.
A Syrian man walks past damaged homes following a snow storm in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Tuesday: photo by Karam Al-Masri/AFP, 5 January 2015
Fighters loyal to Yemen’s President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi celebrate
after they managed to secure completely and take control of the port of
the southern city of Aden: photo by Saleh Al-Obeidi/AFP, 5 January 2015
The rubble of the Chamber of Trade and Industry headquarters in Sana, Yemen, on Tuesday after it was hit by airstrikes said to have been carried out by the Saudi-led coalition: photo by Khaled Abdullah/Reuters, 5 January 2015
A Syrian refugee and two children arrive aboard the passenger ferry Ariadne at the port of Piraeus, near Athens, Greece: photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters, 4 January 2015
A Syrian refugee and two children arrive aboard the passenger ferry Ariadne at the port of Piraeus, near Athens, Greece: photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters, 4 January 2015
On the route of a thousand hells: Grande-Synthe camp, Dunkirk
Scenes from refugee settlements in France as rains flood in: #calais #dunkirk: image via Australia for UNHCR @UNrefugees, 5 January 2015
Volunteers try to clean up the camp in Grande-Synthe, Dunkirk. Many refugees are reported to be suffering from scabies and coughing up blood: photo by Jordi Oliver for the Guardian, 5 January 2015
A girl tries on mud-caked boots in the camp: photo by Jordi Oliver for the Guardian, 5 January 2015
Much-needed supplies appear to have been blocked from being delivered to the camp: photo by Jordi Oliver for the Guardian, 5 January 2015
A pool of water in the middle of the camp, which has destroyed large numbers of tents. Hundreds
of refugees are living in dangerous, unsanitary conditions after days
of heavy rain left their camp in northern France ankle-deep in filthy
water, while guards have blocked migrants’ attempts to replace tents and
rebuild temporary shelters. Aid agencies working at the camp in Grande-Synthe, Dunkirk, say they
are concerned for the health of the refugees due to an apparent ban on
building materials, firewood and even blankets being brought into the
compound during the cold, damp period. The site, known as France’s “forgotten” camp and which is about 50
miles from Dover, is estimated to hold 3,000 refugees mainly from Syria,
Iran and Iraq. After Sunday night’s rain, 200 refugees –- many of them children –- had
to leave their sodden tents to keep dry in the distribution shelter. By
Monday a huge pool of water stood in the middle of the camp, which has
destroyed large numbers of tents. Building rain-proof dry shelters or
bringing new tents is forbidden, according to aid workers on the ground.: photo by Jordi Oliver for the Guardian, 5 January 2015
On the route of a thousand hells: In The Jungle, Calais
A Syrian man and his son in the Jungle in Calais: photo by David Levene for The Guardian, 3 November 2015
Karzan, a nurse back in Iraq, with his wife Sharmin and son Hemn in their makeshift shelter in the Jungle in Calais: photo by David Levene for the Guardian, 3 November 2015
The Jungle in Calais -- ‘It is the largest slum in Europe and probably the worst’: photo by David Levene for The Guardian, 3 November 2015
Many people in the camp wear ill-fitting shoes that have been donated by well-wishers: photo by David Levene for The Guardian, 3 November 2015
Some of the refugees waiting, hoping for a chance to get to Britain: photo by David Levene for The Guardian, 3 November 2015
Those with children cannot risk the dangers of trying to jump trains or lorries: photo by David Levene for The Guardian, 3 November 2015
High-energy drinks are a popular item at the camp’s unofficial shops: photo by David Levene for The Guardian, 3 November 2015
Men queue in line for a handout of clothing: photo by David Levene for The Guardian, 3 November 2015
Some of the books in the Jungle’s library, set up by volunteers: photo by David Levene for The Guardian, 3 November 2015
The #jungle camp in #calais: cold, muddy and unwelcoming. @care4calais donations keep refugees warm, dry and fed: image via Sean Hawkey @seanhawkeye, 3 January 2016
The #jungle camp in #calais: cold, muddy and unwelcoming. @care4calais donations keep refugees warm, dry and fed: image via Sean Hawkey @seanhawkeye, 3 January 2016
The #jungle camp in #calais: cold, muddy and unwelcoming. @care4calais donations keep refugees warm, dry and fed: image via Sean Hawkey @seanhawkeye, 3 January 2016
The Jungle refugee camp, Calais.‘No sanitation, no healthcare, no security, no refuse collection, and no roads – just tracks of stinking mud full of litter and human detritus.’: photo by Jeff J Mitchell via the Guardian, 10 December 2015
Troopers of The Empire
Camels compete during the Liwa 2016 Moreeb Dune Festival on Tuesday,
in the Liwa desert, 250 kilometres west of the Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi: photo by Karim Sahib/AFP, 5 January 2015
Japan sushi boss pays $117,000 for endangered tuna: AFP, 6 January 2015
A Japanese sushi boss paid more than $117,000 Tuesday for a giant
bluefin tuna as Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market held its last New Year
auction ahead of a much-needed modernisation move.
