rompedas

A MASTER OF DRAMATIC COMPOSITION

2012-01-27T14:24:00.000+08:00

Harvey Thomas Dunn

From pulpartists.com

Harvey Thomas Dunn was born on March 8, 1884 on a homestead farm near Manchester, South Dakota. The young man's talent was first recognized by Ada Caldwell, an art instructor at South Dakota Agricultural College (presently South Dakota State University), which Dunn attended during 1901-1902. Urged by Caldwell, Dunn pursued his artistic studies at the Art Institute of Chicago under the instruction of Howard Pyle, one of America's most important illustrators.

In 1906, after two years with Pyle, Dunn established his own studio in Wilmington, DE and immediately began a successful career in illustration. In 1915 he opened the Leonia School of Illustration, NJ. Shortly after starting the school, Dunn was tapped into service in World War I as one of eight artist-correspondents with the American Expeditionary Force in Europe. Dunn returned from the War and his artistic career continued to excel. He is remembered as South Dakota's finest artist; having left a legacy as a war reporter, teacher, and painter of the Plains of his native state.

(sdstate.edu)

Sunday Morning at Cunel

American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) WWI 1918

National Archives

From constitutioncenter.org

They are Giving all Will You Send Them Wheat?

WWI Propaganda Lithograph, 1918

Printed by W F Powers Co Litho NY

From icollector.com

Dunn was 33 in 1917 and past the age of military service, but he was chosen as one of a cadre of eight artists who were commissioned to serve as graphic reporters of combat activities at the front. He was a fearless reporter and filled scrolls with powerful images of devastation, both physical and emotional. He wanted desperately to transform these reams of drawings into finished paintings and expected to be kept on the national payroll as he completed the proposed canvases. But he was discharged in 1919 immediately after the war and had to return to commercial work to support himself and his family. It was a bitter disappointment.

His drawings still exist, many at the Smithsonian, and display an emotional power that still can overwhelm the viewer, even today Settling back into the illustrative grind was simply not as satisfying as it had been before his war experiences. He moved to Tenefly, New Jersey, in 1919 and built a large studio adjacent to his new home. More and more he felt the need to create lasting art, in addition to illustration. He was commissioned to paint five mural-like panels for the 100th anniversary of a New York department store in 1925, but this failed to supply him with the fulfillment he sought.

In 1928 a venue opened up for Dunn to complete several of his proposed war canvases. The American Legion Monthly magazine began to feature his paintings as covers and Dunn's vision of the war was recorded for posterity. There were still two other goals yet to be reached: teaching and capturing the beauty of his native Dakotan prairie. The Legion magazine covers allowed him a venue for the latter and teaching was never far from his thoughts. Pyle's legacy would never find a more ardent supporter or capable disciple.

(bpib.com)

Mine

Aetna Life Insurance Company ad illustration, 1930

From kevinalfredstrom.com

From 1926 to 1942 he taught at the Grand Central School of Art, which held classes on the top floor of the actual terminal building. Students rode a special elevator located on track 23 to the sky-lighted 7th floor. The Grand Central Terminal was the heart of America's modern streamlined industrial commerce. This setting inspired Dunn's students to consider the power of their own commercial work to elevate mass media to a higher level of art, by generously filling their work with the power of their unique inner spirit. Among his many pupils were pulp artists Lyman Anderson, Ernest Chiriacka, John Clymer, Dean Cornwell, Curtis Delano, Don Hewitt, Norman Saunders, Amos Sewell, Gloria Stoll, and Herbert Morton Stoops.

Dunn believed the purpose of illustration was to set the stage for the reader's imagination. He would often select a scene that was not described in detail in the text, in order to concentrate on depicting the mood of the story instead of the details. Dunn's approach to painting was to first establish the darker tones that provide base color values and contrasts and then build up to the light tones. Figures started with the heads, and the heads had to remain the most interesting elements in the final painting.

After WW2, Dunn only taught occasional seminars. He was the President of the Society of Illustrators, and he used that platform to vigorously attack changes in the publishing industry that threatened to destroy the noble humanist traditons of illustration art. Dunn could see that the need of corporate mass marketing to control a unified media message would soon destroy the classic era of freelance illustration by stifling the voice of the artist's individual creativity. Up until then magazines had used art editors to make curatorial selections from trusted artists, but that cordial relationship ended when art editors were replaced by art directors, or as Dunn called them, "art dictators!," whose prescribed assignments were best fabricated by anonymous graphic studios. "If I can't sign my own name on a painting, why would I bother to paint it! I'd rather quit the business and paint landscapes. If you ever amount to anything at all, it will be because you are true to that deep desire or ideal which made you seek artistic expression." — Harvey Dunn He died of cancer at age 68 on October 29, 1952.

(David Saunders 2009 at pulpartists.com)

Harvey Dunn'S Prairie Works

From cityofbrookings.org

The Prairie Is My Garden

South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings

From venturegalleries.com

The South Dakota Art Museum maintains a large, comprehensive collection of work by South Dakota artists. A substantial collection of works by Harvey Dunn—one of South Dakota’s favorite artists and a former SDSU student—is housed permanently in the South Dakota Art Museum.

(cityofbrookings.org)

Visitors think it's their aunt or grandmother who is gathering wildflowers in The Prairie is My Garden (above), but no one knows the identities of the people in Harvey Dunn’s masterpiece. “We have lots of claims from people who know who it is,” says Lynn Verschoor, director of the South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings, where The Prairie is My Garden hangs. “But he (Dunn) was an illustrator. He drew people all the time, with just generic faces.”

In fact, very little is known about Dunn’s most recognized Dakota landscape. Records are complete enough to show that Edgar Soreng, a member of South Dakota State College’s class of 1908 and a friend of Dunn’s, donated the work sometime between 1950 and 1970. The scene is likely a combination of Dunn’s memories growing up at Manchester in Kingsbury County and later summertime visits home, when he spent countless hours behind the wheel of his car sketching prairie vistas.

(southdakotamagazine.com)

Jedediah Smith in the Badlands

From thedahl.org

The Prairie Trail

From sdstate.edu

Harvey Dunn’s paintings of pioneer life on the South Dakota prairie have come to symbolize the state's early history. Even though Dunn died more than 60 years ago, he's still one of the region's most famous artists. He is an inspiration to local artists and warms the heart of many enthusiastic admirers. Dunn traveled extensively but he always seemed to come back to the inspiration of his beloved home state, South Dakota.

He painted with bold strokes of windswept color, depicting the strength and hardships of pioneer life. As a war artist for World War 1 he shared his observations, the ruins of armed combat while documenting the history of battles. Illustrating books and magazines he sold smiles and ideas with story telling pictures. Teaching, he spoke about spirit and emotions more than technique with his students.

Harvey Dunn paintings are full of life, energy and emotion. His impressionistic painting style is reminiscent of Norman Rockwell, but perhaps with a more documentary note. Bright blues, crisp yellows and warm browns draw you into each painting to reveal their own story of the past. Dunn was known to “attack the canvas” with a brush, moving energy from artist and idea into each painting. The power of his convictions is evident in the moving brush strokes, impasto style layers of paint and composition of color. Foggy climates in blue grey give way to the mangled limbs of war soldiers, wind blown skirts and prairie grass blaze under a golden Dakota sun; wind, light and atmosphere are as real as if you had stepped inside the mind of Mr. Dunn.

(DAHL ARTS CENTER at thedahl.org)

Dunn created vibrant, energetic canvases that sing with drama, emotion, adventure and excitement. Even though many of his paintings were printed as black and white illustrations, he painted them in strikingly rich color, perhaps partly to please himself and partly to honor the extremely high standards of his mentor. His illustrations appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s Weekly, Harper’s Magazine and Scribner’s as well as in numerous books. He emphasized the emotion and feeling of the image, taking Pyle’s advice to project oneself into the scene being painted, and he became a master of dramatic composition.

(Charley Parker at linesandcolors.com)

WHERE DO WE COME FROM? WHAT ARE WE? WHERE ARE WE GOING

2012-01-15T22:28:00.000+08:00

Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

From shafe.co.uk

In April 1897 Paul Gauguin had already been back in Tahiti for two years. His health was poor and he rarely worked outside in the lush natural world or by the ocean. He spent much more time in his studio. That month he received the news from his wife Mette that his daughter Aline, at the age of only twenty, had died in Copenhagen in January from complications due to pneumonia. Gauguin was utterly distraught at this news and in the following months he gradually resolved to take his own life. Illness and distance from home were an unbearable weight. But before leaving the world he wished to paint his masterpiece, one last great work summing up the meaning of his journey in the world and among the lights of painting. So he ordered fresh paints and lots of brushes, some very large, from Paris. On Tahiti he had an enormous canvas made, almost four meters long and one and a half meters high. Having been admitted to the French Hospital with heart problems on the second day of December 1897, he immediately walked out again and set to work on an epoch-making painting, one of the most celebrated works in the whole of the history of art. By the end of December the painting was finished, and the day before old year's night he climbed up into the mountains with a jar of arsenic, bent on suicide. But he swallowed so much all at once that he immediately vomited the poison. Prey to convulsions and in terrible pain, he lay on the mountain for a whole day until he eventually managed to stagger back down to the village for help. What survives from this whole experience is the celebrated painting Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?.(lineadombra.it)

Gauguin inscribed the original French title in the upper left corner: D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous. The inscription the artist wrote on his canvas has no question mark, no dash, and all words are capitalized. In the upper right corner he signed and dated the painting: P. Gauguin / 1897. The painting was created in Tahiti, and is in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.Gauguin—after vowing that he would commit suicide following this painting's completion, something he had previously attempted—indicated that the painting should be read from right to left, with the three major figure groups illustrating the questions posed in the title. The three women with a child represent the beginning of life; the middle group symbolizes the daily existence of young adulthood; and in the final group, according to the artist, "an old woman approaching death appears reconciled and resigned to her thoughts"; at her feet, "a strange white bird...represents the futility of words." The blue idol in the background apparently represents what Gauguin described as "the Beyond." Of its entirety he said, "I believe that this canvas not only surpasses all my preceding ones, but that I shall never do anything better—or even like it."The painting is an accentuation of Gauguin's trailblazing post-impressionistic style; his art stressed the vivid use of colors and thick brushstrokes, tenets of the impressionists, while it aimed to convey an emotional or expressionistic strength. It emerged in conjunction with other avant-garde movements of the twentieth century, including cubism and fauvism.

(WIKIPEDIA)

Like Van Gogh, Gauguin thought and wrote about his work at length. A collection of his writing is contained in The Writings of a Savage. His concern with philosophical questions can be judged from the following extract:Given this ever present riddle: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? What is our ideal, natural, rational destiny? And under what conditions can it be accomplished? or what is the law, what are the rules for accomplishing it in its individual and humanitarian meaning? We do not know whether Gauguin ever found a satisfactory answer, but we must look at his paintings for illumination of these questions.

(escapeintolife.com)

To look for allegorical meanings in Gauguin’s greatest work appears to be an invitation to embark on a fool’s errand. Gauguin’s implication that his title was a mere afterthought is somewhat hard to swallow in the light of events leading up to and immediately following the execution of the painting. Knowing noting of its genesis, or even of its content, we can still admire the organization of color, line and pattern in ”Where Do We Come From?” and still marvel at its glowing topical light. Still, a nagging question remains which is what exactly are is the viewer looking at? That question is best answered through some biographical data on Gauguin to know where Gauguin came from. What was he? And Where was he going?By the time Gauguin decided, belatedly, and irrevocably, to devote his life to art, the most controversial innovation in the history of painting, impressionism, had won a measure of acceptance. The disturbance that it once caused now seems altogether disproportionate to the small measure of radicalism the style really embodied. The much misunderstood aim of impressionism was the achievement of a more credible realism, and the adherents of the style were more concerned with evolution than revolution.Gauguin’s contemporaries found his colors bizarre, his drawings crude, and his forms flat an unconvincing. They were not yet able to concede that paintings could exist on their own terms, independent of both external reality and established conventions. However, no such hesitation impeded public acceptance of the content of Gauguin’s pictures, which were taken to be literal illustrations of Tahitian life and mythology. Posterity has chosen to see the particualr in the universal and to cast its image of Tahiti in Gauguin’s mold.Since Gauguin’s death in 1903, much has been learned about the indigenous arts of the South Pacific that was not known in his time. The enormous idols dominating ”The Feast of Hina” and ”Where Do We Come From”, were the products of Gauguin’s fanciful approach to the Tahitian scene and its mythology, and that effigies in other paintings had no real counterparts in tahitian sculpture but were derivations and composites of Indian, Javan, and ancient Egyptian religious art. Still, the notion endured that the remainder of Gauguin’s Tahiti, the idyllic settings peopled by childlike, unspoiled beings, may be taken as a literal transcript of what the artist found in the colony.

(NONE OF THE ABOVE Posted on March 2, 2010 by Dave at madamepickwickartblog.com)

Paul Gaugin and Piano

From booksplendour.com.au

Paul Gaugin

From booksplendour.com.au

The life of Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), who abandoned his wife, five children, and a successful career as a stockbroker to paint in poverty in exotic Tahiti, is one of the legendary tales of the art world. Today he is recognized as a highly influential founding father of modern art, who emphasized the use of flat planes and bright, no naturalistic color in conjunction with symbolic or primitive subjects. In brilliantly lucid discussions of life and art Gauguin paints a triumphant self-portrait of a volcanic artist and the tormented man within.(The Writings Of A Savage (Paperback) book description at amazon.com)Why did Gauguin make his way towards the tropical island of Tahiti? The artist, Gauguin, continued his search for the essentials of humanity whilst being torn apart by the extremities between civilized and savage, sacred and profane, life and death, man and woman, spiritual and materialistic. He turned his back on the highly developed western civilization of the end of the 19th century and made his way alone to the solitary island of Tahiti in the South Seas. It can be said that his tumultuous life is typical of the lonely wandering artist who sacrificed his life for art.Awakened by his inner "wildness", Gauguin searched for the "paradise" which would nurture his nascent singular imagination. His search led him to Brittany with its strong tradition of Celtic culture, Martinique with its sparkling tropical nature, Arles, in the South of France, which provided the stage for his legendary collaborative work with Van Gogh, and his two journeys to Tahiti. In this way, Gauguin continued to travel with no ending in sight. During this process, he arrived at the fundamental subject matter of human life and death, civilized and savage. The aim of Gauguin's paintings was to express through the language of form, the deep emotions and contemplations of human existence.His great masterpiece which was painted in Tahiti, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897-98), represents the consolidation of what he was attempting to achieve through his art. Along with the enigmatic title, this work represents his spiritual testament which he left behind for future generations.

( About the Exhibition, THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, TOKYO at momat.go.jp)

WILLIE GILLIS

2012-01-03T00:51:00.000+08:00

Willie Gillis Generations

From my-mags.com

Norman Rockwell painted 332 magazine covers for the Saturday Evening Post, and never repeated a character. That is, until “Willie Gillis.”
From 1941 to 1946, Mr. Rockwell featured Willie eleven times. He took Willie from a boy to a man. The pilot for the series has taken the paintings and chronologically linked them together to tell the epic of Willie Gillis. Each of the paintings becomes the closeout still-frame of this most incredible portrait of Americana. (RUSS WEATHERFORD at russweatherford.com)

New Year's Eve

From wikipaintings.org

Willie Gillis, Jr. (more commonly simply Willie Gillis) is a fictional character created by Norman Rockwell for a series of World War II paintings that appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post (henceforth Post).
A fictional private, he appeared on a total of eleven Post covers. Gillis was a fictional everyman whose career was tracked on the cover of the Post from induction through discharge without being depicted in battle. Gillis and his fictional girlfriend were artistic depictions of some of Rockwell's real-life acquaintances who served as his models. Although Gillis was not exclusively used on Post covers, the Willie Gillis series of covers was a hallmark of Rockwell's wartime work. In Rockwell's prime and at the peak of its popularity, The Post had a subscribership of 4 million, and many of these subscribers believed Gillis was a real person.
(WIKIPEDIA)
A fictious name taken from his wife's, Willie Gillis narrated the story of a all-American innocent young boy going to war. The intent was to infuse a sense of duty, patriotism and optimism to a whole generation of young Americans embarking for war (similar to the 1917 illustration for Life magazine, "Polley Voos Fransay). It was a successful idea and the illustrations became very popular.Robert Otis "Bob" Buck, a boy from where he lived in West Arlington and who was exempt from the draft, was the model for his illustrations initially. When he also managed to be enrolled by the Navy, Rockwell used photos of him.
(non-solo-arte.com)

Willie Gillis’ Package from Home

From my-mags.com

The very first image "Willie Gillis Food Package" showed him holding a care package labeled 'Food.' He is looking hesitantly over his shoulder, while a dozen high ranked officers are starring at the package with anticipation.

(EzineArticles.com)

Willie Gillis USO
from antarasdiary.com

A popular cover from the series "Willie Gillis USO" shows a very amused Willie being served donuts and cookies by two young dutiful USO workers.

(EzineArticles.com)

Double Trouble for Willie Gillis
From my-mags.com

Two lovely ladies are at their mailboxes, but the situation isn’t pretty. Seems both have been communicating with the same soldier, Willie Gillis. Not the first time we find Willie in hot water.(saturdayeveningpost.com)

Willie Gillis in the Convoy

From prints.encore-editions.com

Rockwell had a flair for storytelling on canvas and liked to paint the softer side of life. His unique, yet a simple portrayal of innocent "Willie Gillis" reacting to everyday scenarios, won the affection of the American public. Many Americans thought Willie was a real person and were always curious to know more about his life. Norman made one painting of "Willie Gillis," which was not meant for cover. It was called "Willie Gillis in the Convoy." It depicted him in the back of a military truck with a rifle in his hand. Rockwell donated this painting to the Gardner High School.

(EzineArticles.com)

Willie Gillis Home on Leave

From my-mags.com

His model, Robert Otis Buck
From saturdayeveningpost.com

The name may not be familiar to you, but the face should be. Norman Rockwell chose it for his Willie Gillis series, which portrayed events from the life of a young American GI.Willie first appeared on the cover of the Post on October 4, 1941. When he next appeared, a year later, the editors ran this short item:There have been so many questions about the first Willie Gillis cover by Norman Rockwell that we’re glad to supply a few answers. No, Willie is not a soldier. He works in a sawmill near Mr. Rockwell’s Vermont home. And that was all they said about Mr. Buck.

Over the next two years, Willie Gillis had adorned the Post cover eight times and had become a celebrity. Like Rosie the Riveter and the Americans shown in the Four Freedoms, he had become a symbol of the American war effort. He had become so popular, the Post finally divulged the model’s identity.“Willie in real life is Robert Otis Buck, known to his friends as “Little Buck.” Norman Rockwell, seeking a model for his Willie Gillis Post covers, spotted Little Buck in the summer of 1941 at a square dance at Arlington, Vermont, where the Rockwells live.“Norman stared at the boy so long,” Mrs. Rockwell said afterward, “that Buck was ready to take a poke at him until Norman finally explained that he wanted him for a model.”The following June Little Buck was graduated from Salem Washington Academy, Salem, New York, and went to work for General Electric at Pittsfield, Mass. Mr. Rockwell made a number of sketches of Little Buck for future Willie Gillis covers.”

Rockwell liked Buck’s looks. He wasn’t glamorous. He didn’t exude bravery and nobility. To Rockwell, the character of Willie Gillis was “an inoffensive, ordinary little guy thrown into the chaos of war.” He would look decent and unsophisticated, but ready to adapt to life in the Army.Rockwell also liked the fact that Buck had a medical deferment, which kept him out of the draft, so his model would be available for posing throughout the war. But by 1943, Robert Buck was tired of sitting out the war.“The trouble with the country and the world, too, is that nothing stays put. Not even Pvt. Willie Gillis.We hope your illusions are good sturdy fellows, able to take it on the chin when we report, as we feel bound to do, that Gillis is leading a double life—has been since May, when he joined the Navy.

On May fourteenth, Buck entered the Navy as apprentice seaman at the Naval Training Station at Sampson, New York. The following day the Rockwell studio at Arlington burned and all (of Rockwell’s sketches of Buck) were destroyed. The Navy, with the generous realization that life must go on for Pvt. Willie Gillis, lent him back to Mr. Rockwell long enough for the artist to make new sketches.Little Buck, who, the Rockwells agree, is a swell youngster, hopes to become a Naval flying cadet at the end of eight months’ training.He himself sees no impropriety in his up and joining the Navy after becoming, as Willie Gillis in Army togs, America’s No. 1 pin-up boy. As for his reason, it was simple. ” I just liked the Navy better,” he said.Well, it’s Willie Gillis’, excuse us—Little Buck’s, young life to lead and to offer to whatever branch of the service he prefers. We’ve always rooted for the Annapolis football team ourselves. But all the same, Willie’s turning up in the Navy does underline the instability these days of all so-called established things.”

(Thanks, Robert Buck. Goodbye, Willie Gillis by Jeff Nilsson at saturdayeveningpost.com)

Wiilie Gillis at college

From my-mags.com

In all, Buck/Gillis appeared on 11 Post covers. The last one showed him as a young man, discharged from the Army, studying at college. The American soldier was now the American scholar, one of 7.8 million Americans taking advantage of the G.I. Bill.It was as happy an ending as Rockwell could have painted for the war. He gave the original painting to Buck, who never parted with it.

(Thanks, Robert Buck. Goodbye, Willie Gillis by Jeff Nilsson at saturdayeveningpost.com)

Wiilie Gillis at college

From my-mags.com

The illustration "Willie Gillis in College" gave the series a kind of happy conclusion. It showed the post war Gillis dressed in smart casual clothes smoking a pipe and sprawled next to a window reading a book. His expression is relaxed and he seemed happy in that pleasant environment.(EzineArticles.com)

Willie Gillis of World War II,

Portrayed by Norman Rockwell as

American GI, true blue,

One of all America has,

For freedom, fighting the good fight,

Then coming home safe to fulfill

A future, promising and bright,

To college on the GI bill.

In wars today, no Willie’s shown,

The sight and sound bytes give no face.

Coverage keeps a high tech tone

To keep up with war’s modern pace.

Yet, the American GI

Fights for freedom for you and I.

(Posted by Ima Ryma, May 30, 2011 at saturdayeveningpost.com)

MIGRANT MOTHER

2011-12-05T22:09:00.001+08:00

Migrant Mother

From shorpy.com

The Library of Congress caption for the above photograph reads: "Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California."

As era-defining photographs go, “Migrant Mother” pretty much takes the cake. For many, Florence Owens Thompson is the face of the Great Depression, thanks to legendary educated and apprenticed photojournalist Dorothea Lange. Lange captured the image while visiting a dusty California pea-pickers’ camp in February 1936, and in doing so, captured the resilience of a proud nation facing desperate times. Unbelievably, Thompson’s story is as compelling as her portrait. Just 32 years old when Lange approached her (”as if drawn by a magnet,” Lange said). Thompson was a mother of seven who’d lost her husband, Cleo, to tuberculosis. Stranded at a migratory labor farm in Nipomo, Calif. her family sustained themselves on birds killed by her kids and vegetables taken from a nearby field – as meager a living as any earned by the other 2,500 workers there. The photo’s impact was staggering. Reproduced in newspapers everywhere, Thompson’s haunted face triggered an immediate public outcry, quickly prompting politicos from the federal Resettlement Administration to send food and supplies. Sadly, however, Thompson and her family had already moved on, receiving nary a wedge of government cheese for their high-profile misery. In fact, no one knew the identity of the photographed woman until Thompson revealed herself years later in a 1976 newspaper article.

(Blog Penting Dede Wijaya at dedewijaya.wordpress.com)

Excerpts from Dust Bowl Descent Interviews: Migrant Mother – Florence Thompson at livinghistoryfarm.org:

"I left Oklahoma in 1925 and went to Oroville (California). That's where them three girls' dad (Cleo) died, in Oroville, 1931. And I was 28 years old (in 1931), and I had five kids and that one (the baby in this photo, Norma) was on the road. She never even saw her daddy. She was born after he died. It was very hard. And cheap. I picked cotton in Firebaugh, when that girl there was about two years old, I picked cotton in Firebaugh for 50-cents a hundred." Question: "A 'hundred' (meaning) weight?" "A hundred pounds." Question: "How much could you pick in a day, then?" "I generally picked around 450, 500. I didn't even weigh a hundred pounds. I lived down there in Shafter, and I'd leave home before daylight and come in after dark. We just existed! Anyway, we lived. We survived, let's put it that way. I walked from what they called a Hoover camp ground right there at the bridge (in Bakersfield), I walked from there to way down on First Street, and worked at a penny a dish down there for 50-cents a day and the leftovers. Yeah, they give me what was leftover to take home with me. Sometimes, I'd carry home two water buckets full. "Well, (in 1936) we started from L.A. to Watsonville. And the timing chain broke on my car. And I had a guy to pull into this pea camp in Nipomo. I started to cook dinner for my kids, and all the little kids around the camp came in. 'Can I have a bite? Can I have a bite?' And they were hungry, them people was. And I got my car fixed, and I was just getting ready to pull out when she (Dorothea Lange) come back and snapped my picture. "I come to this town (Modesto) in 1945. I transferred from Whittier State to Modesto. And when this hospital opened up out here, I went to work there. And the first eight years I lived in this town, I worked 16 hours out of 24. Eight-and-a-half years, seven days a week." Question: "Are you comfortable now?" "Yeah."

Migrant Mother

From picture-america.com

The above photograph is a little different from the original photograph due to the addition of color courtesy of the creators of picture-america.com. Look at the woman's face, you can tell that this woman has been through hard times.

(picture-america.com)

This is an excerpt from a February 1960 article from Popular Photography, in which Lange gives her account of the experience:

‘I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.’

(Annie explores the Arts at aeroland.wordpress.com)

Migrant Mother

Library of Congress Prints and Photo Div

Washington, DC

From livinginstereo.com

Migrant Mother

Library of Congress Prints and Photo Div

Washington, DC

From livinginstereo.com

Migrant Mother

Library of Congress Prints and Photo Div

Washington, DC

From livinginstereo.com

Migrant Mother

Library of Congress Prints and Photo Div

Washington, DC

From livinginstereo.com

Migrant Mother

Library of Congress Prints and Photo Div

Washington, DC

From livinginstereo.com

The photo that Lange made of Florence Thompson’s haunted face, wearing a cloak of weariness and worry that offered no more protection from the camera lens than from the elements, staring with dignity while cuddling children who averted their faces, was entitled “Migrant Mother.” Sometimes referred to as “The Madonna of the Depression,” it became one of the most powerful and painful images of its era. As the epitome of Dorothea Lange’s penetrating, humane style, “Migrant Mother” was by far her most famous photo. Yet it tells us nothing like the “truth” of Florence Thompson’s life. In the other shots from the series Lange took that night, we see the environment in which it was taken: the pure squalor and filth of the camp, the full shabbiness of the lean-to tent, the utter lack of anything as tidy and green as the camp depicted in John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath. That doesn’t mean that Lange’s camera lied. She saw (or used) what was needed to make plain the dignity of the ravaged, not the fact of their misery. It’s only today, when the reroutings of American streets and highways have made the poor and their pain invisible to us that the mere facts of the matter have become crucial. The real point is that we know almost nothing about how Florence Thompson felt that evening, or in the months and years afterwards when her face became famous.

(LIVING IN STEREO at livinginstereo.com)

Other Dust Bowl Descent Interviews:

Excerpts from Dust Bowl Descent Interviews: Darrel Coble and Lois Houleat livinghistoryfarm.org:

(Darrel Coble:) "The wind and the dust just blew every day. The one that I remember come in here from the north that evening. Dad was in the field, and I don't know why as dry as it was. This thing (dust storm) rolled in there, and he got caught on the tractor. And he started for the house, but he couldn't see the house. But we had an old chickenhouse just out east of the house. And the back wheel just clipped the corner of that chickenhouse, and he knew where he was at then. And he just stopped there and got in the chickenhouse and spent the night in the chickenhouse. (Laughter.) Of course, we had kerosene lamps and everything. It got so dark you couldn't even see without – Kerosene lamps didn't make no light so you could see by.... "Ah, it kind of scared me, best I can recall (laughs). I thought maybe the world was coming to an end, I didn't know (laughs)... "Last spring we had some pretty bad days. They weren't the old black dusters, but I mean, there was plenty of dust in the air…

(Question:) "Do you like living in this country?"

"You bet."

(Question:) "How come?"

"It's just home. Dad always says, 'Anybody ever come out here and wear out two pairs of shoes here, they'd never leave.' I've known some that did do it in later years."

(Question:) "Tell me about what was it like in Colorado?"

(Lois Houle:) "It was terrible. (Laughs.) We had dust storms and droughts. We survived back there as long as we possibly could. I can remember one dust storm back there. We were coming from my grandparents' in Straton. And as we got closer to home, you could see this big gray matter up in the air. And the minute we got home, we had a storm cellar built with things to eat and everything else in it. We were all taken to the storm cellar right away, and they went in and closed the house all up good. And we stayed down there until the storm was over. It just came to the point where we couldn't live any more back there. And we had relatives out here already."

(Question:) "Did they write back or anything?"

"Oh, yes! Oh, yeah! Everything was 'beautiful' out here. (Laughs.) This was the land of milk and honey out here."

Excerpts from Dust Bowl Descent Interviews: Nettie Featherston, "If You Die" at livinghistoryfarm.org:

"Oh, it was terrible. And when you didn't have hardly nothing to eat, and your kids would cry for something to eat and you couldn't give it. We were living in a little old two-room house. And we cooked with blackeyed peas until I never wanted to ever see another blackeyed pea. I just prayed and prayed and prayed all the time that God would take care of us and not let my children starve… "I must have said, 'Well, if we're dead, we're just dead.' That's all I can remember because I don't remember talking to her (the photographer Dorothea Lange'... "I never once thought about living this long (81 years in 1979). Well, I just didn't think we'd survive. You want to know something we're not living much better than we did, as high as everything is, than we did then… "Seems like I'm not satisfied. I have too much on my mind. It seems like I have more temptations put on me than anyone. That's the way we'd be tried out. And every time I ask God to remove this awful burden off of my heart, he does." Excerpts from Dust Bowl Descent Interviews: Lois Houle on Relief and Flour Sacks at livinghistoryfarm.org: "When we first moved out here (to Washington State from Colorado) my Dad had rheumatism real bad – in fact, he almost died – and we had to go on "relief" (local welfare programs) what they called it then. We got some food from them, and we got sometimes clothes. And then, my mother and them would make clothes out of flour sacks. And things (the sacks) that they gave us were all printed. Of course, we used those for dresses and underpants and everything we could possible use them for."

(Question:) "Flour sacks for underpants!?"

"Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You utilized everything then. This was a case of 'Have to.'"

