and teachers to discuss school safety at the White House Photo Jonathan Ernst: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 21 February 2018

Zimbabwe Supporters of the late opposition strongman Morgan Tsvangirai gather under an umbrella during a rains storm ahead of his burial in Humanikwa. Photo @ZinyangePhoto #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 21 February 2018

GAZA STRIP - Palestinian children ride a donkey cart to school in Beit Lahia Photo @mohmabed #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 21 February 2018

GAZA STRIP - Palestinians wait for permission to cross into Egypt through the Rafah border crossing in the southern Gaza Strip after it was opened by Egyptian authorities. Photo @saidkhatib #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 21 February 2018

I took these pictures of Emma a few weeks ago. Emma is real. Emma is a badass. Emma is going to change the nation. @Emma4Change: image via Kyra @longlivekc, 20 February 2018

I took these pictures of Emma a few weeks ago. Emma is real. Emma is a badass. Emma is going to change the nation. @Emma4Change: image via Kyra @longlivekc, 20 February 2018

It's hour seven on the Stoneman Douglas bus headed to Tallahassee.: image via julieturkewitz @julieturkewitz, 20 February 2018

At one table, Mallory Muller, 17, a Stoneman Douglas student, hugged a teddy bear. She had spent much of the trip on the phone with her mom. “The whole bus ride here I was very anxious. You have the nervousness about—what happens? And kind of scared for your own safety." hour seven on the Stoneman Douglas bus headed to Tallahassee.: image via julieturkewitz @julieturkewitz, 20 February 2018

Washington Post: “The desperate images from one of Syria’s bloodiest days” Ph: Mohammed Badra @epaphotos @washingtonpost #EasternGhouta: image via Mohammed Badra @badramamet, 2 February 2018

↧

barrels and bombs (you've got to get over it) | listening session (for a better tomorrow)

February 23, 2018, 8:35 am

≫ Next: Grinding-Down of History To Suit the Victors | Removal of the Rohingya from Historical Memory by Enlightened Erasure | Curling

≪ Previous: انظروا إلى هذه العيون! | “Look into these eyes!”

Dhaka, Bangladesh: photo by Alison Adcock 15 February 2018

Untitled [Dhaka]: photo by Md. Enamul Kabir, 20 February 2018

Rickshaws - Dhaka, Bangldesh | by Maciej Dakowicz

Rickshaws, Dhaka | Rickshaw drivers in CentralDhaka, Bangladesh: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 18 January 2018

So you've got to get over it. Even the worst things... | by _MaK_

So you've got to get over it. Even the worst things... | We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. Even the worst things...[Amla Para, Dhaka]: photo by Masum Khan, 31 October 2014

Riverside[Varanasi]: photo by Saumalya Ghosh, 30 December 2017

Matanzas, Cuba: photo by Jaume Escofet, 4 December 2017

Matanzas, Cuba: photo by Jaume Escofet, 7 December 2017

Matanzas, Cuba | by jaumescar

Matanzas, Cuba: photo by Jaume Escofet, 7 December 2017

Ljubljana: photo by Hand of Dave, 17 February 2018

Untitled [Oxford Street, London]: photo by Moxette, 18 April 2014

Untitled[Thailand]: photo by tananwad wanavit, 4 February 2018

Untitled[Tel Aviv]: photo by Ilan Burla, 2 May 2017

ms-29: photo by ilan Ben yehuda, 8 March 2012

Crete , 2016 / IMG_9624 | by dirtyharrry

Crrete, 2016 / IMG_9624ms-29: photo by dirtyharrry, 10 January 2016

La Habana, Cuba: photo by Jaume Escofet, 4 December 2017

Ash Monday VI: photo by Konstantinos Trachanas, 19 February 2018

Feels Like We Only Go Backwards | by Michael Goldrei (microsketch)

Feels Like We Only Go Backwards | London 2018: photo by Michael Goldrei, 7 February 2018

death from above

A Russian-made Syrian air force MiG-23 fighter jet flies over the rebel-held town of Arbin, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region.: photo by Amer Almohibany/AFP, 21 February 2018

SYRIA - A wounded Syrian girl receives treatment at a make-shift hospital in Kafr Batna following Syrian government bombardments on the besieged Eastern Ghouta region. Photo Ammar Suleiman #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 22 February 2018

Chaos deepens in Syria enclave, global outcry grows: AFP, 22 February 2018

The Syrian regime rained rockets and bombs on Eastern Ghouta Thursday, killing another 19 civilians as international pressure mounted to stop the carnage in the rebel-held enclave.

Calls for a humanitarian truce in one of the bloodiest episodes of Syria's seven-year-old conflict went unheeded as the death toll for Damascus's five-day blitz rose to 368.

The United Nations chief said the bloodshed wreaked by the aerial campaign had turned Eastern Ghouta into "hell on earth", while German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for an end to the "massacre".

Residents huddled in basements as government forces pounded the besieged enclave with rockets and bombs, turning towns into fields of ruins and even hitting hospitals.

Regime bombardment of Eastern Ghouta: image by Omar KAMAL/AFP, 22 February 2018

According to Doctors Without Borders, 13 of the facilities it supports in Eastern Ghouta were damaged or destroyed in three days, leaving remaining staff with very little to save the hundreds of wounded brought to them every day.

In the hospital mortuary in Douma, the main town in the enclave just east of Damascus, bodies wrapped in white shrouds were already lining up on the floor, two of them children.

Little pools of blood dotted the way to the hospital, where most of the victims of the sustained rocket fire unleashed by government troops on Thursday were taken.

A Syrian military helicopter flies over the rebel-held town of Kafr Batna during a bombardment on February 21, 2018: photo by Amer ALMOHIBANY/AFP, 21 February 2018

Nowhere safe

"The rocket fire hasn't stopped this morning. Around 200 ground-to-ground rockets struck Douma alone," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Morning rain appeared to initially keep warplanes away but the sky cleared by midday and jets, some of them Russian according to the Observatory, soon returned.

Russia has so far denied direct involvement in the assault on Ghouta but the pro-government Syrian newspaper Al-Watan reported on Thursday that Russian warplanes and advisers had joined the battle.

Regime and allied forces have been massing around the enclave, in which an estimated 400,000 people live, ahead of a likely ground offensive to flush out holdout Islamist and jihadist groups.

The brief respite provided by the rain on Thursday encouraged some residents to venture out of their basements and shelters, to buy food, check on their property or enquire about their relatives and neighbours.

A Syrian surveys the destruction after an air strike on the Eastern Ghouta town of Hamouria on February 21, 2018: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 21 February 2o18

In the town of Hammuriyeh, a queue had formed outside a shop as starving residents tried to stock up but another rocket sowed panic and sent everybody back to their shelters.

In Douma, a young boy tried to peddle lighters on the street but rocket fire quickly forced him to scamper back to cover.

Powerless

An AFP correspondent saw rescuers known as the "White Helmets" forced to stop their efforts to retrieve a wounded woman from the rubble of a collapsed home when air strikes resumed.

When they ventured back to the site, the woman was dead.

The indiscriminate bombardment and the strikes on medical facilities sparked global outrage but few concrete options emerged to stop the bloodletting.

"The killing of children, the destruction of hospitals -- all that amounts to a massacre that must be condemned and which must be countered with a clear no," Merkel said.

Wounded Syrians wait to receive treatment at a makeshift hospital in the Eastern Ghouta town of Kafr Batna following a bombardment by government forces on February 21, 2018: photo by Amer ALMOHIBANY/AFP, 21 February 2018

Russia has asked for a special meeting of the UN Security Council and the Red Cross has demanded it be allowed to enter the besieged enclave to help overwhelmed doctors and nurses to treat the wounded.

The aid community voiced its frustration as the world appeared once again powerless to stop a conflict that has left almost 350,000 dead in seven years and caused destruction rarely seen since World War II.

Humanitarian agencies are "sickened that no matter how many times they've raised the alarm, taken the step of speaking out, called on the Security Council to do something, the violence and brutality will sink to new lows," a statement by the Syria INGO Regional Forum said.

Talks for a deal between the regime and the armed groups controlling Ghouta appear to have stalled.

yrians chant anti-Russia slogans outside the Russian Consulate in Istanbul, Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018, during a protest against the airstrikes and shelling by the Syrian government forces in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, Syria. New airstrikes and shelling on the besieged, rebel-held suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus killed at least 10 people on Wednesday, a rescue organization and a monitoring group said.: photo byLefteris Pitarakis/AP, 22 February 2018

Syrians chant anti-Russia slogans outside the Russian Consulate in Istanbul, Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018, during a protest against the airstrikes and shelling by the Syrian government forces in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, Syria. New airstrikes and shelling on the besieged, rebel-held suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus killed at least 10 people on Wednesday, a rescue organization and a monitoring group said.: photo byLefteris Pitarakis/AP, 22 February 2018

Syria war: Russia says no agreement on ceasefire resolution: BBC News, 22 February 2018

Russia says it wants changes to a UN Security Council resolution for a ceasefire in Syria amid growing outrage over civilian deaths in a rebel enclave under Syrian government bombardment.

Russia's UN ambassador called for "feasible" not "populist" action.

But Western diplomats say Russia is stalling for time and France said failure to act could spell the end of the Security Council itself.

Activists say 400 people have been killed in Eastern Ghouta in five days.

The UN body in New York is due to vote on the resolution on Friday at 11:00 local time (16:00 GMT).

Russia, one of five powers that can veto a resolution, is a key backer of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war. Western powers suspect that Moscow wants to give its ally time to deal a final blow to rebel forces.

The United States, the UK and France are calling for the resolution to be approved without delay.

The draft, put forward by Kuwait and Sweden, calls for a 30-day nationwide truce to go into effect 72 hours after the resolution is passed.

Medical evacuations and aid deliveries would start 48 hours after that. The draft says 5.6 million people in 1,244 communities across the country are in acute need.

Russia says it has presented amendments to the draft resolution - but Sweden's UN ambassador Olof Skoog told the BBC that getting aid to the Eastern Ghouta was the main objective.

"I think that without the pressure coming from a united Security Council things are not happening the way they should on the ground," he said.

"So I think for the council it's a little bit less about the details and more about giving a political pressure to ensure that this happens."

France's UN ambassador François Delattre said the UN's inability to help Syrian civilians would result in a devastating loss of credibility.

The draft resolution also calls for all parties to avoid establishing military positions in civilian areas, including schools and hospitals. Sieges of populated areas should be lifted.

Under the terms of the resolution, any ceasefire would not apply to the Islamic State group, al-Qaeda and the al-Nusra Front.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has made clear that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an al-Qaeda-linked alliance that has a presence in the Eastern Ghouta, must also be excluded.

Mr Lavrov said he also wanted to exclude rebel groups in the enclave who are "co-operating" with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and shelling nearby government-held areas.

Russia's UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia stressed the need for a resolution that would actually work.

"What we need is not symbolism, not decisions for the sake of decisions, but rather measures that are undertaken that are commensurate with conditions on the ground," he said.

For the fifth day running, Syrian government forces carried out a wave of air and artillery strikes.

The number killed since Sunday has risen to at least 403, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group says, as 46 more died on Thursday.

Barrel bombs and shell fire have rained down in what the UN has described as "hell on earth" for the 393,000 people trapped there.

The Syria Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, said residential areas in the town of Douma came under sustained attack, first from ground-to-ground rockets and then government and Russian jets.

Spokesman Siraj Mahmoud said the organisation was being deliberately targeted by government aircraft, with four rescuers killed since Sunday night. "Everyone knows it is an extermination," he told the Associated Press.

The Syrian state news agency meanwhile reported that a child was killed and six civilians wounded in the government-controlled Barzeh district of Damascus by shellfire. Army units responded with "precision strikes", destroying a number of rebel positions and inflicting heavy losses, it said.

The UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Syria, Panos Moumtzis, echoed calls for a ceasefire.

Referring to the harrowing images coming out of the Eastern Ghouta, he said: "If this is not going to convince [UN security] council members, council states, of the need for a ceasefire, honestly we don't know what is it that would convince them."

The Syrian government has denied targeting civilians and insisted it is trying to liberate the Eastern Ghouta from "terrorists" - a term it has used to describe both jihadist militants and the mainstream rebel groups that dominate the enclave.

Aid groups report dozens of hospitals being put out of action since Sunday.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said the government's siege was also preventing medics from obtaining essential life-saving supplies, warning that its facilities had completely run out of supplies of blood bags, general anaesthetic drugs and intravenous antibiotics.

#Turkey Protest against the airstrikes and shelling by Syrian government forces in Ghouta in front of the Russian Consulate in Istanbul. Photo @ozankosee #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 22 February 20

Mother see[s] her son die in front of her eyes and says he always tells me that he would like to die to go to heaven because there is food and everything. I'm sorry to tell you that the child died #GhoutaGenocide BBC News Russia says no agreement: tweet via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 22 February 2018

A man carries an infant rescued from the rubble of buildings on Monday, after government bombing in the rebel-held town of Hamouria, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region, on the outskirts of thye Syrian capitol, Damascus: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 21 February 2018

Smoke plumes rise Tuesday after a regime airstrike in the rebel-held town of Hamouria.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 21 February 2018

LEFT: A woman and children run for cover Monday after government bombing in Hamouria.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 21 February 2018

RIGHT: A member of the Syrian Civil Defense, popularly known as the White Helmets, carries an injured child rescued from the rubble.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 21 February 2018

LEFT: A woman and children run for cover Monday after government bombing in Hamouria.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 21 February 2018

RIGHT: A member of the Syrian Civil Defense, popularly known as the White Helmets, carries an injured child rescued from the rubble.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 21 February 2018

Volunteers from the White Helmets search for injured victims in the rubble of buildings in Hamouria on Tuesday: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 21 February 2018

A man carries an infant injured in an attack in Hamouria on Monday.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 21 February 2018

Civilians look at the rubble in the wake of government attacks in Hamouria on Monday.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 21 February 2018

Injured children are treated at a hospital in Douma, Syria, on Monday.: photo by Mohammed Badra/European Pressphoto Agency, 21 February 2018

A body of a child lies on the floor of a morgue in rebel-held Douma on Tuesday.: photo by Mohammed Badra/European Pressphoto Agency, 21 February 2018

The body of a girl is moved at a morgue in Douma on Tuesday, leaving a trail of blood.: photo by Mohammed Badra/European Pressphoto Agency, 21 February 2018

An injured child receives treatment Monday at a makeshift hospital in Hamouria.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 21 February 2018

The town of Hamouria, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, has been devastated by the government’s bombing campaign.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 22 February 2018

Syria Civil Defense members help an unconscious woman from an underground shelter in the besieged town of Douma, Eastern Ghouta Photo @BassamKhabieh: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 21 February 2018

Plus de 400 civils, dont une centaine d'enfants, ont été tués depuis dimanche dans l'enclave rebelle de la Ghouta orientale par les intenses bombardements du régime syrien. Ce dernier fait fi des appels internationaux à stopper le bain de sang #AFP: image via Agence France-Presse @afpfr. 21 February 2018

Conséquence de ce déluge de feu déversé par les forces du président syrien Bachar al-Assad, de nombreux habitants de la Ghouta orientale ont trouvé refuge dans des sous-sols, parfois après avoir fui leur domicile en ruine: image via Agence France-Presse @afpfr. 21 February 2018

Damaged Hamouriyah hospital after an airstrike in eastern Ghouta in Damascus on 21 February.: photo by Anadolu Agency/Getty Images, 21 February 2018

More suffering in besieged #Ghouta, ambulances are under attacks also and no access to bring any more instead of the attacked ones. @ICRC_sy should immediately cover this very important gap. 10 ambulances at least are out of duty: image via Mohamad Katoub @MhdKatoub, 21 February 2018

Department of Central Ambulance Yesterday 20/02/2018 Damascus countryside specialist Hospital #Children #Shells #Siege #Damascus #Douma #TogetherForGhouta #Syria #Always: image via Douma Medical @Doumamedical, 21 February 2018

closed to the vest

A model wears a creation as part of the Gucci women's Fall/Winter 2018-2019 collection, presented during the Milan Fashion Week, in Milan, Italy, Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2018.: photo by Antonio Calanni/AP, 21 February 2018

Italy Fashion Gucci

"Be a model they said" The #GucciFW18 runway by #AlessandroMichele @gucci All access Photo to #MilanFashionWeek: image via Getty Images News @GettyImagesNews, 21 February 2018

"Be a model they said" The #GucciFW18 runway by #AlessandroMichele @gucci All access Photo to #MilanFashionWeek: image via Getty Images News @GettyImagesNews, 20 February 2018

President Trump hosts mass shooting victims and their family members at the White House in a listening session Photo: @somogettynews: image via Getty Images News @GettyImagesNews, 21 February 2018

President Donald Trump listens during a meeting with state and local officials to discuss school safety, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018, in Washington.: photo by Evan Vucci/AP, 22 February 2018

Trump Guns

It's all too easy to focus on Trump's severe personal limitations and miss the larger point, that it's the script for a show. #ListeningSession #GunReform: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 22 February 2018

So much for holding your cards closed [sic] to the vest. And sorry but yes, do worry about Trump protecting all the boys and the girls. Photo @somogettynews. Trump @MassShootings listening session. #GunViolence: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 22 February 2018

West Boca High School students protest as others attend the funeral of 15 year old Peter Wang, a boy whose dream was to attend West Point Photo: @jraedle: image via Getty Images News @GettyImagesNews, 20 February 2018

Women dancers wait to perform during beach festival in Bali, Indonesia, Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018. The three-day beach festival is organized to promote tourism on the resort island.: photo by Firdia Lisnawati/AP, 22 February 2018

Indonesia Daily Life

"Be a model they said" The #GucciFW18 runway by #AlessandroMichele @gucci All access Photo to #MilanFashionWeek: image via Getty Images News @GettyImagesNews, 21 February 2018

Canadian fans watch during the first period of the women's gold medal hockey game the United States and Canada at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Gangneung, South Korea, Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018.: photo by Jae C. Hong/AP, 22 February 2018

Listen to our first podcast episode with guest @jenatkinhair @nbcgoodgirls: image via Who What Wear @WhoWhatWear, 2 February 2018

Torin Yater-Wallace of the U.S. crashes during the freestyle halfpipe at #PyeongChang2018 Photo Jorge Silva: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 21 February 2018

Silver medalist Ramon Zenhaeusern, of Switzerland, left, gold medalist Andre Myhrer, of Sweden, and bronze medalist Michael Matt, of Austria, walk to the podium during the venue ceremony after the men's slalom at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018.: photo by Charlie Riedel/AP, 22 February 2018

Pyeongchang Olympics Alpine Skiing

People gather to mourn the death of a Pakistani laborer Inzamam Hussain in Tetrinote Hajeera, situated at the Line of Control between Pakistan and Indian Kashmir, Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018. Pakistan's foreign ministry says Indian troops opened fire in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, killing Hussain on the Pakistani side of the boundary.: photo by M.D. Mughal/AP, 2 February 2018

↧

Grinding-Down of History To Suit the Victors | Removal of the Rohingya from Historical Memory by Enlightened Erasure | Curling

February 24, 2018, 7:50 am

≫ Next: To the Invisibles

≪ Previous: barrels and bombs (you've got to get over it) | listening session (for a better tomorrow)

The domes of truth, our helmets, our camp, and the right of God, defended by the soldiers of God in the field: image via Amer_almohibany @amer_almohibany, 24 February 2018

The willful flattening of history eliminates the rough spots, the obscure patches in the image, the blurred and shadowy areas on the map where nothing seems as clear as it was promised to be, and where the truth of not knowing abides, and begins to know itself at last

People inspect missile remains in the besieged town of Douma, as bombs fall on the last rebel bastion near Syria's capital: Photo Bassam Khabieh: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 23 February 2018

My Syrian friends and I live in social media feeds that scroll endless death, blood and horror. I wonder when we will be able to stop the posts with dead children. I wonder when others will notice that we are still here; seven years later, scrolling through death. #SaveGhouta #Syria: image via Lina Sergie Attar @AmalHanano, 19 February 2018

I will never get over this image. You shouldn’t either. #SaveGhouta #Syria: image via Lina Sergie Attar @AmalHanano, 23 February 2018

Just deeply disheartening to see readership numbers drop whenever we do a Syria story in the newsletter. Like clockwork.: tweet via Max J. Rosenthal @maxjrosenthal, 22 February 2018

My message to UN ... this is our country which born where and live..the solution is not change the demographic and displacement the owners of the Earth .. the solution to stop this massacres Those you kill are all children and women Amer almohibany #EasternGhouta #syria: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 23 February 2018

Hala, 9, receives treatment at a makeshift hospital following Syrian government bombardments on rebel-held town of Saqba, in the besieged Eastern #Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on February 22, 2018. Photo @amer_almohibany: image via Eliane Alhussein @ElianeAlhussein, 22 February 2018

En Syrie, la vie sous terre des habitants d'un fief rebelle pilonné #AFP: image via Agence France-Presse afpfr, 22 February 2018

U.N. Security Council delays vote on Syria ceasefire resolution: Michelle Nichols, Ellen Francis, Reuters, 23 February 2018

The 24-hour delay followed a flurry of last-minute negotiations on the text drafted by Sweden and Kuwait after Russia, a veto-holding ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, proposed new amendments on Friday.