Bidding
stopped at a whopping 14 million yen for the enormous 200-kilogram
(440-pound) fish -- a threatened species -- that was caught off Japan's
northern coast.
The price was three times
higher than last year but still far below a record 155.4 million yen
paid by the sushi chain operator in 2013 -- when a Hong Kong restaurant
chain weighed in and drove up bidding -- for a slightly larger fish of
similar quality.
The New Year auction is a
traditional feature at Tsukiji, where bidders pay way over the odds for
the prestige of buying the first fish of the year.
But
it came as Japan, the world's largest consumer of bluefin tuna, faces
growing calls for a trade ban on the species, which environmentalists
warn is on its way to extinction.
Kiyoshi Kimura, president of sushi restaurant chain Sushi-Zanmai, paid more than $117,000 for the 200kg bluefin tuna, displayed at his main restaurant near Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market on January 5, 2016: photo by AFP, 5 January 2016
The population of Pacific bluefin tuna is set to keep
declining "even if governments ensure existing management measures are
fully implemented", Amanda Nickson, director of Global Tuna Conservation
at the Pew Charitable Trusts, said in a release.
Bluefin is usually the most expensive fish available at Tsukiji, the biggest fish and wholesale seafood market in the world.
A single piece of "otoro", or the fish's fatty underbelly, can cost up to several thousand yen at high-end Tokyo restaurants.
The growing popularity of Japanese sushi worldwide has stoked demand elsewhere.
Fishmongers inspect frozen bluefin tuna before the first auction of the New Year at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market, which will end its eight-decade history this year: photo by AFP, 5 January 2016
"Given the already dire state of the population –- decimated to just
four percent of unfished levels -- it is of particular concern that the
auction price is rising again," Nickson added.
"The international community must let the Japanese government know that additional action is needed to save this species."
Tuesday's
auction winner, Kiyoshi Kimura, president of the firm behind the
popular Sushi-Zanmai restaurant chain, said he was "glad to make a
winning bid in the last New Year auction at Tsukiji."
Kimura has won the bidding every year since 2012.
Tsukiji
-- a sprawling complex of tiny stalls and wholesalers popular with
tourists -- will end its eight-decade history this year when it is
relocated to a modern facility in Toyosu, a few kilometres (miles) away.