Excerpts from Dust Bowl Descent Interviews: Vernon Evans – Oregon or Bust at livinghistoryfarm.org:

"Well, we were all without jobs here. And the jobs were so few and far between at the time we left that you couldn't even buy a job. We decided we had friends that we knew out in Oregon, and we decided we were going to go out there and see if we could find some work. We had $54 between the five of us when we started out from here to go to Oregon. And when we got to Oregon, I think we had about $16 left. We had absolutely no idea what we wre going to do. "We all got in an old Model-T and started for Oregon. We started out, and, I don't know, we got out six miles and broke the crankshaft. This old rancher, he had some old Model-T motors laying around. He said we were welcome to a crankshaft if we wanted one. So, we went back and proceeded to tear the motor out of the old Model-T and put the crankshaft in. And that night we made Baker (laughs) which is a matter of 24 miles from the night before. "Well, then we had pretty good luck all the rest of the way. But we got around Missoula, (Montana) and we were having a good time. See somebody along the road or something. And here was this car sitting alongside the road, and a guy sleeping in it. So, we honked and hollared at him, having a good time. Pretty soon, this car was after us. We'd heard they were sending them back (police sending migrants back at state borders), wasn't letting 'em go on through. So, we thought, 'Well, here's where we go back home.' He motioned for us to pull over to the side of the road. Anyhow, he come up and introduced himself (as Arthur Rothstein) and said he was with the Resettlement Administration (the precursor of the FSA) and asked us questions about the conditons here and one thing or another. Where we were headed for. This 'Oregon or Bust' on the back end was what took his eye. Then, he asked us if we cared if he took some pictures of us. Oh, we said, 'I guess not.' I think he took eight different poses. And then after we were out there (in Oregon) I guess probably it was that fall or winter, why these pictures started showing up in the different magazines and papers. Anyhow, we got out there and I went to work on the railroad. "In the winter of '45, my father passed away. And then I quit working on the railroad to get ready to come come back here. And been here ever since. (Laughs.) Oh, we've had our ups and downs. I think I've been hailed out probably five, six times, and dried out three, four years. And one year we rusted out (from a plant disease called 'rust')."

Excerpts from Dust Bowl Descent Interviews: Walter Ballard on Riding the Rails at livinghistoryfarm.org:

Question: "What was it like riding the rails?"

"I loved it. And I tell you, you don't recommend that to any young kid because it'll get in your blood. You're not agoing anywhere. You don't care. You just ride. And I wasn't married. I didn't care. It'll sure get in your blood because you don't have no worries about how you're going to get around. It's paid for. You're going to eat (in the hobo 'jungles'). That was more than you were doing at home, probably. "Now we'd stop. I never mooched (begged) a meal in my life on that. Never did. We'd stop and work in town anywhere we could get a job. Well, we'd work and get our money and catch that freight on again. Yeah, it'll get in your blood. I still like it. That old whistle will take off there. "I've been hijacked in the yards by the railroad bulls (guards), and, boy, they'd get rough with you, too. Me and my brother-in-law, we were going down through the yards, the railroad yards. Well, everybody catching the train, why, they'd be down in there prowling around. Well, this old boy – he was one of them wops, too, big guard, mean as he could be – he stepped out between the cars, and he said, 'Where you guys going?' "'Oh, we were going up to North Dakota for the harvest.' "He said, 'You just came from that away, didn't you?' "'No, we're from Texas.' "'Well, just get your hands up!' Boy, I'll tell you! He said, 'Now, you see that elevator down yonder?' "'Yeah.' "'You get your so-and-so down there, and you catch this train whenever it gets down there.' "Why, that train would be making 50 mile an hour when it got down there. (Laughs.) So, we seen the guard go away. We run back up and caught it in the yard and left out. He knew we couldn't catch that train agoing that fast. But he meant it. He meant stay out of that yard. And then, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, one time, they run us all out. They were on horses. Boy, them pistols were shooting around there. Now, I'll say this much – "

Question: "Were they shooting at you?"

"Nah, I don't think they ever did shoot at us. I think they were shooting straight up. But, me and my brother-in-law, we just got over behind the railroad track in the weeds and hid there. When the train started up, we just went up and caught it and took it along. I never have thought they were shooting at anybody. They just – See, there was so many (hobos). They just couldn't let you congregate in one town. "So, we'd been working in the laboratory there in Chadron, Nebraska. We seen a freight asitting over there, and there were so many people on it it looked like blackbirds all over it. We were scared to death to ride one, afraid we'd get throwed off or beat up. And believe it or not, when we got ready to go, that old brakeman hollered, 'All aboard!' (Laughs.) 'All aboard.' Just like it was a passenger train. Well, then we felt at ease."

Excerpts from Dust Bowl Descent Interviews: Walter Ballard on Being "Tractored Out" at livinghistoryfarm.org:

Now, that's where you got started at when they run the renters off. We were helping them. I was working for a renter. Now the fellow I worked for, Frank Heine, is dead. He knows about him. He had half of that country out there. He'd have, oh maybe on a half section of land, there'd be two or three houses, you know, of me and him and you. Families living in them making a decent living working for him. Well, he seen he could buy tractors up, and (he said) 'You get off! I don't need you no more. I don't need you no more.' "The fellow I worked for, he bought four new tractors at one time and three combines, see. Case tractors and combines. Well, you take a four-up team of mules – well, one tractor can do as much in a day as one team could do in a week and not be as expensive. Gas then, you know – You may not believe it, but he knows, we bought gas right here in Goodlett for nine- and ten-cents a gallon. They seen they could make so much more money by farming all of their land and running the little farmer off." Excerpts from Dust Bowl Descent Interviews: Fritz Fredrick – Growing Wheat at livinghistoryfarm.org: "This picture here was taken in 1936, and this was practically the only wheat field that I know of that was harvested (in the county). I just picked it up – The wheat was there, and I used that for just chicken feed. It was so dry that the ground started to blow, and it go real fine that it would extend over. And more land would blow."

(Question:) "Do you remember how much you paid for that combine?"

"Yes, it was about $1,785. Oh, they're around from, I imagine, $12,000 to $25,000 now (in 1979) for these combines. The prices are not in line, that's all I can see. That's the big trouble now."

Excerpts from Dust Bowl Descent Interviews: Madge May on the FSA at livinghistoryfarm.org:

"The first photograph? I don't exactly remember the actual occassion, but I do remember doing that same job many, many times. We used to raise a lot of them (chickens), and I used to clean a lot of them. And we took them in to town to – cleaned and took them in to town for people to use as fryers, you know." Question: "How would you clean a chicken?" "Well, first you have to cut their heads off. Pluck them good. Then, we used to always have to singe them to finish getting them clean and then wash them." Question: "The photograph identifies you as borrowers from the Farm Security Administration. Do you remember that?" "Yes." Lynn May: "Definitely." Madge: "Well, I imagine probably we couldn't have even survived probably without them because we had to have – they gave us what financial background we had when we started. And they were helpful." Lynn: "I think probably that's where you got your start in bookkeeping." Madge: "Well, that could be. I don't know." Lynn: "We always had to keep books. She was good keeping books. And to this day, she still does that."

Question: "And what are you doing now?"

Madge: "I'm doing bookkeeping. Well, from the farm, we started a Purina Feed franchise here in town. We had that five years, and then decided that wasn't that prosperous and a lot of hard work, too. And so he then sold that and bought a propane gas delivery service. And I decided then to go to work in Lincoln, and I went to work at Hovland-Swanson's in 1953, in January of 1953. And I'm still there. Hovland-Swanson's is a specialty store in Lincoln, exclusive."

Excerpts from Dust Bowl Descent Interviews: Harvey Taft on Cooperative Farmsteads at livinghistoryfarm.org:

"That's this place right here. That's my wife. It was a wonderful experience. I wouldn't have wanted to miss it, nor I wouldn't have wanted to live it over. "That's the way I got my start. They picked my family as one of the 10 families (to live on the farmstead project). I could move here. This house was built new. It just had a house, and a garage and an outside toilet. We built the caves after we moved here. We still worked on relief (welfare) that first summer and tended our garden and dug our caves, and helped build them. We didn't raise anything to sell the first two years because it was kind of dry. And we didn't have any vegetables to sell to make a living. We stayed with that four years, and they kept moving families off. "After four years they leased us that farm and organized us into a co-op, a non-stock co-op. And them two new families (that they replaced) and me run that co-op – (we) farmed cooperatively – for four years. We started a holstein dairy herd, a hog project, raising hogs. And they sent me to another place where they were selling out. And with a supervisor, (I) bought tractors and machinery to farm this land. And we farmed this 517 acres of land at a nominal figure. The rented it to us, and it was a good deal. And I told my wife, I sez, 'That beats renting and getting moved off (the land.' "Then, the co-op blowed up after about three years. The men didn't co-op with me. They wouldn't help me when the hay needed put up. I blew up. I sez, 'I'm done with the co-op.' I got to where I could borrow money and I and my boy could start and rent a farm. "Some of the big shots came here and they said, 'You pick a farm out like you'd want it out of this land.' "And I did. I picked a 194 acre farm out of this. They sold it to me for a little less than $12,000, and it was good land. And we stayed. "In 14 years – that was during World War II – prices were good, and I had good crops. The first five or six years I had bumper crops. And I doubled and tripled my payments. In 14 years, I paid it out. "I sold out when I was 65, 14 years ago. I sold out to my son here and just reserved my home. Now, I got everything the way I wanted it when I got old, only that I'm left alone. (Harvey's wife died two years before this interview.) But, financially I don't have any worries. All my life I had to worry. I had debts and interest to pay. And I fought it for years."

Excerpts from Dust Bowl Descent Interviews: May Ross Lincoln on School Pie Suppers at livinghistoryfarm.org:

"It was a one-room school house, all eight grades." Question: "Just tell me about the pie supper." "Well, in the rural areas, (they were) for money making projects and social, too. It was chance for everybody in the school and the neighborhood to get together. Come about 7:00 (o'clock), all the women brought in their pies. And there were tables set up for the pies and cakes. The young men would get out – and boys – would play, like baseball, is what I recall, because it was in the spring. And the girls were over talking and chatting and giggling and laughing (laughs) and wondering who was going to buy their pie. "So then, I think they introduced me since I was the teacher. And I told them how much I enjoyed working with their children. And I was glad they came to the party, and I hoped they had a good time. "It was obvious that if there was a certain pie that a certain boy wanted to buy, well then the rest of the kids would bid it up. Some of them would go as high as $5 or $6. There was one couple – they didn't go to school, but they were engaged, I'd say they were in their 20s – so, they ran his pie up to about $10. And they made quite a bit of money that way. "And then after they'd sold all the pies, they had this contest of the 'Prettiest Girl.' So, I don't remember who nominated me, but I remember that after we were nominated well then they said, 'All the pretty girls stand up.' And then they started casting their votes to see who was the (prettiest). I have a vague recollection of winning. Well, I felt real pleased, and I felt like the community approved of me, because I really didn't think I was the prettiest. But I just thought that it was kind of an honor since I'd been teaching their children. And the children voted for me. So I thought well they like me and like the way I'd been teaching them. "I met a young man in college, and he was pre-med. We were married in 1941, and then that November (actually December 7) Pearl Harbor was attacked. And then they called him (drafted him). He became a private, a 'Pfc.' (Private First Class) He went down to Fort Sill for indoctrination, and came back. And he went to med school as a Pfc. "So, I was fulfilled as a housewife and mother."

Excerpts from Dust Bowl Descent Interviews: Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" at livinghistoryfarm.org:

"This Land is Your Land" is probably the best-known song written by Woody Guthrie. The song has become something of a patriotic anthem. But it's important to remember that Guthrie was a union organizer, and the song would have originally been performed in labor union halls and at rallies for migrant farm workers. In that context, the song is a radical call for the lower classes in American society to take back their country.

Here are the lyrics of this version, which was recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in March, 1940:

This land is your land

And this land is my land

From California
To the New York Island,
From the redwood forests
To the gulfstream waters,
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking
That ribbon of highway
I saw above me
That endless skyway,
Saw below me
That golden valley.
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and rambled
And I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of
Her diamond deserts.
All around me
A voice was sounding,
'This land was made for you and me.'

When the sun come shining
Then I was stolling
And the wheat fields waving
And the dust clouds rolling.
The voice was chanting
As the fog was lifting,
'This land was made for you and me.'
(Reprise first and last verses.)

As Lange told the story years later, the decision to stop at the pea picker’s camp was fortuitous. She was driving home after a month in the field when she happened upon a sign identifying the camp. She tried to ignore the sign and drive on, but after twenty miles she was compelled to return to the camp, “following instinct, not reason.” She shot six photographs in a very short period of time of the woman and members of her family, starting at a distance and working her way closer and closer after the fashion of a portrait photographer. Her photos first appeared in the San Francisco News on March 10, 1936, as part of a story demanding relief for the starving pea pickers. The feature was a success: relief was organized, and there is no record of death by starvation. This story of the photo’s origin and impact is, of course, a bit too good. Every icon acquires a standard narrative and often others as well. The standard narrative includes a myth of origin, a tale of public uptake or impact, and a quest for the actual people in the picture to provide closure for the larger social drama captured by the image. In this case, the photo’s origin is due to serendipity, not routine or craft. There is no mention of Lange’s government subsidy nor of the fact that the photo was retouched to remove the woman’s thumb in the lower right corner. Most tellingly, it slides over the fact that the iconic photo was not actually shown in the San Francisco News until the day following the original story. Iconic photos acquire mythic narratives: Lange becomes a poetic vehicle for the operation of historical forces; by mobilizing public opinion, the photographer provides the impetus to collective action. “The star illustration of moving somebody to do something is Migrant Mother".

(An excerpt from Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy, Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites at press.uchicago.edu)

HIS BARK IS WORSE THAN HIS BITE

2011-12-03T00:12:00.000+08:00

Have you ever met a person who behaves as if he is the greatest person on earth ever? Have you ever worked with a person who pretends that you are only an error-prone “mere mortal” whereas he is the most sublime creation of the divinity? Have you ever seen someone who never wants to move away from his own area of expertise & keeps perfecting those expertises secretly so that they can “perform” them in front of public?

If you have managed to experience at least one of the situations as mentioned above most likely you already had the opportunity of coming across an “Arrogant” person. In the entire discussion to follow our focus would be on the word “Arrogant”. This is important to discuss because generally arrogant people have a negative impact on the social fabric. We shall try to detect and understand arrogant people.

(oppapers.com)

More than likely, you have met people during your lifetime who possess an arrogant behavior. For some reason, these people tend to look down on others while putting themselves on a pedestal. Now, there is nothing wrong with having self-esteem and self-confidence but when those character traits cross the line to an unhealthy sense of self-worth, something is wrong. In fact, some people are so arrogant that they are cruel to other people and unfortunately, they do not care who gets in the way of them promoting self. Keep in mind that when talking about an arrogant behavior, this person constantly acts in an unhealthy way, meaning he or she is not just somewhat vain or conceited. You will actually find arrogant people make a lot of presumptions and claims, as well as bold statements about how important they are. In addition, when trying to point out something these people did wrong or even a character flaw, the immediate reaction is to become extremely defensive. After all, in those people’s minds, they are perfect so there is no way they would fail at something.

It is important to know that while arrogant behavior is unattractive, the reasons behind it are not always what you might think. The most common reasons that people act this way is because of power and wealth, beauty and youth, status and prestige, and intelligence and education. However, some people behave with arrogance out of fear, insecurity, unhappiness, doubt, past tragedies, etc. In these cases, the arrogance is a way of trying to feel better about one’s self but unfortunately, at the expense of others. However, we wanted to touch briefly on the more common reasons for arrogant behavior:

• Power and Wealth – When a person has power and wealth, an arrogant behavior is relatively common. Typically, this type of behavior is seen in people who come from an affluent or famous home, or someone from old money. In this case, there is a sense of entitlement. Now, arrogance can also breed from newfound power and wealth but often a person with a “rags to riches” story appreciates what they have gained and remembers where they came from so arrogance is not as much of an issue. A prime example is many young people in Hollywood who have come from well-known homes. Sadly, these people grow up feeling they have more and better things than anyone else does so it allows them to behave badly.

• Beauty and Youth – An arrogant behavior is also commonly associated with someone who has exceptional beauty and youth. Although there are millions of gorgeous, young people who appreciate what they have been blessed with, others take these qualities for granted. However, along with both beauty and youth fading over time, a car accident, house fire, or some other tragedy could take that away.

• Status and Prestige – In this case, holding a high position in a company, being a political leader, or living the movie star life can also lead to an arrogant behavior. While these people have worked hard to achieve their position in life, with all the benefits and monetary gain that comes from having status and prestige, arrogance is often the result.

• Intelligence and Education – If someone is naturally intelligent, or has achieved a higher level of understanding through years of education, an arrogant behavior is often the result. In this case, the person has allowed pride of know more create a sense of importance that is simply unhealthy. Education is always a good choice but after earning multiple Master’s degrees or PhD, this type of person should put the knowledge to good use rather than see themselves as being above others.

Sadly, people with an arrogant behavior have created an overinflated sense of pride, which results in ongoing boasting and the “know it all” attitude. Instead of this making that person more liked or respected, it turns other people off, causing them to lose interest. Because of this, it is also common for people who are highly arrogant to have few real friends and usually, those friends are also arrogant or they are only true friends to the person’s face. Arrogant behavior is not only unhealthy and unattractive but it can lead to a long life of loneliness.

(knowledgegalaxy.net)

Truly humble people are satisfied in the fact that they are not proud. Of course, many conceited people have a lot to be humble about people “control for input”. We all want feedback telling us we’re important and worthy. Large sums are spent to procure colossal-sized SUV’s and wardrobes lined with chic and swank labels. Laurence J. Peter saw two types of egotists: Those who admit it… and the rest of us.

(Robert Morton at examiner.com)

Those who are conceited or arrogant really have low self-esteem because they put a low value on others. If they think other people have a low value, they must also believe that they have a low value too - even if they do not realize it. Those who attempt to build themselves up by pushing other people down would only want to do that because of self-doubt. They do it to gain 'social proof' that they are more valuable or important and thus they do not take kindly to criticism. Yet if you know you already have a high value, then you do not need build yourself up and so will not feel the need to push others down. Criticism will not affect you because you know that it is only an opinion and does not affect the truth. Thus you are self-confident, self-assured and secure. You have self-respect because you respect others. You have high self-esteem.

(William P Webb at ezinearticles.com)

Egotists are essentially insecure people who are attempting to cover up their own suspicion that they are not quite as good as other people by pretending that they are more important. People with very high levels of self-esteem do not need to determine their self-worth by comparing themselves, either publicly or in their own minds, with others. An egotistical person's sense of self-worth is mostly determined by external conditions, circumstances or events. They promote themselves so that they can be convinced of their own value by the feedback they receive from peers, fans, voters, employees or even their own children. They often strive to be high achievers because they can then get the acclaim of others, in the hope that this acclaim will somehow prove their worth; though it seldom erases the suspicion that they are unworthy. It is not a bad thing to be egotistical; it is just sad.

(Leslie Fieger at ezinearticles.com)

There is nothing more arrogant, more self-boasting, and haughtier and more cock than a human being. Humans dress up make obeisance to one another and think they are very intelligent, very knowledgeable; everyone takes himself for Aristotle, for Julius Caesar and Einstein. No exception to the rule. There is nothing more presumptuous than man himself, thinking that he is the wisest of beings and looks at others as utter shit. Why the scoundrel bastard, he is the most ignorant of all creatures. He knows nothing, simply nothing. His knowledge can say where his atoms came from? Who put them together? And why should he be in his form and shape color and structure? Why should he function in one way and not the other? Where did the universe in which he lives in, comes from? Why should he be there like a lemon on a tree? The lemon has more functions and more advantages than man and his shitty race. The lemon stands there to serve and give life, while man wants to be served and takes life whenever it is possible.

Have a look at the Pharaohs, kings, Sultans, Emirs, presidents (such self-boasters and self-worshippers, empty of everything except shit, like, you name it and other big shits). Have a look at nation levels and states, ‘Deutchland uber al', Germany above all, with Hitler, have considered themselves over all humans; the Japanese did the same, the Italians did the same. In older times the British and the French did the same self-boasting cock. The Spaniards, Portuguese and Dutch before and then the Ottomans, then the Arabs, Persians and Romans, Jews, Assyrians, Babylonians, Sumerians, Hittites and the Pharaohs. Nowadays, ‘we are the best and better than everybody else', is practiced by many, and a little while before the Soviets, then the Chinese Giant of Gog and Magog shall take place of better race and better humans than the others, alongside the Hindus. Then, maybe it is the turn of the Africans or the South Americans. No one misses this chance of being better.

Man reaches the moon and discovers the DNA Charts but cannot even heal himself from a common cold. He has made so many discoveries but he is unable with all the progress of scientific knowledge to stop his ageing one day or to postpone his death one hour once he is gone. His mind is so limited and so weak that he cannot stay without sleep for few days. He cannot stay without drinking for more than four days, he dies, the poor guy. He is unable to create one simple tiny little and invisible atom, of any sort. He cannot bring back to life a dead fly or a dead worm. He cannot even create a leaf of a vine tree. His limited to what he is, to his body, to his psychological stimulus-response, to his mental incapacities and to his spiritual handicaps. No way he has accessibility to ultimate knowledge, his presence and the presence of everything around him. He does not understand it, the imbecile. He has no access to his origin, except for Darwin to explain for him his origin. Well, the beast is contended with this genius explanation. He denies God his creator for he does not see God and cannot prove His existence.

(articlesbase.com)

Look around you! and you see nothing but cocks, parrots and peacocks. From your neighbor to your green grocer, the café owner, the local policeman, the mayor, the governor, the president, a rich man, a poor man, a scientist, a teacher, a sudden or what have you, all are arrogant boasters. You feel you are in front of generals and world leaders listening to their wisdom and knowledge. Have you ever tried to scratch the surface and see whether you are scraping gold, silver or zinc! They are all gold; some are platinum, as they think themselves to be. Whoever you talk to he, or she, takes an arrogant air of one who knows everything and you are nothing but a cockroach. They even make you feel as such. You talk to the local green grocer about China economic policies, and he seems to know everything about it. He has all his theories and how the Gog and Magog are out to control the world in a very short time. But his knowledge of US dominance in the world is more astonishing for he vouched that every Muslim in the world ought to be eliminated for being a born terrorist. Well, the green grocer must have hated Ben Ladden for destroying the Twins of World Commercial Centre in New York and that every Muslim now is a confirmed terrorist. When asked about Obama, he retorted, it is great to see the white America being dominated by an African Muslim Negro. He even mentioned that petrol should not be in the hands of the Arabs for fear they would raise up the prices of petrol and his grocery van would suffer the consequences. Well, not bad for a green grocer!

But seriously, from the time of the Pharaoh Ramsis II to the present time many leaders, no arrogant has equaled these great men of genius and knowledge. However, if we look into the real price of a human being then we are faced with a drastic fact of the local market costs namely less than a Dollar. Being made of some cheap metals, few grams of calcium, potassium and sodium, and the rest is 90% of ocean water, then the bill amounts to one Dollar, nearly, depending on the mass of human flesh you are discussing. But humans are arrogant haughty boasters. Ask anyone his opinion about anything, from Darwin to the local price of radishes, he would all know it. But the air he, or she, takes for his, or her ,knowledge is amazing. What the hell! Why can't we be humble and modest? Why should we be so arrogant and so boastful, and for what? We all have eyes and ears and an arsehole. When billionaires, presidents and kings, not to forget queens, go to the toilet they do not exactly lay golden eggs. When they die they do not take with them anything, but dirty cotton sticking in their bottoms. So where is the difference between humans and why be arrogant and self-conceited?

We know nothing, not even the greatest of scientists of all knows, about matter, atoms, where do they come from, who made them in their shape, why should be in their shape. We know nothing about our origin, how did we come about, our presence and our end. Humans eat up one another. They snatch your bite from your mouth and do not hesitate to stick a knife in your back and trot on you to advance in life. Man's arrogance and self-conceited haughtiness has made him blind to see God, arrogant to worship God and bow down to Him in recognition and gratitude.....

(mardini at articlesbase.com)

THE GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES

2011-12-01T21:56:00.000+08:00

U.S. Army troops Kunar province

eastern Afghanistan

From countryxp.com

The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the Afghan United Front (Northern Alliance) launched Operation Enduring Freedom. The primary driver of the invasion was the September 11 attacks on the United States, with the stated goal of dismantling the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization and ending its use of Afghanistan as a base. The United States also said that it would remove the Taliban regime from power and create a viable democratic state.

A decade into the war, the U.S. continues to battle a widespread Taliban insurgency, and the war has expanded into the tribal areas of neighboring Pakistan. The preludes to the war were the assassination of anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud on September 9, 2001, and the September 11 attacks on the United States, in which nearly 3000 civilians lost their lives in New York City, Arlington Va. and Pennsylvania. The United States identified members of al-Qaeda, an organization based in, operating out of and allied with the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as the perpetrators of the attacks. The Taliban offered to try Bin Laden in an Afghan court, or have him extradited to a third country, so long as the United States provided evidence of his guilt, but the U.S. refused, stating it would not hand over evidence to the Taliban. So on October 7, 2001, the U.S. government launched military operations in Afghanistan. Teams from the CIA's Special Activities Division (SAD) were the first U.S. forces to enter Afghanistan and begin combat operations. They were soon joined by U.S. Army Special Forces from the 5th Special Forces Group and other units from USSOCOM. On October 7, 2001, airstrikes were reported in the capital, Kabul (where electricity supplies were severed), at the airport, at Kandahar (home of the Taliban's Supreme Leader Mullah Omar), and in the city of Jalalabad. CNN released exclusive footage of Kabul being bombed to all the American broadcasters at approximately 5:08 p.m. October 7, 2001. At 17:00 UTC, President Bush confirmed the strikes on national television and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair also addressed the UK. Bush stated that Taliban military sites and terrorist training grounds would be targeted. In addition, food, medicine, and supplies would be dropped to "the starving and suffering men, women and children of Afghanistan"

(WIKIPEDIA)

US 10th Mountain Division soldiers

Afghanistan Province of Daychopan

US Army Photo by Staff Sgt. Kyle Davis

From times92.com

Helmand Province of Afghanistan, July 3, 2009

U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant Ryan Pettit (L)

(4th Civil Affairs Group)

Cpl Matthew Miller
(2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment)

Source defenseimagery.mil

Author Sgt. Pete Thibodeau

From WIKIMEDIA

2nd Mentoring & Reconstruction Task Force Engineers

Author Source originally posted to Flickr

Uploaded using F2ComButton Author isafmedia

From WIKIMEDIA

After the Taliban fled Kabul in November 2001 and left their stronghold, the southern city of Kandahar, in December 2001, it was generally understood that by then major Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders had fled across the border into Pakistan. To fill the political void, in December 2001 the United Nations hosted the Bonn Conference in Germany. The meetings of various Afghan leaders here were organized by the United Nations Security Council. The Taliban were not included. Participants included representatives of four Afghan opposition groups. Observers included representatives of neighbouring and other involved major countries, including the United States. The result was the Bonn Agreement which created the Afghan Interim Authority that would serve as the “repository of Afghan sovereignty” and outlined the so-called Petersberg Process, a political process towards a new constitution and choosing a new Afghan government. (WIKIPEDIA)

The initial attack removed the Taliban from power, but Taliban forces have since regained some strength. Since 2006, Afghanistan has seen threats to its stability from increased Taliban-led insurgent activity, record-high levels of illegal drug production, and a fragile government with limited control outside of Kabul. By the end of 2008, the Taliban had severed any remaining ties with al-Qaeda. According to senior U.S. military intelligence officials, there are perhaps fewer than 100 members of Al-Qaeda remaining in Afghanistan. The Taliban can sustain itself indefinitely, according to a December 2009 briefing by the top U.S. intelligence officer in Afghanistan. It’s time to play “State the Obvious” with new polling data that’s out today about the war in Afghanistan. A Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 64 percent of Americans feel that fighting the Afghan war is not worth it. That’s nearly two-thirds of all respondents. The conflict is going into its 11th year, making it the longest conflict in American history. Somehow they found 31 percent of respondents, polling low, that actually thought the war was worth fighting. Not sure what planet they live on, but they are entitled to their opinions. In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Gen. David Petraeus reminded people that 9/11 was the reason they are in Afghanistan in the first place. He says that the attacks were spawned there, hence the need to complete the mission. “Blah, blah, blah, blah….” That’s exactly how these excuses about war sound to the American people. Since it started, there has been a strong contingency of the American people who have been against the preemptive conflicts in the Middle East. They were a minority in the beginning, but now they have grown into the majority. It’s really sad how correct they are. US need to cut losses over there and leave once and for all. The U.S. is far too concerned with fiscal policy at home to justify spending trillions of dollars overseas any longer. Much of the effort in Afghanistan now is too late. They took their eye off of that nation in favor of Iraq during the early years of that conflict. In what is defined as an “ego move,” US have stayed in Afghanistan, doubled their efforts, and tried to correct their mistake. It would be well-served for the people and resources to come home and regroup to focus on other important tasks.