“Unbelievable that Russia is stalling a vote on a ceasefire allowing humanitarian access in Syria,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley posted on Twitter.

Talks have centered on the paragraph demanding a cessation of hostilities for 30 days to allow aid access and medical evacuations. A proposal for the truce to start 72 hours after the resolution’s adoption has been watered-down to instead demand it start “without delay” in a bid to win Russian support.

Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Moscow does not want to specify when a truce should start. It was not immediately clear how Russia would vote on Saturday. A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia, China, the United States, Britain and France to be adopted.

“We’re not going to give up. ... I hope that we will adopt something forceful, meaningful, impactful tomorrow,” Olof Skoog, Sweden’s U.N. ambassador, told reporters.

Previous ceasefires, however, have had a poor record of ending fighting in Syria, where Assad’s forces have gained the upper hand.

The towns and farms of eastern Ghouta have been under government siege since 2013, with shortages of food, water and electricity that worsened last year. Earlier on Friday, the densely populated enclave was bombed for a sixth straight day, witnesses said.

The civilian casualties and devastation there are among the worst in Syria since the government captured rebel-held parts of Aleppo in 2016. At least 462 people have been killed, including at least 99 children, and many hundreds injured, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said on Friday.

Syrian state media reported one person was killed and 58 injured in rebel shelling of sites in Damascus, including a hospital.

Clouding any potential ceasefire is the Syrian government’s frequently used tactic of pushing rebels to surrender their strongholds after long sieges and military offensives.

Insurgents in eastern Ghouta have vowed not to accept such a fate, ruling out an evacuation of fighters, their families and other civilians of the kind that ended rebellions in Aleppo and Homs after heavy bombardment in earlier years.

“We refuse categorically any initiative that includes getting the residents out of their homes and moving them elsewhere,” Ghouta rebel factions wrote in a letter to the Security Council.

Eastern Ghouta has 400,000 people spread over a larger area than other enclaves the government has recaptured. Late on Thursday, government aircraft dropped leaflets urging civilians to depart and hand themselves over to the Syrian army, marking corridors through which they could leave safely.

Pressure on Russia

Leading up to the Security Council vote, all eyes have been on Russia. Moscow has a history of standing in the way of Security Council measures that would harm Assad’s interests.

Germany and France were among the nations to ratchet up the pressure on Russia, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron asking Russian President Vladimir Putin to support the resolution.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow wanted guarantees that rebel fighters will not shoot at residential areas in Damascus.

Damascus and Moscow say they only target militants. They have said their main aim is to stop rebel shelling of the capital, and have accused insurgents in Ghouta of holding residents as human shields.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government planes and artillery hit Douma, Zamalka and other towns across the enclave in the early hours of Friday.

There was no immediate comment from the Syrian military.

This pic of a man from #EasternGhouta probably lost his family - summarize[s] the whole catastrophe situation. #SaveGhouta: image via Zouhir_AlShimale @ZouhirAlShimale, 21 February 2018

Removal of the Rohingya from Historical Memory by Enlightened Erasure

This Feb. 13, 2018, satellite image provided by DigitalGlobe, shows the village of Myin Hlut, 25 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of Maungdaw, Rakhine state, Myanmar. Satellite images of Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state, released to The Associated Press by Colorado-based DigitalGlobe on Friday, Feb. 23, 2018, show that dozens of empty villages and hamlets have been completely leveled by authorities in recent weeks, far more than previously reported. The villages were all set ablaze in the wake of violence last August, when a brutal clearance operation by security forces drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingya into exile in Bangladesh. (DigitalGlobe via AP)

Myanmar bulldozes what was left of Rohingya Muslim villages: Todd Pitman and Esther Htusan, 23 February 2018

BANGKOK (AP) — First, their villages were burned to the ground. Now, Myanmar’s government is using bulldozers to literally erase them from the earth — in a vast operation rights groups say is destroying crucial evidence of mass atrocities against the nation’s ethnic Rohingya Muslim minority.

Satellite images of Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state, released to The Associated Press by Colorado-based DigitalGlobe on Friday, show that dozens of empty villages and hamlets have been completely leveled by authorities in recent weeks — far more than previously reported. The villages were all set ablaze in the wake of violence last August, when a brutal clearance operation by security forces drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingya into exile in Bangladesh.

While Myanmar’s government claims it’s simply trying to rebuild a devastated region, the operation has raised deep concern among human rights advocates, who say the government is destroying what amounts to scores of crime scenes before any credible investigation takes place. The operation has also horrified the Rohingya, who believe the government is intentionally eviscerating the dwindling remnants of their culture to make it nearly impossible for them to return.

This Feb. 13, 2018, satellite image provided by DigitalGlobe, shows the village of Myin Hlut, 25 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of Maungdaw, Rakhine state, Myanmar. Satellite images of Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state, released to The Associated Press by Colorado-based DigitalGlobe on Friday, Feb. 23, 2018, show that dozens of empty villages and hamlets have been completely leveled by authorities in recent weeks, far more than previously reported. The villages were all set ablaze in the wake of violence last August, when a brutal clearance operation by security forces drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingya into exile in Bangladesh. (DigitalGlobe via AP)

This Dec. 20, 2017, satellite image provided by DigitalGlobe, shows the village of Myin Hlut, 25 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of Maungdaw, Rakhine state, Myanmar. Satellite images of Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state, released to The Associated Press by Colorado-based DigitalGlobe on Friday, Feb. 23, 2018, show that dozens of empty villages and hamlets have been completely leveled by authorities in recent weeks, far more than previously reported. The villages were all set ablaze in the wake of violence last August, when a brutal clearance operation by security forces drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingya into exile in Bangladesh. (DigitalGlobe via AP)

One displaced Rohingya woman, whose village was among those razed, said she recently visited her former home in Myin Hlut and was shocked by what she saw. Most houses had been torched last year, but now, “everything is gone, not even the trees are left,” the woman, named Zubairia, told AP by telephone. “They just bulldozed everything ... I could hardly recognize it.”
The 18-year-old said other homes in the same area that had been abandoned but not damaged were also flattened. “All the memories that I had there are gone,” she said.

“They’ve been erased.”

Myanmar’s armed forces are accused not just of burning Muslim villages with the help of Buddhist mobs, but of carrying out massacres, rapes and widespread looting. The latest crisis in Rakhine state began in August after Rohingya insurgents launched a series of unprecedented attacks on security posts.

Aerial photographs of leveled villages in northern Rakhine State were first made public Feb. 9 when the European Union’s ambassador to Myanmar, Kristian Schmidt, posted images taken from an aircraft of what he described as a “vast bulldozed area” south of the town of Maungdaw.

Satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe indicates at least 28 villages or hamlets were leveled by bulldozers and other machinery in a 30-mile (50-kilometer) radius around Maungdaw between December and February; on some of the cleared areas, construction crews had erected new buildings or housing structures and helipads. A similar analysis by Human Rights Watch on Friday said at least 55 villages have been affected so far.

The images offer an important window into what is effectively a part of Myanmar that is largely sealed off to the outside world. Myanmar bars independent media access to the state.

The government has spoken of plans to rebuild the region for months, and it has been busily expanding roads, repairing bridges, and constructing shelters, including dozens at a large transit camp at Taungpyo, near the Bangladesh border. The camp opened in January to house returning refugees; but none have arrived and Rohingya have continued to flee.
Myint Khine, a government administrator in Maungdaw, said some of the new homes were intended for Muslims. But that does not appear to be the case for the majority of those built or planned so far, and many Rohingya fear authorities are seizing land they’ve lived on for generations.
One list, published by the government in December, indicated 787 houses would be constructed, most of them for Buddhists or Hindus. Only 22 of the houses were slated for “Bengalis” — the word Myanmar nationalists often use to describe the Rohingya, who they say are illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

Myint Khine said the government had no ulterior motive.

“Of course we have been using machines like earth removers and bulldozers because we have to clear the ground first before building new houses,” he said.

Chris Lewa, whose Arakan Project monitors the persecuted Muslim minority’s plight, said the degree to which the villages had been razed would make it even harder for the Rohingya, who have no citizenship and few rights, to ever reclaim their land.

“How will they identify where they lived, if nothing is left, if nothing can be recognized?” Lewa said. “Their culture, their history, their past, their present — it’s all being erased. When you see the pictures, it’s clear that whatever was left — the mosques, the cemeteries, the homes — they’re gone.”

Richard Weir, a Myanmar expert with Human Rights Watch, said on the images he had seen, “there’s no more landmarks, there’s no trees, there’s no vegetation.”

“Everything is wiped away, and this is very concerning, because these are crime scenes,” he said. “There’s been no credible investigation of these crimes. And so, what we’re talking about really is obstruction of justice.”

Both Weir and Lewa said no mass graves were known to have been destroyed. But, Weir added: “We don’t know where all the graves are ... because there is no access.”

Zubairia, who asked that only one of her names be used to protect her identify because she feared reprisals, said she did not believe any of the newly constructed homes were intended for Rohingya.

“Even if they give us small houses to live in, it will never be the same for us,” she said.

“How can we be happy about our houses being ripped off from our land?”

↧

To the Invisibles

February 25, 2018, 9:51 am

≫ Next: Sad birds from the middle of the war | Joseph Ceravolo: Dusk ("Before the dusk grows deeper...")

≪ Previous: Grinding-Down of History To Suit the Victors | Removal of the Rohingya from Historical Memory by Enlightened Erasure | Curling

A los invisibles: photo by museo de arte un, 25 August 2008

mesa 00862: photo by m.r. nelson, 28 January 2018

mesa 00869: photo by m.r. nelson, 28 January 2018

2018-38 | Berkeley, CA: photo by biosfear, February 2018

double feature. parker, az. 2018. | by eyetwist

double feature. parker, az. 2018. | late afternoon at an abandoned desert drive-in theater: photo by eyetwist, 11 February 2018

Seaside, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 22 February 2018

mesa 00857: photo by m.r. nelson, 28 January 2018

2018-21 | Big Sur, CA: photo by biosfear, 1 January 2018

Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 23 February 2018

This image by our photographer @AmmarSulaiman91 shows the extent of the ruin in Eastern #Ghouta, and its proximity to Damascus. Like hundreds were being bombed daily with impunity in Richmond, or the Bronx.: image via Patrick Galey @patrickgaley, 24 February 2018

#الغوطة_الشرقيةمساء أمس. Smoke billows following a regime air strike on the besieged #EasternGhouta region on the outskirts of the capital #Damascus, late on February 23, 2018. #AFP / Ammar Suleiman #SaveGhouta: image via Ammar Sulaiman @AmmarSulaiman91, 24 February 2018

#BREAKING: New regime strikes in Syria enclave despite ceasefire call: monitor - via @afp: tweet via Maya Gebeily @GebeilyM, 24 February 2018

All eyes on Syria’s ceasefire this morning. White Helmets rescue teams in Eastern Ghouta continue to report air strikes and shelling, including the use of what appear to be incendiary munitions in Douma.: tweet via Louisa Loveluck, @leloveluck, 25 February 2018

#BREAKING 24-2-2018 Assad's army and his allies start a ground military incursion [into] #EasternGhouta from the east and doesn't respect the international laws and the decision to desolation ... now 3 warplanes on ghouta sky are launching air strikes on #EasternGhouta: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 24 February 2018

This morning brought a fresh wave of attacks against #EasternGhouta: Artillery shelling by the Syrian military on targeting Hazza, Kafr Batna, Jisrin, Ein Tarma, Douma, and Harasta. Pro-government forces launched a ground attack in al-Marj area in an attempt to gain territory. 12:25 AM - 25 Feb 2018: tweet via Siege Watch @SiegeWatch, 25 February 2018

Death shapes A picture taken [today] shows a Russian-made Syrian army attack helicopter dropping a payload over the rebel-held town of Arbin, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus. / @AFP / #amer_almohibany: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 24 February 2018

Death shapes A picture taken [today] shows a Russian-made Syrian army aircraft attacking the rebel-held town of Arbin, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus. / @AFP / #amer_almohibany: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 24 February 2018

Death shapes A picture taken [today] shows a Russian-made Syrian army attack aircraft firing a missileover the rebel-held town of Arbin, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus. / @AFP / #amer_almohibany: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 24 February 2018

Understanding Eastern Ghouta in Syria: Aron Lund, IRIN News, 23 February 2018

Understanding Eastern Ghouta in Syria New backgrounder for @IRINnews: what is the Ghouta, why does it matter, how many civilians are stuck in the enclave, why can't they leave, how does the siege work, who are the rebels, and what does the government want?: image via Aron Lund @aronlund, 23 February 2018

The UN says nearly 400,000 civilians are trapped the Eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, the latest battleground in a series of bloody rebel defeats in Syria’s cities. Syrian

President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and his Russian allies seem poised for a major ground offensive on the besieged insurgent enclave. What do we know?

What is the Eastern Ghouta enclave and why does it matter?

Ghouta is an agricultural region ringing Damascus, part of which has succumbed to urban expansion and slum housing in recent decades. In Eastern Ghouta, anti-Assad insurgents have been besieged by the Syrian army since spring 2013.

Recent UN estimates put the enclave’s population at around 393,000, with the UN’s top official in Syria, Ali al-Zatari, saying 272,500 inhabitants are in need of humanitarian assistance. About a third of Eastern Ghouta’s population is internally displaced, including people who have fled from Damascus.

These figures remain uncertain, and previous UN population estimates for besieged areas in Syria have at times proven too high, notably in eastern Aleppo. But although Syrian loyalist or opposition sources may provide lower or higher numbers, the UN records remain the only widely-recognised figures available.

The area is important to the Syrian government, since it encompasses the eastern suburbs of the capital. Large, well-defended, and within mortar range of central Damascus, where the Old City and other neighbourhoods have suffered from rebel shelling, Eastern Ghouta has been a severe irritant to the loyalist camp for years.

Cancivilians leave the enclave?

Leaving the enclave has long been impossible for most inhabitants, though there are exceptions. A small number of inhabitants, including public employees, are reportedly allowed to come and go through an agreed and mutually supervised checkpoint at Wafideen, near Douma, though it is a risky passage due to land mines, sniper fire, and the aggressive and unpredictable behaviour of both government and rebel forces.

Syrian authorities recently dropped fliers over Eastern Ghouta telling civilians to leave the area, but they have in the past refused entry for people trying to get out.

For example, the UN has tried for eight months to evacuate 500 severely ill or wounded civilians from Eastern Ghouta, including small children. The government refuses to let them out of the enclave, leading to the reported death of 22 of these patients so far.

A smaller group of around 35 patients was allowed out in December, albeit as part of a negotiated swap with detainees released by the rebels, rather than out of respect for humanitarian law. Both sides have made a habit of using prisoners of war and civilian hostages as negotiating chips.

Critics of al-Assad who are thinking of leaving are also fearful of being apprehended by his police forces, which have a decades-long history of arbitrary arrests, detainee abuse, and unlawful executions. Many of those who are apolitical or willing to take their chances with the regime remain concerned that they or their male relatives could be drafted into the army.

The rebels also restrict civilian movement. Amnesty International has noted that the Islam Army, which controls the opposition side of the Wafideen checkpoint, only allows select civilians to leave and has on occasion arrested people for simply asking permission to go.

According to REACH, a UN-backed initiative working on humanitarian reporting, the opposition groups have reportedly banned women, children, and men of fighting age from leaving the enclave, thereby preventing families from exiting together even if some members have been given free passage.

How does food get into Eastern Ghouta?

Humanitarian conditions inside Eastern Ghouta are extremely poor. Government shelling, infighting, and misrule by armed opposition groups play a part in that, but the most important reason is a blockade on food and humanitarian assistance imposed by the Syrian army.

How harshly the blockade is enforced has varied over the years. UN and Syrian Arab Red Crescent aid convoys are sometimes allowed in to prevent outright starvation, but permissions are rare and irregular. Aid officials say they are not permitted to deliver anywhere near the amount of food needed, and medical supplies are often stolen or sent back at government checkpoints.

By withholding humanitarian aid, the government has pushed up food prices and inflated the profit margins of a regime-connected businessman granted monopoly rights to trade via the Wafideen crossing, possibly in return for sharing the profits with the president’s entourage. Some rebel groups have been in on the deal: both regime figures and insurgent commanders have made money by taxing food at the expense of local civilians.