Garbage (Higashizu-cho, Shizuoka Prefecture): photo by efo, September 2015
Star Wars fans wait for the first showing of the movie “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” outside a cinema in Tokyo: photo by Issei Kato/Reuters, 18 December 2015
Tokyo Invasion: "All your base are belong to US". The Empire sent three Stormtroopers to invade Tokyo. One went off dancing and the other two decided to take some time off instead, seeing the sights at Akihabara, Shibuya, Asakusa and more: photo by Danny Choo, 25 January 2011
Angry single men stage anti-Christmas rally in Tokyo: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 19 December 2015
Fries and kebabs [Nishishinjuku 2 Chome, Tokyo]: photo by efo, 2015
Cat with guard, Tokyo [Nishishinjuku 1 Chome, Tokyo]: photo by efo, 7 November 2015
Smile [Higashinippon 4 Chome, Tokyo]: photo by efo, 2015
Yoshimi [Yoshimi-machi, Saitama Prefecture]: photo by efo, 29 September 2015
Touchy Subjects
Wearing makeup to workout: it's a touchy subject: image via New York Times @nytimes, 6 September 2015
This image of Alan's body washed up on a beach in Turkey led to an outpouring of concern for Syrian refugees. Since then, at least 100 more children have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea: photo by Nilufer Demir via Agence France-Presse, 2 September 2015
A Turkish police officer carried the body of Alan Kurdi a young Syrian refugee who drowned off the coast of Turkey’s Bodrum Peninsula on Wednesday: photo by Nilufer Demir/DHA, via Reuters, 2 September 2015
Abdullah Kurdi in the piano bar of a hotel in Erbil, in Iraq's Kurdistan region, less than a month after losing his wife and two sons in an attempt to flee the Syrian conflict by risking the perilous sea journey from Turkey to Greece. “I have become a shadow,” he said..: photo by Bryan Denton for The New York Times, 27 December 2015
Armed activists defy government in #Oregonstandoff: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 4 January 2015
Ammon Bundy addresses reporters earlier today. #Oregonstandoff #OregonUnderAttack #OregonOccupation: image via Jason Wilson @jason_a_w 3 January 2015
This is as close as I was allowed to get to the armed militia occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge HQ. #burnsoregon: image via Jason Wilson @jason_a_w, 2 January 2015
A few unpublished pics from the trip to the Malheur Refuge today. 1. Ammon Bundy. #Oregonstandoff #burnsoregon: image via Jason Wilson @jason_a_w, 3 January 2015
2. Ammon Bundy and crew: image via Jason Wilson @jason_a_w, 3 January 2015
3. Ammon's bodyguard: image via Jason Wilson @jason_a_w, 3 January 2015
The unnamed bodyguard is Brian David Cavalier, aka Booda. He's a tattoo artist from Arizona. @jason_a_w: image via JJ MacNab @jjmacnab, 3 January 2015
6. Needed a longer lens for this - anyway, the fire observation tower now manned with sentries.: image via Jason Wilson @jason_a_w, 3 January 2015
Larger Than Life
Monster statue of China's founder Mao Zedong built by group of capitalists: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 5 January 2015
Monster statue of China's founder Mao Zedong built by group of capitalists: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 5 January 2015
Ghettovision. Los Angeles, California.: photo by michaelj1998, 2 December 2015
The Empire loves itself some Empire: image via Al Seib @AlSeibPhoto, 6 January 2015
Nothing but life itself
Syrians evacuate a wounded man on a stretcher following an airstrike by Syrian government forces in Damascus’ rebel-held suburb of Zamalka, on Wednesday: photo by Abdul Monam Eassa/AFP, 6 January 2015
A child looks out of a bus window after walking from the Macedonian
border into Serbia, in the village of Miratovac, Serbia, Wednesday.