(Social Issues by Stevie in International Affairs at prunejuicemedia.com)

Contact with insurgents, June 26, 2010

An Afghann National Police officer returns fire

Photo Source: yeeyan.org

From news.xinhuanet.com

When Gen. David Petraeus took over the Afghan war effort, the conflict took a violent turn. Especially that part of the war launched from above. Petraeus relaxed the restrictions on air power, and strikes from the sky returned to a level all-but-unseen since the war’s earliest days. In October of 2010, coalition planes unleashed their weapons on more than 1,000 missions. Now, Petraeus is gone, and the air war — like the rest of the conflict — has cooled a bit from its fever pitch. In the three full months since Gen. John Allen assumed command, strike sorties are down more than 25% over the same period in 2010: 1,631 attack runs, compared to 2,198 last year, according to U.S. military statistics. In October, the drop was particularly stark: 616 strike sorties, down from 1,043 during the previous October. It’s a particularly remarkable trend, given that there are more aircraft than ever patrolling Afghanistan’s skies. And it may be a sign for how the rest of the Afghan war is waged.
(Petraeus Gone, Afghan Air War Plummets by Noah Shachtman, November 7, 2011, WIRED at wired.com)
War is never easy and it is never clean. There is little doubt that the United States fully realized that as they contemplated engaging in conflict in Afghanistan. While few will debate that the war in that country was necessary, and that the United States certainly had the firepower advantage, any optimism that the war began with has been destroyed by almost a decade of conflict and bloodshed. Adding to those military woes is the continuing political turmoil in the country which has started to reach a head following debates between the governments of the two countries. At issue is the growing divide between the Obama government and the renewed confidence of Afghan President Hamid Karzai who in recent weeks has started to take the destiny of his country onto his shoulders. While such action should be welcomed in a country that continues to endure turmoil and serious threats from an insurgent force, it is Karzai’s slightly irregular behaviour, such as stating his desire to join the Taliban, that has run very much afoul of the Obama administration, particularly as U.S. soldiers continue to die in that country. Now however the government has tabled a possible new plan that could forever end the troubles in Afghanistan, nuking the entire site from orbit. “It’s obviously top, top secret, even though we are talking about it here but it is a serious consideration by more than just the military hawks in the country. I’m not sure exactly who came up with the idea but apparently it came from a late night viewing of ‘Aliens’ on AMC where they realize the best solution is to just take out the entire site,” said a Pentagon insider. “Obviously it didn’t work out in the movie but in the real world we are not bound by the conventions of plot and bringing things to a satisfying conclusion. We have the ability to blow the hell out of that country, to just make it a giant crater, and it is a serious consideration at this point.” While nuclear weapons are the most powerful weapons yet created, it’s believed that the level of weaponry required to actual make the country a crater would render the entire planet uninhabitable and kill every living thing, making that an unlikely scenario. “Afghanistan has been called the Graveyard of Empires and that has proven largely true.
From Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan to the Soviets, Afghanistan has defeated some of the greatest armies ever assembled. Until now however no one has ever had the firepower to truly deal with the country, which we do now with nukes,” said Scrape TV International analyst Gustav Hander. “Like many wars in the modern era all that could have realistically expected was a kind of truce, reducing the Taliban to a regional threat. A true win was never in the cards but now the United States is mired in the country with their pride and reputation on the line, which makes winning all the more important.” In the movie ‘Aliens’ American Marines are placed on an isolated planet infested with malevolent aliens which they then decide to nuke, though their plans ultimately fail. “In the movie you had this lone detachment of Marines isolated in the middle of space, but here you have the top military in the world with all kinds of backup and a bunch of nukes at the ready. It would be very easy to just do away with the whole country and redeem all those militaries and soldiers that bled out on the sands of Afghanistan,” continued Hander. “The real question would be what to do with the region once the Afghans are out. Obviously you would have to wait decades before the radiation abated, but that would give you plenty of time to plan. I would hope for a lot of green space and perhaps a theme park or two. I’m sure the Khyber Pass would be great for a rollercoaster or two.” Should the country be reduced to a massive crater it’s likely that it would eventually fill with water creating a killer wading pool. (U.S. CONSIDERING JUST NUKING AFGHANISTAN FROM ORBIT Emil Uliya, International Correspondent, April 13 2010, SCRAPE TV at scrapetv.com)

According even to an official UN report, opium production in Afghanistan has risen dramatically since the downfall of the Taliban in 2001. UNODC data shows more opium poppy cultivation in each of the past four growing seasons (2004-2007), than in any one year during Taliban rule. More land is now used for opium in Afghanistan, than for coca cultivation in Latin America. In 2007, 93% of the opiates on the world market originated in Afghanistan. This is no accident. The US military remains in Afghanistan long after the world has forgotten even who the mysterious Osama bin Laden and his alleged Al Qaeda terrorist organization is or even if they exist. The aim is not to eradicate any Al Qaeda cells that may have survived in the caves of Tora Bora, or to eradicate a mythical “Taliban” which at that point according to eyewitness reports is made up overwhelmingly of local ordinary Afghanis fighting to rid their land once more of occupier armies as they did in the 11980’s against the Russians.
(Adapted from The Geopolitics Behind the Phoney U.S. War in Afghanistan, Oct 21, 2009 by: F William Engdahl, engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net at marketoracle.co.uk)

"Poppy Palaces" in Kabul

From CNN Money at money.cnn.com

Passing by a poppy field

U.S. Marines, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit

From thelibertyvoice.com

Addicts smoke heroin

Aref Karimi/AFP/Getty Images

From boston.com

After the Taliban was toppled, Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon focused mainly on counterterrorism. Drugs were a police matter, he believed, though there was no functioning police force. Sensing an opportunity, Afghans of all stripes lined up to cash in: farmers hoping to make money; landowners seeking higher returns; local, district, and provincial officials -- police chiefs, governors, and militia leaders (i.e., warlords) -- who'd smuggled before and saw a chance to do so again. "These guys started to look around and say, 'Holy shit, no one is doing anything about this,'" says Alex Thier, a rule-of-law expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace who has worked in Afghanistan since the mid-1990s. They figured, he says, "there's no risk in doing it. It's not only that I'm able to bribe the governor. The governor owns the fields that I'm planting!"
By 2007 more than 3 million Afghans were involved in cultivating a yield of some 8,200 metric tons of poppies, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Farmers were earning roughly six times the nation's per capita income of $340 a year. In 2007 opium's value was nearly 10 times that of wheat, making it extremely difficult to persuade farmers to switch crops. American policy now stresses alternative livelihood programs designed to help farmers grow crops -- grapes, pomegranates, and almonds, for instance -- that can bring in as much as poppies do. However, the seeds literally take time to grow, so farmers living hand-to-mouth need some kind of bridge, which the West is trying to provide in the form of training and fertilizer and seedling subsidies. So poppies remain the best thing going. "Of course we know it's illegal, but we have no other option," Hamid Hakmal, a teacher in Nokher Khil, a village in Nangarhar province, says. "I can't earn enough to live with wheat. If the government or NGOs would help us, we wouldn't have to plant this." Given these harsh realities, poppy cultivation "is a logical economic response to conditions of chaos," says Ronald Neumann, the American ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007. Distressingly, several past and present cabinet ministers, senior law enforcement officials, and even Karzai's own brother are widely suspected of profiting handsomely from the poppy trade, overseeing growing operations or enabling transport of the yield across and out of the country. They deny the charges, but it's impossible not to believe, as does David Kilcullen, an Australian counterinsurgency scholar and former adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, that "we shouldn't underestimate the degree to which corrupt Afghan officials are involved in the drug trade." Current and former government officials speak of investigations thwarted, inquiries shut down, suspects summarily released after a hurried phone call. Such was the state of affairs, says a State Department official, that an Afghan radio program that announced a seizure of 100 kilos of opium got a call from the trafficker himself moments later. He insisted he'd had twice that amount, accused the police of stealing the rest, and demanded it back.

(Afghanistan's drug czar - world's toughest job by Phil Zabriskie, contributor, CNN Money at money.cnn.com)

US soldiers fly on a military plane

Afghanistan, October 8, 2011

Tauseef Mustafa/AFP/Getty Images From boston.com

An Afghan girl works at a brick factory

Outskirts of Jalalabad, October 10, 2011

Rahmat Gul/AP From boston.com

Girls attend a class

A camp for the displaced Kabul, October 11, 2011

Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images

From boston.com

Wazir Akbar Khan hill

Kabul, October 12, 2011

Omar Sobhani/Reuters From boston.com

Street in Kabul, October 23, 2011

Muhammed Muheisen/AP

From boston.com

Shop owner Mohammed Ahmadi, 32

Dress shop in Kabul

Muhammed Muheisen/AP

From boston.com

Afghan children enjoy a swing ride

A cemetery outside Sakhi shrine

Kabul, October 11, 2011

Muhammed Muheisen/AP

From boston.com

A family walks by riot police

Demo against a U.S.-Afghan strategic security agreement

Kabul, October 24, 2011

Muhammed Muheisen/AP

From boston.com

People visit a cemetery

The Sakhi shrine in Kabul, October 24, 2011

Muhammed Muheisen/AP

From boston.com

Women walk in a market Kabul, October 26, 2011

Muhammed Muheisen/AP

From boston.com

Indira Gandhi Children's Hospital

Kabul, October 27, 2011

Muhammed Muheisen/AP

From boston.com

Feints and baby steps in the direction of eventually ending a massive crime are not enough. Hoping to meet a distant deadline for ending a war that cannot be justified for a single day is not enough. A new misunderstanding should not be piled on top of other fictional accomplishments (the closing of Guantanamo, the complete withdrawal from Iraq, universal health coverage, etc.) But if we don't understand that we are beginning to move things in the right direction many among us will lose heart and others will miscalculate. This is what the Associated Press had to say on Thursday morning, Nov 3rd 2011:
"A senior U.S. official says the Obama administration is considering shifting the U.S. military role in Afghanistan from primarily combat to mainly advisory and training duties as early as next year. If this approach is adopted it would mean a reduction in American combat duties in Afghanistan sooner than the administration had planned. But it would not mean an early end to the war. The U.S. and its NATO partners agreed a year ago that coalition forces would complete their combat mission by the end of 2014. Advising and training Afghan forces would gradually become a more dominant part of the mission, particularly after the U.S. completes the withdrawal of 33,000 'surge' troops by September 2012. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because no decisions have been made."
The Wall Street Journal ran into some similar criminal but respectable leakers of "national security" information:
"The Obama administration is exploring a shift in the military's mission in Afghanistan to an advisory role as soon as next year, senior officials told The Wall Street Journal, a move that would scale back U.S. combat duties well ahead of their scheduled conclusion at the end of 2014. Such a move would have broad implications for the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. It could begin a phase-out of the current troop-intensive approach, which focuses on protecting the Afghan population, in favor of a greater focus on targeted counterterrorism operations, as well as training the Afghan military. A transition to a training mission could also allow for a faster drawdown of U.S. forces in the country, though officials said discussions about troop levels have yet to move forward. The revised approach has been discussed in recent high-level meetings involving top defense and administration officials, according to people involved in the deliberations. No decisions have been made, officials said, and policy makers could consider other options that would adjust the mission in other ways, officials said. Officials said agreement on a formal shift to an advisory role could come as early as a North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting in May—in the heat of the U.S. presidential election campaign. Some officials have drawn comparisons to President Barack Obama's 2009 decision to switch to an 'advice and assist' role in Iraq and to declare a formal end to U.S. combat operations there. In Iraq, after mid-2009, troops were largely confined to their bases. Security conditions in Afghanistan are different, however, and will likely require U.S. troops, particularly Special Operations forces, to continue to accompany their Afghan counterparts into battle after the U.S. takes an advisory role. Defense officials said the U.S. still would be directly involved in many combat operations, though increasingly with Afghan forces in the lead." Wars are rarely lost in a single encounter; Defeat is almost always more complex than that. (Public Pressure Is Slowly Ending Afghanistan War, Column by David Swanson, November 3, 2011, warisacrime.org at scoop.co.nz)

An Afghan policeman reacts

Suicide attack in Kabul, October 29, 2011

A U.S. helicopter lands at the site

Omar Sobhani/Reuters From boston.com

The United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies have lost the war in Afghanistan, but not just because they failed in the battle for Marjah or decided that discretion was the better part of valor in Kandahar. They lost the war because they should never have invaded in the first place; because they never had a goal that was achievable; because their blood and capital are finite. The face of that defeat was everywhere. According to the Afghanistan Rights Monitor, “In terms of insecurity, 2010 has been the worst year since the demise of the Taliban regime in late 2001.”
A U.S. government audit found that despite $27 billion spent on training, fewer than 12 percent of Afghan security forces were capable of operating on their own. Some 58 percent of the American public think the war is “a lost cause,” and 60 percent think the United States should begin to withdraw in July 2011. Only Republican votes in Congress saved the Obama administration’s request for $33 billion to fuel the war in the coming fiscal year. The war is currently hemorrhaging money at a rate of $7 billion a month. The British public — the United Kingdom is the second largest armed contingent in Afghanistan — opposes the war by 72 percent, and other coalition forces are quickly abandoning the effort in the war-torn Central Asian nation. Poland announced it would withdraw its 2,600 troops in 2012. The Dutch will be out this August. The Canadians in 2011. The Australians, along with the rest of the NATO allies, declined a plea in July to send more combat troops. In a sign of the dire circumstances of the war effort, Afghan soldiers turned their guns on NATO soldiers. A poll by the International Council on Security and Development reaffirms that the NATO alliance is failing to win over Afghan civilians, a cornerstone of success in the current strategy employed in Afghanistan. The poll found that in the two provinces currently at the center of the war — Helmand and Kandahar — 75 percent of Afghans believe foreigners disrespect their religion and traditions; 74 percent think working for foreign forces is wrong; 68 percent believe NATO will not protect them; and 65 percent think Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar should be part of the government.
So does one calculate the arithmetic of defeat? But “defeat” does not mean the war is over. Indeed, the moment when it becomes obvious that victory is no longer an option can be the most dangerous time in a conflict’s history. The losers may double down, as the French and the United States did in Vietnam. They may lash out in a frenzy of destruction, as the United States did in Laos and Cambodia. Or they may poison the well for generations to come by dividing people on the basis of ethnicity, religion and tribe, as the British did when their empire began to disintegrate.

(Conn Hallinan in Foreign Policy in Focus)

Note: I found these images (above) from all over the web. If you own a photo’s copyright and think this page violates Fair Use, please contact me.

DUSSELDORFERS

2011-11-21T01:45:00.000+08:00

Self Portrait

Owner: In Kunstnarliv

Original uploader was Clemens Alexander

Source/Photographer aus Melkild, Kunstnarliv

From WIKIPEDIA

Hans Dahl (19 February 1849, Granvin – 27 July 1937) was a Norwegian painter. He was famous for his paintings of Norwegian fjords and surrounding landscapes. He was born in the village of Granvin, on the Hardangerfjord, in the county of Hordaland in Norway.

His talent was already evident when Dahl was 16 years old. However, it was only after service in the Swedish army that Dahl received artistic education. He was educated first to become an officer and became a lieutenant in 1871. He served in the Bergenske Brigade until 1874.

After leaving the army, he apprenticed with Johan Fredrik Eckersberg and Knud Bergslien. He went to Karlsruhe, where he studied under Hans Fredrik Gude and Wilhelm Riefstahl and then to Düsseldorf, where his teachers included Eduard von Gebhardt and Wilhelm Sohn. His art became associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting, which was characterized by finely detailed yet still fanciful landscapes.

(WIKIPEDIA)

By The Fjord

uploaded by user:Staszek99

From WIKIMEDIA

Girl in a Field

From artexpertswebsite.com

On The Banks of the Fjord

From ARC at artrenewal.org

The Fjord

From xaxor.com

An Alpine Landscape With A Shepherdess And Goats

From xaxor.com

In The Mountains

From xaxor.com

Returning From the Fields

From xaxor.com

By the Water's Edge

From s005.radikal.ru

Dahl painted the spectacular scenery of the western part of Norway - vestlandet - and often put beautiful, blond girls in national costumes in his paintings. Dahl was well known abroad; he was a close friend of the German emperor and was well liked in the village.

He had his first exhibition in Düsseldorf in 1876. Already then he had found a style and subjects which he later kept to. He lived in Germany from 1888 but every summer he went to Norway to make sketches of the "vestland" scenery.

In the 1890s a new school of art arose, and artists like Dahl were not very popular in the leading circles in the capital. He was particularly criticised by the art historian Jens Thiis. There are no paintings by Hans Dahl in the National Art Gallery. They were much opposed to his kind of painting. The artist Christian Krogh also disapproved of the so-called Düsseldorfers. Hans Dahl however, maintained his opinion of art. He had good writing skills and enjoyed a debate. In the publication "Malerne og publikum" he wrote that he wanted art to be comprehensible to ordinary people. He did not want it to be highbrow culture for the elite. Dahl often described the scenery of the western part of Norway in brilliant sunshine with smiling people in national costumes. He was not highly valued as an artist by art critiques in his own time. However, he had a large market with private collectors. In the 1980s paintings by Hans Dahl have fetched prices around 200000 kroner.

Hans Dahl was concerned with his health. He often slept on the veranda in winter time. Both his beard and bed clothes were rime frozen in the morning. However, Dahl dressed in woollen cloths and thought wool particularly important to people's health. He wrote both articles and a small book about this. In the publication "How to strengthen ones Health and Work Capacity" he puts forward his thoughts and in 1928 he gave a lecture in Oslo. He thundered against the medical experts who were present. Dr. Tannberg said: "I am no supporter of all this wool." Dahl did not change his mind because of this. He was otherwise a light-hearted man. "Keep a cheerful mind in Storm as well as in Sunshine" he once wrote.

(sffarkiv.no)

Faraway Thoughts

From burlington.co.uk

Faraway Thoughts

From burlington.co.uk

Dahl specialised in painting the beautiful landscapes of Norway depicting the monumental mountains and fijords. Unlike his contemporary Normann, who also painted the fijords, Dahl nearly always included figures in his landscapes. In this magnificent painting, above, the charming young peasant girl is wistfully gazing over the water, perhaps thinking of her beau in the distant boat. This gives a romantic element to the painting which contrasts well with the grandeur of the landscape. The perspective in the painting is executed with masterly precision and ones eye is drawn towards the centre of the work by the dramatic diagonal lines and then on to the far shore. The sky is very atmospheric and the artist's use of light is highly skilful. Dahl painted many works throughout his life but this work shows Dahl at his very best. Exhibited : Berlin (Art Academy), Munich, Dusseldorf, Vienna, Philadelphia

(burlington.co.uk)

Hans Dahl at Villa Strandheim

German Federal Archive

From WIKIMEDIA

The German emperor was an annual summer guest in Balestrand until World War I. He liked both Dahl and his work. Dahl's home was in many ways also the Emperor's home when he visited Balestrand. Dahl was the emperor's good friend. He also acted as a consultant when Wilhelm started the work with the statues in Balestrand and Vangsnes.

Every summer there were garden parties in Dahl's garden. Then Dahl acted as host and the Emperor was the guest of honour. Ladies from the upper classes in Bergen had come to Balestrand. On the other side of the picket fence the wide-eyed villagers were watching.

Dahl kept in contact with the Emperor throughout his life, and we expect that this was a deep personal friendship. He was highly valued both by Wilhelm I and Wilhelm II. Wilhelm II bought many paintings from Dahl. In 1910 Dahl was appointed Royal Prussian Professor of Art.

On the19th of February 1919, Hans Dahl was 70 years old. He celebrated by throwing a party in his villa. Sigurd Kvikne was one of the guests and said in his speech that Hans Dahl had made Norway known abroad and that Balestrand owed him great thanks because so many visitors had come there. While Dahl lived in Balestrand, he made many travels in the district. He went to both the mountains and the different arms of the fjord in search of subjects to paint. He often brought girls with him as models. The persons who modelled for him characterised him as a nice man, kind and understanding. Dahl usually employed two girls as models. He paid them 80100 kroner a month. "It was a lot of money in those days", said a woman who worked as a model for many years. Hans Dahl died in Balestrand in 1937.

(sffarkiv.no)

Note: I found these images (above) from all over the web. If you own a photo’s copyright and think this page violates Fair Use, please contact me.

PROGRESSIVE MORALITY

2011-11-20T21:22:00.000+08:00

Much of the trouble, vexation, and misery of which men are the cause to themselves is due to cowardice, or the false shame which results from attaching undue importance to custom, fashion, or the opinion of others, even when that opinion is not confirmed by their own reflection.

Shame is an invaluable protection to men, as a restraining feeling. But the objects to which it properly attaches are wrong-doing, unkindness, discourtesy, to others, and, as regards us, ignorance, imprudence, intemperance, impurity, and avoidable defects or misfortunes.

As soon as a man begins to care about what others will say of circumstances not under his own control, such as his race, his origin, his appearance, his physical defects, or his lack of wealth or natural talents, he may be laying up for himself a store of incalculable misery, and is certainly enfeebling his character and impairing his chances of future usefulness. It is under the influence of this motive, for instance, that many a man lives above his income, not for the purpose of gratifying any real wants either of himself or his family, but for the sake of 'keeping up appearances,' though he is exposing his creditors to considerable losses, his family to many probable disadvantages, and himself to almost certain disgrace in the future. It is under the influence of this motive, too, that many men, in the upper and middle classes, rather than marries on a modest income, and drop out of the society of their fashionable acquaintance, form irregular sexual connections, which are a source of injury to themselves and ruin to their victims.

We at one time think ourselves or others more, and, at another time, less blamable for the self-same acts, or we come to regard some particular class of acts in a different light from what we used to do, either modifying our praise or blame, or, in extreme cases, actually substituting one for the other. Human nature, in its normal condition, is so constituted that the remorse felt, when we look back upon a wrong action, far outweighs any pleasure we may have derived from it, just as the satisfaction with which we look back upon a right action far more than compensates for any pain with which it may have been attended.

A man must; ultimately, be the judge of his own conduct, and, as he acts or does not act according to his own best judgment, so he will subsequently feel satisfaction or remorse. We have a variety of appetites and desires, which centre in ourselves, including what has been called rational self-love, or a desire for what, on cool reflection, we conceive to be our own highest good on the whole, as well as self-respect, or a regard for our own dignity and character, and for our own opinion of ourselves. When any of these various appetites or desires is gratified, we feel satisfaction, and, on the other hand, when they are thwarted, we feel dissatisfaction.

Similarly, we have a number of affections, of which others are the object, some of them of a malevolent or resentful, but most of them of a benevolent character, including a general desire to confer all the happiness that we can. Here, again, we feel satisfaction, when our affections are gratified, and dissatisfaction, when they are thwarted.

We praise a man who, by due economy, makes decent provision for himself in old age, as we blame a man who fails to do so. Quite apart from any public or social considerations, we admire and applaud in the one man the power of self-restraint and the habit of foresight, which enable him to subordinate his immediate gratifications to his larger interests in the remote future, and to forego sensual and passing pleasures for the purpose of preserving his self-respect and personal independence in later life. And we admire and applaud him still more, if to these purely self-regarding considerations he adds the social one of wishing to avoid becoming a burden on his family or his friends or the public. Just in the same way, we condemn the other man, who, rather than sacrifice his immediate gratification, will incur the risk of forfeiting his self-respect and independence in after years as well as of making others suffer for his improvidence.

A man who, by the exercise of similar economy and forethought, makes provision for his family or relations we esteem still more than the man who simply makes provision for himself, because the sacrifice of passing pleasures is generally still greater, and because there is also, in this case, a total sacrifice of all self-regarding interests, except, perhaps, self-respect and reputation, for the sake of others. Similarly, the man who has a family or relations dependent upon him, and who neglects to make future provision for them, deservedly incurs our censure far more than the man who merely neglects to make provision for him.

The ancient morality, which was the product of the patriarchal form of society, when the patria potestas was still in vigor, laid peculiar stress on the duties of children to parents, while it almost ignored the reciprocal duties of parents to children. When the members of a family were seldom separated, and the pressure of population had not yet begun to be felt, this was the natural order of ideas with respect to the parental relation. But now that the common labor of the household is replaced by competition amongst individuals, and most young men and women have, at an early age, to leave their families and set about earning their own living, or carving out their own career, it is obvious, on reflection, that parents are guilty of a gross breach of duty, if they do not use their utmost endeavors to facilitate the introduction of their children to the active work of life, and to fit them for the circumstances in which they are likely to be placed. To bring up a son or daughter in idleness or ignorance ought to be as great a reproach to a parent as it is to a child to dishonor its father or mother. And yet, in the upper and middle classes at all events, there are many parents who, without incurring much reprobation from their friends, prefer to treat their children like playthings or pet animals rather than to take the pains to train them with a view to their future trials and duties.

It ought to be thoroughly realized, and, as the moral consciousness becomes better adapted to the existing circumstances of society, it is to be trusted that it will be realized, that parents have no moral right to do what they choose with their children, but that they are under a strict obligation both to society and to their children themselves so to mould their dispositions and develop their faculties and inform their minds and train their bodies as to render them good and useful citizens, and honest and skilful men.

(Adapted from The Project Gutenberg EBook of Progressive Morality, by Thomas Fowler)

RUSSIAN MEMORY

2011-11-19T10:42:00.000+08:00

Imprisoned at Tsarkoe Selo

The Triptych “Imperial Golgotha”

From 01varvara.wordpress.com

The painter of Imprisoned at Tsarkoe Sel, above, is Pavel Ryzhenko, a Russian artist (born in 1970) and professor at the Russian Fine Arts Academy. He specializes in historical & religious paintings. Ryzhenko has been critized for some historical errors.....In an interview the painter said he wanted to show the Tsar returning home in March 1917 after his abdication, but Alexei looks much younger than 11, he wasn’t suffering from an hemophilia attack at the time and no rooms in the Imperial Family private quarters looked like that. Anyway he didn't intend to be historically accurate, but rather to give an idea of what happened and convey feelings, emotions. The Empress is holding the Holy Bible in her hands: her reading was interrupted by the arrival of her husband which can’t hide his despair from the intruder. This painting is part 2 of a 3 part series called Imperial Calvary (Martyrdom) done by the artist after he went to visit the field where the Imperial Family was buried outside Ekaterinburg. He wanted to depict 3 of the most tragic moments in Nicholas II’s last 18 months on this earth.

(Posted by Daniel Briere, June 17, 2009 at forum.alexanderpalace.org)

Nicholas II bidding farewell to his Troops

The Triptych “Imperial Golgotha”

From 01varvara.wordpress.com

Part 1 is this stunning painting titled Nicholas II bidding farewell to his Troops (at Stavka after his abdication) which is also quite moving. Nicholas II isn’t wearing the same uniform he actually did on that awful day (as someone pointed out)…..H e didn’t review his Escort Cossacks on the day he left (he had taken his leave from them the day before, but yes they wore the Revolution’s red ribbon, and yes, some of them had cried and one had collapsed before the Tsar) but in any case it’s quite effective.

(Posted by Daniel Briere, June 17, 2009 at forum.alexanderpalace.org)

Farewell to the shoulder straps

From allart.biz

Triptych The Russian Century

From allart.biz

Another moving painting is the Civil War-time ‘Imperial Shoulder boards’ depicting an Officer burying his shoulder boards and a handkerchief embroidered by Tsarina Alexandra. “Triptych The Russian Century” looks like a photo shoot that would have been taken on the Borodino battlefield at the Centennial celebrations in 1912, with many officer in splendid uniforms, and quite good portraits of the 4 grand-duchesses, Their Majesties, with Alexei between them - in his War-time khaki coat & Medal of St. George! – and besides Anastasia…a younger Alexei in some parade uniform, partly conceiling an even younger Alexei in his sailor suit from the Standart!! Only then I understood the true intention of this artist. His painting wasn’t meant to be a photo, but rather a metaphor of the glorious Russia which had vanished : the representative of the Church, some old veterans, all those devoted soldiers and officers of various Guards regiments, even a cavalry officer from the 1812 War! It really is an ode to an Empire that is no more. Oddly enough almost all of the participants are looking towards the camera. But the photographer isn’t there. But pay attention to the Imperial Family : they’re not looking at the camera (except for the 2 younger Alexei who aren’t really there – only a figment of your imagination) : they’re looking at YOU, and they’re smiling. YOU are the photographer and you’re looking at THEM. What are you thinking? Are you smiling too?? …Brilliant painting!

(Posted by Daniel Briere, June 17, 2009 at forum.alexanderpalace.org)

The Ipatiev House

After the Murder of the Imperial Family

From 02varvara.wordpress.com

On a more tragic note, here is a large photo of part 3 of the Nicholas II’s triptych: The Ipatiev House after the murder of the Imperial Family. It’s, quite gruesome and moving too, with personal items left over after the Bolsheviks' ramsack : papers, photos & books, dolls & eyeglasses, a woman’s boot, the Tsar’s greatcoat, with one his shoulder-board and his Cross of St. George which his captors wanted him to remove, and then Alexei’s toy soldiers, chessboard, his sailor cap…The artist said the white chair was a symbol of the Russian throne, on which only a toy soldier remained as a Tsar-pretender while, in the back, one of the new masters of Russia was looking at what he had just accomplished.

(Posted by Daniel Briere, June 17, 2009 at forum.alexanderpalace.org)

Malyuta Skuratov

From 01varvara.wordpress.com

A Moment of Royal Contemplation

From 01varvara.wordpress.com

The Battle of the Kalka River

From allart.biz

The Battle of the Kalka River took place on May 31, 1223, between the Mongol Empire (led by Jebe and Subutai) and Kiev, Galich, and several other Rus' principalities and the Cumans, under the command of Mstislav the Bold and Mstislav III of Kiev. The battle was fought on the banks of the Kalka River (in present-day Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine) and ended in a Mongol victory. Following the Mongol invasion of Central Asia and the subsequent collapse of the Khwarezmian Empire, a Mongol force under the command of generals Jebe and Subutai advanced into Iraq-i Ajam. Jebe requested permission from the Mongol leader, Genghis Khan, to continue his conquests for a few years before returning to the main army via the Caucasus. While waiting for Genghis Khan's reply, the duo set out on a raid in which they attacked Georgia and killed its king. Genghis Khan granted the duo permission to undertake their expedition, and after making their way through the Caucasus, they defeated a coalition of Caucasian tribes before defeating the Cumans. The Cuman Khan fled to the court of his son-in-law, Prince Mstislav the Bold of Galich, who he convinced to help fight the Mongols. Mstislav the Bold formed an alliance of the Rus' princes including Mstislav III of Kiev. The combined Rus' army, at first, defeated the Mongol rearguard. For several days, the Rus' pursued the Mongols but became spread out over a large distance. The Mongols stopped and assumed battle formation on the banks of the Kalka River. Mstislav the Bold, with his Cuman allies, attacked the Mongols without waiting for the rest of the Rus' army and were defeated. In the ensuing confusion, several other Rus' princes were defeated, and Mstislav of Kiev was forced to retreat to a fortified camp. After holding for three days, he surrendered in return for a promise of safe conduct for himself and his men. Once they surrendered, however, the Mongols slaughtered them and uted Mstislav of Kiev. Mstislav the Bold escaped, and the Mongols went back to Asia, where they joined Genghis Khan.

(allart.biz)

Spring

From 01varvara.wordpress.com

Overflowing Its Banks

From 01varvara.wordpress.com

A Country Road

From 01varvara.wordpress.com

Orchardman

From s3.amazonaws.com

The Victory of Peresvet

From s3.amazonaws.com

Alexander Peresvet, above, also spelled Peresviet, was a Russian Orthodox Christian monk who fought in a single combat with the Tatar champion Temir-murza (known in most Russian sources as Chelubey or Cheli-bey) at the opening of the Battle of Kulikovo (8 September 1380), where they killed each other. The champions killed each other in the first run, though according to a Russian legend, Peresvet did not fall from the saddle, while Temir-murza did.