From 2014 until 2017, rebel-controlled smuggling tunnels brought in goods not permitted through Wafideen—including weapons and ammunition, but also food, medicine and fuel, which is needed to power electrical generators, water pumps and other basic infrastructure. In spring 2017, the Syrian army captured the tunnels. Since then, accumulating economic and infrastructural problems have diminished the area’s ability to cope with deprivation.

What is the current humanitarian situation?

Despite promises of improved humanitarian access as the main rebel groups signed Russian-brokered de-escalation deals last summer, the Syrian military began tightening the screws in late 2017.

In September, the government shut down even the for-profit food trade it had previously allowed through Wafideen. Since then, all but a handful of UN-organised aid convoys have been stopped by the authorities, thus engineering a severe civilian health crisis .

Recent WFP reporting indicates that prices in the enclave have grown by 140 percent since the Wafideen closure and are now six times higher than the national average. According to REACH, a bag of flat bread, which is a staple food in Syria, now costs 94 Syrian pounds in Damascus but 1,500 Syrian pounds in Eastern Ghouta.

Even before the effects of the current crisis were fully felt, humanitarian officials described Eastern Ghouta’s malnutrition levels as the worst ever recorded during the Syrian war. A November 2017 UN survey found that 11.9 percent of children under five were acutely malnourished, and that 36 percent suffered from stunted growth.

To Paulo Pinheiro, head of the UN-mandated Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, the government’s denial of aid access amounts to “deliberate starvation of the civilian population.”

Who are the rebels in Eastern Ghouta?

The Eastern Ghouta insurgency is dominated by two rival factions, whose mutually hostile relationship was shaped by a long, bitter and polarising process of factional consolidation through infighting.

The northern city of Douma and eastern parts of the enclave are run by the Islam Army, a large Salafi-inspired Islamist group. The outskirts of Damascus, in the enclave’s southwest, are dominated by Failaq al-Rahman, a Free Syrian Army-branded group with some ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Both factions rule their areas in an authoritarian fashion, enforcing conservative religious laws and repressing dissidents who show support for the government or for their local rivals.

There are also two smaller Islamist factions, both of which are opportunistically aligned with Failaq al-Rahman due to a shared history of conflict with the Islam Army.

On the northwestern end of the enclave, the Harasta neighbourhood is run by a local franchise of Ahrar al-Sham, a Salafi faction whose main area of influence is in northern Syria.

The jihadi group Tahrir al-Sham, which emerged out of Syria’s al-Qaeda franchise, also has a presence in the enclave. Though it is the most powerful rebel faction in northern Syria, Tahrir al-Sham’s Ghouta wing seems small in comparison with the Islam Army or Failaq al-Rahman. To survive, it operates in Failaq al-Rahman-dominated areas after being violently attacked by the Islam Army last year.

In interviews with IRIN, Failaq al-Rahman officials have denied any alliance with Tahrir al-Sham, and clashes between the two groups have been known to occur. However, signs point to some form of defensive pact between these two groups against the Islam Army.

Due to its anti-Western agenda and terrorism designations, Tahrir al-Sham tends to be given outsized importance in the rhetoric of the pro-Assad camp, as when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently claimed that Tahrir al-Sham "runs the show" in Eastern Ghouta.

What will happen now?

In the past week, the air campaign against Eastern Ghouta has reached unprecedented levels, with hundreds killed in the enclave while rebels fire mortars into Damascus. The pro-government Syrian daily al-Watan says a major ground offensive may begin in the coming week.

Reactions in Syria are, as always, deeply polarised.

Opposition sympathisers condemn the surging air strikes, with the Douma Local Council demanding international protection against what it terms a "genocidal campaign".

To many government supporters, however, an offensive to clear out rebels from Eastern Ghouta cannot come soon enough.

“This is a legitimate liberation process that is long due”, said Syrian member of parliament Fares al-Shehabi, who spoke to IRIN on Thursday afternoon. “No more Qaeda jihadis next to our capital!”

How are civilians affected by the escalation?

Though the fighting in Eastern Ghouta is at heart a military conflict over territory—not, as one might presume from overheated press commentary, a Srebrenica-style mass execution—civilians are bearing the brunt of the violence.

UN sources have documented 346 deaths and 878 injuries since early February, not counting combatants. The real figure is thought to be higher, and aerial bombardment is now escalating sharply.

According to Linda Tom, a Damascus-based spokeswoman for the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, there were reports of over 200 killed and more than 500 wounded in the enclave on Tuesday and Wednesday alone.

According to an opposition tally seen by IRIN, a further 71 civilians lost their lives in Eastern Ghouta on Thursday, and a medical source speaking to IRIN listed 24 attacks on hospitals, clinics and Red Crescent centres since 18 February, including in Douma, Saqba, Jisreen, Harasta, Kafr Batna, and Beit Sawa.

The attacks on health facilities are particularly destructive, international aid organisations say.

“Wounded victims are dying only because they cannot be treated in time”, noted Marianne Gasser, the ICRC's head of delegation in Syria, in a 21 February statement where she demanded access for ICRC teams.

Although the rebels have much less firepower than the pro-regime side, their mortar and rocket fire into Damascus seems equally indiscriminate. OCHA’s Linda Tom tells IRIN that the UN received reports of 13 killed and more than 50 wounded in rebel shelling on Tuesday. Syrian state media reported another three dead and 22 wounded by mortars yesterday.

How will this end?

The government’s immediate aims are unclear. To retake the entire enclave may be the ultimate ambition, but al-Assad’s forces are likely to pursue interim goals such as seizing specific areas, decimating a particular faction, or mixing military assaults with temporary ceasefires and evacuation agreements.

As always when a government offensive looms, official rhetoric homes in on Tahrir al-Sham.

Russia led talks last autumn to force the jihadis to evacuate Eastern Ghouta to Idlib, following a model seen in several other besieged areas whereby armed fighters can chose between surrendering or accepting safe passage on buses to rebel-held territory in the north, accompanied by those civilians and family members who wish to join them. In return, Failaq al-Rahman reportedly asked for a new trade crossing near Mleiha or Harasta in order to reduce their reliance on Islam Army-controlled Wafideen. But these talks failed, and the current offensive seems to aim much higher.

According to the al-Assad-friendly Beirut daily al-Akhbar, the government now wants both Tahrir al-Sham and Failaq al-Rahman sent to Idlib. Russian and Egyptian negotiators have reportedly sought to stitch together an agreement along these lines, with Russia warning it will back a ground offensive unless a deal is reached. But despite "marathon" negotiations, there seems to have been no breakthrough.

“The experience gained in Aleppo, when an agreement was reached with militants on their organized exodus, can be used in Eastern Ghouta”, Lavrov said earlier this week.

That would seem to be sugar-coating events in Aleppo, which rather stands out as a model to be avoided. Aleppo’s rebels and their international backers rejected all talk of a negotiated handover for months, despite being overwhelmingly outgunned. Only after opposition defences had crumbled and civilians were fleeing in all directions did they agree to a deal, which resulted in a hasty, scrambled, and chaotic evacuation of both rebel fighters and about 30,000 of the remaining civilians, most of whom were apparently never given a choice over whether to stay or leave. It was later described by the UN’s Commission of Inquiry as "forced displacement", a war crime.

The Eastern Ghouta enclave’s fate appears to be sealed. A safe exit arrangement for armed rebels and others who refuse or are unable to live under al-Assad may therefore be the least harmful solution for civilians. However there is a thin line between that outcome and violence that spins out of control into mass expulsion.

Even if opposition defeat in Eastern Ghouta ultimately seems certain, there are still many military and political paths to that end—some fast, some slow, and some more damaging to innocent people than others.

SYRIA: Nine civilians killed today in #EasternGhouta, 426 since Sunday: monitor @syriahr @AFP #Syria: image via Jean-Marc Mojon @mojobeirut, 23 February 2018

Remember that the children we see in #Ghouta have never known a life without fear... Seven years of this #Syria #Ghouta By @AFP @hamza_alajweh: image via Sophie McNeill @Sophiemcneill, 22 February 2018

epa editor's choice 23 February 2018: #SyriaBombing #EasternGhouta #Damascus #Syria Photo epa-efe / @badramamet: image via epa photos @epaphotos, 23 February 2018

Moscow mired in Syria as Putin’s gameplan risks a deadly ending: Russian leader’s gamble backing Bashar al-Assad increasingly looks miscalculated: Martin Chulov, The Observer, 24 February 2018

From his spot in the ruins of east Ghouta, Arif Othman sees the current phase of Syria’s war as brutally simple. The longer he holds out against Bashar al-Assad and his allies, the worse it will get – especially at the hands of the Russians.

“We were supposed to have surrendered by now,” he said at the end of the most intensive week-long barrage anywhere in Syria in the past three years.

“When we didn’t, the bombs were bigger, the planes more regular, and the injuries like nothing we’ve seen. All sent from Moscow.”

The Russian-led air blitz has been the sum of all fears for the besieged population on the ground. Up to 400,000 people, with nowhere to run, have been pinned down by Vladimir Putin’s air force as Syrian and Iranian-backed ground troops edge closer to the largest and most important opposition area anywhere south of Idlib.

For Assad and Putin, Ghouta is the key to controlling the capital, and winning the war. But outside the Syrian cauldron, friends and foes alike are starting to believe both men have miscalculated.

It is increasingly unclear how Moscow will recoup its investment in the world’s most complex conflict

Nearly 18 months into Russia’s intervention to prevent Assad’s defeat at the hands of rebel groups that were advancing on his heartland areas of Latakia and Tartous, it is increasingly unclear just how Moscow will recoup its investment in the world’s most complex and intractable conflict.

While it no longer appears Assad is in danger of falling, what remains of Syria looks nothing like the prewar country he used to rule. Central authority in the once-rigid police state has been subsumed several times over – first by opposition groups, and then by regional players also increasingly invested in shaping postwar outcomes in their own interests, which only partly align with what Putin wants. Protagonists on both sides are drowning in a swamp they did not see ahead.

Putin, in particular, is learning that Syria in its present form is ungovernable. His December claim of "victory" at a Russian airbase near Idlib has been followed by a dizzying series of events which, on the contrary, have drawn Russia further into the war. At the same time they have exposed the Assad regime’s near-total dependence on proxy support to hold its positions, let alone secure more gains.

The statement is looking every bit as premature as George W Bush’s claim of “mission accomplished”, made in a speech on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003 at the end of the war in Iraq. In attempting to showcase a superpower’s military strength, the former president instead exposed its diplomatic limitations.

Across Syria, and in the region itself, alliances that were more or less predictable are now splintered and opaque. A chessboard once easy to read could now outwit a grandmaster of global geopolitics.

From Ghouta north to the Turkish border, from Hama in the west to the oil-rich Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria, where up to 200 advancing Russian mercenaries were killed by a US counterattack on 7 February, a new regional order is being fought out.

“And we will be trampled like mice under the feet of buffaloes,” said Ayman Thaer, a volunteer at an aid centre in Ghouta, where at least 500 peoole were killed this past week by Russian and Syrian bombs. “May God damn them all.”

Just how to balance the increasingly potent interests on display in Syria is bedevilling all who have tried.

“The only winner so far is Iran,” said Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat who defected from the regime in mid-2013. “It achieves what it wants without too much noise. Iran enjoys Russian-American conflict because it makes Russia more dependent on Iran to survive.”

The clash between the US and Russian mercenaries sent to Syria was kept quiet by Moscow, which – in different circumstances – would have complained bitterly if 200 of its citizens had been killed by a rival power. For Putin to admit even that the men were there would have belied his claim of victory and withdrawal from a war that no longer needed him. Acknowledging they were advancing on an oil refinery held by US Kurdish proxies would have been an equally tough sell, at a time when securing Syria from the threat of terrorism and US hegemony remains the official narrative.

US intelligence officials believe the company that recruited the Russians – the Wagner Group – is controlled by a Putin confidant, Yevgeniy Prigozhin.

Also staking its claim in Deir ez-Zor is Iran, with which Russia has partnered to ensure that what remains of the anti-Assad opposition can no longer win the war. Russian officials have complained to counterparts in Turkey that Iranian aims are increasingly at odds with their own.

A senior Turkish diplomat told the Observer Moscow feels especially threatened by what it sees as Iran’s determination to build a state security structure in Damascus modelled on its Revolutionary Guard Corps – the most powerful institution in Tehran 40 years after the Islamic Revolution. “But how can they stop them?”, the diplomat said. “Putin won’t have it his own way from here. And we can see [the Russians] getting irritated by it.”

From mid-2016, Putin started to draw Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan into an alliance with Iran which aimed to bring the war to an end on terms to Assad’s benefit.

The alliance was a death knell for an opposition that Turkey backed in the north. It culminated in a trilateral summit in Sochi last November, which was supposed to deliver a diplomatic victory that had eluded all others – and at the same time sideline a moribund UN-backed process. It was an embarrassing failure. Diplomacy has since collapsed and violence, first in Idlib and now in Ghouta, is nearing record levels.

Turkey has reframed its involvement in the war, started to oust Assad but now aimed at keeping Kurds from controlling the Turkey-Syria border. Last month Turkey sent troops – and Arab militia – into the Syrian border enclave of Afrin to fight Kurdish militias. The move was quietly sanctioned by Moscow. But in the past week, forces loyal to Assad were allowed into Afrin to counter the Turks.

Russia’s position on this development is unclear. “Russia always says it does not have the leverage on Assad the way the world thinks. This is true,” said Barabandi. “Iran has more influence on Assad. Put simply, Iran came to stay in all of Syria and to challenge the US by threatening Israel. Syria will be the theatre in any coming war between Hezbollah and Iran against Israel. At least this is what the Iranians are hoping.

“And Iran is happy that Russia has taken the lead in Syria and let them empower their forces without distraction. None of the players trust each other and what we see is short-term contracts that may shift at any time. The only thing they have in common is they want the US to be out of Syria.”

Meanwhile, Russia – which had high hopes that Syria would be a launching pad for a new power projection, ensuring Assad’s survival and securing its own lead role in shaping order in the region, and perhaps far beyond – is focusing on more short-term gains. “As we helped the brotherly Syrian people, we tested over 200 new types of weapons,” said Vladimir Shamanov, head of the Russian Duma’s defence committee. “Today our military-industrial complex made our army look in a way we can be proud of.”

With little to bank, Russia will continue to find its veto at the UN Security Council a potent tool. It has vetoed UN resolutions against Assad 11 times.

Civil defence rescue workers help a man from a shelter after an air strike in the besieged town of Douma in eastern Ghouta, 22 February 2018: photo by Reuters, 22 February 2018

Negotiations continue between rebels and the Syrian Army, but the bombardment of Ghouta won't stop any time soon: Ghouta will fall. That is the message. And when it falls, Idlib must surely be next. And then the Syrians must decide how to break the US-Kurdish hold on Raqqa. Robert Fisk, The Independent, 24 February 2018

Syria continues to mass its armed forces around the east Ghouta enclave of Damascus, including army units commanded by President Bashar al-Assad’s brother Maher and by Colonel Soheil Hassan, the “Tiger” whose military victories across the country have made him legendary among Assad’s supporters.

Instead of moving by night - the traditional tactic adopted by the army in the war - vast quantities of Syrian armour have been humming along the highways to the capital in broad daylight from Aleppo and Homs in the north, from Deraa in the south, and from the countryside of Damascus itself. The Syrian authorities want them to be seen, to show the Islamist rebels of Ghouta know how their battle will end.

Despite Russia’s veto at the UN on Thursday night, however, negotiations have continued between three rebel groups and the Syrian army - under the direct mediation of the Russians - to establish “humanitarian corridors” and “escape routes” for the tens of thousands of civilians trapped inside Ghouta, the vast area of suburban slums and farmland held by Islamist and other rebel groups since 2013. Almost identical talks took place between Islamists and the government over eastern Aleppo before its fall in December 2016. Bloodshed and negotiations have long been a feature of the Syrian war.

But despite all the West’s rhetoric - and the UN’s constant refrain that the civilians of eastern Ghouta are experiencing "hell on earth" - the massive Syrian and Russian bombardment is going to continue. The Islamist Nusrah faction, the “child” of al-Qaeda of 9/11 infamy, appears to be more reluctant to surrender to the Syrians - even if allowed to leave with its light weapons - than Saudi Arabia’s favourite militia, the Jaish al-Islam, or Qatar’s proxy “Rahman Legion”. There are even suggestions that the Saudi and Qatari supported factions are arguing with each other - even now, inside Ghouta - about the Gulf dispute between the Saudis and Qataris.

There appears to be no such disunity among their enemies. The Presidential Guard is on the edge of Ghouta, and the Syrians have brought their 14th Division (Special Forces) to the suburbs. Maher Assad’s 4th Armoured Division, based in Damascus, is positioned on the perimeter, as is the military’s 7th Division, and troops belonging to units commanded by Colonel “Tiger” Soheil Hassan.

Given the multitude of army regiments around Ghouta, Hassan cannot be the overall commander, a post which remains diplomatically undefined. But the convoys of tanks, armoured vehicles, field guns and trucks pouring in daylight towards Damascus – and enthusiastically captured on film by government photographers – is meant to be seen.

Ghouta will fall. That is the message. From within the Syrian military, there are attempts to explain the ruthlessness of the assault. Thousands of soldiers have been killed in the battles around Ghouta since 2013; vast military “resources” – the word the army uses – have been poured into this battle over the years. Most of the car bomb attacks in Damascus and the constant shelling across the centre of the capital for the past four years have come from Islamist forces in Ghouta, especially from the Douma district. Of course, there are the usual explanations from artillery officers: of “surgical” strikes, of rebels hiding in hospitals and using civilians as “human shields”; but these are words the world has heard before – from the Americans about Mosul and Afghanistan, from the Israelis about Gaza, and the Russians about Chechnya.

And pictures, as usual, speak louder than words. While the footage from eastern Ghouta pointedly fails to show the armed Islamists who are fighting in the enclave, there is no reason to doubt the suffering of the civilians. And some of these civilians, it should be remembered, will inevitably be relatives of the very Syrian soldiers who are planning to storm Ghouta; there were many Syrian military personnel who captured eastern Aleppo in 2016 whose own families also lived there.

But Ghouta is experiencing a different sort of siege, one that has no precedent in size during this war. “Shock and awe” – or shock and terror – is what Syria’s enemies are supposed to experience. The Russian and Syrian air attacks are proof of that. Even if maps look simple on television screens, wars are infinitely more chaotic. Think of the effect of a brick hitting the windscreen of a car, of the dozens of fractures across the glass; that is what Syrian military maps look like.