Hundreds of migrants continue to arrive daily into Serbia in order to
register and continue their journey further north towards Western Europe: photo by Visar Kryeziu/AP, 6 January 2015
Bulgarian men dance in the icy winter waters of the Tundzha river in the town of Kalofer as part of the Epiphany Day celebrations. As a tradition, an Eastern Orthodox priest throws a cross in the river and it is believed that the one who retrieves it will be healthy through the year as well as all those who dance in the icy waters: photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP, 6 January 2015
Turkey finds drowned bodies of 21 migrants, including children: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 5 January 2015
#Refugees and #migrants. From #Lesbos to .......: image via Aris Messinis @Aris Messinis, 8 December 2015
21 #Refugees, many of them children, have washed ashore in Turkey photo @dromografos: image via Revolution News @NewsRevo, 5 January 2015
21 #Refugees, many of them children, have washed ashore in Turkey photo @dromografos: image via Revolution News @NewsRevo, 5 January 2015
Κατα τ αλλά αν έπεφτε ο φράκτης θα θρηνούσαμε θύματα... #refugeesGr: image via dromografos @dromografos, 5 January 2015
Κατα τ αλλά αν έπεφτε ο φράκτης θα θρηνούσαμε θύματα... #refugeesGr: image via dromografos @dromografos, 5 January 2015
Κατα τ αλλά αν έπεφτε ο φράκτης θα θρηνούσαμε θύματα... #refugeesGr: image via dromografos @dromografos, 5 January 2015
Κατα τ αλλά αν έπεφτε ο φράκτης θα θρηνούσαμε θύματα... #refugeesGr: image via dromografos @dromografos, 5 January 2015
Number of #refugees drowned off #Lesbos rises to 34 - another 10 bodies found off #Turkey coast. (Pics via @HDNER): image via Jon Williams Verified account @WilliamsJon 5 January 2015
Accurate information is a massively unmet need for #refugees #migrants - Nobody knows what's next causing huge anxiety.: image via MSF Sea @MSF_Sea, 2 January 2015
yIn Belgrade, activists appealed for winter clothes as 4 child #migrants were admitted to emergency with hypothermia.: image via Balkan Newsbeat @BalkanNewsbeat 3 January 2015
Bodies of 34 #migrants found on #Turkish coast #migrantcrisis: image via Arab News Verified account @Arab_News, 5 January 2015
Bodies of 34 #migrants found on #Turkish coast #migrantcrisis: image via Arab News Verified account @Arab_News, 5 January 2015
The Kid makes a splash
Trash collects on the banks of the Los Angeles River after a heavy rainstorm passed through the area, raising the water levels in the river in Vernon: photo by Abdul Monam Eassa/AFP, 6 January 2015
Today's #ElNiño storm brings more flood danger as it moves slowly over the L.A. area: image via Los Angeles Times Verified account @latimes, 6 January 2015
Homes at Mondo's Beach between the Solimar and Faria Beach communities west of Ventura have their sea walls tested Wednesday morning, as the third storm of this season's El Nino moves in with more rain and heavy surf: photo by Al Seib / Los Angeles Times, 6 January 2015
#ElNino making waves as vehicles navigate flooded lanes on the SB 101 Fwy at California Street in downtown #Ventura: image via Al Seib @AlSeibPhoto, 6 January 2015
Pouring in Vallejo as we talk #ElNino @KQEDForum #cawx: image via voxterra @voxterra, 6 January 2015 Vallejo, CA
Felipe Flores Lopez, 59, loses his homeless encampment to #ElNino: image via Genaro Molina @GenaroMolina47, 5 January 2015
@berkelyside rainbow over the Bay between storms in Berkeley: image via Fred Werner @SustainableFred, 6 January 2015
Deluge
Study for Deluge (portion of sheet): Jacopo Pontormo. c. 1546, red chalk on paper, 419 x 216 mm (whole sheet)(Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
The Deluge: Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1508-09, fresco, 280 x 570 cm (Cappella Sistina, Vatican
The Deluge (detail): Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1508-09, fresco (Cappella Sistina, Vatican)
The Deluge (detail): Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1508-09, fresco (Cappella Sistina, Vatican)
The Deluge (detail): Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1508-09, fresco (Cappella Sistina, Vatican)
Deluge over a city: Leonardo da Vinci, 1517-18, black chalk on paper, 163 x 210 mm (Royal Library, Windsor)
Fighters loyal to Yemen’s President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi celebrate after they managed to secure completely and take control of the port of the southern city of Aden: photo by Saleh Al-Obeidi/AFP, 5 January 2015
A Syrian man walks past damaged homes following a snow storm in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Tuesday: photo by Karam Al-Masri/AFP, 5 January 2015
Tom,
ReplyDeleteYesterday the year that was in the deluge of these images, and grim indeed it appears to have been --- and now, here are the rains of this El Nino winter, a moment's respite of blue this morning before the next front moves in . . .