(mediumaevum.tumblr.com)

Alexander Jaroslavovich Nevsky

From allart.biz

Triptych Repentance-Strike the bell

From 01varvara.wordpress.com

Battle of the Neva

From allart.biz

The Battle of the Neva was fought between the Novgorod Republic and Swedish armies on the Neva River, near the settlement of Ust-Izhora, on July 15, 1240. The purpose of the Swedish invasion was probably to gain control over the mouth of the Neva and the city of Ladoga and, hence, seize the most important part of the Trade Route the Varangians to the Greeks, which had been under Novgorod's control for more than a hundred years. The battle was part of the medieval Swedish-Novgorodian Wars. Existence of the battle is only known Russian sources. First to mention the battle is the Novgorod First Chronicle the 14th century. According to the chronicle, on receiving the news of the advancing Swedish fleet, the 20-year-old Prince Alexander Yaroslavich of Novgorod quickly moved his small army to face the enemy before they had reached Lake Ladoga. The chronicle described the battle as follows: "Swedes came with a great army, and Norwegians and Finns and Tavastians with ships in great numbers, Swedes with their prince and bishops, and they stayed on the Neva, at the mouth of the Izhora, willing to take Ladoga, and to put it short, Novgorod and all of its lands. But still protected the merciful, man-loving God us and sheltered us the foreign people, and the word came to Novgorod that Swedes were sailing to Ladoga; but prince Alexander did not hesitate at all, but went against them with Novgorodians and people of Ladoga and overcame them with the help of Saint Sophia and through prayers of our lady, the Mother of God and Virgin Mary, July 15, in the memory of Kirik and Ulita, on Sunday, (the same day that) the 630 holy fathers held a meeting in Chalcedon; and there was a great gathering of the Swedes; and their leader called Spiridon was killed there; but some claimed that even the bishop was slain; and a great number of them fell; and when they had loaded two ships with the bodies of high-born men, they let them sail to the sea; but the others, that were unnumbered, they cast to a pit, that they buried, and many others were wounded; and that same night they fled, without waiting for the Monday light, with shame. Of Novgorodians there fell: Konstantin Lugotinitch, Yuryata Pinyashchinich, Namest Drochilo, Nesdylov son of Kozhevnik, but including the people of Ladoga 20 men or less, God knows. But Prince Alexander came back home with Novgorodians and people of Ladoga……” Later, Prince Alexander Yaroslavich was nicknamed "Nevsky" (of Neva) for his first significant victory. Two years later, Alexander stalled an invasion of the Livonian Knights during the Battle on the Ice. Despite the victories, there were no Novgorodian advances further west to Finland or Estonia. (allart.biz)

Note: I found these images (above) from all over the web. If you own a photo’s copyright and think this page violates Fair Use, please contact me.

THE WILL TO DOUBT

2011-11-18T11:42:00.000+08:00

Without undue sensationalism it may be said that this is an age of doubt. Wherever one looks in journeying through the different departments of life one sees doubt. And one sees, too, some of the blight which doubt produces, although the blight is by no means all that one sees.

We would often hide it from others, not to say from ourselves, but it is there, and we all know it to be there. In a fable, never in real life, a man might get the smell of burning wood in his house and refuse to recognize the danger because of the inevitable delay to his business which the alarm of fire would involve.

Doubt is not less real nor less dangerous, nor even less capable, when under control, of useful applications. Any danger, too, squarely faced is at least half met. Why, then, be so impracticable, so like characters in fables, as to overlook or turn one's back upon the doubt of the day, refusing it a place and a part in real life? Our life is ever cherishing what we are pleased to call its verities, some in religion and morals, some in politics, some in mathematics and science, some in the more general relations to nature, but what elusive things these verities are! How shallow, or how hollow all of them are, or at one time or another may become.
Self and society, love and friendship, mind and matter, nature and God have again and again been subjected to essentially the same questioning. The verities of life, all the way from simple words used every day to the great things of our moral and spiritual being, have lost, sometimes slowly, sometimes very suddenly, the reality with which we have supposed them endowed, and although we may still bravely believe we find ourselves crying out passionately for help in our unbelief. There certainly are the verities; not one of them can possibly fall to the ground; yet these very verities are never quite in our experience.
Still the world has its thoroughly confident people. Every one of us has met some of those estimable beings to whom doubt seems wholly foreign, people who assert with trembling voice and sacred vow that their convictions, political perhaps or religious, are unassailable, and that they must hold them to the grave.
Moreover, positive people under any standard are notoriously as fearful as they are dogmatic.
Fear is often, if not always, the chief motive of dogmatism, and fear is hardly the most natural companion of genuine confidence. The eyes may have been moved and the head turned, but in spite of the impulses present in them the legs have not been used to bring the observer nearer to the object seen, nor have the arms and hands been raised to secure a contact with it, and perhaps a tracing of its lines, although some stimulus for such contact and tracing must be always present as a part of the actual or possible value of the experience. It may be objected that at times men, individually or collectively, seek not something else, but simply more of something already secured; more money, it may be, or more learning, or more territory, or more pleasure.
There is, however, in spite of man's many conceits to the contrary, no change that is purely quantitative. More is also different or other. Accordingly, we both always find, and, what is even more to the point, always seeking a real change whenever we do anything. Life, then, is a game, and the game of life, doubts and all, is a real interest as well as a necessity. We are creatures of habit, but we have, and we cherish, no habit stronger or more essential than the habit at once of adaptation and variation. Doubt is necessary to life, to real life, to deep experience. Doubt is but one of the phases of the resistance which a real life demands. Real life implies a constant challenge, and doubt is a form under which the challenge finds expression. The doubter is a questioner, a seeker; he has, then, something to overcome; he fears, too, as well as hopes.
Man ever confidently seeks what man has lost. Dependent man and doubting man must have society. Now, there are five things, some of them already foreseen, that seem worth saying here of the essential habit of self-contradiction, and they seem worth saying because so effectively and so comprehensively they warrant the conclusion that even upon our strongest reason for doubt we may rest a genuine case for belief.
Have you ever climbed a mountain up and up and up, through thick woods, over rough, almost impassable trails, into clouds dense and chilling, stormy and angry, over treacherous snows and frightful cliffs, and come out at last on the very top to see both earth and heaven, yourself between, the clouds dispersed, the hardships and dangers all forgotten, the whole world real and yours? Well, that is doubt become achievement.
Have you worked at some problem of everyday life, or a problem of science or philosophy, patiently or impatiently applying all the rules and precepts at your command, trying every resort known to you, and in final desperation many you only guess at, and then, when failure seems almost certain, caught a glimpse of the real meaning and the real way, attaining to an insight that reveals a new world to you? That, too, is doubt rewarded. Have you ever suffered a great heartrending disappointment or a great personal loss, and found it seemingly impossible to return to the routine of your former life, but nevertheless, almost imperceptibly, come into a sense of presence and gain from the very thing that seemed taken from you? That, once more, is doubt without its sting, robbed of its victory.
Does it hurt your business to doubt it sufficiently to make you able to sympathize with the interests of another? Does it hurt your politics, if you can lose enough of the partisan's conceit or the jingo's bombast to sympathize with the other parties or the other nations? The value of real independence in politics is one answer, and the idea of federation among competing states, or of international polity as a basis of successful national life, is another. Does it hurt your understanding to outgrow your own profoundest ideas and see some validity in the doctrines and formulæ of others?
So we find ourselves well upon our way in the world of the doubter—and what a world it is! No finality, because so much reality. Conflict is forever necessary to its effective realization. Relativity is finiteness, of all things, of all things in it, just for the sake of its own true absoluteness, just to conserve its own actual infinity. And, also, in such a world human life, individually and socially, gets new interest and vitality. There is given to human life so much fellowship, and yet, at the same time, so much hostility and competition. Society and the individual, though neither loses its own peculiar importance, are so vitally intimate with each other.
The confession of doubt, which we set out to make with all possible candor, is now nearly concluded even to the harvesting of the promised fruit. The confession began, as will be remembered, with recognition of certain general and easily demonstrated facts, of which there were five, as follows: (1) We are all universal doubters. (2) Doubt is essential to all consciousness. (3) Even habit, though confidence be the horse, has doubt sitting up behind. (4) Like pain or ignorance, doubt is a condition of real life. (5) And the sense of dependence, so general to human nature, gives rise to doubt, although also, like misery, it always seeks company—the company of nature, of man, of God.
Then, after this beginning, which left us by no means so hopeless as might have been expected, we proceeded to try the doubter, nay, to try ourselves, first before the court of ordinary life with its ordinary views of things, and secondly, before the court of science, and, in both trials, we found the doubting justified. We believe through our doubts; we believe, not in something apart, but in the very things we doubt.
Certain people have cried illusion and unreality at things political or moral or even at things physical, but only in the end to feel, and to make others feel, first, their evident narrowness, if not their actual dishonesty, and then their need of a more hospitable idea of what is valid and real.
Nothing can be, or ever has been, unreal. At once opponents and companions—this is the truth about the doubter and the believer. Consider how taken alone neither would be quite justified, while together both are justified. Perfect approval or, for that matter, perfect disapproval, can belong to neither singly, in our doubting, even though we fully confess, nor yet to him who hides his doubts in an outward show that almost deceives him as well as others.
Of course in all matters as well as in this of intellectual honesty, the conceit of individual righteousness or individual possession is a very strong one, but it is "easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye" than for a man who is anything or has anything to himself alone, to enter into any kingdom. Is not life everywhere a movement and a struggle? And who is there, rich or poor, law-abiding or lawless, righteous or unrighteous, faithful or treacherous, believing or doubting, who can stand aloof, or who needs to stand aloof, and say to himself: "I personally, within my own nature, have no part in the struggle; for good or for ill, I am just what I am, and with him that is against me I have and can have no dealings"?
The doubter, then, and the believer may have to look askance at each other; the looking askance may be quite appropriate to the conflict in which each has and must feel his social role, but, at most and worst, they are only jealous lovers. They may be given, and profitably given, as much to quarrelling as to gentleness, but they love still, and, to borrow part of a line from a familiar college song, their battling love affords just one more view of that which "makes the world go 'round"—instead of off at some tangent.
(Adapted from The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Will to Doubt, by Alfred H. Lloyd)

THE UNTROUBLED MIND

2011-11-17T22:16:00.000+08:00

A VERY wise physician has said that “every illness has two parts—what it is, and what the patient thinks about it.” What the patient thinks about it is often more important and more troublesome than the real disease. What the patient thinks of life, what life means to him is also of great importance and may be the bar that shuts out all real health and happiness.

The great roots of worry are conscience, fear, and regret. Undoubtedly we ought to be conscientious and we ought to fear and regret evil. But if it is to be better than an impediment and harm, our worry must be largely unconscious, and intuitive. The moment we become conscious of worry we are undone.

SINCE our minds are so constantly filled with anxiety, there would seem to be at least one sure way to be rid of it—to stop thinking. A great many people believe that the mind will become less effective, that life will become dull and purposeless, unless they are constantly thinking and planning and arranging their affairs. The mind may easily and wisely be free from conscious thought a good deal of the time, and that the greatest progress and development in mind often comes when the thinker is virtually at rest, when his mind is to all intents and purposes blank. The busy, unconscious mind does its best work in the serenity of an atmosphere which does not interfere and confuse. A man is not necessarily condemned to tortures of mind because he must rest for a week or a month or a year. There must be anxious times, especially when idleness means dependence, and when it brings hardship to those who need our help. But the invalid must not try constantly to puzzle the matter out. If we do not make ourselves sick with worry, we shall be able sometime to approach active life with sufficient frankness and force. It is the constant effort of the poor, tired mind to solve its problems that not only fails of its object, but plunges the invalid deeper into discouragement and misunderstanding.

How cruel this is, and how unfortunate that it should come more commonly to those who try the hardest to overcome their handicaps, to throw off the yoke of idleness and to be well. It is not so much the idleness, then, as the attempt to overcome its irksomeness that makes this condition painful. The invalid in bed is in a trap, to be tormented by his thoughts unless he knows the meaning of successful idleness. This knowledge may come to him by giving up the struggle against worry and fret; but peace will come surely, steadily, “with healing in its wings,” when the mind is changed altogether, when life becomes free because of a growth and development that finds significance even in idleness, that sees the world with wise and patient eyes. Unfortunately, the idleness of disability often means pain, the wear and tear of physical or nervous suffering. That is another matter. We cannot meet it fully with any philosophy.

Patients very often beg to know the best way to bear pain, how they may overcome the attacks of “nerves” that are harder to bear than pain. The time to bear pain is before and after. Live in such a way in the times of comparative comfort that the attacks are less likely to appear and easier to bear when they do come. After the pain or the “nervous” attack is over, that is the time to prevent the worst features of another. Forget the distress; live simply and happily in spite of the memory, and you will have done all that the patient himself can do to ward off or to make tolerable the next occasion of suffering. Pain itself, pure physical pain, is a matter for the physician’s judgment. It is his business to seek out the causes and apply the remedy.

The rules we have wittingly or unwittingly broken are often unknown to us, but they exist in the All-Wise Providence, and we may guess by our own suffering how far we have overstepped them. If a man runs into a door in the dark, we know all about that,—the case is simple,—but if he runs overtime at his office and hastens to be rich with the result of a nervous dyspepsia—that is a mystery. Strangely enough, the sense of effort and the feeling of our own inadequacy damage the nervous system quite as much as the actual physical effort. The attempt to catch up with life and with affairs that go on too fast for us is a frequent and harmful deflection from the rules of the game. Few of us avoid it. Life comes at us and goes by very fast. Tasks multiply and we are inadequate, responsibilities increase before we are ready. They bring fatigue and confusion.

We cannot shirk and be true. Having done all you reasonably can, stop, whatever the consequences may be. To do more is to drag and fail. The trouble is that we look at our work or our responsibility all in one piece, and it crushes us. If we cannot arrange our lives so that we may meet their obligations a little at a time, then we must admit failure and try again, on what may seem a lower plane. That is the brave thing to do. We would honor the factory superintendent, who, finding himself unequal to his position should choose to work at the bench where he could succeed perfectly. The nervous person is often morose and unsocial—perhaps because he is not understood, perhaps because he falls so short of his own ideals. Often he does not find kindred spirits anywhere. We should not drive such a man into conditions that hurt, but if he is truly artistic, and not a snob, he may lead himself into a larger social life without too much sacrifice. The nervous temperament under irritation is very prone to become selfish—and very likely to hide behind this selfishness, calling it temperament.

The man who flies into a passion when he is disturbed, or who spends his days in torment from the noises of the street; the woman of high attainment who has retired into herself, who is moody and unresponsive,—these unfortunates have virtually built a wall about their lives, a wall which shuts out the world of life and happiness. From the walls of this prison the sounds of discord and annoyance are thrown back upon the prisoner intensified and multiplied. The wall is real enough in its effect, but will cease to exist when the prisoner begins to go outside, when he begins to realize his selfishness and his mistake. Then the noises and the irritations will be lost in the wider world that is open to him. After all, it is only through unselfish service in the world of men that this broadening can come. The person who thinks little of his own attitude of mind is more likely to be well controlled and to radiate happiness than one who must continually prompt himself to worthy thoughts. The man whose heart is great with understanding of the sorrow and pathos of life is far more apt to be brave and fine in his own trouble than one who must look to a motto or a formula for consolation and advice.

Deep in the lives of those who permanently triumph over sorrow there is an abiding peace and joy. Such peace cannot come even from ample experience in the material world. Despair comes from that experience sometimes, unless the heart is open to the vital spirit that lies beyond all material things, that creates and renews life and that makes it indescribably beautiful and significant.

Experience of material things is only the beginning. In it and through it we may have experience of the wider life that surrounds the material. Life is serious—alas, too serious—and full enough of pathos. We cannot joke about its troubles; they are real. But, at least, we need not magnify them. Why should we act as though everything depended upon our efforts, even the changing seasons and the blowing winds. No doubt we are responsible for our own acts and thoughts and for the welfare of those who depend upon us. The trouble is we take unnecessary responsibilities so seriously that we overreach ourselves and defeat our own good ends.

We have all about us instances of the effectiveness of the lighter touch as applied to serious matters. The life of the busy surgeon is a good example. He may be, and usually is, brimming with sympathy, but if he were to feel too deeply for all his patients, he would soon fail and die. He goes about his work and he puts through a half-dozen operations in a way that would send cold shivers down the back of the uninitiated. And yet he is accurate and sure as a machine. If he were to take each case upon his mind in a heavy, consequential way, if he were to give deep concern to each ligature he ties, and if he were to be constantly afraid of causing pain, he would be a poor surgeon. His work, instead of being clean and sharp, would suffer from over-conscientiousness. He might never finish an operation for fear his patient would bleed to death. Such a man may be the reverse of flippant, and yet he may actually enjoy his somber work. Cruel and bloodthirsty? Not at all. These men—the great surgeons—are as tender as children. But they love their work; they really care very deeply for their patients. The successful ones have the lighter touch and they have no time for worry.

There is a natural gayety in most of us which helps more than we realize to keep us sound. The pity is that when responsibilities come and hardships come, we repress our lighter selves sternly, as though such repression were a duty. Better let us guard the springs of happiness very, very jealously. The whistling boy in the dark street does more than cheer himself on the way. He actually protects himself from evil, and brings courage not only to himself, but to those who hear him.

Do not hold for false cheerfulness that is sometimes affected, but a brave show of courage in a forlorn hope will sometimes win the day. It is infinitely more likely to win than a too serious realization of the danger of defeat. The show of courage is often not a pretense at all, but victory itself. The need of the world is very great and its human destiny is in our hands. Half of those who could help to right the wrongs are asleep or too selfishly immersed in their own affairs. We need more helpers like the skylights. Most of us are far too serious. The slumberers will slumber on, and the worriers will worry, the serious people will go ponderously about until someone shows them how ridiculous they are and how pitiful.

THE unrepentant sinner walks abroad. Unfortunately for us moralists he seems to be having a very good time. We must not condone him, though he may be a very lovable person; neither must we altogether condemn him, for he may be repentant in the very best way of all ways, the way that forgets much and leaves behind more, because life is so fine that it must not be spoiled, and because progress is in every way better than retrospection. The fact is, that repentance is too often the fear of punishment, and such fear is, to say the least, unmanly.

We would rather be a lovable sinner than one of the people who repent because they cannot bear to think of the consequences. Knowledge and fear of consequences undoubtedly keep a great many young people from the so-called sins of ignorance. But there must be something behind knowledge and fear of consequences to stop the youth of spirit from doing what he is inclined to do. Over and over again we must go back to the appreciation of life’s dignity and beauty in the world if we are to find a balance and a character that will “deliver us from evil.” Many a man has followed the best of advice for a time, and has become discouraged because the promised results did not materialize. It is disappointing, surely, to have lived upon a diet for months only to find that you still have dyspepsia, or to have followed certain rules of morality with great precision and enthusiasm without obtaining the untroubled mind.

We are accustomed to see results in the material world and naturally expect them everywhere. The trouble is we do not always recognize improvements when we see them, and we insist upon certain preconceived changes as a result of our endeavors. The physician is apt rashly to promise definite physical accomplishments in a given time. He is courting disappointment and distrust when he does so. We all want to get relief from our symptoms, and we are inclined to insist upon a particular kind of relief so strongly that we fail to appreciate the possibilities of another and a better relief which may be at hand. The going astray in this particular is sometimes very unfortunate.

There was a man to rush frantically from one doctor to another, trying to obtain relief for a particular pain or discomfort, unwilling to rest long enough to find out that the trouble would have disappeared naturally if he had taken the advice of the first physician, to live without impatience and within his limitations.

A man grows better, more human, more intelligent, as he practices the virtues. He is safer, no doubt, and the world is better. It is even true that, by the constant practice of virtues, he may come finally to espouse goodness and become thoroughly good. That is the hopeful thing about it and the reason why we may consistently ask or demand the routine practice of the virtues.

(Adapted from The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Untroubled Mind, by Herbert J. Hall)

'PERFORMANCE CAPTURE'

2011-11-01T23:22:00.000+08:00

Avatar Wallpaper

From image.photography5.com

Zoë Saldaña (Neytiri) & Sam Worthington (Jake Sully)

From images4.fanpop.com

Director James Cameron had many reasons to be happy the morning that the Oscar nominations for 2010 were announced: His blockbuster movie “Avatar” tied for the most with nine, including best picture and best director. But he was dismayed that his cast, including stars Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver, was shut out.

In fact, unlike the great majority of best picture nominees, the “Avatar” actors have not nabbed one major critic’s award, or guild prize. The snubs reflect the apparent ambivalence of the film community — especially actors — to “Avatar” and its revolutionary use of “performance capture,” a new technology that combines human actors with computer-generated animation to create the blue, 10-foot-tall creatures who are the heart of the movie.

To the uninitiated, it raises basic questions: Is this acting, or is it animation? And, does this suggest that actors could become obsolete? It’s an issue that provokes a strong response from Hollywood figures, from best actor nominees Jeff Bridges and Jeremy Renner to directors Cameron and Steven Spielberg.

“I’m sure they could do it now if they wanted. Actors will kind of be a thing of the past,” Bridges told Tribune Newspapers the day nominations were announced. “We’ll be turned into combinations. A director will be able to say, ‘I want 60 percent Clooney; give me 10 percent Bridges; and throw some Charles Bronson in there.’ They’ll come up with a new guy who will look like nobody who has ever lived and that person or thing will be huge,” he said.

(Tribune Newspapers writers Richard Verrier, Amy Kaufman and Yvonne Villarreal contributed to this report at chicagotribune.com) Some people are science fiction enthusiasts of the highest order. However, great films are not strictly confined to one genre. You can find them anywhere. STANLEY KUBRICK’S 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is so amazing and original that it blows almost everything else to hell. Nothing can ever scale the heights of the original STAR WARS and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. They possessed an epic sweep and fabulous characters that you could become emotionally invested in. Both trilogies in the series are noteworthy for obvious reasons. The first two ALIEN movies (particularly the one that Mr. Cameron directed) are incredible. AVATAR is a cross between DANCES WITH WOLVES and PLANET OF THE APES. In case you were wondering, that’s not a good thing.

(SHERYL CROW at cinematicpassions.wordpress.com)

Jake Sully

From ourpoliticsblog.com

Neytiri

From blog.christianitytoday.com

No one in the universe has the imagination of James Cameron, and if they do, they don’t have the ability to convey it into the world of film. Not like he does. Avatar was the best film of 2009, and one of the best films to come out this entire decade…. You’ll eat up what’s been fed with a smile on your face, because it’s that damn good. Avatar is unlike any movie….. Cameron takes a simple, almost cliché story, and makes it an authentic tale about two races, two people, and the world that lives and breathes around them. The fairyland of Pandora becomes a reality and you as a viewer are lucky enough to have been invited to see it through the eyes of Jake Sully.

(SHERYL CROW at cinematicpassions.wordpress.com)

Jake Sully, a paralyzed marine

From avatar3trailer.com

Avatar is the biggest money-making film of all time, earning nearly $2.8 billion worldwide at the box office. It is also the top-selling Blu-Ray disc in history. Cameron said, "It is a rare and remarkable opportunity when a filmmaker gets to build a fantasy world, and watch it grow, with the resources and partnership of a global media company. Avatar was conceived as an epic work of fantasy – a world that audiences could visit, across all media platforms, and this moment marks the launch of the next phase of that world. With two new films on the drawing boards, my company and I are embarking on an epic journey with our partners at Twentieth Century Fox. Our goal is to meet and exceed the global audience's expectations for the richness of Avatar’s visual world and the power of the storytelling. In the second and third films, which will be self contained stories that also fulfill a greater story arc, we will not back off the throttle of Avatar’s visual and emotional horsepower, and will continue to explore its themes and characters, which touched the hearts of audiences in all cultures around the world. I'm looking forward to returning to Pandora, a world where our imaginations can run wild."

(Mark Moring at blog.christianitytoday.com)

In the year 2154, ex marine JAKE SULLY (SAM WORTHINGTON) is a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair. He lacks the financial resources for an operation that would allow him permanent mobility.

Jake’s brother was a scientist working with a team on the cutting edge of some remarkable technology. Though he has no training, Jake eagerly accepts his late sibling’s mission in exchange for financial compensation that will restore the use of his legs.

With the rest of his intellectually focused companions, he travels to the moon Pandora, which is several light years from Earth. The scientists are studying the Na’vi, the indigenous people who inhabit the planet. They are strange looking creatures: long and slender, approximately ten feet tall, bright blue with glittering golden eyes (complete with tails). They resemble enormous athletic azure kitty cats.

Jake is to infiltrate the population and get to know the Na’vi on their own level. But because the planet’s atmosphere is hostile to humans, the scientists have an innovative idea. A body (referred to as an avatar) has all ready been prepared for Jake’s sibling. They were identical twins. So the scenario fits perfectly. The physical structure is a mix of several kinds of different DNA. If Jake were an authentic Na’vi living on Pandora, that is precisely what he would look like. In reality, Jake will be lying in an unconscious state in a pod inside their spacecraft. But the representational avatar will be roaming throughout the planet as long as Jake is in a motionless state. When he gets up from his station, the avatar is lifeless until he returns.

(SHERYL CROW at cinematicpassions.wordpress.com)

Sully and Neyriti

From lookpictures.net

We are soon privy to the knowledge that it’s not just a scientific exploration, but a military program with the intent to mine the precious material scattered throughout their rich woodland. Jake is asked by his military commander to find any Intel that would help them infiltrate the precious land, and force them off. Colonel Quaritch offers Sully the surgery to return his legs to him in return, but Sully has begun to understand the Na’vi, and more so he has begun to develop an affection for Neytiri , who has been teaching him the ways of their people and land. An epic battle is eminent, but the trip to get there is gripping.

(Posted by Heather at moviemobsters.com)

The Battle

From mymoviewallpapers.com

The Battle

From moviemobsters.com

The Battle

From avatar3trailer.com

Avatar came, spread its magic and conquered! Avatar has been the talk of the town long after people have left the theaters. Critics from around the world are talking about the revolutionary 3D and CGI work but one thing that most have missed out is the story. Director James Cameron has tried to depict the US Marines as brutal hordes of soldiers who enjoy shedding blood and this is what should have caught the senses of the moviegoers. The popular critics, though spared a lot of thought for the graphics, could have manged to put in a little thought on the real meaning of the story.

(Variety)

Avatar is a film that has not only conquered our hearts but was also set to walk away with all the awards and now the word is out that the Charismatic James Cameron is penning its prequel. Jon Landau, the producer of Avatar said Cameron is penning the prequel of the film and this time it is going to be much bigger in terms of the extravaganza and the twists of events that are taking place in Pandora’s world. The book would be about the events that led to the story of Avatar, and Cameron seems to be devoting a lot of his time into penning his thoughts.

(MTV)

James Cameron will begin work on Avatar sequel script (due in 2014) early 2011, with the production set to being at the end of 2011. Judging from the fact that Avatar began filming in April 2007, and was only released 2.5 years later, we might possibly expect a similar time-frame again. On the other way, because Cameron and his crew are going to make two films during this period of time (the third part of the trilogy being planned for release in 2015), perhaps that might take a bit more. Anyway, Sam Worthington whose acting schedule seems to be pretty much determined by the upcoming shoots, has recently given an interview where he said that James Cameron had some great ideas about the 2nd and 3rd parts of Pandora adventures.

(filmonic.com)

If Sam Worthington isn’t a household name after this movie, we don’t know what it will take to make it one. He was the best part of Terminator Salvation and is also starring in the upcoming remake “Clash of the Titans”. In spite of all the brilliant other points of Avatar, it was a success because he was the right guy for the role. Handsome, but with eyes opening his soul to you, he was all the charisma and energy this film needed. Another piece of new and different. Coupled with ZoeSaldana as Neytiri , who completely blew us away with her performance through the special effects. Unlike Worthington, we never see her human face, and don’t need to. Her character, her voice, and her movement was remarkably expressive and unique. Grounding this massive film was the talents of Sigourney Weaver. Her face was a welcome each time she was on screen. With subtle strength she played perfectly against Sully’s over enthusiastic childlike behavior. Her character went by the name of Grace, and it suited her role with perfect reflection.

(Posted by Heather at moviemobsters.com)

Cameron said that he fully intends to make Avatar 2 & 3 at 48 or 60 fps. Movies at 48 or 60 looks different and way more alive. 3D shows a window into another reality. The higher frame rate will take the glass out of the window. It is really stunning, and becomes very real.

DreamWorks Animation CEO, Katzenberg, revealed that he is working on scalable multicore processing, a "quantum leap" in computer processing speed. For years, the animators have been waiting hours upon hours for the computers to render. With the new processes, the animators will be able to create their work in real time, and see the results in seconds. That will make a milestone in the storytelling of movies. An extraordinary and revolutionary help in the process, which will have a positive creative effect, and at the same time, rapidly speed up the creation of a movie.

Having explored Pandora's ground-level flora and fauna in the first Avatar movie, James Cameron wants to go to the distant moon's and the deep watery depths of the oceans in the sequels. He will be able to conjure something new and amazing once again, with aquatic alien life forms and underwater landscape.

Avatar 2 will mainly focus on the oceans of Pandora. And those seas will be just as rich and diverse and crazy and imaginative as the fantastic rain forest from Avatar. There will of course be scenes from the Pandora we already know too, but the waters will hold the secrets and mysteries of the 2nd movie. Cameron's fascination with oceans stretches 2 decades back, where he developed most of the 3D technology used in Avatar, while working on his Titanic documentary "Ghosts of the Abyss" and afterwards took the audience beneath the sea, in "The Abyss". Avatar 3 will take the audience to whole other planets, with new and different environments and life forms.

(avatar3trailer.com)

Note: I found these images (above) from all over the web. If you own a photo’s copyright and think this page violates Fair Use, please contact me.

BROTHER LEADER

2011-10-31T00:33:00.000+08:00

In February 2011, following revolutions in neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia, protests against Gadhafi's rule began. These escalated into an uprising that spread across the country, with the forces opposing Gadhafi establishing a government based in Benghazi named the National Transitional Council (NTC). This led to the 2011 Libyan civil war, which included a military intervention by a NATO-led coalition to enforce a UN Security Council Resolution 1973 calling for a no-fly zone and protection of civilians in Libya. The assets of Gadhafi and his family were frozen, and both Interpol and the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants on 27 June for Gadhafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and his brother-in-law Abdullah Senussi, concerning crimes against humanity.

(WIKIPEDIA)

For most of their history, the peoples of Libya have been subjected to varying degrees of foreign control. The Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals, and Byzantines ruled all or parts of Libya. Although the Greeks and Romans left impressive ruins at Cyrene, Leptis Magna, and Sabratha, little else remains today to testify to the presence of these ancient cultures.

The Arabs conquered Libya in the seventh century A.D. In the following centuries, most of the indigenous peoples adopted Islam and the Arabic language and culture. The Ottoman Turks conquered the country in the mid-16th century. Libya remained part of their empire, although at times virtually autonomous, until Italy invaded in 1911 and, in the face of years of resistance, made Libya a colony.

In 1934, Italy adopted the name "Libya" (used by the Greeks for all of North Africa, except Egypt) as the official name of the colony, which consisted of the Provinces of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and Fezzan. King Idris I, Emir of Cyrenaica, led Libyan resistance to Italian occupation between the two world wars. Allied forces removed Axis powers from Libya in February 1943. Tripolitania and Cyrenaica came under separate British administration, while the French controlled Fezzan. In 1944, Idris returned from exile in Cairo but declined to resume permanent residence in Cyrenaica until the removal of some aspects of foreign control in 1947. Under the terms of the 1947 peace treaty with the Allies, Italy relinquished all claims to Libya.