It is now being said that if the first Syrian advance into Ghouta moves against areas controlled by al-Nusrah, it means that the al-Qaeda fighters are being more stubborn in the negotiations than the other two major groups. They will suffer first, along with the civilians of course. This is the inevitable lesson of this terrifying war. The Syrians, along with Iraqi militias and Hezbollah, do indeed have plans for the overrunning of rebel-held Ghouta. And after this demonstration of firepower, how could the Syrians and Russians stop now? If they did, who would believe the message of the next siege? In northwestern Idlib, for example. Or in the towns around it.

And so, when Ghouta falls, Idlib must surely be next. And then the Syrians must decide how to break the US-Kurdish hold on Raqqa – perhaps that is one reason why pro-Syrian forces have now gone to the rescue of the Kurds in the northern province of Afrin, to drive a further wedge between the Turks and the Americans, and force Washington to abandon its Kurdish allies on the Euphrates.

It is painful to remember how these huge landscapes of river and desert and mountainside lived in peace for a century – their societies straitjacketed, of course, and without justice – before the bloodbath. Ghouta receives the waters of five rivers, and the 1912 French edition of Baedeker’s travel handbook to “Syria and Palestine” describes how the tributaries flowing into the sands to the east conferred upon Ghouta the name of “Lakes of the Prairies”. But that was the old Syria.

During searching of survivors under rubble, #Douma #EasternGhouta #Damascus #Syria #SaveGhouta @SCDrifdimashq #Douma @SyriaCivilDef @SyriaCivilDef: image via Mohammed Badra @badramamet, 23 February 2018

The life of #WhiteHelmets volunteers #SaveGhouta #volunteers #Rescue #Ghouta @SyriaCivilDef @ActForGhouta: image via Mohammed Badra @badramamet, 24 February 2018

A new wave of bombs has struck Syria's besieged town of Douma in eastern Ghouta #Syria @Badramamet @epaphotos: image via Sunday Times Pictures @STPictures, 23 February 2018

#syria #Douma #EasternGhouta @TIME @epaphotos: image via Mohammed Badra @badramamet, 22 February 2018

A new wave of bombs has struck Syria's besieged town of Douma in eastern Ghouta #Syria Photo @BassamKhabieh @reuterspictures: image via Sunday Times Pictures @STPictures, 23 February 2018

Life in #EasternGhouta basements - 'It's very, very cold -- I tried to fix up a stove and bring it into the tent at night so we can stay warm but we started suffocating'#EasternGhouta: image via Jean-Marc Mojon @mojobeirut, 22 February 2018

Many residents of #EasternGhouta have pitched tents in their basements because of constant bombardment @AFPphoto by @abdfree2 #Syria: image via Jean-Marc Mojon @mojobeirut, 22 February 2018

46 people killed in #EasternGhouta today, 403 since Sunday (monitor) @AFPphoto by @abdfree2 #Syria: image via Jean-Marc Mojon @mojobeirut, 22 February 2018

GHOUTA UPDATE: The death toll in #EasternGhouta today rises to 19, according to #syriahr, bringing to 368 the number of people killed since Sunday @AFP#Syria: image via Jean-Marc Mojon @mojobeirut, 22 February 2018

Improvised classroom in #EasternGhouta basement @AFPphoto by @abdfree2 #school #children #Syria: image via Jean-Marc Mojon @mojobeirut, 23 February 2018

UPDATE New air strikes on the Syrian rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta takes the civilian death toll from seven days of devastating bombardment to more than 500: image via AFP news agency @AFP, 24 February 2018

Death toll for today's rocket fire and air strikes on #EasternGhouta rises to 36: monitor @AFP #Syria #Damascus - Total since Sunday is 385: image via Jean-Marc Mojon @mojobeirut, 22 February 2018

Eastern Ghouta24 February 2018: image via Ammar Sulaiman @AmmarSulaiman91, 24 February 2018

Eastern Ghouta 24 February 2018: image via Ammar Sulaiman @AmmarSulaiman91, 24 February 2018

25 February 2018

From his spot sizzled in Les Miserables
The ghost of electricity howls in the bulbs

Of her face, and as I turned the corner
They were by my side, Los Invisibles, the third

Who walks beside and the first two, who appeared
Out of the chalklike dust after the air strike

↧

Sad birds from the middle of the war | Joseph Ceravolo: Dusk ("Before the dusk grows deeper...")

February 26, 2018, 9:14 am

≫ Next: If I remain alive: The Ghouta Diaries: Abdulmonam Eassa | Stevie Smith: Bog Face / Dear Child of God | Joseph Vavak: High Plains Drifting | Weldon Kees: The Lease Is Up / John Vachon: Nebraska

≪ Previous: To the Invisibles

As if the resurrection is in the eastern Gouta What then!! #smoke #destruction #blood #martyrs Photo @mouneb_abo_taim: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 11 February 2018

He heard that the truce of the international consensus provides for the restraining order [to stay] the Russian occupation and the killing of more civilians, [so] went out looking for his children in the morning and was hit by shrapnel from the rockets that rained on his city all day #SaveGhouta: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 26 February 2018

[EasternGhouta]: image via Mahmoud Zahra @abu_huzaifa_zah, 20 February 2018

Air strike in Eastern Ghouta Photo @Ammarsulaiman91 @AFP: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 26 February 2018

Air strike in Eastern Ghouta Photo @Ammarsulaiman91 @AFP: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 26 February 2018

Truce call ignored as deadly strikes hit Syria enclave: AFP News, 26 February 2018

A picture taken on February 25, 2018, shows a Syrian man walking next to damaged buildings following regime air strikes in the Syrian rebel-held town of Douma, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta: photo by Hamza Al-Ajweh / AFP, 25 February 2018

Fresh Syrian regime air strikes on rebel-held Eastern Ghouta killed 10 civilians Monday as Western powers piled pressure on Russia to make a UN truce deal come into force.

The world body's chief demanded the immediate implementation of a resolution calling for a 30-day truce, as another suspected chemical attack left a child dead in the enclave.

"Eastern Ghouta cannot wait. It is high time to stop this hell on earth," Antonio Guterres told the opening of the 37th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Saturday's UN Security Council resolution had raised hopes that a week-old assault by Russian-backed regime forces that has killed more than 500 civilians might end.

But while the intensity of the bombardment eased a little over the weekend, warplanes have continued their raids and rockets were still being launched at Eastern Ghouta.

Among the latest victims were nine family members killed when their home in Douma, the main town in the enclave, collapsed on their heads.

"Nine civilians from a same family were killed in regime air strikes in Douma, after midnight," Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring organisation, said.

Trapped in rubble

"Some of the bodies are still stuck in the rubble," he said.

Ten-year-old Omar who was injured in an air strike that killed several members of his family was treated at a make-shift hospital in Syria's rebel-held enclave ofEastern Ghouta: photo by Amer Almohibany / AFP, 26 February 2018

An AFP correspondent in Douma said the bombardment had been very heavy overnight and impeded rescuers in their work.

The regime intensified its air campaign against Eastern Ghouta, which has been outside government control since 2012, at the beginning of the month.

On February 18, the Syrian government further turned up the heat on the territory controlled by Islamist and jihadist groups.

More than 550 civilians, almost a quarter of them children, have since been killed and extensive destruction wrought on the enclave's towns.

The hospitals and clinics that were not destroyed by strikes struggled to process the more than 2,000 people wounded over the same period.

Residents trapped in the wreckage of their own homes have bled to death as rescuers were targeted even as they tried to save lives.

Much of the nearly 400,000-strong population of Eastern Ghouta has moved underground, with families pitching tents in basements and venturing out only to assess damage to their property and buy food.

Pressure on Putin

On Sunday, a child died and 13 others suffered breathing difficulties and showed symptoms consistent with a chlorine attack after a regime air raid struck the town of Al-Shifuniyah, the Observatory and a medic said.

Russia dismissed reports of a chemical attack as "bogus stories".

The UN Security Council voted unanimously to demand a 30-day ceasefire in Syria: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa / AFP, 26 February 2018

The epic destruction, which has spared none of the towns scattered across the semi-rural area on the outskirts of Damascus, has caused widespread outrage.

The world has remained largely powerless however to stop one of the bloodiest episodes in Syria's seven-year civil conflict.

France and Germany have been at the forefront of Western efforts to clinch a ceasefire but the resolution voted on Saturday has remained a dead letter.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron are now seeking to convince Russia to use its influence on Damascus to ensure the truce if enforced.

They stressed in a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin "that it is crucial that the (UN) resolution be implemented quickly and comprehensively."

France's Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian will also go to Moscow on Tuesday.

The regime has reinforced its deployment around the enclave over the past month, raising fears of a ground offensive that aid groups warned could cause even worse suffering.

Other flashpoints

With the Islamic State group's once sprawling "caliphate" now wiped off the map, the regime looks bent on completing its reconquest and Eastern Ghouta is a key target.

The jihadists only control an estimated three percent of Syria territory, small pockets which various anti-IS forces continue to flush out.

Air strikes and heavy clashes shook Eastern Ghouta despite the UN call for a truce: photo by Amer Almohibany / AFP, 26 February 2018

The Observatory reported that at least 25 civilians were killed in a wave of air strikes on one of the very last pockets of holdout IS fighters in eastern Syria on Sunday.

It said the strikes were carried out by the US-led coalition but a US military spokesman said "there were no reported coalition strikes conducted in Syria" that day.

Another flashpoint in Syria has been the northern region of Afrin, where Kurdish forces have come under attack from neighbouring Turkey since January 20.

Turkey has warned it did not consider that the UN ceasefire resolution, which is not limited to Eastern Ghouta but whose wording excludes operations against terror groups, should affect its offensive on Afrin.

Macron on Monday called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who considers the Syrian Kurdish militia to be "terrorist", to stress that the truce should be implemented there too.

#Syria Truce call ignored as deadly strikes hit Syria enclave #AFP Photo @abdfree2: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 26 February 2018

#Syria Strikes, clashes hit Syria's Ghouta despite ceasefire call #Afrique Photo @hamza_alajweh: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto 25 February 2018

#Syria El régimen sirio bombardea la Guta Oriental a pesar de la resolución de la ONU #AFP: image via Agence France-Presses @AFPespanol, 25 February 2018

Here is Ghouta where there is no place to live One of the people lost his family in the eastern Ghouta #Eastern_Ghouta @mouneb_abo_taim: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 25 February 2018

Here is Ghouta where there is no place to live #Eastern_Ghouta @mouneb_abo_taim: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 25 February 2018

#Eastern_Ghouta #saveghouta: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 20 February 2018

Ghouta wounded today: image via Mohammed Eyad @MohammedEyad2, 5 February 2017

What remains of his house Everything became rubble and destruction Nothing left of his house @mouneb_abo_taim: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 10 February 2018

Fire everywhere did not keep humans nor stone #Syria #Eastern_Ghouta: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 10 February 2018

#Eastern_Ghouta: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 21 February 2018

The city of #Douma suburb of Damascus one day #Devastation #Bombing #Blood #Dead #Douma: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim2, 25 January 2018

Where the children stand after their house is destroyed standing in the street after their house became destroyed: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim2, 21 January 2018

Flyer on [his] way to kill lives of unarmed civilians #War #destruction #Children #Gouta Photo @mouneb_abo_taim: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim2, 25 January 2018

Panoramic photo Mobile phone #Gouta #photo #Douma #mobile Photo @mouneb_abo_taim2: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim2, 10 January 2018

My city is Douma with the absence of its beautiful day .. #Clouds #winter #cold #houses #image Photo @mouneb_abo_taim2: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim2, 18 January 2018

From Al-Ghouta in these moments where the mechanism of death and neck does not stop by the tyrant Assad #Gouta: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim2, 17 January 2018

From Al-Ghouta in these moments where the mechanism of death and neck does not stop by the tyrant Assad #Gouta: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim2, 17 January 2018

#Birds #Morning #Day _New ##War #Smoke #image Photo @mouneb_abo_taim2: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim2, 17 January 2018

Sad birds from the middle of the war Photo @mouneb_abo_taim2: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim2, 17 January 2018

It is the sad Gouta and through which the most difficult days in this war #Ghouta ©Getty_images Photo @mouneb_abo_taim2: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim2, 18 January 2018

It is the sad Gouta and through which the most difficult days in this war #Ghouta #Damascus ©Getty_images Photo @mouneb_abo_taim2: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim2, 16 January 2018

A picture taken from a #Syrian rebel-controlled area in the eastern #Ghouta region shows bullets fired from the capital #Damascus piercing the sky during New Year's eve celebrations. On January 1,2017 Last year Photo by: Mohammed Eyad / @anadoluimages: image via Mohammed Eyad @MohammedEyad2, 5 February 2017

Some images from #EasternGhouta, Sunday 25 February, where the first day of the UN "ceasefire" brought death to 30 civilians, as the besieged enclave was relentlessly bombed by pro-government forces.: image via Siege Watch @SiegeWatch, 25 February 2018

A baby boy was killed in the attack on al-Shaifuniya. He was pulled from beneath the debris smelling strongly of chlorine. It is not clear the direct cause of his death.#EasternGhouta: image via Siege Watch @SiegeWatch, 25 February 2018

A baby boy was killed in the attack on al-Shaifuniya. He was pulled from beneath the debris smelling strongly of chlorine. It is not clear the direct cause of his death. #EasternGhouta: image via Siege Watch @SiegeWatch, 25 February 2018

A chlorine like smell was pervasive in the area, reported by people nearby, rescuers, and victims. Two of those injured were members of the Syrian Civil Defense@SCDrifdimashq.#al-Shaifuniya #EasternGhouta: image via Siege Watch @SiegeWatch, 25 February 2018

18 people were treated for symptoms of exposure to the chemical, which included respiratory distress, irritated eyes, and bluish lips.#al-Shaifuniya #EasternGhouta: image via Siege Watch @SiegeWatch, 25 February 2018

18 people were treated for symptoms of exposure to the chemical, which included respiratory distress, irritated eyes, and bluish lips. #al-Shaifuniya #EasternGhouta: image via Siege Watch @SiegeWatch, 25 February 2018

New chemical attack in #EasternGhouta. Earlier this evening government forces fired missiles loaded with a toxic gas believed to be chlorine at the small town of #al-Shaifuniya, to the southwest of Douma city.: image via Siege Watch @SiegeWatch, 25 February 2018

Image of efforts to put out fires from the new napalm attacks on Harasta launched this morning - Sunday, 25 February 2018.#EasternGhouta: image via Siege Watch@SiegeWatch, 25 February 2018

The ruins of #Douma ... Images from new overnight attacks, as the destruction of #EasternGhouta continues.: image via Siege Watch@SiegeWatch, 24 February 2018

The ruins of #KafrBatna... As the destruction of #EasternGhouta continues: image via Siege Watch @SiegeWatch, 24 February 2018

The ruins of #KafrBatna... As the destruction of #EasternGhouta continues:image via Siege Watch @SiegeWatch, 24 February 2018

The ruins of #KafrBatna... As the destruction of #EasternGhouta continues: image via Siege Watch @SiegeWatch, 24 February 2018

Incendiary phosphorus munitions raining down tonight on Arbin in besieged #EasternGhouta: image via Siege Watch @SiegeWatch, 24 February 2018

Incendiary phosphorus munitions raining down tonight on Arbin in besieged #EasternGhouta: image via Siege Watch@SiegeWatch, 23 February 2018

Dramatic images of the cultural center in #Douma, which was bombed with what is believed to be napalm today. #EasternGhouta: image via Siege Watch@SiegeWatch, 23 February 2018

Eastern Ghouta is literally on fire. Heavy artillery fire w/ incendiary munitions (believed to contain napalm) is hitting communities in #EasternGhouta tonight. The bombardments have started hundreds of fires that the SCD first responders are unable to put out.: image via Siege Watch@SiegeWatch, 22 February 2018

Joseph Ceravolo: Dusk ("Before the dusk grows deeper...")

Jersey Tiger Moth (Euplagia quadripunctaria): photo by 2+2=4. Probably, 2009

Before the dusk grows deeper
Now comes a little moth dressed in

rose pink, wings bordered with yellow. Now

a tiger moth, now..another..and another...another

Cinnabar Moth (Tyria jacobeae), Adult showing hindwings, the Netherlands: photo by JMuiden, 2006

Tiger Moth (Callimorpha dominula), Belgian High Ardennes: photo by James K. Lindsey, 2004

Scarlet Tiger Moth (Callimorpha dominula), Canton of Neuchatel, Switzerland: photo by Jeffdelonge, 2005

JosephCeravolo (1934-1988): Dusk, from Spring in This World of Poor Mutts, 1968

cf John Keats. The Eve of St. Agnes. XXIV. A casement high and triple-arch'd there was, All garlanded with carven imag'ries. Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, And diamonded with panes of quaint device, Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes, As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings

R0010902 [Bangkok]: photo by THANASORN JANEKANJIT, 14 February 2018

Untitled | Kolkata, 2018: photo by Koushik Sinha Roy, 11 February 2018

Untitled | by Norbert Farkas (francisgod)

Tyrnavos, Greece, February 18, 2018: photo by Andreas Katsakos, 18 February 2018

Phuket 2018: photo by Pazta Sakulpradit, 23 February 2018

↧

If I remain alive: The Ghouta Diaries: Abdulmonam Eassa | Stevie Smith: Bog Face / Dear Child of God | Joseph Vavak: High Plains Drifting | Weldon Kees: The Lease Is Up / John Vachon: Nebraska

February 27, 2018, 11:34 am

≫ Next: Among the teapot aggregates on the Day of Resurrection (target practise) | Josephine Miles: Eighteen Poems

≪ Previous: Sad birds from the middle of the war | Joseph Ceravolo: Dusk ("Before the dusk grows deeper...")

Syrians walk along a street covered in debris from shelling in Arbin in eastern Ghouta.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 26 February 2018

If I remain alive: The Ghouta Diaries: Abdulmonam Eassa, AFP, Monday 26 February 2018

On February 18, 2018, Syrian regime forces intensified their bombardment of Eastern Ghouta, an area home to almost 400,000 people that has escaped government control since 2012, been besieged almost ever since and is controlled by mostly Islamist and jihadist groups. So far the assault has killed more than 550 civilians, including around 140 children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The bombardment was widely considered to be preparation for a government ground assault to retake an area which lies within mortar range of central Damascus.

Here it is as seen by Abdulmonam Eassa, a local photographer whose images for AFP of the death and destruction there you may have seen.

A Syrian man carries an infant rescued from the rubble of buildings following government bombing in the rebel-held town of Hamouria, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on February 19, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 19 February 2018

Monday February 19

Strikes on Eastern Ghouta leave 127 dead.