Meanwhile and otherwise, Happy New Year to you!
Steve,
ReplyDeleteAnd heretofore and in any event, happy New Year to you and your amazing Extended All!
The rains bring back many a memory of Nymph Road days, and Larch, and Alder days, and Mission Canyon days, and for that matter later and latter days and nights of battening down hatches, bailing basements, patching roofs, and all that brings back memories of the one rain song that brings back all those memories most.
The week the record came out I was up on a ladder railing at the rain on Alder.
Ann Peebles: I Can't Stand the Rain (live in studio)
Ann Peebles: I Can't Stand the Rain (original, recorded 1973, released 1974)
About the year (this one, that is, not the 1973-74 version), I don't know what to say, the old blends into the new so seamlessly, yet with such an abrupt skull-shocking jolt, as of a blow upon a bruise, repeated in the manner of the grand iterative forms of the early days of the romance languages.
Actually, we're a bit envious of those whacko cowboys up at the Refuge, they've got a better heating system than we do, and we're even paying for it, which keeps reminding us of the curious double standard whereby those brokeback throwbacks to the cro magnon get this pass, nonchalant shrug from law, noli me tangere... whereas if the charmer in the Major League Sniper ball cap came out with a white towel wrapt round his modest cranial unit, for how many seconds do you reckon he'd continue to be breathing?
One earnest reporter spent last night eating pizza with them in the Refuge. A welcome change for the Constitutionalists, after 11 consecutive nights of micro-warmed mac 'n cheese dinners.
Tom, the giant Mao has been taken down!
ReplyDeleteYesterday is definitely not forever
Yes, a great lurch sideways for mankind... the "after" (or should we perhaps say "in transition"?) photos suggest a gargantuan hooded golden sacrificial fallen deity/mega-victim, legs and feet already amputated, now with admirable stoicism awaiting beheading by the massive and inexorable mega-machinery of... well, who ISN'T doing public beheadings, these glorious days?
ReplyDeleteTom Phillips in Beijing 8 January 2016 04.39 EST:
A giant golden statue of Mao Zedong has been torn down in central China just days after the 36-metre effigy sparked an outpouring of criticism and ridicule.
Photographs of Henan province’s “mega Mao”, which had reportedly been built in a rural corner of Tongxu county at a cost of 3m yuan (about £312,000), went viral this week after appearing on a Chinese website.
But a picture circulating on Friday showed that Mao was no more. The Great Helmsman’s hands, legs and feet appeared to have been hacked off, and a black cloth draped over his head.
“I heard it was destroyed yesterday,” a local delivery worker, who asked not to be named, told the Guardian. “I heard it was because it had occupied a farmer’s land.”
Before the demolition, Liu Jianwu, dean of the Mao Zedong research centre, said entrepreneurs and residents of Henan’s Zhushigang village appeared to have dreamed up the statue in order to commemorate China’s revolutionary leader.
“In contemporary China, Mao Zedong represents the embodiment of fairness and justice,” Liu said. “In the hearts of ordinary people, Mao represents fairness and justice. So people hold these kinds of emotions towards him.”
Last month, the state-run Global Times claimed “Mao worship” was on the rise in parts of rural China. The newspaper pointed to the construction of temples and statues dedicated to the former leader in the provinces of Shaanxi, Guangdong and Hunan.
However, the headline-grabbing Mao memorial is unlikely to have pleased Chinese authorities given the attention – and mockery – the statue drew.
“Why not use the 3 million to improve local education?” argued one of thousands of critics on Weibo, as photos of the golden statue spread this week.