On November 21, 1949, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution stating that Libya should become independent before January 1, 1952. King Idris I represented Libya in the subsequent UN negotiations. When Libya declared its independence on December 24, 1951, it was the first country to achieve independence through the United Nations and one of the first former European possessions in Africa to gain independence. Libya was proclaimed a constitutional and a hereditary monarchy under King Idris.

The discovery of significant oil reserves in 1959 and the subsequent income from petroleum sales enabled what had been one of the world's poorest countries to become extremely wealthy, as measured by per capita GDP. Although oil drastically improved Libya's finances, popular resentment grew as wealth was increasingly concentrated in the hands of the elite. This discontent continued to mount with the rise throughout the Arab world of Nasserism and the idea of Arab unity.

On September 1, 1969, a small group of military officers led by then 28-year-old army officer Muammar Abu Minyar al-Qadhafi staged a coup d'etat against King Idris, who was subsequently exiled to Egypt. The new regime, headed by the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the new Libyan Arab Republic. Qadhafi emerged as leader of the RCC and eventually as de facto head of state. The Libyan Government asserts that Qadhafi holds no official position, although he is referred to in government statements and the official press as the "Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution," among other honorifics.

The new RCC's motto became "freedom, socialism, and unity." It pledged itself to remedy "backwardness," take an active role in the Palestinian cause, promote Arab unity, and encourage domestic policies based on social justice, non-exploitation, and an equitable distribution of wealth.

An early objective of the new government was withdrawal of all foreign military installations from Libya. Following negotiations, British military installations at Tobruk and nearby El Adem were closed in March 1970, and U.S. facilities at Wheelus Air Force Base near Tripoli were closed in June 1970. That July, the Libyan Government ordered the expulsion of several thousand Italian residents. By 1971, libraries and cultural centers operated by foreign governments were ordered closed.

After the 1969 coup, Qadhafi closed American and British bases on Libyan territory and partially nationalized all foreign oil and commercial interests in Libya. He also played a key role in promoting the use of oil embargoes as a political weapon for challenging the West, hoping that an oil price rise and embargo in 1973 would persuade the West, especially the United States, to end support for Israel. Qadhafi rejected both Soviet communism and Western capitalism, and claimed he was charting a middle course.

(Background Note: Libya, US DEPARTMENT OF STATE at state.gov)

Muammar Gadhafi abolished the Libyan Constitution of 1951, and adopted laws based on his own ideology. Under Gaddafi, Libya was theoretically a decentralized, democratic state run according to the philosophy of Gaddafi's Green Book, with Gaddafi retaining a ceremonial position. Libya was officially run by a system of people's committees which served as local governments for the country's subdivisions, an indirectly-elected General People's Congress as the legislature, and the General People's Committee, led by a Secretary-General, as the executive branch.

(Wikipedia)

Muammar Gadhafi ruled Libya for more than 40 years by banning and brutally opposing any individual or group opposing the ideology of his 1969 revolution, criminalizing the peaceful exercise of expression and association, refusing to permit independent journalists' and lawyers' organizations, and engaging in torture and extrajudicial executions, including the 1,200 detainees killed in Abu Salim Prison in June 1996. Libya took formal responsibility for the terrorist attack that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, 189 of whom were U.S. citizens and high-ranking Libyan officials have indicated that Muammar Gadhafi personally ordered the attack.

The demands of the Libyan people began much like those of their neighbors in North Africa and the Middle East--for the protection of their universal rights, for greater political freedom and representative government, for justice and opportunity. But the response of Qadhafi and those still loyal to him stood in stark contrast to the inspiring events of what some called the Arab spring. Qadhafi unleashed a merciless campaign of violence against the Libyan people, including civilian noncombatants, using every tool at his disposal, from artillery barrages, to airstrikes, to the employment of foreign mercenaries.

On February 16, 2011 Libyan protesters clashed with police in an anti-government demonstration inspired by the uprisings that brought down the rulers of Libya's neighbors, Egypt and Tunisia. Opposition activists, organizing through social media, rallied against the country's long-time leader, Muammar Gadhafi, in the country's second-biggest city,

By February 23, 2011 a massive evacuation of foreigners from Libya was underway by air, sea and land. Tens of thousands of foreigners in Libya were boarding planes, ships and, in some cases, overcrowded vans in an effort to flee the chaos that has erupted from opposition protests and a government crackdown. Two Turkish vessels picked up 3,000 Turks from the eastern Libyan port of Benghazi Wednesday, as part of what Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called the biggest evacuation operation in Turkey's history. Benghazi's airport has been shut down for several days, forcing nations to evacuate foreigners by sea. About 25,000 Turks resided in Libya when the unrest began, many of them working in construction. Chinese state media said Beijing also was organizing an air, sea and land operation to evacuate up to 33,000 Chinese citizens from Libya.

The United Nations Security Council and the international community condemned the violence and use of force against civilians in Libya and on February 26, 2011, the United Nations Security Council unanimously agreed to refer the ongoing situation in Libya to the International Criminal Court, impose an arms embargo on the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including the provision of mercenary personnel, freezed the financial assets of Muammar Gadhafi and certain family members, and impose a travel ban on Gadhafi, certain family members and senior advisors.

On March 10, 2011, the Government of France recognized the Libyan Transitional National Council, based in Benghazi, as the sole legitimate government of Libya and has announced its intention to send an ambassador there. Their senior leaders consist of longstanding critics of Qadhafi as well as officials who recently broke with his regime. Mustafa Abdul Jalil, Gaddafi's former justice minister, emerged as leader of Libyan National Transitional Council. The council withheld names of members in other cities like Zawiya, Nalot, Musrata, Zentan, Zawara, Tripoli, Jado.

On 19 April 2011, the United Kingdom announced that it was sending military advisers to assist the rebel forces in Libya. Foreign Secretary William Hague said that the deployment of advisers was within the provisions of UN Security Resolution 1973, which expressly forbade a foreign occupation of Libya. On 20 April 2011, France and Italy also announced their intention to send similar advisory elements to Libya. Italy posted eight combat aircraft for Libyan airstrikes on April 27 2011, with additional aircraft patrolling the no-fly zone.

The Polish Foreign Minister arrived in Benghazi to show Poland's support for the future of Libya on May 11, 2011. May 12, 2011 saw British Foreign Secretary William Hague recognize Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the leader of the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC), as the "legitimate representative of the Libyan people." PM David Cameron also invited the rebels to establish a permanent office in London. Greece announced plans to send humainitarian aid ships, including a modible hospital, to Benghazi on May 14, 2011.

(globalsecurity.org)

In Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has spearheaded UN-backed NATO intervention, pledged stronger military action at his first meeting with the leader of the opposition Libyan National Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil.

French military sources said Sarkozy had won approval from NATO to carry out more air strikes and France had moved six fighter jets from Corsica to the southern Greek island of Crete, closer to Libya, for that purpose.

Italy, the former colonial power in Libya that provided air bases for the NATO mission but said its own planes will not open fire, said it may send 10 military trainers as part of increased Western efforts to help the badly pressured rebels.

U.S. President Barack Obama opposed sending U.S. ground troops to Libya, the White House said, but he supported a French and British move to dispatch military advisers to help rebels fighting Gadhafi.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden insisted in an interview with the Financial Times that U.S. strike aircraft, requested by France, were not needed to achieve the alliance's goal in Libya.

"If the Lord Almighty extricated the U.S. out of NATO and dropped it on the planet of Mars so we were no longer participating, it is bizarre to suggest that NATO and the rest of the world lacks the capacity to deal with Libya — it does not," he was quoted as saying. "Occasionally other countries lack the will, but this is not about capacity," Biden said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recommended $25 million in commodities and services for Libyan rebels that would not include weapons, the State Department said. Obama still must sign off on this provision of aid such as radios, body armour and halal ready-to-eat-meals, spokesman Mark Toner said.

France's decision to send up to 10 military advisers to work with the rebels came a day after Britain, the other main leader of the coalition, announced a similar move.

(Sarkozy tells Libyan rebels: "We will help you" by Emmanuel Jarry and Michael Georgy, Reuters April 20, 2011)

When international disagreements deteriorate to the point when Washington felt it has no choice but to use massive military force, the person held most responsible is ruthlessly hunted down. Manuel Noriega, Panama's mafia boss in the 1980s, was toppled in a US invasion in 1989 and ended up in a maximum security jail in Illinois. Slobodan Milosevic was put on trial in The Hague, where he died in custody. Saddam Hussein was dug out of a hole and sent to the gallows.

Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, was similarly blunt. "It is our belief that if Mr Gadhafi loses the capacity to enforce his will through vastly superior armed forces, he simply will not be able to sustain his grip on the country," he said.

Nicolas Sarkozy, Cameron's co-hawk, has been busy swapping insults with Gadhafi, with all the appearance of a personal vendetta. After the Libyan leader said the French president had "gone mad", Sarkozy responded in kind, condemning Gadhafi's "murderous madness".

Sarkozy has also spoken of "targeted" actions – meaning assassination – should Gadhafi authorise the use of his stores of mustard gas or other WMD. Even normally measured Barack Obama had been getting hot under the collar about the man Ronald Reagan branded a "mad dog".

Taken by itself, such name-calling might not matter so much. But the larger, unavoidable conclusion was that capturing or killing Gaddafi has then became an end in itself for the western allies (though perhaps not their Arab coalition partners), and that the war would not be deemed "won" until this objective was attained.

The implications were serious. The missiles and B52s began their dreadful work, Gadhafi knew, if he didn't already, that hewas in a fight to the finish – and for him, there may be no escape. His course of action in the coming days would be influenced by this realization, and may be consequently more extreme and more aggressive than otherwise.

His defiant overnight statement, when he condemned the "crusader colonialism" afflicting his country, was clearly aimed at Arab and Muslim world opinion in particular, and the non-western world in general (major countries such as China, India, Brazil and Germany have not supported the intervention). Regime claims about mounting civilian deaths will play big there, Iraq-style. Gaddafi would press his propaganda advantage for all its worth.

The demonization of Gadhafi has made it impossible for western leaders to countenance his continuation in power. But without the ground invasion they have pledged not to undertake, he could well survive as the overlord of western and southern Libya following a de facto partition, hostile, vengeful and highly dangerous.

This seemed to be his plan. Far from giving up or drawing back, Gadhafi escalated the fighting around Benghazi at the weekend. Rather than abandon cities such as Zawiya, as Obama demanded, he was reportedly moving his troops into urban areas where they can less easily be targeted from the air. Meanwhile, his apparent willingness to use "human shields", his threats of retaliation across the Mediterranean area, and his designation of the whole of North Africa as a "war zone" raised the specter of possible terrorist attacks and an alarming regression to his old ways.

Gadhafi has personalized this war, too. And he was not going to go quietly. Military superiority in the air will count for nothing if pro-regime army and air force units, militia and security forces, and civilian and tribal supporters who had remained loyal refused to turn on him or kick him out of Tripoli. By its determination to "get Gadhafi", the west has made this a fight to the death – and death may be a long time in coming.

(Simon Tisdall, guardian.co.uk, Sunday 20 March 2011 11.01 GM)

The Libyan Transitional National Council has set up a rival government in Benghazi. The 45-member Council includes representatives from throughout Libya and is headed by Chairman (and former Qadhafi Minister of Justice) Mustafa Abdul Jalil. The Council acts as the opposition’s legislative branch and has appointed an executive committee, headed by Mahmoud Jibril, to oversee interim governance issues. The TNC has stated repeatedly its desire to serve only as an interim body and has issued plans to draft a constitution and hold nationwide elections as soon as Qadhafi was removed from power.

(Background Note: Libya, US DEPARTMENT OF STATE at state.gov)

Gadhafi and his forces lost the Battle of Tripoli in August and on 16 September 2011 the NTC took Libya's seat at the UN, replacing Gadhafi. He retained control over parts of Libya, most notably the city of Sirte, to which it was presumed that he had fled. Although Gadhafi's forces initially held out against the NTC's advances, Gadhafi was captured alive after his convoy was attacked by NATO warplanes as Sirte fell on 20 October 2011 but was killed by the rebels the same day.

A National Transitional Council (NTC) official told Al Jazeera that Gadhafi had been captured that day by Libyan forces near his hometown of Sirte. He had been in a convoy of vehicles that was targeted by a US Predator Missile which was followed by a French air strike on a road about 3 kilometres (2 mi) west of Sirte, killing dozens of loyalist fighters. Gadhafi survived but was wounded and took refuge with several of his bodyguards in a drain underneath the road west of the city. Around noon NTC fighters found the group and took Gadhafi prisoner. Shortly afterward, he was shot dead. At least four mobile phone videos showed rebels beating Gadhafi and manhandling him on the back of a utility vehicle before his death. One video suggested he was sodomized "with some kind of stick or knife" or possibly a bayonet, after his capture. In another video, he was seen being rolled around on the ground as rebels pulled off his shirt, though it was unclear if he was already dead. Later pictures of his body showed that he had wounds in the abdomen, chest, and head. A rebel who identified himself as Senad el-Sadik el-Ureybi later claimed to have shot and killed Gadhafi. He claimed to have shot Gaddafi in the head and chest, and that it took half an hour for him to die. Gadhafi's body was subsequently flown to Misrata and was placed in the freezer of a local market alongside the bodies of Defense Minister Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr and his son and national security adviser Moatassem Gadhafi. The bodies were put on public display for four days contrary to Islamic custom, with Libyans from all over the country coming to view them. Many took pictures on their cell phones.

Libya's Prime Minister and several NTC figures confirmed Gadhafi's death, claiming he died of wounds suffered during his capture. News channels aired a graphic video claiming to be of Gadhafi's bloodied body after capture. However on 28 October 2011, widespread revulsion outside Libya at the manner of Gadhafi's death prompted the interim government to promise to bring his killers to trial.

On 25 October 2011, the National Transitional Council announced that Gadhafi was buried at an unidentified location in the desert. Later Al Aan TV showed amateur video footage of the funeral taking place at an undisclosed location.

(WIKIPEDIA)

CHANGE OF POWER IN CAIRO

2011-10-29T22:46:00.000+08:00

Gamal Abdul Nasser (1918-1970), the greatest genius produced by Egypt in five hundred years, was the first Egyptian since the Pharaohs 2,500 years ago to govern Egypt. Nasser led the complete liberation of Egypt and the restitution of national dignity in a titanic struggle with both his 35 million mostly downtrodden people and numerous world powers that undercut his efforts at every opportunity.

(Adapted from SUBURBAN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT PROJECT at semp.us)

On 22 July 1952, the Free Officers, led by Gamal Abdul Nasser, realized that King Farouk might be preparing to move against them. They decided to strike and seize power the next morning. On July 26, King Farouk, forced to abdicate in favor of his infant son, sailed into exile on the same yacht on which his grandfather, Ismail, had left for exile about seventy years earlier. In 1954, the army overthrew King Farouk of Egypt whereby Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser was subsequently made President of Egypt.

It was under Nasser that Egypt finally succeeded in ridding itself of the last vestiges of British imperialism; that Egypt attempted to steer a middle course between the Western countries and the Soviet Union and its allies and in so doing became a founder of the Nonaligned Movement that exists to this day; that Egypt moved out of the isolation the British had imposed on the country and assumed a leadership position in the Arab world; and that Egypt became the "beating heart" of pan-Arabism and the symbol of renewed Arab pride.

Internally, Nasser destroyed the political and economic power of the old feudal landowning class. Education and employment opportunities were made available to all Egyptians regardless of class or sex. Women were encouraged to get an education and go to work as part of the national struggle for economic progress and development. After the revolution, women were at last granted the right to vote. Nasser emphasized social programs to improve the living and working conditions of the peasants and workers, such as the electrification of villages, worker housing, minimum wage laws, decreased working hours, and worker participation in management. Industrialization intensified, and the country became less dependent on the export of cotton. The economy grew at acceptable rates in spite of some problems. After the June 1967 War with Israel, however, the military expenditures began to absorb about 25 percent of Egypt's gross national product (GNP). Also, the population increase that had begun in the 1940s began to overtake the economic advances.

It is true that Nasser never really opened up his rule to popular participation. He once admitted that he had become so used to conspiracy, by necessity that he tended to see a conspiracy in everything, a view that prevented him from conducting an open rule. He wanted to establish a basis of support for his regime but one that would not require the regime to give significant power to the public. He felt that an ideology such as socialism might accomplish this, but at the same time he feared that the commitment would be to the ideology and not to him. Thus, when Nasser died in 1970 he left behind an imperfect and unfinished revolution.

(Adapted from globalsecurity.org)

Nasser wrote: “When I now try to recall the details of our experience in Palestine (in 1948), I find a curious thing: we were fighting in Palestine, but our dreams were centered in Egypt. Our bullets were aimed at the enemy in his trenches before us, by our hearts hovered over our distant country, which we had left to the care of wolves.” As one of Nasser’s fellow officers lay dying he told his comrades: “The biggest battlefield is in Egypt.”

“Every man we questioned had nothing to recommend except to kill someone else. Every idea we listened to was nothing but an attack on some other idea. If we had gone along with everything we heard, we would have killed off all the people and torn down every idea, and there would have been nothing left for us to do but sit down among the corpses and ruins, bewailing our evil fortune and cursing our wretched fate.”

“If anyone had asked me in those days what I wanted most, I would have answered promptly: To hear an Egyptian speak fairly about another Egyptian. To sense an Egyptian has opened his heart to pardon, forgiveness and love for his Egyptian brethren. To find an Egyptian who does not devote his time to tearing down the views of another Egyptian.”

Nasser was especially disillusioned with the professors at universities who did not advance any ideas to him and instead, “each confined himself to advancing himself, pointing out his unique fitness for making miracles. Each of them kept glancing at me with the look of one who preferred me to all the treasures of earth and heaven.”

In summary, Gamal Nasser was a giant of the twentieth century who curiously is not well-remembered today. He was ahead of his times. The world powers that constantly opposed his attempts to mainstream Egypt into the world while he was alive may long for his forward-looking pragmatic and logical approach compared to the backward-looking Islamist extremism rife in the region today. He accomplished much in spite of his short life.

(Adapted from SUBURBAN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT PROJECT at semp.us)

Gamal Abdel Nasser was not a great manager: finances during the 18 years on his watch were in bad shape. Yet it was under Nasser that life for millions of poor peasants, who had been poor for hundreds of years, finally improved. It was under Nasser that schools were built, clean drinking water brought to people, clinics opened. Through it all, the state's bureaucracy grew top-heavy, patronage and corruption were rampant, and the authoritarian police state was honed, though it would not become the internal, infernal prison of the slightest dissenters until the years of Sadat and Mubarak.

(Pierre Tristam, About.com Guide)

In Egypt, a country where 50 per cent of the population is under 30 years old and which has known no other regime than Mubarak’s state of emergency, with its torture and surveillance, it was the reaction to the murder of Khaled Said, a young blogger beaten to death by the police, that was a turning point. It began with a protest of 1,000 people in Alexandria during Said’s funeral and then went ‘underground’ onto the internet. Pictures of his crushed face are still on his facebook page. The next spark in the North African revolution was in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, ignited by the self immolation of Mohamed Bouazazi, a vegetable peddler whose cart and produce were confiscated by the police. Over the next month, despite increased repression, protests grew across Tunisia and President Ben Ali was pushed out of the country.

The sit-ins, strikes, and demonstrations of 2006, the almost daily workers’ actions of early 2007, and the massive strike of textile workers in Muhalla al-Kubra in 2008 were initiated by working women. These struggles led to beatings and imprisonments as well as some wage increases and bread subsidies as the regime tried to cheaply buy its way out of crisis. The mixture of economic hardship, political repression and social control indicate how deep the uprooting of the old regime had to be.

Once the lid is taken off a police state, it is very difficult to put back on. Mental liberation and the radical change in consciousness that accompanies revolution, entails a rethinking of everything, a questioning of everything that has been taken for granted. What had been normal for so long has been fundamentally shaken. After 30 years of life under Mubarak, the Egyptian people had become historical protagonists. Tahrir Square, the revolution’s focal point, became territorialized by those who had not counted. It became the space of a new kind of work, namely the hard but collectively joyous work of human liberation.

Mubarak’s departure represents a victory for the movement but it is not the goal of liberation. Egypt remains at a crossroads with the military as the only possible institution to renormalize it. Yet under the guise of the national interest any return to the old normal must include suppressing freedom, strikes, demonstrations, and any other manifestation of the economic and social revolt against injustice and exploitation that has been brewing for the past decade.

In 1956, four years after the 1952 Egyptian revolution and one year into the Algerian revolution, Algeria’s liberation movement met in the Soummam Valley to discuss the organization and programme of its revolution. An important principle adopted there was that rather than militarizing politics, the military and any military decision had to be subservient to, and under the control of, the political struggle. It is a principle that continues to haunt Algeria and Egypt where militarized states of emergency have been in place for decades, abrogating political rights and suppressing spaces for public discourse.

In Egypt the army – intimately connected to the economy and self-interested in the maintenance of the status quo – is repeating the same calls it made during the last days of Mubarak under the slogans to ‘return to order’ and ‘return to normalcy.’ Yet the people are not naïve.

It is the revolution happening in the minds of the people – including perhaps those among the army’s rank and file – that is really significant. Nasser understood its importance, calling his book on the liberation of Egypt a ‘philosophy of revolution’.

The ‘commune’ at Tahrir Square produced a new political form. And in an attempt to de-communalize that form, it has now been deterritorialised. As youths moved to literally and symbolically clean the square, the military destroyed the shelters, banners, and artworks and removed the people.

(Adapted from PAMBAZUKA NEWS ‘What makes the lid blow off?’ by Nigel C. Gibson, 2011-02-17, Issue 517 at pambazuka.org)

Many thoughtful Egyptians will be recalling this "bon mot" as the watch one ruler, the ousted Husni Mubarak, replaced by a military junta led by Field Marshall Mohammed Tantawi. Egyptians are getting more Mubarakism, sans Mubarak, at least for now. This is not what most Egyptians want or deserve. The new military junta just proclaimed it would support the hated Israeli-Egyptian peace deal signed by Anwar Sadat, thus assuaging fears in the US and Israel. In an example of typical post-coup talk, the junta says elections will be held sometime in the future. Many Egyptians are still euphoric over the ouster of Gen. Mubarak, known to one and all as "pharaoh." Most of them do not yet seem to have realized that the people who have taken over the regime are the very same generals, policemen and tycoons who ran it under Mubarak.

The dreaded secret police, or "Mukhabarat," is commanded by Gen. Omar Suleiman, who is widely viewed as America’s and Israel’s man in Cairo. Alongside him are Marshall Tantawi, chief of staff Lieutenant General Enan and Ahmed Shafik, also seen as America’s men on the Nile. The US usually had a backup for its favorite dictators; Gen. Omer Suleiman was Mubarak’s US-anointed successor. After Anwar Sadat’s assassination, Gen. Mubarak was quickly engineered into power.

(Adapted from Egypt's Faux Revolution: Bait and Switch on the Nile by Eric Margolis at informationliberation.com)

Gamal Abdul Nasser and Family, 1960

From edition.cnn.com

Egypt’s younger officers must be thinking about the example of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who seized power in 1952 after Egypt’s disastrous war with Israel in 1947–8. Perhaps there is a young colonel or even major who may try to seize power and emulate Nasser, who is still adored by many Egyptians in spite of his disastrous mistakes. People have forgotten many of them. What they do remember was that when Nasser died of a heart attack in 1970, his family had little money, and they recall that Nasser spoke for Egypt, not foreign powers.

So far, the so-called Egyptian Revolution has only been a game of musical chairs. The United States still dominates Egypt’s military, policy, and economy. Washington provides wheat without which Egypt cannot feed itself.

Israel still exercises powerful influence over Egypt, thanks to its supporters in the US Congress. An angry word from Jerusalem, and Egypt’s wheat could be cut off. Egyptian and Israeli intelligence are as entwined as was Israel’s Mossad with the Iranian Savak secret police.

The massive pyramid of Egypt’s police state – to use a fine metaphor from the brilliant Albanian writer Ismail Kadere – will not be easily lifted, perhaps without a full scale, violent revolution. To date, the revolt on the Nile has not even produced a Kerensky, never mind a Lenin.

If Egyptians feel cheated by the change of power in Cairo, as many will, and violent demonstrations begin, what will happen if the junta orders a battalion commanded by a colonel to open fire on protesters?

The first young officer who refuses and orders his men to join the demonstrators could become Egypt’s new hero. Nasser’s ghost haunts Cairo.

(Adapted from Egypt's Faux Revolution: Bait and Switch on the Nile by Eric Margolis at informationliberation.com)

WE ARE OUR OWN WORST ENEMY

2011-10-26T22:33:00.000+08:00

Almost all human beings do have something to ask for from Almighty. Some have a craving for some lawful worldly objects, some have to ask for solutions of their problems, some longing for remedy of illness and getting good health, while some have the far-sight of asking favors of the next world. Thus everyone has something to ask from his/her own angle of view.

(boltwolf.tripod.com)

Imagine for a moment that you find yourself with a flashlight in your hand in a room that is totally dark. You turn on the flashlight and see a beautiful painting hanging on the wall. You might think, "Sure, this is a wonderful work of art, but is this all there is?" Then, all at once, the room becomes illuminated from above. You look around and see that you are in an art museum, with hundreds of paintings on the walls around you, each more beautiful than the last. As these possibilities stand revealed to you, you realize you have a lifetime of art to study and love. You are no longer constrained to view just one painting lit by the weak glow of your flashlight.

Can anything be classed as real when our perceptions differ greatly on so many things? Just because we see something a particular way does not make it so. We can be so insistent sometimes that our way of seeing something is more right than someone else’s way.

Let’s take the example of war. There are some people who believe that war is necessary sometimes to get peace and then in order to keep the peace. There are other people who will believe that war is evil and should never be entered into no matter what. Who is right? Is war right or wrong? That’s just an example.....

What you see as real is only defined by your belief structure. Your version of what is real is only your perception of it; not what is so.

Here’s another example: Let’s say an event occurs in your life. You have the choice about how you respond to it. Let’s say you have a death in the family. You can choose to see that event as something terrible and tragic to which you will respond accordingly. Or, you can choose to see that event and something that inspires you to make something more of your life; living every day as if it was the last, so to speak.

From that example you can see that you may or may not have control over the events in your life but you can certainly take control of how to respond to them. That part of life will always be within your power. This is where life gets interesting because you shape your own reality through your beliefs.

Your belief structure determines your perception which then ultimately determines how you respond to events. Going by that sequence you can then see that there is another place to start. You can choose to examine your beliefs and then choose to change them.

(Adaptted fron Perception vs Reality by Amit Sodha on March 22, 2006 at unlimitedchoice.org)

We have a very narrow view of things. Naturally, the imperfect existence cannot be the source of perfect consciousness. The imperfect perspective of the human mind cannot be expected to give a complete picture of things in their true state of affairs.

There is a habit of the mind by which it looks at things in a linear fashion, in a line or a straight vision, as it were, as a series of objects, a line in space and time, and this is what may be succinctly called the three-dimensional perspective or the individualistic perception of the human mind – to look at things as bodies, as isolated existences, with the feeling that you and I are different, that things are isolated from one another in such a manner that there cannot be intrinsic or organic connections among them. This is perhaps the historical way of things. There is no organic connection between events in history. They are mathematically or causally related, so that one follows the other.

(An Analysis of Our Perception of Historical Personalities by Swami Krishnananda at swami-krishnananda.org)

The ultimate source of our problems is in thought. Our thinking determines our actions and our actions determine the quality of our relationship with each other. Society is the result of relationships. Problems arising out of human relationship appear to be intractable. There is conflict at all levels of human relationship. There is conflict between husband and wife, between parent and child, between one group and another, between nations, religions and within the same political and religious organizations. There is enormous confusion, violence, brutalities, the wars, terrorism and endless division of religion and nationality. Roots of disorder lie in the state of human mind.

Unfortunately we use the same thinking ability to find solutions to the numerous complex and intricate problems that thought has created. Past history clearly demonstrates that despite all the knowledge and experience accumulated through centuries, man has not been able to produce a harmonious and healthy society. We do make some improvements here and there but the overall situation remains grim. The momentum at which the problems are being created is quite overwhelming. It is obvious that there must be a serious flaw in the way we think.

It is amazing that two distinct systems of thought operate within the framework of human consciousness, one that creates the problem and the other that tries to find solution to the problem. Both arise out of the same source. That source is self-centeredness. Thinking arising out of self-interest, self-concern creates numerous problems. Problems like greed, jealousy, anxiety, anger, hate and violence arise out of the conditioned state of mind. Any problem that arises in the mind poses a challenge and there is an automatic response to meet the challenge. This response generates thought process that has no clue as to how the problem got created.

It is extremely important that we should understand the nature of the self because most of our actions spring from this center. Our perceptions and responses to the challenges of life and our basic urges, desires and demands are determined by the nature of the self. Human relationship is based on the operation of thought that is self-centered. Only a profound understanding of the nature of the self can bring about inward revolution.

(Adapted from Clarity of Perception by SardarSingh, September 17, 2009 at lifeisrelationship.com)

One of the things people are quickly becoming aware of is the media’s nonstop repetition of the same old themes and always trying to keep us scared and manipulated, whether it be who to vote for in an upcoming election or the suppression and total disregard of information which paints things in a different picture to the one that they are trying to impose on us. Another is how democracy is just two sides of the same coin so to speak, they offer us choice but that choice is limited inside of their choices.

Freedom is more than a word. It is everything and the only thing that is in our way of obtaining it is our own perception. What we perceive is what believe. Consider this, if we were walking along and spotted a house and someone said that it was a nice house and you disagreed, then which one of you is right? The thing about perception is that more often than not it is not even your own perception; it was manipulated from the day you were born and constantly conditioned by outside forces, from parents to school and work. We are being bombarded with influence and the problem with that is we don’t realize it until we become someone else’s perception altogether and we cry out inside to ourselves.

If someone said the words planet earth most people would immediately conjure up visions of the earth from space as we know it, a giant sphere covered in ocean, dotted with land and surrounded with clouds. But what if you could see ultraviolet light, or x-ray or even gamma rays? Than earth would look incredibly different to you and would therefore provoke different thoughts and feelings, you see everything is symbolic and just because you see something does not mean you see all aspects of something; you just have an idea of how it is and this is one of the biggest problems in the world today as Governments, Media, religion and society in general are constantly trying to take other peoples freedom to see things from many angles and points of view and limit them to only the ones they want them to see. Parents are some of the worst offenders for this.