A strike hits very close today. I go to take a look. The whole area seems to have been burned. During the first few seconds, you think no-one is dead, you just see ashes and destruction. That’s because people hide as soon as they hear the sound of a rocket or a plane. But after a few seconds you see signs of life.

I see a woman coming out from a destroyed building with four children. They are screaming. One of the kids is carrying a notepad or a book, maybe a Koran, I can’t remember.

A Syrian woman and children run for cover amid the rubble of buildings following government bombing in the rebel-held town of Hamouria, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on February 19, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 19 February 2018

The Syria Civil Defence volunteers known as the "White Helmets" arrive and begin to dig through the rubble. I see one of them carrying an infant. I am shocked that someone so young has been hurt.

I keep taking pictures and look at the back of my camera to see how they came out. Suddenly I see one my brothers-in-law staring at me from one of the images. He is standing next to a door of a building, screaming for help. He is injured. I didn’t even realize it was him when I was shooting the scene, only after, when I quickly checked the photos. What should I do? Should I help him or continue to take pictures? It’s a question that I constantly ask myself.

I’m about to leave when I see a White Helmet carrying a child. I realize it’s the son of a friend. I hurry and take him and rush to the hospital. The boy holds on tight to me, he doesn’t want to let me go. When we get inside, I want to take a picture of him, but he doesn’t want to let go of my hand. I manage to free my hand, but he keeps holding his hand towards me. I can feel myself crying.

A Syrian child injured in government bombing cries as he receives treatment at make-shift hospital in the rebel-held town of Hamouria, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on February 19, 2018.

Eastern Ghouta, February 19, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 19 February 2018

I leave a half hour later, heading home, which is about 700 meters away. After about 200 meters, I see that the area where I live has been shelled. I suddenly panic. My family lives there! What if one of them is dead?!

I hurry along and see that the building where my sisters and other relatives live has been hit. It's covered in dust and I can’t see anything. Fear spreads through me as I get closer. I leave my motorbike in the middle of the street and run into our house. I see one of my brothers. “Is Mum ok?” I ask. “Yes,” he answers. “Is everyone else all right?” “Yes,” he says. I am about to breathe a sigh of relief when I catch a figure lying on the ground out of the corner of my eye. It’s a friend of mine. He has a head injury. He is dead. But we have to just leave his body there because there are wounded children and they have to be taken to the hospital. I can’t take pictures of scenes like this.

I take a look at the other side of the street. I see a woman wearing a prayer outfit. Her face is bleeding. I suddenly realize that it's one of my sisters. Two other female relatives are standing next to her, also injured. I try to calm my sister down. She has no shoes, so I want to carry her, but she tells me not to worry, she will walk barefoot. I take her and the others to the hospital, then drop off my mother and other siblings in Daraya. Then I go back to take a look at our house.

The doors and windows are completely smashed. I take a look around and realize that I no longer care about death. There is a plane in the sky again, a strike can come at any moment, but I am not scared. I have been hurt to the point where I can hurt no more.

Syrian civilians look at the rubble following government bombing in the rebel-held town of Hamouria, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on February 19, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 19 February 2018

My family spends the night in another house. No-one really sleeps. As I record these words, I can hear planes in the sky. The building is shaking. Thoughts keep shooting through my mind. What if my loved ones die and I live? How will I bear the pain? I leave.

Tuesday, February 20

The attacks on Eastern Ghouta kill 128 civilians, including 29 children. Another hospital, Arbin, has been taken out of action.

The UN children’s agency UNICEF issues a blank statement.

“No words will do justice to the children killed, their mothers, their fathers and their loved ones,” it says.

Members of the Syrian civil defence evacuate an injured civilian from an area hit by a reported regime air strike in the rebel-held town of Saqba, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on February 20, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 20 February 2018

Members of the Syrian civil defence evacuate an injured civilian on a stretcher from an area hit by a reported regime air strike in the rebel-held town of Saqba, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on February 2

Eastern Ghouta, February 20, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 20 February 2018

I go to the hospital because I know the situation there is terrible. No-one has eaten for a day. I walk into one room, it’s full of dead bodies. Some died yesterday, some died before that, but haven't been buried yet.

The bodies of civilians who were killed in Syrian army bombardment on the town of Hamouria in the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta are seen lying on the ground at a make-shift morgue the morning after the attacks on February 20, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 20 February 2018

I manage to sleep for a few hours at the hospital. I know in a few hours it's going to be the same routine -- planes, strikes, barrel bombs, wounded civilians, horror, recognising loved ones wounded or dead. But I am still strong. I can still go out and take pictures. I don’t know how…. But I can.

A picture taken on February 20, 2018 shows a Russian air force Sukhoi Su-34 fighter jet flying over the sky in the rebel-held town of Arbin, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 20 February 2018

A picture taken on February 20, 2018 shows smoke plumes rising following a reported regime air strike in the rebel-held town of Hamouria, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 20 February 2018

Wednesday, February 21

UN chief Antonio Guterres describes what’s happening in Eastern Ghouta as “hell on earth.” Planes drop barrel bombs on the area.

We go into the Saqba neighbourhood after a barrel bomb strike. A woman and her children are crying. A man is stuck between two walls of a destroyed building. While we’re here, a second barrel bomb hits, two streets away. I can’t focus. It feels like there is a huge cloud above my head…

After a while, I head back to my neighbourhood. A Russian plane had hit it. People are screaming. People don’t know how to deal with a situation like this. I know a little because I follow death and destruction for my work. I get closer to a building. A boy and a girl are stuck between two walls of a collapsed building. I see their legs dangling. I inspect the area to make sure it’s safe. Then I pull out the boy. Then the girl.

I climb to the rooftop to get a better view. Everything is burning. It seems like everywhere was shelled -- Saqba, Misraba, Douma, Kafr Batna… it seems like the whole area is burning.

Smoke and dust are seen following a reported regime air strike in the rebel-held town of Hamouria, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on February 21, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 21 February 2018

My neighbours scream that there are more children under the rubble. I put away my camera and head to where they’re pointing. Sometimes I take pictures and sometimes I help pull people out. I don’t have a set formula for when I do what. I just go with my gut. The Civil Defense volunteers say there is one child still stuck, but we find a child and a father. The father has suffocated to death, the child has survived.

Syrians rescue a child following a reported regime air strike in the rebel-held town of Hamouria, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on February 21, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 21 February 2018

Thursday, February 22

German Chancellor Angela Merkel calls for an end to “massacre” in Syria. The UN Security Council fails to adopt a resolution on a ceasefire over objections from Russia, an ally of Syria President Bashar al-Assad, who has been helping him militarily.

I wake up at 6:00 am. It’s quiet. There is destruction everywhere. People start to emerge, to check the damage and to try to get some food. A half hour later there is that dreaded sound -- a plane in the sky. It starts shelling. People run back to their shelters. It’s been four days now that the bombing hasn’t stopped. Everyone is scared.

Later I see White Helmets giving first aid to a man. “Where is my bag of flour?! I need it!” he keeps crying. Seems he was wounded getting food.

There are many people missing. Everyone seems to be searching for their relatives. Some are dead, some are just hiding, but communication is hard.

Syrian children stand amidst debris in Hamouria, in the rebel-held besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on February 22, 2018.

Eastern Ghouta, February 22, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 22 February 2018

I don’t have any electricity. I worry about being able to recharge my cameras and my computer. I need them, I can’t work without them.

The number of martyrs has now risen to more than 300. Hospitals can’t count the number of dead and injured. Some people are still stuck under the rubble. The Civil Defence volunteers are trying their best, but they just can’t reach some areas because of the bombardment. The situation is so bad. God help us.

It’s 3:00 pm as I record this and the planes haven’t stopped bombing. Not one area has been spared. The White Helmets are really struggling. Many of their vehicles are damaged. It’s very difficult.

A Syrian man checks the site of Syrian government bombardments in Hamouria, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on February 22, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 22 February 2018

Friday, February 23

The UN Security Council postpones a vote on a truce in Eastern Ghouta.

People are cowering in shelters. Everyone is in shock. We can’t understand anything. Everything is out of service. I can’t believe the difference four days of bombardment has made. The whole area has been changed, erased. The streets aren’t there anymore. They’re full of dust, rubble. Only ambulances use them.

A civil Defence volunteer, known as the White Helmets, checks the site of a regime air strike in the rebel-held town of Saqba, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on February 23, 2018.

Eastern Ghouta, February 23, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 23 February 2018

Maybe crying doesn’t help, but today I cry. I can’t say anything else. Please, someone stop the carnage. Please, someone has to stop what is happening here!

But life goes on. Today we take out four children from underneath a fully destroyed building. The things that I have witnessed here, I will never forget. If I remain alive.

Saturday, February 24, the UN Security Council approved a ceasefire resolution, which calls for a ceasefire “without delay” to allow aid into the area. But air strikes continued and claimed more lives. On Monday Russia announced a five-hour daily "humanitarian pause" and corridors for civilians to leave.

This blog was written with Samar Hazboun in Nicosia and Tana Dlugy in Paris.

A picture shows the scene following a reported regime air strike in the rebel-held town of Hamouria, in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on February 21, 2018.

Hamouria, in Eastern Ghouta, on February 23, 2018.: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 23 February 2018

Stevie Smith: Bog-Face / Dear Child of God

Among the rubble of #Ghouta... (ph:Badra Mohammed Badra/EPA): image via Nino Fezza @nfcinereporter, , 26 February 2018

UK Foreign Office summons Russian ambassador over Eastern Ghouta situation Photo Mohammed Badra EPA-EFE: image via TASS @tassagency, 26 February 2018

Children receive treatment after an alleged chlorine gas attack on Shifunieh, a village in eastern Ghouta. According to activists working in the area, one child died and more than 18 people were affected. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad continue their air and ground attacks on the Damascus suburb: photo by Mohammed Badra/EPA, 26 February 2018

Noctilucent clouds, Kuresoo bog, Soomaa National Park, Estonia: photo by Martin Koitmäe, 2009

Stevie Smith: Bog-Face

Dear Little Bog-Face,
Why are you so cold?
And why do you lie with your eyes shut? --
You are not very old.

I am a Child of this World,
And a Child of Grace,
And Mother, I shall be glad when it is over,
I am Bog-Face.

Florence Margaret "Stevie" Stevie Smith (1902-1971): Bog-Face, from Mother, What Is Man? (1942)

childhood: photo by the beauty of nocturnal air raids, 13 August 2009

Stevie Smith: Dear Child of God

Dear child of God

With the tears on your face

And your hands clasped in anger

What is the matter with your race?

In the beginning, Father,

You made the terms of our survival

That we should use our intelligence

To kill every rival.

The poison of this ferocity

Runs in our nature,

And O Lord thou knowest
How it nourishes thy creatures.

Oh what a lively poison it was

To bring to full growth.

Is then becoming loving

As much as our life is worth?

It is a price I would pay

To grow loving and kind,

The price of my life

And the life of human kind.

Father in heaven

Dear Father of peacefulness

It is not often we remember

You put this poison in us,

Generally we stand

With the tears on our face

And our hands clasped in anger,

Faithful but unfortunate.

Florence Margaret "Stevie" Smith (1902-1971): Dear Child of God from Not Waving but Drowning (1966)

Bucket Boy (found photo). Found in Amsterdam, December 2013: image by robert schneider (rolopix), 2014

lunenberg(R-type print from mixed media): photo by the beauty of nocturnal air raids, 6 September 2008

boy (C-type from mixed media): photo by the beauty of nocturnal air raids, 27 March 2007

Drones stole the show at Dolce and Gabbana's #MFW presentation. image via Getty Images @GettyImages, 26 February 2018

Not so much news as reassurance God's in his drone farm and all's wrong with the world

A fresh wave of deliveries today brought the consumer brainimplant toll for the week

to ten thousand, and it's only Tuesday

here in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, a metal murmuration spreading
across the unregulated flyways
keep an eye on the eye in the sky
the millipede extensors are whirring
you could be hit by a falling $90,000 Dolce and Gabbana handbag

fashioned from highest quality epidermal tissue stripped off raw baby bone

after the napalm strikeand still sizzling

A drone carries a bag from the Dolce and Gabbana collection during Milan Fashion Week Photo Alessandro Garofalo: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 26 February 2018

Joseph Vavak: high plains drifting

Bushnell, Nebraska: photo by Joseph Vavak, 17 February 2018

Nebraska - Wyoming State Line | by josephvavak

Chappell, Nebraska: photo by Joseph Vavak, 10 February 2018

Chappell, Nebraska: photo by Joseph Vavak, 17 February 2018

Laramie, Wyoming: photo by Joseph Vavak, 25 February 2018

Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming | by josephvavak

Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming: photo by Joseph Vavak, 17 February 2018

Bushnell, Nebraska: photo by Joseph Vavak, 17 February 2018

Edmond, Kansas: photo by Joseph Vavak, 4January 2018

Havelock, Iowa: photo by Joseph Vavak, 4January 2018

Rich Hill, Missouri: photo by Joseph Vavak, 4January 2018

Kimball, Nebraska: photo by Joseph Vavak, 10 February 2018

Heartwell, Nebraska: photo by Joseph Vavak, 4 February 2018

Monona County, Iowa: photo by Joseph Vavak, 27January 2018

From the Introduction

The miniature essays which make up A Short Guide to the High Plains do the traditional service the lingering traveller in The West has done over the decades. The best of western literature has always been acute observation, whether from geologists or poets. There have been more geologists than poets, as difficult to swallow as thatmay seem in the present statistic. But the worth of these statements is far beyond observation. When it gets down to the haunting necessities of the mind,

All I want

to do

is to go

back to

Pueblo

and let

the wind

blow

right

through

in the

parking

lot

by the

Trailways

Depot

Beyond any explanation, a masterpiece of uncontrolable want.

Edward Dorn, Boulder, 1 October 1980

A Short Guide to the High Plains: Tom Clark: cover by TC, 1981

Weldon Kees: The Lease Is Up

Lincoln, Nebraska: photo by John Vachon, May 1942

Walk the horses down the hill
Through the darkening groves;
Pat their rumps and leave the stall;
Even the eyeless cat perceives
Things are not going well.

Fasten the lock on the drawingroom door,
Cover the tables with sheets:
This is the end of the swollen year
When even the sound of the rain repeats:
The lease is up, the time is near.

Pull the curtains to the sill,
Darken the rooms, cut all the wires.
Crush the embers as they fall
From the dying fires:
Things are not going well.

Weldon Kees (b. 24 February 1915, Beatrice, Nebraska; d. 18 July 1955[?], San Francisco, California): When the Lease is Up, from The Last Man, 1943

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Going to back door to ask for handout, Omaha, Nebraska: photo by John Vachon, November 1938

Leaving house from which he failed to get something to eat, Omaha, Nebraska: photo by John Vachon, November 1938

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Abandoned farm, Nebraska: photo by John Vachon, November 1938

Cattle gate, Dawson County, Nebraska: photo by John Vachon, October 1938

Grazing land, Dawson County, Nebraska: photo by John Vachon, October 1938

Railroad depot, Grand Island, Nebraska: photo by John Vachon, October 1938

Leaning grain elevator, Grand Island, Nebraska

Leaning grain elevator, Grand Island, Nebraska: photo by John Vachon, October 1938

Half a mile from the Nebraska state line: photo by John Vachon, October 1938

Men picking their teeth, Beatrice, Nebraska: photo by John Vachon, October 1938

Girl carrying her father's lunch pail, South Omaha, Nebraska: photo by John Vachon, November 1938

Girl carrying her father's lunch pail, South Omaha, Nebraska: photo by John Vachon, November 1938

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a06000/8a06000/8a06087v.jpg

Coal miner's son at Granger Homesteads, Iowa: photo by John Vachon, May 1940

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a06000/8a06000/8a06089v.jpg

Coal miner's son at Granger Homesteads, Iowa: photo by John Vachon, May 1940

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8c18000/8c18000/8c18068v.jpg

North Dakota landscape, McHenry County: photo by John Vachon, October 1940

Image, Source: b&w film copy neg. of print

Peculiar, Missouri: photo by John Vachon, January 1942

Farm wife waiting in the car while her husband attends the auction, Oskaloosa, Kansas: photo by John Vachon, October 1938

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8b14000/8b14200/8b14237v.jpg

Window in rooming house, Omaha, Nebraska: photo by John Vachon, November 1938

Photos by John Vachon (b. St. Paul, Minnesota, 14 May 1914; d. 20 April 1975, New York, New York)from Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress

↧

Among the teapot aggregates on the Day of Resurrection (target practise) | Josephine Miles: Eighteen Poems

February 28, 2018, 5:51 pm

≫ Next: #777 is my lucky number

≪ Previous: If I remain alive: The Ghouta Diaries: Abdulmonam Eassa | Stevie Smith: Bog Face / Dear Child of God | Joseph Vavak: High Plains Drifting | Weldon Kees: The Lease Is Up / John Vachon: Nebraska

#Syria Smoke rises from the rebel-held enclave of Eastern #Ghouta following fresh air strikes and rocket fire today. #AFP: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 27 February 2018

Warplanes resume striking Syria’s eastern Ghouta region after a Russian call for a five-hour truce fails to halt one of the most devastating campaigns of the Syrian war: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 27 February 2018

Always during yesterday's day was a very harsh day families under the rubble sounds of screaming under the rubble: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 27 February 2018

Douma in the past nights as if the Day of Resurrection in the most accurate details : image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 28 February 2018

#Douma: image via Ahmad36120, 23 February 2018

Douma: image via Ahmad36120, 23 February 2018

This is what look like my street looks like today. Nobody can imagine what we are living through. Shelling never stops. Children don't see light of day since nearly one week. They are afraid, they scream, they cry, they need to eat. What is this world who can watch us dying? Keep a share for us please.: image via Ahmad36120, 23 February 2018

The situation is now relatively calm, but the people here don't go out of their homes and don't believe that the ceasefire will be respected, the warplanes are in the sky, the situation is uncertain, the majority of the people are still in shelter, #Douma, Feb 25: image via Ahmad36120, 25 February 2018

Can you imagine that is the popular market!! This looks like it's in a city where there are no human beings and already abandoned, but we are here. This is the result of all the rockets launched on our head. #Douma, Feb 25: image via Ahmad36120, 25 February 2018

انعدام الحياة في الغوطة الشرقية The absence of life in the eastern Ghouta @mouneb_abo_taim: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 27 February 2018

Among the teapot aggregates a man lost his family.: image via mouneb abo taim @mouneb_abo_taim, 27 February 2018

#Al-Marwahi helicopters continued shelling of civilians and more than 75 martyrs and hundreds wounded on the Day of Resurrection #EastGhouta doomsday #Al-Ghouta #Al-Sharqiya #Always: image via Maamuon Abo Loae @MaamuonLoae, 20 February 2018