Everything expresses itself in many shapes and forms and your perception is the only thing that holds it in that myopic and preconceived view you have. You must open yourself up to possibility and when you do that you can let the information flow freely and make an informed judgment. But that is not the world we live in now; the world we live in now is the same world that burnt people alive at the stake for ideas just a few hundred years ago, and although we may not be as physically brutal anymore, fear of changing the way we look at things is still alive and kicking in today’s social structure.

(Adapted from How Everything is a Symbolic Representation of Your Perception, by AndrewCalvisi Mar 2nd, 2010 at bukisa.com)

AMERICAN REALIST

2011-10-25T09:51:00.000+08:00

Portrait of Andrew Wyeth by his son Jamie Wyeth

From allartnews.com

Winter 1946

From artofalexfischer.com

Winter 1946, a self portrait of when Andrew Wyeth (American, 1917-2009) was a boy running in a brown field of dead and dormant grass, a short distance from where his father, N.C. Wyeth, was killed when his stalled car was hit by a train, now hangs in the North Carolina Museum of Art.

(Wyatt Sanderman Day at betterangelsnow.com)

Christina's World, 1948

Tempera on gessoed panel

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

From arthistory.about.com

Christina's World

From mountainsoftravelphotos.com

The woman in the painting is Christina Olson (May 3, 1893 — January 27, 1968). She suffered from polio, a muscular deterioration that paralyzed her lower body. Wyeth was inspired to create the painting when through a window from within the house he saw her crawling across a field. Wyeth had a summer home in the area and was on friendly terms with Olson, using her and her younger brother as the subject of paintings from 1940 to 1968. Although Olson was the inspiration and subject of the painting, she was not the primary model — Wyeth's wife Betsy posed as the torso of the painting. Olson was 55 at the time Wyeth created the work.

The house depicted in the painting is known as the Olson House, and is located in Cushing, Maine. It is open to the public as a part of the Farnsworth Museum complex; it is a National Historic Landmark, and has been restored to match its appearance in the painting.] In the painting, Wyeth separated the house from its barn and changed the lay of the land.

(WIKIPEDIA)

Anna Christina Olson (1893-1968) was a lifelong resident of the Cushing, Maine farm pictured in Christina's World. She had a degenerative muscular disorder (undiagnosed, but sometimes identified as polio) that took away her ability to walk by the late 1920s. Eschewing a wheelchair, she crawled around the house and grounds.

Wyeth, who had summered in Maine for many years, met the spinster Olson and her bachelor brother, Alvaro, in 1939. The three were introduced by Wyeth's future wife, Betsy James (b. 1922), another long-term summer resident. It's hard to say what fired the young artist's imagination more: the Olson siblings or their residence.

We have three here, actually. The figure's wasted limbs and pink dress belong to Christina Olson. The youthful head and torso, however, belong to Betsy Wyeth who was then in her mid-20s (as opposed to Christina's then-mid-50s).

The most famous "model" in this scene is the Olson farmhouse itself, on the National Register of Historic Places since 1995.

(Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth by Shelley Esaak, About.com Guide)

Christina Olson

From castello.tistory.com

Christina'sTeapot

From lakeketchum.com

Adrift, 1982

From castello.tistory.com

Christina Olson of Cushing, at the end of Hathorn Point, was his most famous model, but over the years, Wyeth formed close friendships with – and painted – several other Maine neighbors. His closest friend, Walt Anderson, gradually ages before the eyes of viewers in numerous Wyeth drawings and paintings that show life’s changes from the youthful Young Swede (1939) to the older man in Adrift (1982).

A painter of landscape and figure subjects in Pennsylvania and Maine, Andrew Wyeth became one of the best-known American painters of the 20th century. His style is both realistic and abstract, and he works primarily in tempera and watercolor, often using the dry brush technique.

He is the son of Newell Convers and Carolyn Bockius Wyeth of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and was home-schooled because of delicate health. His art instruction came from his famous-illustrator father, who preached the tying of painting to life–to mood and to essences and to capturing the subtleties of changing light and shadows.

(dowlingwalsh.com)

Up in the Studio

From electricgallery.co.uk

Andrew Wyeth was tutored solely by his father, N. C. Wyeth, a well-known illustrator, who taught his son to draw from casts, skeletons, still life and the life model. Andrew did not develop his own inimitable style until after his father’s death in a level crossing accident. The emotional impact of this personal tragedy precipitated the change in his work. He had always been especially drawn to landscape, particularly the Brandywine Valley around his home, but his range broadened to include the study of people and their emotions. His work has a compelling, highly-detailed realism, which can be traced back to Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, but conveys a distinct sense of lugubrious wistfulness. In Up in the Studio, a dry brush watercolor, Wyeth uses the frame of his panel as a compositional device. The cropping of the lower edge, combined with the lines of the floor and window, draw the viewer into this private, isolated space. The subdued colors are characteristic of Wyeth’s work and were achieved by grinding his own pigments from a range of earth and mineral colors. He paints in one of two media – dry brush or tempera – both methods being painstaking and slow.

(electricgallery.co.uk)

Andrew Wyeth Dry Brush and Pencil Drawings

From etsystatic.com

Andrew Wyeth Dry Brush and Pencil Drawings

From etsystatic.com

Andrew Wyeth Dry Brush and Pencil Drawings

From etsystatic.com

His art focused on his love for the people and the land surrounding him, mostly based in his hometown, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania as well as Cushing, Maine. He spent 50 years of prefessional career producing realistic paintings as well as loosely done pencil drawings and watercolors. He often did the pencil and watercolor sketches as preliminay studies for his large finished paintings.

His works created some controversy as he was pursuing representational works in an era dominated by abstract visual arts. One critique has described Wyeth works as being formulated and superficial, but the admirers of Wyeth argued that the works contain underlying abstraction while being realistic, and possess strong symbolic and emotional currents.

(charcoalandpencildrawing.com)

Airborne

From castello.tistory.com

Strength of the hills-Shade Trees

From alittlegoat.tumblr.com

Weather side, 1965

From ncartmuseum.org

Sea Boots, 1976

From salandpen.com

Watercolor remained a medium favored by Wyeth, although he had begun working in tempera paint by the early 1940s. Wyeth’s paintings emphasize details of light and texture and are most often executed in warm, soft shades of brown and gray. He achieves great precision in his drawing, but it is always an expression of mood that he seeks rather than an exact reproduction of nature. His art has a deep melancholy strain.

Wyeth was among the most popular painters of the mid-20th century. He received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, and in 1970 he became the first living artist to be accorded an exhibition in the White House. In 1986 his reputation was enhanced by the disclosure of some 240 previously unknown paintings and drawings, all of the same woman, which the artist had kept hidden while he created them over a period of 15 years. The works, including nudes, were of Helga Testorf, Wyeth’s longtime neighbor in Chadds Ford. Wyeth added another painting, Gone, to the Helga series in 2002.

(artwallpapers.net)

Asleep, 1979

Graphite pencil on paper

Gift of Warren Adelson and Frank Fowler

From The Morgan Library & Museum at themorgan.org)

Two superbly rendered drawings by celebrated American artist Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) are currently on view on the second floor of the Morgan's Annex building. The works, Asleep, 1979, and Watch Cap Study, 1974, depict two of Wyeth's favorite subjects, Helga Testorf and Walt Anderson.

Andrew Wyeth remains one of America's most popular and most controversial artists. The meticulously detailed realism of his largely rural people and scenes—sometimes criticized in relation to the modernist trend towards abstraction and urban subject matter—exists in an American sphere that includes the work of illustrators such as his father, N.C. Wyeth, and Norman Rockwell, as well as great landscape artists such as Winslow Homer.

Wyeth's exacting style relied heavily on drawings made from observation. Between 1971 and 1985, Wyeth created over two hundred works inspired by his neighbor Helga Testorf. The so-called Helga pictures emerged as an important career landmark. Asleep is a beautiful example of Wyeth's manner—the intimate portrait of Helga emphasizes the details of her face, while the surrounding elements are merely indicated with a few cursory lines.

Watch Cap Study, a preparatory drawing for the watercolor, Watch Cap, of the same year, shows subject Walt Anderson turned away from the viewer and staring toward a vast expanse of water—in a pose reminiscent of nineteenth-century Romanticism. The detailed rendering of the hair and weathered wool cap are typical of Wyeth's realism, marked by a masterful attention to telling detail.

(The Morgan Library & Museum at themorgan.org)

Braids

Helga Testorf

From kcfac.kilgore.cc.tx.us

Helga Testorf, a middle-aged woman in pigtails who was Mr. Wyeth's neighbor in rural Pennsylvania, has the curious distinction of being the last person to be made famous by a painting. In this she joins that very select pantheon that includes Raphael's Fornarina, John Singer Sargent's Madame X, and the costive couple in Grant Wood's "American Gothic." Yes, John Currin's ethereally lovely wife might elicit an informed double-take along Tenth Avenue, but she is small beer compared with Helga, whose severe, Teutonic features have adorned books and postcards throughout the world.

(A Villain in Pigtails by James Gardner, NEW YORK THE SUN at nysun.com)

Andrew and Jamie Wyeth, July 2008

From islandinstitute.org

Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, October 15, 2008

From islandinstitute.org

Wyeth, who focused on the people and landscapes of Pennsylvania's Brandywine Valley and coastal Maine in works such as "Christina's World," died in his sleep at his Philadelphia-area home early Friday, January 16,2009. He was 91.

The death of Wyeth _ the most famous member of the three-generation family art dynasty _ will likely rekindle the debate over his contribution to American art.

"The squabbling is kind of art-world politics over who owns modernism," said curator Kathleen Foster of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, who helped assemble the last major retrospective of his work at the museum in 2006.

Wyeth's pictures express for many the alienation of 20th century life and art, she said. Yet critics in the 1950s assailed him as a provincial reactionary next to New York abstract painters Jackson Pollock and William de Kooning.

"As we get farther from his work, we're going to recognize that he's just a different voice of modernism," Foster said. "This kind of quarreling over his status is going to fade, and he will be recognized as a great, great American artist."

Wyeth died at his home in suburban Chadds Ford, Pa., after a brief illness, according to Jim Duff, director of the Brandywine River Museum.

(Andrew Wyeth, "Christina's World" Artist, Dies At 91 by MARYCLAIRE DALE, January 16, 2009 THE HUFFINGTON POST at huffingtonpost.com)

ANALYSIS OF A FAILED STATE

2011-10-18T22:00:00.000+08:00

Somalia was created on 01 July 1960 following the independence of Italian Somaliland from Italy, which then immediately united with British Somaliland to form the Somali Republic. British Somaliland had gained its independence just five days earlier on 26 June 1960. The British established a protectorate in 1886 over what became known as British Somaliland and the Italians colonized the south in 1889, which became known as Italian Somaliland.

Currently Somalia is regarded as a "failed state" with a weak, but recognised central government authority, which is known as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). The TFG only controls the central region of the country.

De facto control of the north of the country resides in local authorities, of which Puntland, Maakhir and Galmudug acknowledge the authority of the TFG, and maintain their declaration of autonomy within a federated Somalia. Southwestern Somalia and Jubaland, in the south, have largely abandoned the idea of autonomy. Somaliland in the north has declared itself independent from Somalia and does not recognize the authority of the TFG. Somaliland's self-declared independence is not recognized.

(flagspot.net)

In 1970 Mr Barre proclaimed a socialist state, paving the way for close relations with the USSR. In 1977, with the help of Soviet arms, Somalia attempted to seize the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, but was defeated thanks to Soviet and Cuban backing for Ethiopia, which had turned Marxist.

In 1991 President Barre was overthrown by opposing clans. But they failed to agree on a replacement and plunged the country into lawlessness and clan warfare.

In 2000 clan elders and other senior figures appointed Abdulkassim Salat Hassan president at a conference in Djibouti. A transitional government was set up, with the aim of reconciling warring militias. But as its mandate drew to a close, the administration had made little progress in uniting the country.

In 2004, after protracted talks in Kenya, the main warlords and politicians signed a deal to set up a new parliament, which later appointed a president.

(news.bbc.co.uk)

Since 2006, the country has faced an insurgency led by Al Shabab, one of Africa's most fearsome militant Islamist groups. Al Shabab controls much of southern Somalia and has claimed affiliation with Al Qaeda since 2007.

For the first time in years, the Shabab is receding from several areas at once, handing the Transitional Federal Government an enormous opportunity to finally step outside the capital and begin uniting this fractious country after two decades of war. Instead, a messy, violent, clannish scramble is emerging over who will take control.

The government is too weak, corrupt, divided and disorganized to mount a claim beyond Mogadishu, the capital, leaving clan warlords, Islamist militias and proxy forces armed by foreign governments to battle it out for the regions the Shabab are losing.

(topics.nytimes.com)

Operation Provide Relief, Somalia, 2008

From WIKIMEDIA

The big difference between Somalia and the rest of East Africa is war. Somalis have been fighting one another and have lived without a central government for 20 years. Perhaps a million people have died. One symptom of this lawlessness is piracy. Another is the rise of Islamists. What began as a fight between clan warlords became, in its second decade, a struggle between warlords and militants demanding the imposition of strict Shari'a. The more extreme Islamists then formed Al Shabab, or "the Youth." For four years, Al Shabab has battled the official Transitional Federal Government. .

(time.com)
Humanitarian aid often fails to reach those who need it because of conflict, high inflation, corruption, pirate attacks on sea deliveries, roadblocks and armed attacks on aid convoys.

Somalia is one of the most dangerous places in the world to work so aid agencies do not base personnel there. 80% of Somalia’s security forces; soldiers, officers and police have deserted, taking with them weapons, uniforms and vehicles.

Piracy is a multi-million dollar industry employing between 1000-1500 pirates and using over 60 small boats and mother ships. Pirates invoke legitimate Somali grievances regarding foreign exploitation of marine resources such as illegal fishing and toxic waste dumping in Somali waters, thus gaining community support. In September, 2008, the pirates seized a Ukrainian freighter loaded with 33 battle tanks and off Kenya in November they seized a Saudi supertanker carrying $100m worth of crude oil. So far they have attacked 100 ships and raked in an estimated $30m in ransoms for ships and crews.

(maryanncp.wordpress.com)

The current Transitional Federal Government is the seventeenth attempt to create a formal state, the most recent of which brought the opposition Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia into the government in February 2009. The country is currently controlled by various political and regional factions as well as local warlords in the south and in two "republics" in the north.

The president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, seemed to be continuing with his preference for Western-educated technocrats by naming Abdiweli Mohamed Ali as prime minister. Mr. Ali’s résumé reads like the itinerary on a tour of prominent American universities: it says he holds a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard, a master’s degree in economics from Vanderbilt and a Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University. In recent years, he has been teaching economics at Niagara University in upstate New York.

He is Somali-American, and his profile is similar to that of Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, the previous prime minister, who also is an American citizen. He was abruptly pushed out of Somalia’s transitional government this month as part of a United Nations-backed deal to resolve an internal political dispute. Mr. Ali was a deputy prime minister and had been the acting prime minister since Mr. Mohamed resigned.

(cia.gov)

The U.S. is the key international player. Since the 1993 battle known as Black Hawk Down, when 18 U.S. troops died during an intervention to support a U.N. mission in an earlier famine and the bodies of two were dragged through the streets, few Americans have set foot in Mogadishu. But Washington pays close attention. Osama bin Laden first shot to the top of the CIA's danger list not on 9/11 but on Aug. 7, 1998, when his Somalia-based unit blew up U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 230 people. When al-Shabab allied with al-Qaeda, it too found itself in American crosshairs.

The U.S. strikes when it can. When Ethiopia invaded Somalia in late 2006 to topple the Islamist government, U.S. Special Operations troops went with them and detained about 20 al-Qaeda suspects. Washington has also assassinated several Islamist leaders in Somalia, using Predator drones, cruise missiles launched from warships in the Indian Ocean and, once, a helicopter gunship. Those efforts are assisted by a CIA station in Mogadishu and U.S.-funded mercenary operations. Also, Washington bankrolls the unelected TFG, which is perhaps best understood as a U.S. attempt to create a Somali leadership whose authority does not depend solely on firepower.

In 2008 the U.S. State Department listed Al Shabab as a foreign terrorist organization, making aiding or abetting it a serious crime. Al-Shabab was stealing aid to feed itself and to sell. Theft of aid is a routine occurrence, but when Al Shabab was designated as a terrorist group, it meant that U.S. officials and foreign aid workers whose actions benefited al-Shabab, even unwittingly, would be penalized. By late 2009 the U.S. was withholding about $50 million in food aid from al-Shabab's territory in southern Somalia, saying it had no legal alternative.

(time.com)

Al Shabab appears to have consolidated its position as the most powerful insurgent group by driving its main rival, Hizbul Islam, out of the southern port city of Kismayo in October 2009. Since then they have openly declared their alliance with al-Qaeda and have been steadily moving forces up towards Mogadishu.

The long-standing absence of authority in the country has led to Somali pirates becoming a major threat to international shipping in the area, and has prompted Nato to take the lead in an anti-piracy operation.

(news.bbc.co.uk)

By early 2010 the U.S. was in a standoff with aid workers, requiring them to refuse to pay the tolls al-Shabab demanded if they wanted U.S. funding. For its part, al-Shabab expelled the World Food Programme (WFP) in January 2010, saying food aid created dependence and that the organization was an American proxy: 60% of the WFP's food is from the U.S. Al Shabab also claimed WFP contractors were corrupt; a Western investigator tasked with probing the WFP's operations in southern Somalia tells TIME many contractors were indeed skimming anywhere from 25% to 65% of aid to sell in the market.

(time.com)

Refugees fleeing Somalia, 2010

Photo A Fazinna/UNHCR

From genevalunch.com

In 2011, the plight of the Somali people was exacerbated by the worst drought in six decades, which left millions of people on the verge of starvation and caused tens of thousands to flee to Kenya and Ethiopia in search of food.

(news.bbc.co.uk)

Mother and child

From Disasters Emergency Committee at dec.org.uk

Mother and child

From cdn.lightgalleries.net

Mother and child 3

From timeglobalspin.files.wordpress.com

Mother and child 4

Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP

From media.sacbee.com

As 13 million in the Horn of Africa seek food assistance, aid workers are facing unique political and logistical challenges in helping an estimated 3.7 Somalis facing the threat of malnutrition and starvation.

While international organizations such as UNICEF and UNHCR, the U.N.'s refugee agency, work with local governments to provide aid in Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti, Somalia — large tracts of which are lawless, ruled over by warlords and Islamist factions — presents difficulties for distribution and for adequately reaching those in need.

In Mogadishu alone, the World Food Programme feeds over 300,000 people each day, but many of the areas in the southern part of the country may never be reachable for aid workers as the Islamist group Al-Shabaab has largely barred humanitarian efforts for the past year and a half.

Anti-Western sentiment doesn't simply threaten aid distribution in Al-Shabaab controlled areas, but in the capital Mogadishu as well. The WFP has had to adjust its standard program of providing month-long rations in favor of daily soup kitchen-style "wet feeding centers," Challiss McDonough, the World Food Programme's senior spokesperson for east, central and southern Africa, said . "Sometimes it would be dangerous for people to take food home: someone may try to steal it, or they may even be punished for getting it." But with these feeding centers and more specialized "targeted supplementary feeding" centers (which provide nutrition supplements intended for malnourished children and pregnant and breastfeeding mothers) the WFP is able to reach much of the needy.

(Famine in Somalia: How Do You Feed Four Million Hungry People? Posted by Everett Rosenfeld, a TIME contributor Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 2:00 am at gobalspin.blogs.time.com)

Somali child from southern Somalia holds his brother

Making their way to the internally displaced camps

Mogadishu, Somalia

Friday, July 08, 2011

Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP

From blogs.sacbee.com

Women and children from southern Somalia

A malnourished child from southern Somalia

Shelter in a destroyed building in Mogadishu, Somalia

Saturday, July 09, 2011

Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP

From blogs.sacbee.com

Somali refugees lead their herds of goats home for the night

Outside Dagahaley Camp, outside Dadaab, Kenya

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Rebecca Blackwell / AP

From blogs.sacbee.com

The frame for a makeshift shelter

Thorny acacia tree

On the outskirts of Dagahaley Camp, outside Dadaab, Kenya

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Rebecca Blackwell / AP

From blogs.sacbee.com

A family from southern Somali

Making their way to the internally displaced camps

Mogadishu, Somalia

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP

From blogs.sacbee.com

The head of the U.N. refugee agency said Sunday, July 10, 2011 that drought-ridden Somalia is the "worst humanitarian disaster" in the world after meeting with refugees who endured unspeakable hardship to reach the world's largest refugee camp.

The Kenyan camp, Dadaab, is overflowing with tens of thousands of newly arrived refugees forced into the camp by the parched landscape in the region where Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya meet. The World Food Program estimates that 10 million people already need humanitarian aid. The U.N. Children's Fund estimates that more than 2 million children are malnourished and in need of lifesaving action.

Antonio Guterres, the head of UNHCR who visited Dadaab on Sunday, appealed to the world to supply the "massive support" needed by thousands of refugees showing up at this camp every week. More than 380,000 refugees now live there.

( blogs.sacbee.com)

The fragmented country of Somalia is no stranger to conflict and the last two years of fighting has increasingly taken a toll on the lives of everyone in the country, especially the children. Somalia is quite literally a raging battle ground, as fighting in the country continues, as insurgents exchange fire with the Somali government, Ethiopian troops and African Union peacekeepers.

Not only is Somalia a lawless land of conflict, but it is one of the worlds harshest places to live environmentally, and the countries strong culture of pastoralism (nomadic way of life) on increases the impact on a child’s chances of survival. A Somali child has less chance of living to adulthood than a child in any other part of the world. The high child mortality rates are rooted in a number of causes, mainly due to primarily preventable diseases, dehydration, malnutrition, lack of safe water, and poor sanitation. Not only is a child’s future hindered by health, but only one in five children actually receive any form of education. Many children are left the primary or sole caretakers, and with low literacy rates the future is far from hopeful for most. (UNICEF)

(Will we remember by SomaliaCassandra Clifford at children.foreignpolicyblogs.com)

INSIGHT THAT OTHERS OFTEN MISJUDGE

2011-10-11T01:11:00.000+08:00

“It won’t last. She’ll dump him in a month.”.....

Prediction is one of the pleasures of life. Conversation would wither without it. If you’re wrong, no one will call you on it, because being right or wrong isn’t really the point. The point is that you think he’s not worthy of her, and the prediction is just a way of enhancing your judgment with a pleasant prevision of doom. Unless you’re putting money on it, nothing is at stake except your reputation for wisdom in matters of the heart. If a month goes by and they’re still together, the deadline can be extended without penalty.

“She’ll leave him, trust me. It’s only a matter of time.” They get married: “Funny things happen. You never know.” You still weren’t wrong. The marriage is a bad one—you erred in the right direction—or you got beaten by a low-probability outcome.

(Louis Menand at newyorker.com)

Wrong judgment exists everywhere, and within every culture. It would be far better to leave the money in the pockets of those who had earned it, than to waste money on wrong judgment. We are all the same, and that no one has a right to judge another publicly.

Millions upon millions of people, work for money which is being spent to invade people's privacy and judge such basic privacy as who we may or may not have had sex with. Millions has been spent attempting to hide who we have had sex with. The simple reality is that if we were not judged, we would not be vulnerable, and we would not attempt to cover the truth, and others, for a variety of reasons, would not seek to uncover the truth.

If there was no judgment, hiding or uncovering the truth would be unnecessary and millions of dollars would be saved. All judgment is based upon fear, whilst we continue to live in a fear based environment, and whilst we continue to feed such an environment with our political and moral judgment, our fear based environment will never change.

(eaglespiritministry.com)

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) has several reasons for thinking that human judgment is unreliable, and needs to be guided by science. Our judgments tend to be distorted by self-interest or by the pleasures and pains of the moment. We may share the same basic passions, but the various things of the world affect us all very differently; and we are inclined to use our feelings as measures for others. It becomes dogmatic through vanity and morality, as with “men vehemently in love with their own new opinions…and obstinately bent to maintain them, (who give) their opinions also that reverenced name of conscience” (Leviathan, vii.4). When we use words which lack any real objects of reference, or are unclear about the meaning of the words we use, the danger is not only that our thoughts will be meaningless, but also that we will fall into violent dispute. (Hobbes has scholastic philosophy in mind, but he also makes related points about the dangerous effects of faulty political ideas and ideologies.)

We form beliefs about supernatural entities, fairies and spirits and so on, and fear follows where belief has gone, further distorting our judgment. Judgment can be swayed this way and that by rhetoric that is, by the persuasive and “colored” speech of others, who can deliberately deceive us and may well have purposes that go against the common good or indeed our own good. Not least, much judgment is concerned with what we should do now, that is, with future events, “the future being but a fiction of the mind” (Leviathan, iii.7) and therefore not reliably known to us.

(Garrath Williams at iep.utm.edu)

We cannot blame governments or politicians for the wrong judgments, because our governments reflect our choice to exist within a fear based environment. All that we can do is each of us can choose not to live in a fear based environment. Our governments will always continue to reflect our chosen environment, and the only way for us to change our collective environment, is for each of us to change our individual environment. Why do we waste our time judging others when the result is always the same? We are not bad, we are not foolish, we do not lack judgment, and we do not lack moral fiber. All judgment results in the truth that we are human. Regardless of how the media or anyone else chooses to describe their judgment, the result is the same. We are human.

(eaglespiritministry.com)
Good judgment is no less of a concern for lay people. Today, as in years past, citizens have demanded it of their public officials, as fates and fortunes depend on leaders making prudent assessments and wise decisions in diplomatic, economic, ecological, legal, moral, military, and political affairs. Indeed, citizens consistently deem good judgment one of the most important and essential traits for elected officials and heads of state. Napoleon Bonaparte was half right to insist that “Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.” The real difficulty, of course, is to decide well.

Empirical studies demonstrate something we all know: people tend to exhibit self-serving biases when exercising judgment. That should give us pause whenever we contemplate bending or breaking rules. But the same brush can be used to tar principles and law. Certainly the history of moral and political philosophy no less than the history of legal institutions demonstrates that bias is no stranger to systems of thought and law. People exhibit partiality in the construction of “just” rules and the conceptualization of “fair” institutions no less than in their exercise of practical judgments.

The French novelist Anatole France once observed that “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” People gravitate toward standards of justice that best serve their own interests. For all its impartiality, law is not above prejudice and preference.

Notwithstanding great success in thwarting our own biases, we will not become good judges if we operate on the assumption that others are bias-free, are purged of common sources of error, or act out of straightforward, one-dimensional interests. That is to say, the good judge understands that the world is not populated by rational people, but by people who selectively employ rationality. In such a world, good judgment makes use of much more than reason.

Consider the story of the village idiot who preferred dimes to dollars. Offered the choice by neighbor or passerby, the lad would always select the shiny coin to the paper money. It appeared a blatant bit of bad judgment on the youth’s part. Clearly, he had lost his reason. As everyone likes to make fun, the lad’s reputation grew. Soon he was visited by peasants and princes from far and wide, each offering him a dime and a dollar, and each leaving with the dollar bill in hand and a good laugh to boot. Day after day, the misguided youth suffered the ridicule of scores of acquaintances and strangers. And at the end of each day, the lad wandered home with a large sack of coins. He reputedly died a very rich man.

The moral of the story is that good judgment is grounded on the insight that others often misjudge. To judge well, one must comprehend the subtle interplay of motivations and calculations, aversions and desires, passions and prejudices, beliefs and misbelieves that inform human thought and action. Practical judgment requires a thorough “knowledge of the human soul.” Such knowledge develops less from perusing books than from participating in worldly life. Good judgment is not so much gained in the classroom as in the school of hard knocks. Here, reason is but one of many players.

(The Heart of Judgment by Leslie Paul Thiele, University of Florida at cambridge.org)

MASTER OF THE ‘MOODY’ LANDSCAPE

2011-10-09T23:30:00.000+08:00

Isaak Levitan, Self-portrait, 1880

From Olga’s Gallery at abcgallery.com

Isaak Levitan, 1884

From levitan-world.ru

Isaak Levitan, 1898

From levitan-world.ru

What can be more tragic than to feel the boundlessness of the surrounding beauty and to be able to see in it its underlying mystery... and yet to be aware of your own inability to express these large feelings" - Isaak Levitan.

Russian nature is beautiful, poetic, sensitive, sad, stern, unpredictable, mild, cruel, spiritual and breathtaking… Nobody could express these feelings better than the great landscapist Isaac Ilyich Levitan (1860 – 1900), who never looked for exotic and pretentious subjects for his paintings but remained faithful to simple poetic motifs of his native land because his heart was always burning with love for this country…

(stpetersburg-guide.com)

The Lake

From tars.rollins.edu

Levitan was born in Kibarta, near Verzhbolovo Station, in Suvalki province (today Kibartay, Lithuania) on August 30, 1860. He is considered perhaps the greatest landscape painter of Russia. He was born in a poor family, but was able to study, from 1873 to 1875, at the famous Moscow School of Painting and Architecture where his talent for landscape painting became evident. He was taught by Vasilii Perov, Aleksei Savrasov and Vasilii Polenov. The influence of the last two on Levitan's work is particularly significant. His first attempts at landscape painting clearly show the influence of Savrasov.

(rollins.edu)

By 1879 the painter developed his own style and his pictures were enthusiastically received at exhibitions. During the 1880s Levitan explored different styles, trying to follow Ivan Shishkin and the French Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot. This marked a new step in the development of the artist. About 1883 Levitan became acquainted with the writer Anton Chekhov, whose brother had been a colleague of Levitan at the Moscow School of Painting. This relationship would turn into a life-long friendship.

(rollins.edu)

Autumn Landscape, 1880

Source lj.rossia.org

From wikimedia.org

Spring. High water

Source lj.rossia.org

From wikipedia.org

Levitan travelled extensively, if briefly, in Europe, visiting Berlin, Paris, north Italy, Switzerland, Munich and Vienna and was thus, unlike most of his Russian comtemporaries, well aware of the artistic trends in the west. His experience of European painting added considerably to the breadth of his vision in depicting the Russian terrain. In doing this Levitan sought simple but well-loved motifs of the countryside, portraying them in an increasingly laconic and intelligent way. Levitan's scenes of fields and forests at twilight achieve an extraordinary atmospheric veracity, while his joyful evocations of the Russian spring are noted for their expressive lyricism. His work was greatly admired by Diaghilev, the legendary theatre manager Stanislavsky, and the world-famous opera singer Chaliapin.

(indiebound.org)

Seashore, The Crimea

From Olga’s Gallery at abcgallery.com

The Lake

From Olga’s Gallery at abcgallery.com

The Volga, A Calm Day

From Olga’s Gallery at abcgallery.com

On the Volga

From Olga’s Gallery at abcgallery.com

In the summer of 1884 Levitan made his first trip to the Crimea, and in 1887 to the Volga. In this region he managed to capture the poetry and emotion of the landscape in an unprecedented manner.