The beginning of the end (the sweet smell of something else)

At the gun range with teens practicing clay target shooting in Sunrise, Florida, just a dozen miles away from the scene of a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 27 February 2018

White House Communications Director Hope Hicks leaves after appearing before the House Intelligence Committee in Washington: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 27 February 2018

White House Communications Director Hope Hicks arrives to testify in front of the House Intelligence Committee: Photo @somogettynews: image via Getty Images News @GettyImagesNews, 27 February 2018

The findings support the theory that feelings of disgust might partly underpin social discrimination.: image via SIphotography/Getty Images/iStockphoto, 27 February 2018

"AWWWW!""PHEWWWW!""Dude, No!!" [Bucky Isotope after smelling the above pic in his DMs]: image via Bucky Isotope @BuckyIsotope, 27 February 2018

Dude no: image via Bucky Isotope @BuckyIsotope, 27 February 2018

Finally he's making sense: image via Bucky Isotope @BuckyIsotope, 27 February 2018

A worker holds a coin bearing the images of President Donald Trump and King Cyrus, to honor Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, at a private minting facility today, in Tel Aviv, Israel. Photo Sebastian Scheiner: image via AP Images @AP_Images, 28 February 2018

American skip John Shuster reacting after scoring five points in the eighth end of the gold medal curling match against Sweden. @usacurl @TeamUSA @NYTSports @nytimes #Olympics #Curling: image via Doug Mills @dougmillsnyt, 24 February 2018

I tried to tell the aide it’s not OK to physically bump a reporter asking questions in the Capitol halls, and all he said repeatedly was “goodbye” as he departed on an elevator: tweet via Manu Raju @mkraju, 26 February 2018

Sanders then said: “It’s time for the president of the United States to step up to the plate and do what everyone knows is right and tell the Russians that they’re not going to interfere in America.” Asked him a follow if Russians aided his campaign, he grunted, walked into a mtg: tweet via Manu Raju @mkraju, 26 February 2018

Ivanka Trump talks with Curling fans as she watched the USA beat Sweden for the gold medal. @IvankaTrump @JohnBranchNYT #Olympics. @NYTSports @nytimes #Olympics #Curling: image via Doug Mills @dougmillsnyt, 24 February 2018

USA's Matt Hamilton tosses a stone during their Gold Medal win over Sweden at the Gangneung Curling Sheet in Gangneung, South Korea. @usacurl @TeamUSA @NYTSports @nytimes #Olympics #Curling: image via Doug Mills @dougmillsnyt, 24 February 2018

#Palestinian children sit on the back of a Mercedes 6-door taxi converted into a pick-up vehicle in the al-Shatee refugee camp in Gaza City. Photo @MahmudHams: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 27 February 2018

White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, center, one of President Trump's closest aides and advisers, arrives to meet behind closed doors with the House Intelligence Committee today, at the Capitol in Washington. Photo J. Scott Applewhite: image via AP Images @AP_Images, 27 February 2018

Match me, Sidney, 1957 | by MichaelRyerson

Match me, Sidney, 1957 | New York, 1957."Broadway Theatre District -- Times Square at night." Now playing at Loew's State: "The Sweet Smell of Success." 35mm negative from the Look magazine photo archive.: photo by Michael Ryerson, 21 February 2018

DSCF0883 | Paris: photo by Pierre Wayser, 2 November 2011

DSCF7820a: photo by Filip Machac, 6 February 2018

Take a Load Off[Wilkinsburg, PA]: photo by David Grim, 11 February 2018

Down in the Cut[Wilkinsburg, PA]: photo by David Grim, 11 February 2018

Buy Some Dark Desserts[Larimer, Pittsburgh]: photo by David Grim, 28 January 2018

Knockin' Em Down[Larimer, Pittsburgh]: photo by David Grim, 11 February 2018

Little House on the Prairie. | by david grim

Little House on the Prairie[Larimer, Pittsburgh]: photo by David Grim, 28 January 2018

Moving Sale | Auburn Blvd, Ben Ali neighborhood,Sacramento: photo by Rick Ele, 10February 2018

Alley art | Midtown Sacramento: photo by bingley0522, 27February 2018

Midtown | Sacramento: photo by bingley0522, 10February 2018

Mid=Town | Sacramento: photo by bingley0522, 5February 2018

Crossing| Escalon, CA San Joaquin Valley: photo by bingley0522, 10February 2018

Eyesore | This building went up a few years ago on the site of a drab used car lot and a Goodwill resale shop. It is big, and ugly. It's full of arbitrary architectural "flourishes," aiming to be elegant and distinguished, I think, but that have no grounding in the character of the location and surrounding architecture. When the Don Allen dealership across the street was demolished (foreground), it became possible to see the entire building from afar in all its sorry glory, one of the most prominent features of the landscape in this part of town. The strip mall that will fill in the Don Allen space may itself not be much to look at, but I predict it will improve the skyline around here by blocking the view of this regrettable behemoth..[Pittsburgh]: photo by William Real, 12 December 2017

Prosper | Shabby Bloomfield alley with unusually gratifying composition and range of shapes, color, and texture, and graffiti that would be more suited to a corporate office than to an alley characterized by neglect, decay, and vandalism.[Bloomfield, Pittsburgh]: photo by William Real, 6 February 2018

McKees Rocks (Pittsburgh) Streetscape | by real00

McKees Rocks (Pittsburgh) Streetscape | Got lost on a frigid morning and found myself in McKees Rocks, where I'd never been before, though had wanted to, as I'd heard I would find subjects there to my liking. I did. I'll be going back when it's a bit warmer so I can spend more time shooting.: photo by William Real, 4January 2018

just one more.: photo by knitgirl, 23 February 2018

In a heavy fog | San Francisco, CA: photo by Robert Ogilvie, 16 February 2018

Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 23 February 2018

Josephine Miles: Eighteen Poems

Aleppo wounded day of bombardment by government forces that killed fifty people: image via baraa al halabi @baraaalhalabi, 14 June 2016

Josephine Miles: Figure

A poem I keep forgetting to write
Is about the stars,

How I see them in their order
Even without the chair and bear and the sisters,
In their astronomic presence of great space,
And how beyond and behind my eyes they are moving,
Exploding to spirals under extremest pressure.
Having not mathematics, my head
Bursts with anguish of not understanding.

The poem I forget to write is bursting fragments
Of a tortured victim, far from me
In his galaxy of minds bent upon him,
In the oblivion of his headline status
Crumpled and exploding as incomparable
As a star, yet present in its light.
I forget to write.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Figure from Collected Poems: 1930-83

SYRIA - A shepherd leads his flock as smoke billows from a farm following an airstrike in Sheifuniya. By @AbdDoumany: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 14 June 2016

SYRIA - A rebel fighter waits to break his fast during the Ramadan in Jobar near Damascus. By @abdfree2 #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 15 June 2016

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

Josephine Miles: Saving the Bay

Apart from branches in courtyards and small stones,
The countryside is beyond me.
I can go along University Avenue from Rochester to Sobrante
And then the Avenue continues to the Bay.

Often I think of the dry scope of foothill country,

Moraga Hill, Andreas, Indian country, where I was born
And where in the scrub the air tells me
How to be born again.

Often I think of the long rollers
Breaking along the beaches
All the way down the coast to the border
On bookish cressets and culverts blue and Mediterranean.

There I break

In drops of spray as fine as letters
Blown high, never to be answered,
But waking am the shore they break upon.

Both the dry talkers, those old Indians,

And the dry trollers, those old pirates,
Say something, but it's mostly louder talking,
Gavel rapping, and procedural dismays.

Still here we are, and where we roll and call,
The long rollers of the sea come in
As if they lived here. The dry Santa Ana
Sweeps up the town and takes it for a feast.

Then Rochester to El Sobrante is a distance
No longer than my name.

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

Bay Side Ocean View (Berkeley). 35 mm plastic toy camera from dog food. Expired Tri-X from the 1980s.: photo by Dave Hebb, 12 July 2015

Orange stand (Williams, California): photo by efo, 18 May 2016

Josephine Miles: $7,500

I cannot tell you what a bargain this is,
Built at a cost of seven thousand, selling
For seven five, and all the utilities
In, and trees.

Landscaped front and back, strings up for lawn,
Tiles, wrought-iron fixtures, entrance hall
With an echo, echo, echo, beamed ceiling
And a Southern feeling.

Marvelous in this spring month, in this empty field,
Out of the already forgotten hammers, hands compressed,

So like a snowdrop sprung, white, delicate, and new,

With mountain view.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): $7,500 from Lines at Intersection, 1939, in Collected Poems: 1930-83

There's got to be an end (possibly Beryl, Utah): photo by QsySue, 8 June 2016

Resident at the Highland Manor Retirement Home, New Ulm, Minnesota: photo by Flip Schulke for the Environmental Protection Agency's Documerica Project, c. 1975 (US National Archive)

Josephine Miles: Reason

Said, Pull her up a bit will you, Mac, I want to unload there.
Said, Pull her up my rear end, first come first served.
Said, give her the gun, Bud, he needs a taste of his own bumper.
Then the usher came out and got into the act:

Said, Pull her up, pull her up a bit, we need this space, sir.
Said, For God's sake, is this still a free country or what?
You go back and take care of Gary Cooper's horse
And leave me handle my own car.

Saw them unloading the lame old lady,
Ducked out under the wheel and gave her an elbow.
Said, All you needed to do was just explain;
Reason, Reason is my middle name.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Reason, from Prefabrications, 1955

Old man, India: photo by Glenn Losack MD, 17 December 2011

Josephine Miles: The Sympathizers

To this man, to his boned shoulders
Came the descent of pain.
All kinds,
Cruel, blind, dear, horrid, hallowed,
Rained, again, again.

To this small white blind boned face,
Wherever it was,
Descended
The blows of pain, it took as it were blinded,
As it were made for this.

We were there. We uneasy
Did not know if it were.
Knew neither
The reason nor the man nor whether
To share, or to beware.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): The Sympathizers, from Local Measures, 1946

Farmland along the upper Delaware River in New York State: photo by John Collier, June 1943 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Josephine Miles: Gypsy

The entire country is overrun with private property, the gypsy king said.

I don't know if this is true,

I believe in the gypsy kingship though.

The lost tribes of my own nation

Rove and rove.

In red and yellow rough and silent move.

I believe

The majesty pot mending, copper smith

On the hundred highways, nothing to do with.

And black eyes, black I never saw,

Searching out the pocket lines of cloth

The face lines and the furrows of belief.

It's a curious fact, Stephan, King, if you are made to doubt

Aegyptian vision on the Jersey shore.

Property's private as ever, ever.

JosephineMiles (1911-1985): Gypsy,from Local Measures, 1946

Farmland along the upper Delaware River in New York State: photo by John Collier, June 1943 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Josephine Miles: Belief

Mother said to call her if the H-bomb exploded
And I said I would, and it about did
When Louis my brother robbed a service station
And lay cursing on the oily cement in handcuffs.

But by that time it was too late to tell Mother,
She was too sick to worry the life out of her
Over why why. Causation is sequence
And everything is one thing after another.

Besides, my other brother, Eddie, had got to be President,
And you can't ask too much of one family.
The chances were as good for a good future
As bad for a bad one.

Therefore it was surprising that, as we kept the newspapers from Mother,
She died feeling responsible for a disaster unverified,
Murmuring, in her sleep as it seemed, the ancient slogan
Noblesse oblige.
1955
Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Belief, 1955, from Collected Poems 1930-1983

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8b29000/8b29400/8b29417v.jpg

Gas station, Washington, D.C.: photo by John Vachon, July 1937 (Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress)

Josephine Miles: Family

When you swim in the surf off Seal Rocks, and your family
Sits in the sand
Eating potato salad, and the undertow
Comes which takes you out away down
To loss of breath loss of play and the power of play
Holler, say
Help, help, help. Hello, they will say,
Come back here for some potato salad.

It is then that a seventeen-year-old cub
Cruising in a helicopter from Antigua,
A jackstraw expert speaking only Swedish
And remote from this area as a camel, says
Look down there, there is somebody drowning.
And it is you. You say, yes, yes,
And he throws you a line.
This is what is called the brotherhood of man.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Family, from Collected Poems 1930-1983

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8b31000/8b31400/8b31481v.jpg

Gas station and gospel mission, Cleveland, Ohio: photo by John Vachon, August 1937 (Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress)

Josephine Miles: So Graven

Simplicity so graven hurts the sense. The monumental and the simple break
And the great tablets shatter down in deed. Every year the quick particular jig
Of unresolved event moves in the mind,

And there's the trick simplicity has to win.

1946
JosephineMiles (1911-1985): So Graven, 1946, from Collected Poems 1930-83

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a11000/8a11200/8a11201v.jpg

Gas station, Butte, Montana: photo by Arthur Rothstein, Summer 1939 (Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress)

Josephine Miles: Made Shine

This face had no use for light, took none of it,
Grew cavernous against stars, bore into noon
A dark of midnight by its own resources.

Yet where it lay in sleep, where the pillows held it
With the blind plaster over it and the four walls
Keeping the night carefully, it was undone.

Sixty-watt light, squared to a window frame,
Across a well of air, across wind and window
Leaped and made shine the dark face in its sleep.

1939
Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Made Shine, 1939, from Collected Poems 1930-83

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8c17000/8c17000/8c17048v.jpg

Gas station at night, Dubuque, Iowa: photo by John Vachon, April 1940 (Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress)

Josephine Miles: For Futures

When the lights come on at five o'clock on street corners
That is Evolution by the bureau of power,
That is a fine mechanic dealing in futures:
For the sky is wide and warm upon that hour.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): For Futures, from Collected Poems 1930-1983

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a33000/8a33700/8a33747v.jpg

An "open all night" gas station in Durham, North Carolina: photo by Jack Delano, May 1940 (Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress)

Josephine Miles: Kind

When I think of my kindness which is tentative and quiet
And of yours which is intense and free,
I am in elaboration of knowledge impatient
Of even the patientest immobility.

I think of my kind, which is the human fortune
To live in the world and make war among its friends,
And of my version, which is to be moderately peaceful,
And of your version; and must make amends

By my slow word to your wish which is mobile,
Active and moving in its generous sphere.
This is the natural and the supernatural
Of humankind of which I grow aware.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Kind, from Collected Poems 1930-1983

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8c05000/8c05400/8c05405v.jpg

Gas station in Franklin, Heard County, Georgia, nine o'clock in the evening: photo by Jack Delano, April 1941 (Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress)

Josephine Miles: Forecast

All our stones like as much sun as possible.
Along their joints run both solar access and decline
In equal splendor, like a mica chipping
At every beat, being sun responsible.

How much sun then do you think is due them?
Or should say, how much sun do you think they are apt to have?
It has misted at their roots for some days now,
The gray glamour addressing itself to them.

I should think possible that it go on misting likewise
A good way into next year, or time as they have it,
A regular cool season every day for our stones.
Not a streak that low of any sun or longed surprise.
1946
Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Forecast, 1946, from Collected Poems 1930-83

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8b29000/8b29400/8b29416v.jpg

Gas station, Minneapolis, Minnesota: photo by John Vachon, January 1942 (Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress)

Josephine Miles:Effort for Distraction

for Henry Adams

Effort for distraction grew
Ferocious, grew
Ferocious and paced, that was its exercise.

Effort for distraction strained,
Legged in the hour-like single stretch
Its heels and sight to feel, so slit its eyes.

Effort without effort or with
Greatest possible effort always centered
Back in the concentrated trough where lies

The magnet to the filings,
The saw tooth to the tongue,
The turn of life to a returning life.

By all the traction of mind and spin of spirit
Having gained grasp gasped to bear it,
Having got ground groaned, furious title holder.

Paced and cried, so sore for a different direction, grew
Ferocious, grew
Unkind to strength that gave it strength to grow.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Effort for Distraction, from Collected Poems 1930-1983

Gas station, Benton Harbor, Michigan: photo by John Vachon, July 1940 (Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress)

Josephine Miles: Deed

As George Washington hacked at his cherry tree,
Joseph said to him
This is the tree that fed Mary
When she lingered by the way.

As George Washington polished his bright blade,
Joseph told him
This cherry tree
Bent down and nourished the mother and her babe.

As George Washington felled the cherry tree,
Voices of root and stem
Cried out to him
In heavenly accents, but he heard not what they had to say.

Rather, he was making
A clearing in the wilderness,
A subtle discrimination
Of church and state,

By which his little hatchet
Harvested a continental
Bumper crop for Mary
Of natural corn.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Deed, from Collected Poems 1930-1983

Dallas, TX -- March 2015: photo by gumanow, 27 May 2016

Josephine Miles: Lucifer Alone

One rat across the floor and quick to floor's a breeze,
But two a whisper of a human tongue.
One is a breath, two voice;
And one a dream, but more are dreamed too long.

Two are the portent which we may believe at length,
And two the tribe we recognize as true.
Two are the total, they saying and they saying,
So we must ponder what we are to do.

For every scuttle of motion in the corner of the eye
Some thought of thought is asked in us indeed,
But of two, more: there we have likeness moving,
And there knowledge therefore, and therefore creed.

1969

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Lucifer Alone, 1969, from Collected Poems 1930-1983

New York, NY -- July 2015: photo by gumanow, 27 May 2016

Josephine Miles: King

I walked along the river path, the river
I never lived beside,
and met there, hook and line, king of that kingdom

I would not recognize.

He was the golden branch of Eliot, of

Those wasteland parties where I had to play

Tiresias, and he was a king

Whom I did not believe.

Laius nor any man's killed by his son

Unless he wills it, so I said

To this old bird where he sat. Why let come riding

The handsomest of your brood to do you in?

And he wept, Because it is him or me --

Should he not survive me, he survives not

All that I was: alcoholic

At forty, cheat at forty-five,

Coward at fifty, so will he be

Over again in sequence, while I sit

Mourning myself in him. Tell him to hurry.

This was the waste land, as it dawns upon me

To see it was my friend sat by the river

Crouching and fishing in his father's form.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): King, from Poetry, August 1966

Sheep graze on a field at the Siennese clays area near Asciano, Italy. The Crete Senesi, located in Tuscany, consists of an untouched natural landscape of hills and woods: photo by Max Rossi/Reuters, 2011
Josephine Miles: Tally

After her pills the girl slept and counted
Pellet on pellet the regress of life.
Dead to the world, the world's count yet counted
Pellet on pill the antinomies of life.

Refused to turn, the way's back, she counted
Her several stones across the mire of life.
And stones away and sticks away she counted
To keep herself out of the country of life.

Lost tally. How the sheep return to home
Is the story she will retrieve
And the only story believe
Of one and one the sheep returning home

To take the shapes of life,
Coming and being counted.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Tally from Collected Poems 1930-1983 (1983)

Fair Day, Glenties, Co. Donegal | by National Library of Ireland on The Commons

Fair Day, Glenties, County Donegal: photo by Robert French, c. 1890-1910 (Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland)

Serious traffic jam on the back roads of beautiful #Lesvos this morning:image via MSF Sea @MSFSea, 7 February 2016

Silence of the lambs. Narkanda, Himachal, India: photo by Manik Sharma via the land below water, 2016

Sheep staring, Langholm, Dumfriesshire, Scotland: photo by Bug in Box, 10 October 2009

Life [Marand, Azarbayjan-e Sharqi, Iran]: photo by Seyed Mostafa Zamani, 29 September 2010

A flock of sheep walked in the smoggy haze in a suburb of Beijing, where poor air quality has proved to be a persistent health hazard: photo by Lintao Zhang / Getty Images, 15 January 2016

Sheep May Safely Graze: photo by geir tonnessen, 23 July 2013

A villager attempts to rescue a sheep during Israel attack on frontline area of Zanna (Khan Younis), two miles from the border with Israel: photo by Hazem Balousha, 23 July 2014

Domestic Sheep(Corriedale) of Kanazawa Zoo : ヒツジ | by Dakiny

Domestic Sheep, Kanazawa Zoo: photo by Toshiro Gamo, 16 January 2015

Attentive sheep [Sarre, Val d'Aosta, Italy]: photo by enki22, 1 March 2013

Attentive sheep [Sarre, Val d'Aosta, Italy]: photo by enki22, 1 March 2013

Sheep | by Atli Harðarson

Sheep [Skipaskagi, Akranes, Iceland]: photo by Atli Hardarson, 23 September 2007

File:Corsbie Tower - geograph.org.uk - 1422694.jpg

Corsbie Tower:photo by Walter Baxter, 30 July 2009

Everywhere I go, i see ruin, i see desolation, I see URBEX! | by c@rljones

It seems there is no escaping a bit of rural decay is there. Ruined miners' houses with sheep, Cwn Ystradllyn, Wales: photo by Carl Jones, 23 June 2008

Sheep, darkroom print: photo by Mark Dries, 11 November 2015

Sheepish [original version]: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 27 March 2010

Sheepish[hand coloured photogravure version]: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 21 March 2013

New Zealand (sheep and herder) | by Museum of Photographic Arts Collections

New Zealand (sheep and herder): albumen print, photographer unknown, c. 1900 (Museum of Photographic Arts)

field full of sheep | by MICOLO J Thanx 4, 2 million+ views

field full of sheep: photo by Micolo J, 3 February 2015

↧

#777 is my lucky number

March 1, 2018, 9:26 pm

≫ Next: "The Ghouta will fall..." | rods of iron (murican nutjob) / ring of fire | Joseph Ceravolo: A Piece of Glass

≪ Previous: Among the teapot aggregates on the Day of Resurrection (target practise) | Josephine Miles: Eighteen Poems

Street corner lyric [Chinatown, LA]: photo by Andrew Murr, 1 March 2018

Untitled: photo by Barry Talis, 27 February 2018

Lugano | Lugano, Switzerland 瑞士卢加诺: photo by SinoLaZZer, 1 February 2016

Untitled: photo by live .. simply, 19 January 2018

Oh, Mary! 777 years and now the Blue Door

shut on my rostrum! Jeez! And now they want

us to break it down

right to the ground, then build it up again Mary the Tide will fall

Joe who? Oh come on Mary!

You can do better than that! and me Too

Y2K [Wilkinsburg, PA]: photo by David Grim, 11 February 2018

#poetrydarlings #slowpoetryinmurica#wearesoprecious: image via knifeforkbook @knifeforkbook, 22 November 2017

Shhh... | Don't ask: photo by Michael Ryerson, 28February 2018

The fifth columnist who infiltrated the meeting had reason to be happy shamelessly asking for more of the great refreshments

me too Oh Mary Tide is about to fall

everybody is leaving town girl
Trying to find them a play tide
The killer and deceiver Mary, Joe Blow Massif
left
                     twisting in yr dust!
Girl so on you I must confide Oh Mary, girl don’t you take me on no bad, bad, bad trip
in no whisphery secret phalanx   Mary

Somebody at the meeting volunteered several useful clues as to the identity of this mysterious building
      the citadel of all    play Evil

almost as if having been inside and somebody else stood up and said Tide is about to fall Oh Mary
play tide and I said everybody trying to find a play Tide

me too I didn't infiltrate this meeting for no reason Mary It's why I confide in you girl

Not the Evil of the play tidebut, you know Mary the great refreshments

no bad bad trip no whisphery secret phalanx

The killer and deceiver Mary, volunteered several useful clues Girl so on you I must confide

Untitled [Poland]: photo by Joanna Mrowka, 18 January 2018

The fifth columnist who infiltrated the meeting had reason to be happy shamelessly asking for more of the great refreshments

me too Oh Mary Tide is about to fall

everybody is leaving town girl
Trying to find them a play tide
The killer and deceiver Mary,
Girl so on you I must confide Oh Mary, girl don’t you take me on no bad, bad, bad trip
in no whisphery secret phalanx

Untitled: photo by Sylvain Biard, 7February 2016

Zürich | Zurich, Switzerland. 瑞士苏黎世: photo by SinoLaZZer, 26 February 2018

DSCF7217: photo by Mike McCawley, 26 February 2018

IMG_5821s: photo by Ilya Shtutsa, 18 February 2018

she goin' down...1 [Leytonstone, London]: photo by Jan Rocker, 27September 2017

Oh Mary Tide is about to fall

Hong Kong: photo by eddiepfizer, 27 September 2017

Oh Mary Oh Mary

Atami, Shizuoka, Japan / 2017 | by Mankichi Shinshi

Atami, Shizuoka, Japan / 2017: photo by Mankichi Shinsi, 3 November 2017

The Hague, The Netherlands, July 2016 (S&R 106 #10 - Up in the air) | by daily-life.photography

The Hague, The Netherlands, July 2016: photo by Fabricio Santos, 21 July 2016

DSC_5639: photo by selin1968, 24 April 2016

Untitled: photo by Marco Criniti, c. 2018

Seaside Resort Impressions 40/63 | by Author - Photographer

Seaside Resort Impressions 40/63 [Yalta, Crimea}: photo by Pierre Gély-Fort (off), 21 August 2016

↧

"The Ghouta will fall..." | rods of iron (murican nutjob) / ring of fire | Joseph Ceravolo: A Piece of Glass

March 2, 2018, 9:43 pm

≫ Next: Death pays another call upon the Ghouta | Joseph Ceravolo: What chemicals have we forgotten?

≪ Previous: #777 is my lucky number

#Syria Civilians stay put despite 'pause' in Syria Ghouta bloodshed #AFP Photo @MohammedEyad2: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 1 March 2018

ليلاً نهاراً تواصل قوات النظام السوري والطائرات الحربية السورية والروسية قصفها على الغوطة الشرقية المحاصرة .. Flames following a reported rocket attack are seen on the horizon in the rebel-held enclave of Eastern #Ghouta on February 28, 2018. Ph : Mohammed Eyad / @AFPphoto: image via Mohammed Eyad @MohammedEyad2, 1 March 2018

كما كل ليلة . A picture taken on February 28, 2018 shows flames erupting in the horizon following a reported rocket attack in al-Shaffuniyah, in the Syrian rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus. #AFP / Ammar Suleiman: image via Ammer Sulaiman @AmmarSulaiman91, 1 March 2018

#Syria West ups heat on Damascus as Ghouta civilians await aid Photo @amer_almohibany: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 2 March 2018

البحث عن الناجين - دوما Picture of searching for survivors will be published in @TIME magazine next week @SyriaCivilDef: image via Mohamed Badra @badramamet, 1 March 2018

"We got to the point where we’d pay $8 for rotting bread. I’d tear off the green spots and dip the bread in oil. When I ran out of oil, I’d dip it in water." Important, devastating perspective from Syrians as the war enters Year 8.: image via Andrew Katz @katz, 1 March 2018

No me queda muy claro a qué lugar tienen que volver los refugiados. Ghouta, Siria. @badramamet: image via Miguel A. Rodriguez @Marodriguez1971, 2 March 2018

It's hard to forget these days Thanks @BassamKhabieh for the pictures: image via Abdulmonam Eassa @abdfree2, 2 March 2018

Même dans les sous-sols de la Ghouta en Syrie, la mort rattrape les civils #AFP: image via Agence France-Presse @afpfr, 28 February 2018

The body of a civilian who was killed during reported regime bombardment in the besieged eastern Ghouta enclave: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/AFP, 2 March 2018

Eastern Ghouta death toll casts doubt on Russia’s truce plans: Questions asked about sincerity of regime ally as 100 more killed since UN call for ceasefire: Kareem Shaheen, The Guardian, 2 March 2018

More than 100 people have been killed in the besieged Syrian enclave of eastern Ghouta since the UN security council unanimously called for a month-long ceasefire, rescue workers said.

The death toll of 103 since Saturday highlighted the paralysis of an international community that had demanded the ceasefire and the delivery of humanitarian aid. The continuing violence also raised further doubts over the sincerity of Russia, the Syrian regime’s main patron, which had ordered daily five-hour truces and the opening of “humanitarian corridors” for fleeing civilians.

“The regime is lying to us and lying to the whole world, that Russia and the regime are these humanitarians who care about civilians and that people don’t die,” said a local journalist in eastern Ghouta. “In a very short period they killed more than 500 people and wounded more than 4,000, so they shouldn’t pretend all of a sudden to be humanitarians.”

In some of the worst bombardment campaigns of the war in Syria, hundreds of people have been killed in eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held enclave that is home to about 400,000 people that borders the capital of Damascus.

Calls for an end to the violence have largely fallen on deaf ears, despite a UN security council resolution demanding a ceasefire “without delay.”.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, replaced the resolution with his own plan for a five-hour daily truce, which residents say reduced the airstrikes on the area between 9am and 2pm, though shelling usually continued. The plan also called for the creation of a humanitarian corridor in Wafideen, an area north of eastern Ghouta.

Britain called for a debate on Friday at the UN human rights council to discuss the situation, but western powers have little leverage over Russia and the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and have achieved little beyond strongly worded statements.

The US president, Donald Trump, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, jointly called for the ceasefire to be implemented on Friday.

Geert Cappelaere, the Middle East director for Unicef, said: “The UN security council resolution – unanimously adopted nearly a week ago – created an opportunity for hundreds of thousands of children to finally get respite from the brutal and unabated violence they have been living through.

“But as the days went by, these hopes turned into illusions, the windows shut abruptly in our faces. Because, for children in Syria, nothing has changed, nothing.”

Moscow said it had opened the humanitarian corridors for civilians to leave, but residents said the violence had not abated enough for them to contemplate such a possibility.

They also said few civilians trusted the Syrian government not to detain them if they did leave, and resented the idea of forcible displacement from their homes. They also feared the region would be destroyed by regime troops and their communities shattered by displacement.

“The talk of humanitarian corridors is not realistic because until this moment there is heavy bombing, and all the people are still sitting underground,” said one doctor in the enclave. “There needs to be a ceasefire, people need to know about it, there needs to be more than one corridor. People don’t even have the money to pay for gas to take a car to the one in Wafideen.”

He added: “People are also scared. The regime cannot be trusted … People are scared of revenge killings. They are also attached to their land, homes, shops. We haven’t been displaced, but we have seen those who have been displaced, and they are unhappy, their communities have been destroyed.”

The UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, condemned the violence and said residents remained trapped by the violence.

He said the perpetrators would be held to account.

“Once again, I must emphasise that what we are seeing, in eastern Ghouta and elsewhere in Syria, are likely war crimes, and potentially crimes against humanity,” he said.

“Civilians are being pounded into submission or death. The perpetrators of these crimes must know they are being identified; that dossiers are being built up with a view to their prosecution; and that they will be held accountable for what they have done.”

Syrie: un Pakistanais de 73 ans et son épouse, premiers civils évacués de la #GhoutaOrientale @afpfr #Syrie: image via Jean-Marc Mojon, 1 March 2018

Aleppo again? The fighting in East Ghouta looks like a rerun of the battle for East Aleppo in 2016—didn't anyone learn anything from that tragic episode?: image via Aron Lund @aronlund, 2 March 2018

"The Ghouta will fall..."

The Ghouta will fall as Aleppo

fell, slowly, then

at the end suddenly, with

great cruelty and much

suffering, and the rain will

come down in strong

bursts, for periods of time,
with stinging winds

and sharp cold air

all through the old

dark house. The giantpresiding

sequoia sempervirens

bends its heavy drooping

boughs to the flood,

everything soaked and

dripping, and down

on the Ave, traffic
unceasing, blind, mad

and without relief,

driven by the two

great needs, the need

to get, and the need

to spend, everybody

hurrying to a perdition

perceived as a way

of life.

Aftermath of an air strike in eastern Ghouta, February 2018.: image via Youtube/ Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations, 2 March 2018

Death without blood of a child who was killed by poison gas in the shelling of the town of Shafuniya: image via hasan mohamed @hasanmohammed89, 27 February 2016

A Lebanese plays a videogame created by #Hezbollah called "Holy Defence", a simulation game that puts the player in re-enacted battles fought by Hezbollah fighters against "apostates" in #Syria, in a southern suburb of Beirut on February 27, 2018. Photo by @JOSEPHEID1 / @AFPphoto: image v1a Amir Makar @makar, 27 February 2018

Pictures of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and #Russia's s President Vladimir Putin plastered on walls in Eastern Ghouta, security checkpoints.: photo by Rudaw English @RudawEnglish, 1 March 2018

People wearing motorcycle helmets are hit with firecrackers during the Beehive Firecrackers festival in Taiwan Photo Tyrone Siu: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 1 March 2018

Hundreds of couples toting AR-15 rifles packed a Unification church in Pennsylvania to have their marriages blessed and their weapons celebrated as "rods of iron" that could have saved lives in a recent Florida school shooting Photo Eduardo Munoz: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 1 March 2018

A dog named "Sassi" sits next to a golden statue of a bathrobe-clad Harvey Weinstein, seated atop a couch on the sidewalk along Hollywood Blvd., in Los Angeles Thursday, March 1, 2018. The piece, titled "Casting Couch," is a collaborative effort between a Los Angeles street artist known as Plastic Jesus and Joshua "Ginger" Monroe, creator of the nude Donald Trump statue. Plastic Jesus said the piece was meant to shine a light on the entertainment industry's sexual misconduct crisis and the disgraced movie mogul's prominent role in it.: photo by Damian Dovarganes/AP, 1 March 2018

A dog in the civil security brigade jumps through a burning hoop today during exercises to mark World Civil Defense day outside Algiers. Photo Anis Belghoul: image via AP Images @AP_Images, 1 March 2018

Journalists watch as Russian President Vladimir Putin gives his annual state of the nation address in Manezh in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, March 1, 2018. Putin set a slew of ambitious economic goals, vowing to boost living standards, improve health care and education and build modern infrastructure in a state-of-the-nation address.: photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP, 1 March 2018

Russia Putin

As in life, no matter what you do to predict or control a sign's duration, there will always be a random element too. Same with photos - every once in awhile one will really stand out. Hwy 99 #Sacramento #Resist #TheResistance #TraitorTrump #MuellerTime #FreewayBlogger #Treason: image via Patrick Randall @Patrick Randall, 27 February 2018

Thats NOT Snow in Downtown Sacramento it's 40 solid min of HAIL! #Hail #Sacramento #Downtown: image via Cisco'sMarket @wadhapal, 26 February 2018

Thats NOT Snow in Downtown Sacramento it's 40 solid min of HAIL! #Hail #Sacramento #Downtown: image via Cisco's Market @wadhapal, 26 February 2018

The One That Got Away [Wilkinsburg, Pa]: photo by David Grim, 11 February 2018

DSCF2655-1 | Lebanon, Pennsylvania: photo by cedrus`, 27 December 2016

DSCF4973 | Terrebonne, Louisiana: photo by cedrus`, 23 February 2017

DSCF9075c2| Byblos, Lebanon: photo by cedrus`, 15 October 2017

Dhaka, Bangladesh: photo by Alison Adcock, 12 February 2018

Dhaka, Bangladesh: photo by Alison Adcock, 16 February 2018

Kashmiris peel the bark off wicker sticks on the outskirts of Srinagar, 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

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

Untitled: photo by Job Jetwichan Chaowadee, 10 February 2018

↧

Death pays another call upon the Ghouta | Joseph Ceravolo: What chemicals have we forgotten?

March 3, 2018, 10:19 pm

≫ Next: walking to paradise / Joseph Ceravolo: Perpetual | Sanctus Death Twig Insect Purification Ritual (where the red carpet ends)

≪ Previous: "The Ghouta will fall..." | rods of iron (murican nutjob) / ring of fire | Joseph Ceravolo: A Piece of Glass

[Death pays another call uponthe Ghouta]: image via Ahmad @Ahmad36120, 3 March 2018

[Death pays another call uponthe Ghouta]: image via Ahmad @Ahmad36120, 3 March 2018

The muezzin calls:

Live on, prayer, Live on, farmer

After the adhaan says:

Muslims pray in your homes, away from the intensity of the shelling

Only in the Ghouta

Do not think that the number of raids has eased and that the alleged truce has changed anything but achieved the goal, which was to absorb the popular anger of the world and create justifications for killing us.

image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 2 March 2018

There should be a ceasefire. But the bombs fall, at any time. I am tired, listening to warplanes and helicopters, constantly above us and the sounds of missile. I see the pain of these mothers who try to comfort their children, and their screams never leave my mind. #Douma 03/03: image via Ahmad @Ahmad36120, 3 March 2018

The situation in #EasternGhouta is in its worst period ever since the beginning of the siege of the Syrian government army until now, it’s really out of explanation.: tweet via Firas Abdullah @firasabdullah, 10.25 AM, 3 March 2018

Hundreds of missiles and mortars are being dropped, tens of airstrikes, most people still live underground in their basements, shelters, flats and houses, children may have breathing problems and other health cases by living in dry conditions and far from the sun.: tweet via Firas Abdullah @firasabdullah, 10.26 AM, 3 March 2018

Very huge distraction in the neighborhoods, no opened shops, people are depending on what they have in their homes, and some are going in rush to the nearest shop to by their daily meal.: tweet via Firas Abdullah @firasabdullah, 10.27 AM, 3 March 2018

The civilians are in the queue of death, everyday, it’s a turn of some people to be killed The #Holocaust is happening again in front of all the world. #EasternGhouta is the new #Auschwitz with the same death’s queues, the same criminal, the only difference is the name, #Assad: tweet via Firas Abdullah @firasabdullah, 10.29 AM, 3 March 2018

Our sky is crowded with warplanes, 3 jets, 2 helicopters and a drone. An airstrike every 2 minutes. An explosive barrel every 5 minutes. The drone is flying during 24 hours. #EasternGhouta: tweet via Firas Abdullah @firasabdullah, 11.15 AM, 3 March 2018

The ambulance department received a number of wounded today, including martyrs killed in the shelling of eastern Ghouta: image via Douma medical @Doumamedical, 28 February 2018

Louay, a 6-year-old boy who was injured yesterday as a result of the shelling of the eastern Ghouta, has a head injury and is now under surveillance in the intensive care unit @RevolutonSyria #syria #damascus #douma #East_Ghouta: image via Douma medical @Doumamedical, 3 March 2018

Syrie: La courte trève quotidienne ne permet pas d'acheminer l'aide à la Ghouta orientale: image via France 24 Français @France24_fr, 2 March 2018

Tranquilidad, no son nuestros muertos. En el fondo, siempre son otros. Hasta que nos toca, claro. Siria @hamza_alajweh: image via Miguel A. Rodriguez @marodriguez1971, 2 March 2018

Joseph Ceravolo: What chemicals have we forgotten?