In the 1890s Levitan traveled extensively through Europe. As he was traveling, he sketched the landscapes and familiarized himself with working en plein air. More importantly, he discovered the world of the Parisian Impressionists. A good example of the Impressionist or even Post-impressionist influence on Levitan is one of his last paintings, The Lake: Russia (1899-1900), in which the free and dynamic brushstrokes and the brightness of colors indicate perhaps Levitan's familiarity with the work of Vincent Van Gogh.

(rollins.edu)

The Vladimirka, 1892

The Vladimirka road

Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

From art-pics.ru

The Vladimirka road is the road taken by the exiles to reach Siberia. Levitan often combined his realistic vision with a strong message. In this case, the desolation of the landscape echoes the message conveyed by the road itself. Levitan was probably making reference to his own exile, which occurred in the same period. Like many political prisoners, he had been evicted from Moscow because he was Jewish, and this experience would leave a profound mark on the painter's soul. The sky and the fields are all part of the symbolic message that Levitan wants to render through his painting. Colors are dull and rather unattractive. Levitan chooses browns and dull greens so that nothing would stand out; the sky is blue-gray, cloudy, and unforgiving. There is no sun peeking from behind the clouds, as if the painter wanted to say that there is little hope for those who would take that road. The landscape is flat and, with the exception of the trees in the background, has no other vegetation except some sparse yellowish grass. The road appears to have no end. Perhaps Levitan is trying to say that the prisoners are forever itinerants or that Russia is so vast that human beings "vanish" in its unlimited space. There are no human figures, which seems to be a characteristic feature of realistic landscapes of other painters (Shishkin, for instance) and of Levitan himself. Actually, the tendency to "de-humanize" compositions by excluding human figures would be a recurrent feature in Levitan's work - S.C.

(tars.rollins.edu)

Golden autumn, 1895

Source lj.rossia.org

From wikipedia.org

Silence 1898

From planeteyetraveler.com

“If you see a telega, then paint a telega, if you see a cow, paint what you see, try to paint what you feel, the feeling that you have when seeing a picture of nature”. This is a quote from the greatest landscape masters of the generation of Russian painters to which such masters as Ilya Repin or Viktor Vasnetsov belonged. These are words of Isaak Levitan.

(magazine.istopover.com)

Sunny Day, 1898

Source lj.rossia.org

From wikimedia.org

Haystacks. Twilight. 1899

From Olga’s Gallery at abcgallery.com

In 1897, Levitan felt sick, a severe cardiac disease was revealed. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the permanent menace of death, he worked with a particular intensity and inspiration. His latest works are distinguished by a confident mastership, richness of technical methods, and new stylistic trends. One can feel the influence of ancient Russian art, which attracted him at the period, and that of modern style, and the newest searches in French painting, which Levitan always took a lively interest in. Nevertheless, Levitan did not join modern art and remained true to realism, utterly alien to mythologizing and stylization. Most characteristic in the late 1890s were numerous paintings of quiet twilights, moonlit nights, sleeping villages (Sunny Day, 1898, Haystacks, Twilight, 1899, and many others). To the very end of his life Levitan took an active part in artistic life; he took part in organizing the Moscow Club of Literature and Art, showed his pictures at numerous exhibitions of such associations as World of Art and Munich Secession.

(stpetersburg-guide.com)

In 40 years of his life, Isaak Levitan painted many landscapes which were later recognized to be among the finest masterpieces of Russian art. Levitan never looked for exotic and pretentious subjects for his paintings but remained faithful to simple poetic motifs of his native land. The natural simplicity of motif and composition of Levitan's landscapes is a hallmark of his artistic genius. It was evident from the very outset of Levitan's career that he had an extraordinary ability to awaken deep human feelings by the means of landscape painting. Although people usually are not present on his canvases, his landscapes unfailingly speak of humanity. Levitan's paintings tell us something about ourselves, as they touch the chords of our inner spirit. Nature is always presented in them through the prism of very personal human experience. Therefore Levitan's landscapes are often called philosophical and psychological. The complexity of the human soul and the destiny of man can be rightfully considered the true subjects of his paintings.

(Victor Potoskouev at artsstudio.com)

OUR ENEMIES HAVE BEEN CREATED BY OUR OWN MISDEEDS

2011-10-08T12:37:00.000+08:00

Of all the creatures that were made, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one--the solitary one--that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, and vices--the most hateful. He is the only creature that has pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. Also--in the entire list he is the only creature that has a nasty mind - Mark Twain's Autobiography

Among all the people the most detested before God are two persons. One is he who is devoted to his self. So he is deviated from the true path and loves speaking about (foul) innovations and inviting towards wrong path. He is therefore a nuisance for those who are enamored of him, is himself misled from the guidance of those preceding him, misleads those who follow him in his life or after his death, carries the weight of others' sins and is entangled in his own misdeeds.

The other man is he who has picked up ignorance. He moves among the ignorant, is senseless in the thick of mischief and is blind to the advantages of peace. Those resembling like men have named him scholar but he is not so. He goes out early morning to collect things whose deficiency is better than plenty, till when he has quenched his thirst from polluted water and acquired meaningless things. He sits among the people as a judge responsible for solving whatever is confusing to the others. If an ambiguous problem is presented before him he manages shabby argument about it of his own accord and passes judgment on its basis. In this way he is entangled in the confusion of doubts as in the spider's web, not knowing whether he was right or wrong. If he is right he fears lest he erred, while if he is wrong he hopes he is right. He is ignorant, wandering astray in ignorance and riding on carriages aimlessly moving in darkness. He did not try to find reality of knowledge. He scatters the traditions as the wind scatters the dry leaves.

By God, he is not capable of solving the problems that come to him nor is fit for the position assigned to him. Whatever he does not know he does not regard it worth knowing. He does not realize that what is beyond his reach is within the reach of others. If anything is not clear to him he keeps quiet over it because he knows his own ignorance. Lost lives are crying against his unjust verdicts, and properties (that have been wrongly disposed of) are grumbling against him.

(Sermons, Letters, and Sayings of Ameer al-Mu'mineen by Nahj al Balagha at al-islam.org)

Mad dog bites a person. People expect the latter to die. Surprisingly it’s the dog that dies. Hidden therein the man’s blood is the deadlier poison that kills the dog itself. Malice, bogus, is the deadly poison that runs through our blood, but most of us don’t have the courage to admit it. No greater pain can come to us than to hear of another man's well doing; it is a dagger at our hearts. As he did to lose one eye willingly, that his fellow might lose both, nothing fats us but other men’s ruins. Envy, hurt, irritation and pride that spark malice instigate us into feeling that target object of our malice deserves to suffer. Our intentions to inflict pain on others are symbolically like those of the bee that stings an enemy in vengeance, but in the process of using its stinger, initiates its own demise. For evil poisons, malice shafts like boomerang’s return, inflicting wounds that will not heal, while rage and anger burn.

People hate others when they find themselves helpless. When the subconscious mind doesn't find any solution to the problem it uses hatred as a final resort. We hate superiors because we can't shout at them. We hate our jobs much if we can't find alternatives. We hate things when these things harm us and we find ourselves unable to defend ourselves. We are out to take revenge when we have the opportunity to do so. Some bear grudge not only against living beings, but also against lifeless objects such as a stump or a post. They would beat or batter a stump when they stumble over it. When they bump against a post, they would deliberately bump their heads again and again against it. If a thing topples or rolls away or falls down, they would break or throw it away in a rage.

Power corrupts. Weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few. Weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. There is probably an element of malice in the readiness to overestimate people; we are laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size. Malice delights to blacken the characters of prominent men. Man loves malice, but neither against one-eyed men nor the unfortunate, but against the fortunate and proud. Of the entire animal kingdom man alone possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. At least two thirds of miseries spring from his stupidity and malice.

There is no cure for ossification of the heart; when to the jaundiced eye all good transforms itself into evil, and the very instruments of health become the poison of disease. Malice is of a low stature, but it has very long arms. It often reaches into the next world; death itself is not a bar to it. Malice, like lust, when it is at the height, does not know shame. It’s a formed design of doing mischief to another.

(Adapted from ‘Of malice and hatred’ by Tajamul Hussain at risingkashmir.com)

Too many people just assume that they know what a “good man” is. Because a man or an organization (composed of “good men”) builds hospitals, schools, an orphanage, an old-folks home, gives to medical research, to needy relatives, to charities, or because he is pleasant, honest, kind, loyal, refined, cheerful, honorable, or possesses those qualities which endears him to his neighbor, he is called “good,” a “good man.” People assume that a “good man” is defined in this manner, but rarely do people critically examine the assumption to discover whether a “good man” may actually be what he is generally accepted to be.

(Father Michael Azkoul, Spring Valley, Ill. at antiochian.org)

Apart from humans, there is no animal on this planet more cruel than a human. Animals instinctively kill to feed, to procreate and to continue their meaningless cycle of eternal search for more food to maintain the same cycle until evolution says otherwise.

In apes, when a dominant male dies and another takes his place, the very first thing the new dominator will do is kill off the offspring of his former rival. It’s an ironic echo of a feral past throughout human history. Though it is generally accepted that the animal does so to claim more females, it doesn’t mean that the act is cruel in any way, for the animal doesn’t understand what cruelty is and simply performs its preprogrammed duty of ensuring a dominant position and genetic dominance.

On the other hand, humans are the only species on this planet that kill for reasons other than food or self- defense. Unlike our feral cousins, we have minds and highly developed cerebral cortexes that allow us to distinguish between abstract concepts called right and wrong. It is for that reason that we have developed the concept of cruelty as something that falls under the category of wrong, something abhorrent to our psyche.

Hurting anyone or anything that is weaker than the attacker and helpless is perhaps the greatest of all cruelties. This is where deeds cross the threshold of cruelty and into crime territory. Most crimes are based on cruelty. But what is a crime? It is an action committed against law, one might say. But there’s a much deeper meaning to it besides the word penned in iron extending into that which cannot be expressed fully.

Every crime brings with it the irreplaceable and destructive element of emotional distress. In essence, that is the exact meaning of a crime, something that is done not against a collection of words spoken, written and enforced, but something done against the broad and very deeply rooted concept of morality founded on keeping spiritual and emotional harmony without interference into ones peaceful existence. This is where being cruel comes in, for sometimes, an absolute momentary or innate lack of morals can push someone to cause harm for a seemingly meaningless cause that seems essential at the moment to the perpetrator.

But we have evolved to the point where we can give multiple reasons to our crimes. Crime of passion, crime of fraud, murder for hire, political assassination, theft for drugs, rape, mugging, temporary insanity, self-defense, gang murder, revenge, treason, serial murder, pathological disorder, sadism, crime against humanity, to name but a few.

Can the ape claim the same excuses? What is abhorrent in the matter is how shamelessly society forgives everything to forget the concept of morality to return to their daily lives and be rid of troublesome headlines of murder.

Looking at it from such a perspective, we may not differ from the monkey in cruelty in a scenario of seeking power, but in every other respect, we are superior. It’s only a shame that all that superiority is used to condone our own misdeeds and an unmatched appetite for creating ever more vile ways of getting rid of each other.

(God Knows by Rouben Alikian at thesop.org)

"ONE HALF OF THE WORLD DOES NOT KNOW HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES"

2011-10-03T10:38:00.000+08:00

How the Other Half Lives

From collagesheets.paperstreetsupplies.com

LONG ago it was said that "one half of the world does not know how the other half lives." That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat. There came a time when the discomfort and crowding below were so great, and the consequent upheavals so violent, that it was no longer an easy thing to do, and then the upper half fell to inquiring what the matter was. Information on the subject has been accumulating rapidly since, and the whole world has had its hands full answering for its old ignorance.

(How the Other Half Lives, introduction by Jacob Riis at uthentichistory.com)

The pioneering work of photojournalism by Jacob Riis (1849-1914) focused on the plight of the poor in the Lower East Side, and greatly influenced future "muckraking" journalism. Riis mostly attributed the plight of the poor to environmental conditions, but he also divided the poor into two categories: deserving of assistance (mostly women and children) and undeserving (mostly the unemployed and intractably criminal). He wrote with prejudice about Jews, Italians, and Irish, and he stopped short of calling for government intervention. Still, the catalyst of his work was a genuine sympathy for his subjects, and his work shocked many New Yorkers.
(authentichistory.com)

Life in New York

From mdrails.com

Life in New York was certainly hard for the Irish immigrants, but it was without a doubt better than life in famine starved Ireland. Most Irish immigrants had relatives already in New York, so they would frequently move in with them upon arrival in the big apple. It was quite difficult to get affordable housing in New York. Thus, most immigrants would share a tenement apartment with sometimes as many as ten other people. The parks movement that destroyed many buildings and raised the price of real estate didn't help either. The cramped conditions of such tenements led to an unhealthy group of tenants. Such tenements were very unhealthy as it was. Landlords continued to reduce the size of their courtyards and eventually used only air shafts for light and ventilation. These shafts were filled with tenant’s garbage and did nothing to help the ventilation at all. The apartments themselves were cramped and stuffy, filled with too many people.

(mapsites.net)

Five Points in 1852

From latinamericanstudies.org

Five Points in 1861

From latinamericanstudies.org

Present location of the Five Points, New York

From latinamericanstudies.org

Garment Workers Protesting Child Labor

Five Points, New York City

From studenthandouts.com

To make matters worse for the Irish, they were hated by the "native" New Yorkers. There were several reasons for this hatred; one was the poverty and squalor in which they lived. Irish were seen as dirty, but it was their lack of money or base in this country that was to blame. However, the main reason the Irish were hated was because they were catholic. The majority of New Yorkers were protestant, of English background. The Protestants hated the Catholics, thus the Irish were driven into the slums where their collective poverty was something to behold. They became almost entirely isolated within New York in places such as the Five Points. That did not stop the discrimination however. Irish were looked down upon even more than African Americans and were frequently turned down for jobs. All landlords but those who owned housing already in Irish slums turned down Irish tenants. The Irish were depicted as drunks and thugs. Comics about the Irish gangs became common. Their slums became famous; the Five Points was interesting to the upper class.

(mapsites.net)

Little Italy, Mulberry Street, New York City

New York City Boston, Mass

From italianaware.com

Everyone in New York will tell you that Little Italy is not the place to find great Italian food. Unfortunately, the area is referred to as Little Italy more out of respect and nostalgia as a reflection of true ethnic population. The restaurants are better than average, but still worse than some gems in Brooklyn, Staten Island and yes, even the Bronx. For non-New Yorkers: NY's real Little Italy is the Bronx. Manhattan was the logical starting point for many Italian American families. Once the boats from Italy arrived in New York harbor, (after the passengers were processed at Ellis Island) passengers were dropped off in lower Manhattan. As was the case with many immigrants, the Italians made their way to the “ghetto” which was located a few blocks away from Canal Street. Most Italians found their new homes to be tenement buildings with poor sanitation and hygiene. The Italians worked hard to transform their new home into an American area with a uniquely Italian twist. Pastry shops, bakeries, and grocers sprung up throughout while pushcart vendors sold fruits and vegetables. The Italians prospered in the area, and began to flourish as a whole, rather quickly. The “dominance” of Italians in NY's Little Italy was short lived, due in large part to Italian prosperity which caused them to move out of the tenements and into areas such as Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. As a result, the Little Italy of today is a shadow of its former self. However, the remnants are great reminders of what once was. The iconic status of places like Ferrara's Pasticceria and Banca Stabile let everyone know that NY's Little Italy was just the beginning of the Italian success story in America. (italianaware.com)

Bandit's Roost, 1890, New York City

Photograph by Jacob Riis

Featured in his book How the Other Half Lives (1890)

Buk-Swienty's 'The Other Half'

The New York Sun at nysun.com

Free coffee, doughnuts, and soup for the unemployed

From mahadeviyakka.wordpress.com

Coffee on the bowery, New York, 1908

From mahadeviyakka.wordpress.com

New York City immigrant neighborhood in 1908

From fasttrackteaching.com

In New York, the youngest of the world's great cities, that time came later than elsewhere, because the crowding had not been so great. There were those who believed that it would never come; but their hopes were vain. Greed and reckless selfishness wrought like results here as in the cities of older lands. "When the great riot occurred in 1863," so reads the testimony of the Secretary of the Prison Association of New York before a legislative committee appointed to investigate causes of the increase of crime in the State twenty-five years ago, "every hiding-place and nursery of crime discovered itself by immediate and active participation in the operations of the mob. Those very places and domiciles, and all that are like them, are to-day nurseries of crime, and of the vices and disorderly courses which lead to crime. By far, at least the largest part, eighty per cent of crimes against property and against the person are perpetrated by individuals who have either lost connection with home life, or never had any, or whose homes had ceased to be sufficiently separate, decent, and desirable to afford what ate regarded as ordinary wholesome influences of home and family. . . . The younger criminals seem to come almost exclusively from the worst tenement house districts, that is, when traced back to the very places where they had their homes in the city here.'' Of one thing New York made sure at that earls stage of the inquiry: the boundary line of the Other Half lives through the tenements…..

(How the Other Half Lives, introduction by Jacob Riis at uthentichistory.com)

IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO

2011-09-29T00:53:00.000+08:00

Sometimes it seems there is a difference between public service and politics, although the two concepts are supposed to be interchangeable. Citizens may support their hardworking elected representatives, but passionately disdain power-hungry dirty politicians. Why do so many politicians have a bad reputation when their job descriptions seem so noble and self-sacrificing?

One reason certain politicians have a bad reputation is the election process itself. A life of public service and law making is not an occupation for social introverts; so many candidates for local offices are already notorious overachievers with more than enough self-confidence. A number of candidates for political office are very ambitious by nature, and with ambition often comes a level of moral and ethical flexibility. Some politicians have a bad reputation because they've already had to compromise any number of personal beliefs in order to gain votes or popularity.

Historically, there have been numerous examples of dirty politics practiced by equally dirty politicians. Unfortunately for the majority of honest office holders, these incidents often dominate the public media. Consequently, a number of effective politicians have a bad reputation only by association. If one politician is capable of dirty tricks or dereliction of duty, then they may all be equally capable of some wrongdoing.

(wisegeek.com)

It is time to truly choose leaders who follow the rule of law and respect the rights of the people. We must start by sweeping away the ill-smelling garbage they helped to produce - hatred, ethnic divisions, violence, poverty, oppression, injustice, immorality and greed - it is contaminating our continent and if we don’t sweep out the dirt and the rot ourselves, no one else will do it for us! Part of cleaning up that dirt begins with understanding better how it got there. In other words, we must be careful not to fall in the trap of the corrupt politicians by fighting the wrong fight as they turn the truth upside down just to confuse the public.

(The Roosters are Crowing: It’s Time for Africans to Sweep Our Huts Clean of Dirty Politics by

Obang Metho at ethiopiangasha.org)

“This is practically a law of the universe - There are only two kinds of people who want to be politicians in the first place: power-hungry scumbags and good-hearted down-to-earth humans who really want to help people. Unfortunately the latter normally gets punched in the face and thrown in the gutter by “dirty politics.” Actually, extends that universal law to: New Law of Nature: Politicians are dirty, lying scumbags until proven Human.”

(Ashton at lovethishatethat.com)

When that the insanely partisan and ruthless war for party supremacy, with its dirty money, lies and deceptive advertisements, is over and its selfish intentions are clear, it is time for us to look back and remind ourselves why we go through these incredibly expensive and wasteful circus acts. Also, we should think about what we owe to our politicians that gives them the right to openly insult our intelligence with stupid and deceitful theatrics.

Why let political shenanigans decide who and what get our vote instead of using common sense and putting country and all citizens first? Of course, this is something about which we don’t usually think, as is the fact that we never learn our lesson nor see that power-hungry political parties are not interested in the welfare of the country or the citizens, but only in themselves.

Finally, for those of us who voted and expect to see any changes that would make our lives better, think again. Let’s hope that next time we will let intelligence, facts and knowledge decide for us, instead of letting ideology, bias, dirty money and lying political ads dictate where our vote goes. Certainly, by allowing unethical political operatives show us the way, it’s not how we should decide who and what gets our vote.

(Nikolas D. Skalkotos, Las Vegas at lasvegassun.com)

Voters are quick at blaming the government and the politicians for almost all the maladies that afflict society. They are good at whining. They never fail in criticizing the substandard public service, graft and corruption and the stupidity of their political leaders. Little do they realize however, that they share in the blame for the problem.

One only needs to have the right image to win in the elections. Winning public office is decided by popularity not by issues. More worrisome is that political campaigns in any country have been reduced to the battles of jingles, posters, T-shirts, caps, fans, etc. During elections, a candidate must simply come up with his/her own shallow tricks and antics to endear him/her to the voting public. TV stations have already become a good breeding ground for politicians. Ever wonder when the TV station will establish its own political party.
If there is any consolation from these cheap and rubbish political gimmicks, it is this: at least for once, the voters can make fools out of the politicians who soon forget their promises after the elections anyway. It is sad to see however how the dumb voters’ clamor for images and illusions and the equally dumb politicians’ acquiescence deprave the whole electoral exercise.

As if though the “shallow entertainment” was not enough, the politicians and the voters shamelessly display their parasitic relationship in more ways than one. It is disgusting to see how patronage politics creeps into the very heart of political campaigning. Dirty politics, which has been wantonly embraced by the old, has now been passed on to the young. More appalling is the sight of opportunist voters queuing up in the candidate’s headquarters or residence asking for medicine (they have prescription receipts as backups) or any other dole outs that the candidate can give. It is funny to see how many people get sick during elections. And believe it or not, some voters can be ridiculous in their demands.

The politicians know how to share their loot with their constituents. Still discontented, politicians never fail to display their names in bridges, streets, and other infrastructures erected during their term to increase name recall and visibility as if the money used for the construction was theirs. Do not be surprised then if you see ubiquitous signs all over the country such as this, “This is a project of Politician So and So”.

The battle for public office culminates in the night preceding the day of the elections. This is when the grand larceny takes place: vote-buying in a massive scale. Who says that “midnight madness” takes place only during bargain sales in department stores? Politicians and voters also go in a buying and selling binge during elections as if the right of suffrage is a form of a commodity. Sadly, more often than not, electing a public official for many in the rural areas has become a form of an auction, with their votes going to the highest bidder.

It is not surprising why politicians brazenly corrupt. The voters themselves are corrupting the politicians. After spending so much in the elections (it doesn’t matter if the money they spend is theirs or not), the politicians certainly want their investment back. Besides, they have to save again for the next elections. Without any doubt, the electorate is to blame for the dimwits and scoundrels they help install to power. They have corrupted each other very well. As they say, “It takes two to tango.”

(Adapted from Corrupting the Other John Xavier Chavez, Manila at travelsandtravails.com)

Politicians and the media constantly ask “What’s the matter with the economy?” The answer was on glorious display. Ironically, it is the politicians and media who are ruining it. “The storm of the century” turned out to be “the most hyped storm of the century,” along with one of the most hysterical, exaggerated, manipulated media events of all time. Irene was a…rainstorm. A big one and a bad one…..but nonetheless a rainstorm.

Media and politicians need big catastrophes and emergencies to burnish their images and make them seem important. They need to brandish words like “the worst ever” “the biggest ever” “the most deadly ever.” The media loves these bigger-than-life headlines because they are highly profitable. The bigger, the better- it’s all good for business. The more hysterical they can make the public, the higher the ratings. Catastrophes SELL!

Politicians also need catastrophes and emergencies- to show they are in charge, looking out for us helpless little people. Politicians desperately need high profile platforms to showcase their leadership skills, to shout “Get out now, or you’ll die. I’m saving your life. I’m the only thing that stands between you and annihilation.” Emergencies allow politicians to bully, intimidate and threaten citizens and to prove how obviously more important and brilliant they are than the lowly citizens. And, of course, if the politician is right, and the worst happens, they’ve got a platform to shout about how much we need them and how indebted we should be to them.

(Wayne Allyn Root at biggovernment.com)

There are many kinds of political crimes, as well as there are hundreds of so called politicians who are truly greedy and/or truly power hungry enough to violate their oath of office as they proceed to enrich themselves and those who supported those corrupt politicians quest for political power. It does not matter where or in which Country those corrupt politicians exist, but it does matter, in regard to how many other people, World-wide, are hurt, suffer or die as a direct result of such criminal behavior. It is a crime to be politically corrupt. More often than not, when the interests of the minority are served it is the majority who suffers from the actions of the minority. That is why a relatively few become filthy rich while tens of millions of other people slowly sink into a sea of debt.

That evil behavior by those few among us came in the form of Communism, Socialism, Absolute Monarchy and/or an Authoritarian form of Government. Governments controlled by the leaders of the military also proved harmful to the population of citizens within each and every Country controlled by a Military Dictator.

A Democratic form of Government has proved to be the best deterrent against any conspiracy to destroy the rights of the majority within a Country. Then again, there is no such thing as a "True Democracy." However, you can believe that some of the politicians within those, so called, Democratic forms of Government did or continue to try to achieve the truly idealistic level of a "True Democracy."

Make no mistake. "Political Corruption" comes to all of us in many forms. Yes, and each of those forms are nothing more than crimes against Humanity.

(Joseph Malek at helium.com)

THE FRENCH LANSCAPE PAINTER

2011-09-22T22:09:00.000+08:00

Albert Lebourg fully understood the poetic quality of Impressionism and the benefits it brought to painting. He started his studies as a student of Architecture but after meeting the Rouen landscape painter Delamarre, he orientated himself to working as an artist. In his taste for landscapes seen through monochromatic skies, he follows in the tradition of Boudin and Jongkind. His origins and education (Rouen Fine-Art School) explain the harmony between his perception and the reality of the landscapes of the Seine Valley.

(hurtebize.net)

Mill in Normandy

From allpaintings.org

Lebourg’s roots were in Normandy and particularly Rouen where his painting has been appreciated since the early 1870s. His recognition in the Parisian world came with his participation in 1879 in what now is called the 4th Impressionist Exhibition. This exhibition, which took place at 28 avenue de l’Opéra in Paris, included Caillebotte, Cassatt, Degas, Monet, Pissarro and Lebourg who showed twenty paintings and ten drawings. Subsequently, Lebourg took part in the 5th Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1880. The artists in this latter exhibition included Caillebotte, Cassatt, Degas, Guillaumin, Lebourg, Morisot and Pissarro. In this exhibition, Lebourg presented ten paintings and sixteen drawings and watercolors.

(rsjohnsonfineart.com)

The Quay de l'Amiraute in Algiers

From allpaintings.org

Born at Monfort-sur-Risle, Albert Lebourg entered the École des Beaux-Arts of Rouen at a very young age. He was noticed in Rouen by the collector Laperlier who referred him to be appointed as a drawing professor at the Société des Beaux-Arts in Algiers. He was influenced there by Jean Seignemartin who helped him bring more clarity and light into his paintings. He married in 1873; the young couple remained in Algiers until the summer of 1877 when Lebourg resigned his teaching post and returned to Paris with numerous canvases of the Admiralty, the casbah and mosques.

(wallyfindlay.com)

Notre Dame de Paris

View from Pont de la Tournelle

Notre Dame de Paris

View from the Quai de la Tournelle

Paris, the kBridge of Saint-Peres

All images from allpaintings.org

Upon his return to Paris, Lebourg became involved in Impressionism, and participated in Impressionist exhibits in 1879 and 1880. He became friends with Monet, Sisley and Degas, and continued to paint in the Impressionist style throughout the rest of his career.

Although he was almost exclusively a landscape painter, Lebourg incorporated themes in his paintings, such as the presence of water in his later works. Also, like his friend and fellow artist Monet, Lebourg would experiment with light and paint the same or similar landscapes in different shades and tones. He was particularly fond of painting the changing seasons, as well as sunrises and sunsets.

(artexpertswebsite.com)

The Banks of the Seine River at Caumont in the summer

From rsjohnsonfineart.com

Route au bord de la Seine à Neuilly, en hiver

From storage.canalblog.com

Bords de seine a port – marly

From kohn-svv.com

The Seine in the outskirts of Paris, with its countless subjects, kept Lebourg occupied in all seasons. He continued to paint in Auvergne, Normandy, and Ile de France. From 1888 to 1895, Lebourg settled in Puteaux, where he availed himself to the surroundings of Paris. He wrote at the time: "I will paint often at the banks of the Seine: Nanterre, Rueil, Chatou, Bougival, Port-Marly. These are a source of themes and very beautiful landscapes”. At that time, he painted what he regarded as his best paintings.

(wallyfindlay.com)

Lebourg decided to travel to Holland during the years of 1895-1897 and this period saw him returning to his paints and painting in watercolour too. He also visited Great Britain wishing to see what was currently in vogue in artistic circles. In 1903, He was made a Chevalier of the Legion d'honneur and in that same year exhibited 111 paintings. However Lebourg's restless spirit took him, travelling throughout Europe again, from Switzerland to Belgium, from Holland back to France In 1918, he had his largest exhibition of paintings, some 216 canvases, 2 watercolours and 51 drawings, in Paris.

(elliottlouis.com)

The banks of Lake of Geneva

Oil on canvas, 1902

From latelierdutemps.com

It was in 1902 that Albert Lebourg underwent treatment on the shores of Lake Geneva in Saint-Gingolph. With rare exceptions, the pictures painted on the shores of Lake Geneva do not differ essentially in composition from his customary motifs he produced on the banks of the Seine. The edge of a hill to the right or left, here much higher of course, and sometimes cutting the picture diagonally.

Here, at the foot, against a pontoon, a small steamer plying the lake; there a few fishing boats, with nets wound in, in their large sloping yard. On the quayside, a few people and the sky above all this which, as everywhere else, animates everything. You feel that he is deliberately falling back into his old ways. It is, in particular, the atmosphere, the local color, more accentuated, that distinguishes and characterizes this series.

(Albert LEBOURG by Léance Bénédite at latelierdutemps.com)

In a commentary on Lebourg's art, Gustave Geoffroy wrote in 1918: His works do not have brilliant colors or lights like fireworks. But when we look at his paintings, we are drawn into a well-balanced world, infinitely gentle, comfortable and transparent, where everything evaporates and dissolves into a charming and melancholic dream intoxicated with the graces chosen out of the universe.

(marubeni.com)

He always remained faithful, however to his native Normandy, where he drew inspiration for his masterpieces with rose and grey-blue skies. “I am an impressionist in the sense that I am impressed by the present moment” Although far less renowned than Monet or Pissaro, Lebourg is one of the leading painters of this fascinating period.

(galerie-catherinefredericportal.com)

In September of 1920 Lebourg suffered a stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body. Nevertheless he remarried the next February in 1921. A Catalogue Raisonné was organized that year that included 2,137 works and was released in 1923, which garnered united praise by the press.

The year of 1926 bid farewell to the last of the great impressionists: Charles Angrand, Mary Cassatt and Claude Monet; in 1927: Albert Guillaumin. Albert Lebourg died in Rouen on January 7, 1928.

Lebourg’s works are in many museums: the Musee d’Orsay, Petit-Palais and Carnavalet in Paris, as well as museums in: Bayonne, Clermont-Ferrand, Le Havre, Dunkerque, Lille, Strasbourg, Sceaux and above all Rouen (Depeaux collection).

(wallyfindlay.com)

Note: I found these images (above) from all over the web. If you own a photo’s copyright and think this page violates Fair Use, please contact me.

IN ALGERIA, IT COSTS NOTHING TO LOOK TO THE FUTURE

2011-09-21T20:09:00.000+08:00

Noureddine Morceli Casual wear

From ftp cs rochester.edu

Noureddine Morceli had dominated the 1500m between 1990 and 1992, winning the 1991 world title and setting a new world record late in the 1992 season. The only major shortcoming in Morceli's record had come in the 1992 Olympics, when he finished a disappointing 7th behind Fermin Cacho (Spain).

(Ron Casey at sporting-heroes.net)

September 2, 1991, Algerians had all eyes on Tokyo, capital of the rising son. Early in the morning, all Algerians awaited the 1500m final before their little screens. Among the stars of the event, Said Aouita, holder of the world record, and a young Algerian native of Tenes only 21 years old. From the starting gun, Morceli showed good form and a real disposition to sieze the gold medal. He latched onto the front of the pack until the last lap. He made a thunderous acceleration that even Aouita could not follow. Thus he offered to Algeria the first world title in completing the fastest last 300 meters in the history of the 1500m in 39 seconds. Unable to digest this defeat, the great Aouita headed straight to the locker room. A beautiful story begins for Morceli. He dominates the tracks and wins all of the meets, keeping his world title in Stuttgart and Goteborg. Nothing remains for him but an Olympic title to inscribe his name in the rolls of the world's premier middle - distance runner. The defeat conceded at Barcelona sticks in his craw.

(ftp cs rochester.edu)

Morceli showed no such weakness in 1993, finishing the season undefeated and completely dominating his rivals. He recorded the fastest six 1500m times of the season and the fastest four in the mile. In addition, he set the season's fastest time in both the 1000m and 3000m, where he narrowly missed the world record on each occasion. The major event held that year was the World Championships at Stuttgart, and although Morceli was the overwhelming favourite, it seemed that if there was a threat it would probably come from Cacho, who had finished second behind Morceli in the 1500m at Zurich on 4 August.

(Ron Casey at sporting-heroes.net)

World 1500m title in 1993

Photo/Foto: George Herringshaw

From sporting-heroes.net

At Stuttgart, both Morceli and Cacho won their heats of the 1500m on 19 August, which they then followed by winning their respective semi-finals the following day. Although the final on 22 August started at a relatively slow pace, Morceli was always in complete control, sprinting away in the last lap to win easily and retain his world title. After the finish, Noureddine paused to embrace Cacho, who had led the rest of the field home to claim the silver medal.

Following Stuttgart, Morceli embarked on a concerted campaign to try to break the world record for the mile. At Berlin, on 27 August, he set a new personal best of 3min 46.78se, which he followed with a 3min 47.30sec clocking at Brussels on 3 September. Success came two days later at Rieti, where he recorded 3min 44.39sec to demolish the world record by nearly two seconds.

(Ron Casey at sporting-heroes.net)

Morceli narrowly missed his own world record when he won the Mediterranean Games in Narbonne in 3:29.20 min. By that time Morceli had set himself a new aim: to break Steve Cram's eight-year-old record over the Mile (3:46.32). Throughout the season he was virtually without any serious competitors. In Monaco he narrowly missed the 3000m world record. There was even talk that he might skip the World Championships in order to concentrate fully on the world-record hunt. However, in the end he decided to take part.

In the following weeks he failed twice to set a new world record over the Mile in Berlin and Brussels. But just two days after the race in Brussels he astonished everyone by crushing the old record with a time of 3:44.39.

In 1994, he set the new 3000 m world record, clocking 7:25.11. He also experimented successfully with the 5000m. In Zurich he outsprinted the rest of the field to take the victory and also won the 5000 m race in Rieti. The only defeat of the season came when Morceli opted for an unusual 800m appearance in Cologne. Morceli broke the 2000m world record in the following season, setting a new mark of 4:47.88. Nine days later Morceli set the last world record of his magnificent career, when he lowered his own 1500m record to 3:27.37 in Nice. Only a few days after this he almost broke the record again when he triumphed in 3:27.52 in Monaco. Later on that year he defended easily the 1500m World Champion title in Gothenburg. Shortly after, Morceli tried to improve on his Mile record in Zurich but did not succeed.

(english.turkcebilgi.com)

At the 1996 Atlanta Olympic, Morceli increased the tempo around the turn of the 1500m final and the stage was set for a titanic last lap as Cacho and El Guerroudj moved into position. The first precursor of trouble occurred at the head of the straight as El Guerroudj swung past Cacho and pulled up on Morceli's shoulder instigating brief contact as the Algerian quickened his gait and held his position. El Guerroudj moved out a bit and was running on the outside of lane one when disaster struck 25m from the bell. Closely scrutinizing several video replays reveals an infinitesimal contact between Morceli's heel and El Guerroudj's knee a stride before the mishap. This was enough to disrupt Morceli's next stride as his right foot hit his left calf and ricocheted about a foot to the right and into the young Moroccan's path. El Guerroudj's spikes caught Morceli's heel and he crashed to the Mondo leaving 83,000 mouths agape in Olympic Stadium. Blasting the curve in 12.84 the Algerian world record holder opened up 5 meters on Cacho and clocked 25.9 for the penultimate 200. The lead stretched to 10 meters before Morceli coasted in as he realized the elusive Olympic gold medal was finally in his grasp. While we will never know what might have transpired over the last 400 meters, Morceli's easing-up last lap of 53.5 gave every indication that he would have been extremely hard to beat.

Morceli admitted that the win was his only concern,"I wanted to run a tactical race, to save energy and finish with a very strong last lap. If I was challenged that final 200 would have been 25 instead of 27. I was ready to run 1:46 off that pace."

(Ron Casey at sporting-heroes.net)

The final lap Olympic 1500m Final

The 1996 Olympics, Atlanta, USA

Photo: George Herringshaw

From sporting-heroes.net

1500m Gold

The 1996 Olympics, Atlanta, USA

From sporting-heroes.net

After hurdling El Guerroudj, Cacho regained form remarkably well and nearly matched Morceli closing in 53.7. "I was in good position when El Guerroudj fell. I had to jump over him and Morceli got a 5 meter lead. After that it was impossible to catch him." Twenty meters back, the rejuvenated Abdi Bile battled with the Kenyan trio of Stephen Kipkorir, Laban Rotich and William Tanui. Bile moved ahead on the backstretch, but Kipkorir prevailed on the runin. "I just tried to be close to Morceli," the 24 year old Kenyan noted, "but it wasn't enough today."

El Guerroudj was thoroughly devastated after the race and was unable to offer a post-race assessment of the catastrophe. Morceli who also had a forgettable first Olympics said "I feel sorry for him, Hachim is a great athlete with a great future."

(Sean Hartnett, correspondent for Track and Field News at ftp:ftp.cs.rochester.edu)
It is said that all good things must eventually come to an end, and so it was that the dominance that Noureddine Morceli had enjoyed over the world's middle distance runners for the seven seasons from 1990 to 1996 finally faded away in the 1997 season. The signs had been there during the 1996 season with the emergence of the talented young Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj, who had brought Morceli's winning streak at 1500m/1 mile, which started in 1992, to an end when he defeated him over 1500m at the Grand Prix final in Milan on 7 September 1996.

El Guerrouj took over Morceli's mantle as the world's premier middle-distance runner in 1997, while the latter tried to stem the tide of his gradual decline. In the World Championships at Athens, Morceli easily won his heat on 3 August and the second semi-final the following day. El Guerrouj had won the first semi-final, but their anticipated showdown in the final did not live up to expectations, with El Guerrouj winning easily, while Morceli finished fourth, just pipped out of third place by young Spaniard Reyes Estevez in the final strides. Morceli had a reasonable season in 1998, recording a number of wins in minor meets, but he did not compete against the majority of the top runners.

Although Morceli's career was moving towards its inevitable end, he was not prepared to go quietly, and in 1999, at Seville, he qualified for his fifth straight 1500m final at a World Championships, where he dropped out at the bell when well out of medal contention. Noureddine's last appearance at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, where he jogged in last in his semi-final after being involved in a collision in the home straight.

(Ron Casey at sporting-heroes.net)

The El Guerrouj era begins with the end of the reign of Morceli. He knocks down Morceli's records. Thus is athletics done. Records are made to be broken, say the experts. Morceli suffers a cutting defeat at Seville, abandons and heads for the locker room, like Aouita in 1991. Morceli finishes his career at 29, at the age where Aouita began to break records, and breaking the mythical 13 minutes barrier for 5000m, 7:30 for 3000m, and 3:30 for 1500m. Morceli's page has turned and the 1500 remains a Maghrebian property. One must ask if the rebirth is really assured. For, long buoyed by the the exploits of the master and the queen of track, Morceli and Boulmerka, one quickly forgot that glory is ephemeral and supremacy can not last forever. Later, one speaks of the rise of Baya Rahouli in the triple jump, of Abderrahmane Hammad in the high jump, and of Said Guerni in the 800m, the very same who gave Algeria a bronze medal. In Algeria, it costs nothing to look to the future.
(ftp cs rochester.edu)
Noureddine Morceli was unbeaten in 45 finals at 1500/1 mile from 1992 to 1996. In that period he set 6 world records (1500, 1 mile, 2000, 3000 and 1500 indoor).

He won overall GP in 1994 and 4 times 1500/ 1 mile GP and won GWG 1994 and 1998 at 1 mile. He was coached by elder brother Abderrahmane (3:36.26 in 1977).
(iaaf.org)

Personal Bests:
1500 meters: 3:27.37
Mile (1608m): 3:44.39 World Record (9-5-93)
800 meters: 1:44.79
1000 meters: 2:13.73
1000 meters: 2:15.26 World Indoor Record (2-22-92)
2000 meters: 4:47.88 World Record
3000 meters: 7:25.11
5000 meters: 13:03.85
1988: 1500m World Junior Championships Silver Medallist
1989: Fastest junior in world
1994: Overall Grand Prix Winner
1995: 1500m World Champion
1995: 1500m IAAF Grand Prix Winner
1996: 1500m Olympic Champion
1996: Second at IAAF Grand Prix
(Marco Steybe at steybe.freeservers.com)

Note: I found these images (above) from all over the web. If you own a photo’s copyright and think this page violates Fair Use, please contact me.

TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE

2011-09-13T22:08:00.000+08:00

Philosophy answers to our need of forming a complete and unitary conception of the world and of life. Our philosophy—that is, our mode of understanding or not understanding the world and life—springs from our feeling towards life itself. And life, like everything affective, has roots in sub consciousness, perhaps in unconsciousness. It is not usually our ideas that make us optimists or pessimists, but it is our optimism or our pessimism, of physiological or perhaps pathological origin, as much the one as the other, that makes our ideas.

To propose to a man that he should be someone else that he should become someone else, is to propose to him that he should cease to be himself. Everyone defends his own personality, and only consents to a change in his mode of thinking or of feeling in so far as this change is able to enter into the unity of his spirit and become involved in its continuity; in so far as this change can harmonize and integrate itself with all the rest of his mode of being, thinking and feeling, and can at the same time knit itself with his memories. Neither of a man nor of a people—which is, in a certain sense, also a man—can a change be demanded which breaks the unity and continuity of the person.

A man can change greatly, almost completely even, but the change must take place within his continuity. The values we are discussing are values of the heart, and against values of the heart reasons do not avail. Reasons are only reasons—that is to say, they are not even truths. There is a class of pedantic label-mongers, pedants by nature and by grace. There was a man who, purposing to console a father whose son has suddenly died in the flower of his years, says to him, "Patience, my friend, we all must die!" Would you think it strange if this father were offended at such impertinence? For it is impertinence. There are times when even an axiom can become impertinence.

Man, then, in his quality of an isolated individual, only sees, hears, touches, tastes, and smells in so far as is necessary for living and self-preservation. If he does not perceive colors below red or above violet, the reason perhaps is that the colors which he does perceive suffice for the purposes of self-preservation. And the senses themselves are simplifying apparati which eliminate from objective reality everything that it is not necessary to know in order to utilize objects for preserving life. In complete darkness an animal, if it does not perish, ends by becoming blind. Parasites which live in the intestines of other animals upon the nutritive juices which they find ready prepared for them by these animals, as they do not need either to see or hear, do in fact neither see nor hear; they simply adhere, a kind of receptive bag, to the being upon whom they live. For these parasites the visible and audible world does not exist. It is enough for them that the animals, in whose intestines they live, see and hear.

Man habitually sacrifices his life to his purse, but he sacrifices his purse to his vanity. He boasts even of his weaknesses and his misfortunes, for want of anything better to, what is it but eagerness for survival? Boast of, and is like a child who, in order to attract attention, struts about with a bandaged finger. Man, the prisoner of logic, without which he cannot think, has always sought to make logic subservient to his desires, and principally to his fundamental desire. He has always sought to hold fast to logic, and especially in the Middle Ages, in the interests of theology and jurisprudence, both of which based them on what was established by authority.

Man, in effect, is unwilling to remain in ignorance of the motives of his own conduct. And just as a man who has been led to perform a certain action by hypnotic suggestion will afterwards invent reasons which would justify it and make it appear logical to himself and others, being unaware all the time of the real cause of his action, so every man—for since "life is a dream" every man is in a condition of hypnotism—seeks to find reasons for his conduct. And if the pieces on a chessboard were endowed with consciousness, they would probably have little difficulty in ascribing their moves to freewill—that is to say, they would claim for them finalist rationality. And thus it comes about that every philosophic theory serves to explain and justify an ethic, a doctrine of conduct which has its real origin in the inward moral feeling of the author of the theory. But he who harbors this feeling may possibly himself have no clear consciousness of its true reason or cause. Man yearns to be loved, or, what is the same thing, to be pitied.

Man wishes others to feel and share his hardships and his sorrows. The roadside beggar's exhibition of his sores and gangrened mutilations is something more than a device to extort alms from the passer-by. True alms are pity rather than the pittance that alleviates the material hardships of life. The beggar shows little gratitude for alms thrown to him by one who hurries past with averted face; he is more grateful to him who pities him but does not help than to him who helps but does not pity, although from another point of view he may prefer the latter. Observe with what satisfaction he relates his woes to one who is moved by the story of them. He desires to be pitied, to be loved.

Our desire of living, our need of life, asks that that may be true which urges us to self-preservation and self-perpetuation, which sustains man and society; it asks that the true water may be that which assuages our thirst, and because it assuages it, that the true bread may be that which satisfies our hunger, because it satisfies it. He who bases or thinks that he bases his conduct—his inward or his outward conduct, his feeling or his action—upon a dogma or theoretical principle which he deems incontrovertible, runs the risk of becoming a fanatic, and moreover, the moment that this dogma is weakened or shattered, the morality based upon it gives way. If, the earth that he thought firm begins to rock, he himself trembles at the earthquake, for we do not all come up to the standard of the ideal Stoic who remains undaunted among the ruins of a world shattered into atoms. Happily the stuff that is underneath a man's ideas will save him. For if a man should tell you that he does not defraud or cuckold his best friend only because he is afraid of hell, you may depend upon it that neither would he do so even if he were to cease to believe in hell, but that he would invent some other excuse instead. And this is all to the honor of the human race.

(The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tragic Sense Of Life, by Miguel de Unamuno)

THE ESTABLISHED ORDER WAS PROTECTED

2011-09-11T20:56:00.000+08:00

The British Empire dominated South and South East Asia, maintaining its power through the cynical manipulation of ethnic and religious division, alongside brutal repression. It could not, however, hold out against rising workers’ and nationalist movements, particularly after the Second World War.

(British rule in Asia: the poisoned legacy by PETER TAAFFE at socialismtoday.org)

British planners’ primary concern was to enable British business to exploit Malayan economic resources. Malaya possessed valuable minerals such as coal, bauxite, tungsten, gold, iron ore, manganese, and, above all, rubber and tin. A Colonial Office report from 1950 noted that Malaya’s rubber and tin mining industries were the biggest dollar earners in the British Commonwealth. Rubber accounted for 75 per cent, and tin 12-15 per cent, of Malaya’s income.

As a result of colonialism, Malaya was effectively owned by European, primarily British, businesses, with British capital behind most Malayan enterprises. Most importantly, 70 per cent of the acreage of rubber estates was owned by European (primarily British) companies, compared to 29 per cent Asian ownership. Malaya was described by one Lord in 1952 as the “greatest material prize in South-East Asia”, mainly due to its rubber and tin. These resources were “very fortunate” for Britain, another Lord declared, since “they have very largely supported the standard of living of the people of this country and the sterling area ever since the war ended”. “What we should do without Malaya and its earnings in tin and rubber, I do not know”.

(The war in Malaya, 1948-60, 13Feb07 by Mark Curtis at markcurtis.wordpress.com)

European trading in the Far East began with the Portuguese in the 15th Century and they were the first to establish a base in Malaya, then compromising many warring fragmented states. They took Malacca by force in 1511, after a previous expedition in 1509 came to grief. There they settled until the Dutch, with the help of neighboring Johor, took control in 1641.

The British presence began in the Eighteenth Century, when the East India Company started to extend their influence beyond India, seeking a route to China. In 1771, the Sultan of Kedah gave them an opportunity, asking for help in defending his territory. By 1786 he was desperate enough to offer useful land, the island of Penang, and it finally came fully under the Company's control in 1800, along with a strip of the mainland. Sir Francis Light was made superintendent; Penang became Prince of Wales Island and the mainland territory Province Wellesley. Free trade was established and the area thrived. The British also took Malacca from the Dutch in 1795, whose monopolistic view of trading rights had made them increasingly unpopular.

The British came to the area in three waves - the pioneers who opened up the country and established the first trading areas, the civil service of residents, administrators, police and so on. Those who came after them were consolidators - law-givers; teachers; planters; mining engineers; builders of roads, railways, bridges and municipal buildings; many of the second wave were civilians. In the introduction to Charles Allen's Tales from the South China Seas the third wave are described as the 'polishers', making as efficient as possible the groundwork begun by their predecessors. What all three waves had in common was their insistence that their children be sent to England for their education (although there were a few schools in Singapore for those who could not afford to send their children away) and the fact that most of them returned home to retire - to 'go native' was unthinkable.

The following table of dates summarizes the main events of importance:

1786 Penang ceded to the East India Company by the Sultan of Kedah.

1819 Singapore founded on land leased from the rulers of Johor.

1824 Malacca becomes British and Singapore ceded to the East India Company in perpetuity.

1826 Three amalgamated as the Straits Settlements (SS).

1867 SS become a British Crown Colony.

1870 Tin mining increases in importance and first experiments begin with rubber trees.

1896 Formation of Selangor, Perak, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang into Federated Malay States (FMS) 1900 Rubber plantations begin to take over the country.

1904 Kelantan, Kedah, Perlis and Terengganu (the Unfederated Malay States or UMS) accept British Advisors.

1914 The last state without a British Advisor, Johor, joins the UMS and accepts one.

1941 Japanese invaded of Malaya.

1942-45 Singapore was occupied by Japanese.

1948-60 The 'Emergency' declared, as a Communist Resistance Movement sweeps the country.

1957 Federation of Malaya achieves independence.

1959 Singapore also becomes independent.

1963 Malaysia was born (Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo).

1965 Singapore withdraws and becomes an independent city-state.

(The British in Singapore and Malaya by Alex Glendinning at user.itl.net)

By 1910 the pattern of British rule in the Malay lands was established. The Straits Settlements were a Crown Colony, ruled by a governor under the supervision of the Colonial Office in London. Their population was about half Chinese, but all residents, regardless of race, were British subjects. The first four states to accept British residents, Perak, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang, were termed the Federated Malay States: while technically independent, they were placed under a Resident-General in 1895, making them British colonies in all but name. The Unfederated Malay States (Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis and Terengganu) had a slightly larger degree of independence, although they were unable to resist the wishes of their British Residents for long. Johor, as Britain’s closest ally in Malay affairs, had the privilege of a written constitution, which gave the Sultan the right to appoint his own Cabinet, but he was generally careful to consult the British first. (WIKIPEDIA)

Tomoyuki Yamashita

From Wikimedia Commons

Japanese troops disarming captured British soldier

Malaya circa Dec 1941-Feb 1942

Added by C. Peter Chen at ww2db.com

In 1940 the Japanese had taken over French Indochina by agreement with the collaborationist Vichy government, and it was from Indochina that Japan launched its surprise blitzkrieg attack down the Malay Peninsula. The unprepared British forces were forced into a rapid southward retreat, withdrawing to the supposedly impregnable fortress of Singapore. However, Singapore's defenses were all directed towards the sea, and the Japanese came by land. The British in Singapore, recently reinforced by the arrival of many Australian troops, were forced to surrender on 15 February 1942, leaving Japan occupying the whole of Malaya. The defeat of the British at the hands of an Asian power opened the eyes of many Chinese and Malays to the myth of European superiority. However, the Japanese occupation was not generally welcomed, and armed resistance to the Japanese was conducted by pro-communist Chinese guerrillas. (city.com.my)

Japan’s victories were swift: "One might have to look back as far as Alexander the Great’s lightning destruction of the Persian Empire of Darius to find anything like it". Moreover, such was the degree of hostility of Britain’s colonial slaves to their masters that, initially, Japan did not receive the hostility of the peoples in the region, which is the version that pro-imperialist historians of the past have presented. That came after the experience of the bestial methods employed by the Japanese generals. In fact, Japan saw itself in the role of leader of the ‘Asiatic peoples’, which was to be realized through Japanese occupation. During the war, some nationalist forces joined the Japanese – Aung San, ‘father’ of Burma, as well as Subhas Chandra Bose, leader of the most radical nationalist group outside of the Communist Party of India, the Forward Bloc, and founder of the Indian National Army (INA). Bose demanded an immediate disobedience movement against the British when the latter declared war on India’s behalf without consulting the Indian people or politicians in 1939. The leader of Congress, Mahatma Gandhi, was horrified by the prospect of a major campaign, which he declared would lead to "anarchy and red ruin". Bose, who had been elected president of Congress against Gandhi’s wishes, was forced to resign. On the principle of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, Bose left India, made contact with the Germans and subsequently the Japanese, and organized the INA.

(British rule in Asia: the poisoned legacy by PETER TAAFFE at socialismtoday.org)

The Japanese regarded the Malays as liberated from British imperialist rule which gained them some cooperation from the Malay civil service and intellectuals. The Chinese however were regarded as enemies and received harsh treatment from the Japanese. Thousands were killed in Malaya and Singapore and Chinese schools were closed. This led to the setting up of resistance group such as the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), which was the backbone of the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), which was assisted by the British so as to fight the Japanese.

(mymalaysiabooks.com)

In August 1945, when the Allies were preparing for a campaign for the liberation of Malaya, the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought about the unconditional surrender of the Japanese. In September 1945 a British military administration was established under the Supreme Allied Commander, Southeast Asia, whose headquarters were in Singapore.

(city.com.my)

Because the Japanese had been removed with violence Malaya had suffered little loss of life or damage to its towns and cities but many of its tin mines and plantations had been destroyed to prevent the Japanese using them, so the Malayan economy was slow to recover after the war. The Japanese occupation had also sown the seeds of future unrest. They had pursued a policy of divide and conquer by favoring the Malays while persecuting the Chinese who were already anti Japanese due to the Japanese actions in China. This resulted in some violence in the period between the Japanese leaving and the British returning.

Another potential cause for unrest was the British plan for a new constitution for Malaya, known as the Malayan Union (Singapore would be a separate crown colony). This had been devised in Britain with little thought to the feelings of the local population and no consultation. The plan would wipe out the power of the Sultans effectively. Take Malaya from a protectorate to a Colony, it would also grant citizenship to anyone who had been born in Malaya in the last ten years regardless of race or ethnicity. This raised concerns among the Malay population that they would be swamped by the millions of ethnic Chinese and Indians living in Malaya. A huge outcry resulted and the British government relented and eventually after consultation a new constitution was developed which formed the basis of the Federation of Malaya Agreement in 1948 and is the basis of the modern Malayan constitution today.

These post war events sowed the seeds of rebellion in other ways; they showed that the British could be made to back down if pushed and that the British promises of protection weren’t always fulfilled. For many it was clear that a post War Britain had other priorities, domestically and internationally and Malaya was low on the list.

Nationalism was stirring within Malaya for the first time and the Malayan communist party thought the time was right to push and they saw the real chance of winning for the first time.

(Dugdale-Pointon, T. (26 August 2007), The Malayan Emergency (1947-1960), at historyofwar.org)

The British military was dispatched in a classic imperial role – largely to protect commercial interests. “In its narrower context”, the Foreign Office observed in a secret file, the “war against bandits is very much a war in defense of (the) rubber industry”. Britain had traditionally promoted the rights of the Malay community over and above those of the Chinese. Proposals for a new political structure to create a racial equilibrium between the Chinese and Malay communities and remove the latter’s ascendancy over the former had been defeated by Malays and the ex-colonial Malayan lobby.

By 1948 Britain was promoting a new federal constitution that would confirm Malay privileges and consign about 90 per cent of Chinese to non-citizenship. Under this scheme, the High Commissioner would preside over an undemocratic, centralized state where the members of the Executive Council and the Legislative Council were all chosen by him. The war was essentially fought to defend commercial interests. It was not that British planners believed there was no “communist” threat at all – they did. But the nature of this threat needs to be understood.

Communism in Malaya – as elsewhere in the Third World during the cold war – primarily threatened British and Western control over economic resources. There was never any question of military intervention in Malaya by either the USSR or China, nor did they provide any material support to the insurgents: “No operational links have been established as existing”, the Colonial Office reported four years after the beginning of the war. Rather, the British feared that the Chinese revolution of 1949 might be repeated in Malaya. And as the Economist described, the significance of this was that communists “are moving towards an economy and a type of trade in which there will be no place for the foreign manufacturer, the foreign banker or the foreign trader” – not strictly true, but a view that conveys the threat that the wrong kind of development poses to the West’s commercial interests. British policy – then and now – cannot be presented as being based on furthering such crude aims as business interests. So the official pretext became that of resisting communist expansion, a concept shorn of any commercial motives and simply understood as defending the “free world” against nasty totalitarians. Academics and journalists have overwhelmingly fallen into line with the result that the British public have been deprived of the realistic picture.

(The war in Malaya, 1948-60, 13Feb07 by Mark Curtis at markcurtis.wordpress.com)

Meanwhile Malayan nationalism was growing. The first Malay organization was the Kesatuan Melayu Singapura, or Singapore Malay Union, which was formed in 1926. Others quickly followed it. In 1946 Malay organizations joined together to form the Pertubuhan Kebangsaan Melayu Bersatu, the United Malays National Organisation. The Malayan Communist Party (MCP) was founded in 1930. In 1948 they began to attack European estate managers. As a result the government introduced a state of emergency. However communist activity declined after 1949 when the British parliament promised independence. The insurgency continued for some years but it was less of a threat. Communist activity flared up again in the mid-1970s then died down. In 1955 the Reid Commission was formed to prepare a constitution for Malaya. Malaya became independent on 31 August 1957.

(Tim lambert at ocalhistories.org)

How the British put down rebellion in Malaya

From indymedia.ie

End of Empire: Memoirs of a Malaysian Communist Guerrilla Leader, Socialism Today No.91, April 2005 reinforces the potential for the MCP and also for revolutionary change in Malaya at this stage. This would only have been possible through a policy of uniting all workers and peasants on the basis of class and not ethnicity, with correct perspectives, programme and tactics. The strength of the MCP and its military wing, the Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), was shown after the capitulation of the Japanese when "in many areas they (MPAJA and MCP) began to set up skeleton administrations in the form of ‘people’s committees’: according to one estimate, 70% of rural towns were under their control".

The British officer, Major HH Wright, who at one time liaised with the MCP, commented that these committees "were all-powerful in those small towns" in which the MCP were concentrated. Wright, with some experience in Albania and the successful guerrilla struggle there against the German army during the Second World War, declared: "They (the MCP) were the masters and not me". The task of cementing class unity, cutting across ethnic divisions, would not have been easy at this stage – nor is it today – but was possible in an ethnically and racially divided country such as Malaya.

The Malay sultans and their hangers-on, and nationalists like Tunku Abdul Rahman, who went on to help found the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO), furthered the British policy of fostering divisions. However, if the MCP had consistently pursued a policy of uniting all the races and ethnic groups in a war of national liberation, it could have seized power even in 1945 when there was a gap of three weeks before the British were able to reoccupy the country. This would only have been possible through a policy that broke with the idea of ‘stages’, which the MCP was wedded to, and the adoption, in effect, of Leon Trotsky’s idea of the permanent revolution.

With majority Chinese supporters, would the MCP have been able to hold power if it had taken it? There are no a priori guarantees in a serious struggle for power. But the Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh successfully occupied the whole of Indo-China, including the cities of Saigon and Hanoi, for a period in 1945. They then retreated under the military onslaught of imperialist troops – in which British forces played a key role. However, the example that they set of proclaiming an ‘independent’ republic sowed the seeds for the successful eviction not only of French imperialism but also of US imperialism later in 1975. Events would turn out differently in Malaya, not least because of the weaknesses in the MCP’s position.

Malaya was not Vietnam: its population of 3.97 million in 1931 was made up of 49% ‘Malays’, 34% Chinese and 15% ‘Indians’. But if the overwhelmingly Chinese city of Singapore had been included, the Malays would have been reduced to only 44% of the population. The fact that they were "a minority in their own country" was played upon, both by the British and the developing Malay capitalist nationalists.

(British rule in Asia: the poisoned legacy by PETER TAAFFE at socialismtoday.org)

Chin Peng

From bigdogdotcom.files.wordpress.com

Chin Peng, the leader of the MCP, later conceded that the slogan of a ‘Peoples’ Democratic Republic of Malaya’ – with its echoes of what was initially established in China under Mao Zedong – was not capable of reaching out to the Malay population. He wrote later: "Our battle cry should have been: Independence for Malaya and all Malayans who want independence". The British, of course, resorted to ruthless repression, including the outlawing of the trade union confederation. In fact, a ‘white terror’ was unleashed not just against Chinese members of the MCP but also radical Malays who were in alliance with the MCP or were open to it. As Chin Peng revealed in his memoirs, the decision to take to the countryside in a classical guerrilla war and effectively abandon the urban struggle was made under the influence of an Australian Communist Party leader, Lawrence Sharkey. It was a mistake which the MCP and the Malayan revolution were to pay dearly for.

(British rule in Asia: the poisoned legacy by PETER TAAFFE at socialismtoday.org)