Connecticut Rubber Molding Co. | Danielson: photo by efo, 3 March 2018

The morning is warm. A fan whirling

the air. The calm force of tiredness
shows up in everyone's body
chewing, languidly talking.
What chemicals have we forgotten?

The air blows cold
down the northern corridor
the ink freezes in my fingers
no electronics can soothe love.
What chemicals have we forgotten?
...........................................May 18, 1987
Joseph Ceravolo (1934-1988): The morning is warm. A fan whirling..., 18 May 1987, from Collected Poems (2013)

Nonspecific [Ocean View, Albany, California]: photo by efo, February 2018

Galaxie 500 [Alameda Point, Alameda, California]: photo by efo, 24 February 2018

west of hanksville | sprocket rocket road trip (SR171202C23) [Hanksville, Utah]: photo by Michael C. Pastur, 14 February 2018

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walking to paradise / Joseph Ceravolo: Perpetual | Sanctus Death Twig Insect Purification Ritual (where the red carpet ends)

March 4, 2018, 10:18 pm

≫ Next: Joseph Ceravolo: The morning carries Carbon 14

≪ Previous: Death pays another call upon the Ghouta | Joseph Ceravolo: What chemicals have we forgotten?

8791: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 17 November 2017

9373: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 23 January 2006

Untitled {Brick factory, Amin Bazar, Bangladesh]: photo by pratyay, 28 February 2018

Fire broke out between residential areas as a result of an air raid carrying napalm and targeting the town of Mesraba in al-Ghouta al-Sharqiya #SaveGhouta #GhoutaGMC photo by Abu Yahya Naeem: image via Ghouta Media Center @Ghouta_GMC, 2 March 2018

Outbreak of fire caused by machine gun fire from war planes targeting towns of al-Ghouta al-Sharqiya #SaveGhouta photo by Abu Yahya Naeem: image via Ghouta Media Center @Ghouta_GMC, 3March 2018

Le régime syrien annonce avoir "progressé sur plusieurs fronts" dans la Ghouta orientale, après la conquête de nouveaux secteurs de l'enclave rebelle, tenue principalement par le groupe salafiste Jaich al-Islam Photo @abdfree2 #AFP: image via Agence France-Presse @afpfr, 4 March 2018

Syrian government forces capture villages of eastern Ghouta: Hopes of aid entering besieged enclave dashed as Assad’s forces seize more territory: Peter Beaumont, The Guardian, 4 March 2018

Forces loyal to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, have captured six villages and towns bordering the besieged rebel-held enclave of eastern Ghouta, as hopes that a long-planned humanitarian convoy might enter the area were dashed again.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitor, confirmed the latest advances, saying pro-regime government forces had seized roughly a quarter of the enclave on the outskirts of Damascus in recent days.

“Most of it is farms and there are few towns in [the captured area],” said the Observatory’s director, Rami Abdulrahman.

The latest fighting took place as UN aid officials said they had not been given permission from Syrian officials for 40 trucks carrying supplies to reach the town of Douma, despite optimism earlier in the week that the convoy would be allowed to enter.

Condemning the lack of access, the UN’s regional humanitarian coordinator, Panos Moumtzis, said in a statement on Sunday: “One week after the UN security council voted in favour of resolution 2401, calling for a one-month cessation of hostilities across the war-ravaged country, not only has this not happened, in some cases the violence has escalated, particularly for the close to 400,000 men, women and children of [eastern] Ghouta.

“Instead of a much-needed reprieve, we continue to see more fighting, more death, and more disturbing reports of hunger and hospitals being bombed. This collective punishment of civilians is simply unacceptable,” he added.

Some of the heaviest fighting on Sunday was concentrated in the area of Beit Sawa on the eastern edge of the densely populated centre of eastern Ghouta, where civilians fled clashes between government forces and Jaysh al-Islam, one of three main rebel groups.

Thousands in the encircled area have been sheltering in freezing basements and underground shelters in an attempt to escape from the daily bombardment.

Neemat Mohsen, who heads the local women’s office in Saqba, another town in eastern Ghouta, told the Associated Press that in some shelters 350 or more people lived with no running water and no electricity.

“In our street, over 500 metres there are only three basements. They have to house all the families there. We feel the prison shrinking. We were first besieged in an enormous prison called eastern Ghouta, now we are trapped in shelters similar to tombs,” Mohsen said. “We are living real terror 24 hours a day.”

The reports of conditions inside the enclave came as pro-Assad forces continued to make gains. A reporter from the Syrian state-run Al Ekhbariya TV, accompanying troops, broadcast from Nashabiyah, a village on the south-eastern edge of eastern Ghouta.

The reporter said Syrian troops had crossed a “moat” and seized about 12 sq km (4.6 sq miles) in an advance backed by intense shelling and airstrikes.

Encircled by regime-controlled territory and unable or unwilling to flee, residents have been subjected to one of the most ferocious assaults of Syria’s civil war in recent weeks, including airstrikes and rocket and artillery bombardment.

The violence comes on top of critical shortages of food and medicines and a catastrophic collapse of medical care amid the targeting of hospitals and first responders.

However, despite mounting international pressure on Syria and its backer, Russia, to allow access for aid and the evacuation of the wounded and civilians, a promised daily five-hour humanitarian pause has failed to materialise as forces loyal to Assad continued to press their assault.

The latest fighting came as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the UN secretary general, António Guterres, expressed “grave concern” about the humanitarian situation in the area in a telephone conversation late on Saturday.

“The UN convoys must immediately deliver medical assistance and food aid to the besieged population,” the French president said.

On Sunday, Macron asked his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani to put pressure on the Syrian government to end the attacks and allow humanitarian aid in. Tehran is a key backer of the Syrian regime.

El enclave rebelde de Guta Oriental en Siria sigue esperando ayuda #AFP por @hasanmohammed89: image via Agence France-Presse @AFPespanol, 2 March 2018

A picture taken on March 3, 2018 shows the ten-year-old Syrian child Mariam Othman (L), who was rescued from the rubble of a building hit by reported regime bombardment and whose face was damaged, sitting in a hospital in Zamalka, near Syria's capital Damascus Photo @amer_almohibany: image via Amer_almohibany @amer_almohibany, 3 March 2018

My older brother, my eyes, [with] which I see, and my strength, which helps me in my life Two days later he was in intensive care after being wounded and shrapnel of missiles of hatred and treachery #EasternGhouta: image via Belal Kharpotly @belalkh, 4 March 2018

My old brother Join the convoy of martyrs walking to paradise #EasternGhouta: image via Belal Kharpotly @belalkh, 4 March 2018

Untitled: photo by Claire Grinberg, 6 February 2018

Children, nuns and pigeons. | by tetyanabunyak

Children, nuns and pigeons [L'viv, Ukraine]: photo by Tetyana Bunyak, 17 August 2018

London | London Lumiere Festival 2018: photo by Jaume Escofet, 21 January 2018

Morning market, Songkhla [Songkhla, Hat Yai, Thailand]: photo by Sakulchai Sikitikul, 17 August 2018

N. J. (I think this is New Jersey, we were on our way back to Ohio): photo by swindlehome, 9 May 2009

Tank cleaning, Getty, sandwiches to go,

Ice cream, cold drinks

Oak trees in a row, school bus,

94 cents three eggs, toast and home's

keys and cars, ties and shirts, skirts

and sweaters. Food luncheonette,

windows, sulfates

of your tears exchanged

in an empty lot of sorrow, a lucky bet,

hardware and lumber, orders to takeout,

behind the face morning creeps,

keep right, no turn, one way

the blue jay, the blue sky,

the beautiful oily of the crow,

keep right, no turn...one way, just go

....September 16, 1987

Joseph Ceravolo (1934-1988): Perpetual (September 16, 1987)from Collected Poems, 2013

Ozzie's Luncheonette, food market and liquor store, Longport, New Jersey: postcard, issued c. 1930-1945; image by Boston Public Library, 11 February 2011 (The Tichnor Brothers Collection, Print Department, Boston Public Library)

AroundTownWithMumandDad2 #017. Last time we got to watch them feeding the fish. This time we got to watch them clean the tank. Last time was better for pictures, but this time was more fun: photo by wolftracker, 5 August 2010

School bus crossing Riva Avenue Bridge over Farrington Lake Creek, East Brunswick, New Jersey: photo by jag9889, 14 September 2011

School bus on New Jersey Route 159 crossing eastbound bridge over the Passaic River, Montville, New Jersey: photo by jag9889, 10 October 2011

Portland, Oregon: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 8 December 2011

Awakening [Paris suburb]: photo by Matthieu Panicucci, 16 December 2017

Perfection Stage Book of Life Registration Blessing @ World Peace and Unification Sanctuary | Sanctus Death Twig Insect Purification Ritual

Feminist writer Susan Brownmiller photographed in her penthouse apartment in New York City for an interview in the New Review.: photo by Christopher Lane for the Observer, 4 March 2018

Paris Fashion Dries Van Noten

A model wears a creation for Dries Van Noten's ready-to-wear fall/winter 2018/2019 fashion collection presented in Paris, Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2018.: photo by Kamil Zihnioglu/AP, 28 February 2018

Paris Fashion Dries Van Noten

A model wears a creation for Dries Van Noten's ready-to-wear fall/winter 2018/2019 fashion collection presented in Paris, Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2018.: photo by Kamil Zihnioglu/AP, 28 February 2018

Jennifer Lawrence on the #Oscars red carpet#Oscars90: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 4 March 2018

Members of the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary participate in a Perfection Stage Book of Life Registration Blessing with their AR-15 rifles Photo: @spencerplatt1: image via Getty Images @GettyImages, 4 March 2018

Taraji P. Henson wears Vera Wang on the #Oscars red carpet #Oscars90: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 4 March 2018

St. Vincent wears Saint Laurent on the #Oscars red carpet #Oscars90: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 4 March 2018

where the red carpet ends could the possibility of a world begin (but that dog just can't get interested)

DSC07199: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 21 February 2018

DSC07233: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 21 February 2018

DSC07438: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 21 February 2018

DSC07438: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 21 February 2018

DSC07397: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 21 February 2018

DSC07397: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 21 February 2018

DSC07310: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 21 February 2018

DSC07310: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 21 February 2018

Untitled {Dhaka]: photo by pratyay, 15 February 2018

Untitled {Bangladesh]: photo by pratyay, 20 February 2018

Untitled {downtown Dhaka]: photo by pratyay, 9 January 2018

Dhaka | 2018: photo by Sohail Bim Mohammad, 5 January 2018

↧

Joseph Ceravolo: The morning carries Carbon 14

March 6, 2018, 12:19 am

≫ Next: Joseph Ceravolo: Reality Dreamscape | working too close (Like in Home Ec) | They will always be dying in #Syria | Morning, from #Kashmir

≪ Previous: walking to paradise / Joseph Ceravolo: Perpetual | Sanctus Death Twig Insect Purification Ritual (where the red carpet ends)

#haveaniceday #sunrise above the skyline of Shanghai on a polluted day. Photo @johaynz: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 5 March 2018

Joseph Ceravolo: The morning carries Carbon 14

It's the quiet that we
suck out of the noise.
The morning carries Carbon 14
a relative waste jackknifed
in the middle of the universe.

O brook, o river, o baptism,

falling in the hands of moneyseekers.

It's the hermit that we must feel

in the multitude. O woods

O forests, o river!

It's the quiet to extract

..from the wind

Joseph Ceravolo (1934-1988): February 3, 1987 [Bloomfield, New Jersey], from Mad Angels (poems 1976-1988), in Collected Poems, 2013

Shanghai under heavy blanket of pollution at dawn: image via johannes eisele @johanynz, 5 March 2018

#Syria Syria regime forces control third of Ghouta enclave #AFP: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 5 March 2018

#GhoutaOrientale Un tiers de l'enclave rebelle repris par le régime syrien, un premier convoi d'aide a rejoint Douma lundi. #AFP: image via Simon Malfatto @simalfatto, 5 March 2018

The efforts of United Nations to stop crimes of syrian regime, became coffins to Ghouta's children, who were killed by Assad and Russian forces #EasternGhouta, Syria 4/3/2018: image via belal kharpotly @belalkh, 4 March 2018

Today, SAMS documented 89 people killed due to airstrikes and shelling in #EastGhouta, highest daily toll since the UN resolution. The aid convoy entered after being stripped of medical supplies, delivered aid amidst shelling, but was forced to leave early w/out offloading all aid.: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 5 March 2018

#IMPORTANT: @UN withdraws before relief aid relief is released as a result of heavy Russian air strikes on #EasternGhouta: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 5 March 2018

According to a WHO official, 70% of medical supplies destined for #EastGhouta were ordered to be stripped out of the convoy, preventing trauma kits, surgical kits, insulin and other vital material from reaching the area. #SaveGhouta: tweet via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 5 March 2018

We apologize to the @Un because we have used their motto to cover our children #eastern_ghouta @UNICEF @UNICEFmena @NRC_Egelund @NRC_MiddleEast#SaveGhouta: image via Amer almohibany @amer_almohibany, 5 March 2018

The two men that matter. Putin and Assad in Syrian/Russian front line positions facing Eastern Ghouta.: image via Jeremy Bowen @BowenBBC, 5 March 2017

W.B. Yeats: Some Revelation Is At Hand (Those Lost Years When People Were Still Not Afraid To Admit Climate Change Is Real, And We're Causing It, And We Own Everything, And No You Can't Have My Oscar)

Storm clouds dwarf a farm near Lamar, Missouri as the sun sets, 22 May 2011. The storm earlier produced a large tornado that moved through much of Joplin, Missouri: photo by Charlie Riedel/AP, 22 May 2011

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

A shelf cloud containing a thunderstorm approaches a tornado-ravaged neighborhood in Joplin, Missouri: photo by Charlie Riedel/AP, 23 May 2011

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

Emergency workers wait for a medical team after finding a body in a tornado-ravaged car in Joplin, Missouri: photo by Charlie Riedel/AP, 22 May 2011

W. B Yeats (1865-1939): The Second Coming, 1919 (lines 1-3, 9-10)

a riff at the center of the earth (come in, dogspittle)

bolinas_582_el.JPG Among the principal reasons to enjoy Bolinas rests here on the cliff's overlooking the ocean in the backyard of Simon Marc's weekend home in Bolinas on the Mesa. Bolinas and it's present personality Photographer: Eric Luse / The Chronicle names cq from source MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT Photo: Eric Luse

Among the principal reasons to enjoy Bolinas rests [sic] here on the cliff's [sic] overlooking the ocean in the backyard of Simon Marc's weekend home in Bolinas on the Mesa. Bolinas and it's present personality [-]: photo by Eric Luse / The Chronicle, 28 January 2007

more white world bs

bobo was bought
and sold
and woke
and lit
and asleep
and endarkened
and traded upon
until the movie star and the movie director
the hairdresser and the heiress designer
and the other rich
owned all the water meters
and the soul
well the soul of the place
was owned
too

bolinas_1178_el.JPG Tripp with one his Ornamental's, A Hollow Vessel made from Big Leaf Maple which he says is very exciting to pull off because they can explode on you at anytime. Tripp Carpenter in his Bolinas workshop that once was his father's. Bolinas and it's present personality Photographer: Eric Luse / The Chronicle names cq from source MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT Photo: Eric Luse

Tripp with one his Ornamental's, A Hollow Vessel made from Big Leaf Maple which he says is very exciting to pull off because they can explode on you at anytime. Tripp Carpenter in his Bolinas workshop that once was his father's. Bolinas and it's present personality [-]: photo by Eric Luse / The Chronicle, 28 January 2007

bolinas_704_el.JPG Co-owners Riley Johndonnell (hat) and Richard Klein, Publisher of Surface Magazine at the "Surface Concept House" in Bolinas. Bolinas and it's present personality Bolinas and it's present personality Photographer: Eric Luse / The Chronicle names cq from source MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT Photo: Eric Luse

bolinas_704_el.JPG Co-owners Riley Johndonnell (hat) and Richard Klein, Publisher of Surface Magazine at the "Surface Concept House" in Bolinas. Bolinas and it's present personality Bolinas and it's present personality Photographer: Eric Luse / The Chronicle names cq from source MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT Photo: Eric Luse

Co-owners Riley Johndonnell (hat) and Richard Klein, Publisher of Surface Magazine at the "Surface Concept House" in Bolinas. Bolinas and it's present personality [-]: photo by Eric Luse / The Chronicle, 28 January 2007

It's the hermit that we must feel

in the multitude

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: photo by f.d. walker, 10 April 2017

Songkhla [Songkhla, Hat Yai, Thailand]: photo by Sakulchai Sikitikul, 4 March 2018

*: photo by aliioss 00, 19 February 2018

20-18-02-2_04-58=25 [Jakarta]: photo by Chris Tuarissa, 20 February 2018

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: photo by f.d. walker, 6 April 2017

DSCF6870 | by Ufuk Akarı (TURKUAZSTREET)

DSCF6870 [Istanbul]: photo by Ufuk AKARI, 2 March 2018

DSCF6870[Istanbul]: photo by Ufuk AKARI, 2 March 2018

red [Istanbul]: photo by Ufuk AKARI, 11 December 2017

Sacks [Songkhla, Hat Yai, Thailand]: photo by Sakulchai Sikitikul, 4 March 2018

R007817: photo by Chanwut BC Kul, 12 February 2018

2018-02-16_07-43=25 [Jakarta]: photo by Chris Tuarissa, 16 February 2018

İstanbul | by Ufuk Akarı (TURKUAZSTREET)

Istanbul: photo by Ufuk AKARI, 8 December 2017

*: photo by aliioss 00, 4 February 2018

↧