Henan province was one of the regions worst hit by China’s great famine, a catastrophe that claimed tens of millions of lives that was caused by Mao’s disastrous “great leap forward” – a bid for breakneck industrialisation.
In his seminal book on the famine, Tombstone, Chinese writer Yang Jisheng described Henan as the epicentre of the disaster, and estimated that about 3 million lives were lost there because of starvation.
The Tongxu resident, who asked not to be identified, said the identity of Mao’s destroyers was a mystery. “I do not know [who destroyed it],” she said. “I haven’t been there to take a look.”
The People’s Daily newspaper later confirmed Mao’s demise. Officials said the statue had not gone through the correct “approval process” before construction.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteHats off to Ann Peebles for that live studio version -- or maybe rain hats, foul weather jackets and boots on, since it look as if the next front is marching this way, clouds from the east lowering across top of the ridge, bit of a north wind going to change to south later today they say, followed by more rain against our window panes . . .
I once passed through that Malheur Wildlife Refuge (or whatever it's called) on the way to a camping trip in the Steens Mountains -- a huge gently-rising-from-the-west escarpment which at its eastern most edge dropped off vertically above the vast eastern Oregon high desert panorama (clear out to Idaho and beyond (?) . . . Driving through Burns, OR, nothing much to look at but a gas station and run down motel, maybe? Now that I think of it, didn't you once post some photos of that middle-of-nowhere roadside attraction ? ? ?
Meanwhile and otherwise, maybe we can get in the water before the winds and seas kick up again, rain turning formerly clean green ocean water dirt brown with who knows what is running off the Mesa . . .
Steve,
ReplyDeleteThat black mass looming off shore, southwest wind already picking up, here we go again...
Where is Ann Peebles now that we need her so?
That eastern Oregon country where the good ol' boys are holed up with their wives, their guns, their long winter's supply of anti-freeze and their all-important pizza deliveries (to ward off the well-known long-term hazards of mac 'n cheese 'n beef jerky poisoning), has got to be one of the emptiest patches of land on this beleaguered planet -- not that humans have ever wanted to settle down en masse and really fuck things up for everything else living there, as per homo sapiens custom... because, in terms of ordinary expectations of comfort and habitability, the territory obviously hasn't got a whole lot to advertise itself.
For other creatures, of course, especially the ones nimble enough to be able to dodge a speeding pickup truck, this has always been, and probably right down to the day the media hordes arrived to fall all over each other on the ice like a pack of drunken figure skaters attempting to transport heavy equipment on a spacewalk, remained, great good news. And we've just got to hope no intrepid Guardian reporter has slipped and landed on a living jackrabbit.
Here, at the top of a May 2014 post, is a blackbird rising from a bush near Burns:
Something
Passed through the area once and got an intense impression of a whole lot of nothing.
A little later on, in perhaps the most deranged decision in a career of pretty much end-to-end deranged decisions, I chose to move my family from Bo-Town to a place which, while this or that may be said about it in other respects, turned out to be even less habitable for humans than the bleakest stretches of southeastern Oregon -- that is, an extremely windswept and barren spot called Hurricane Hill, at 10,000 feet, atop the Front Range.
Inevitably I composed my chilled plaints to the poetry gods, and when I had collected those, I assembled them into a slim volume called The End of the Line... and when it came time to find an appropriately indicative cover image, I settled on reproducing a piece of map, showing what I had determined to be the emptiest space in America.
It's that blank patch of southeastern Oregon bisected by US 20 as it passes through Burns and the turnoff on state route 71 to Malheur Lake, Malheur Creek, and the vacant wonders of the ancient lava beds hard by the Idaho border -- where, if I recall correctly, the world drops off into another darker, deeper, or perhaps, how would I know, lighter, brighter place...
Funny thing, talking of traditional and familiar atavisms, in that legendary prehistoric period commonly designated "back in the day" I'd swear Ammon and his crew rolled into Smiley's Bar one night in the long hard winter of 1968-1969, took a look around, decided everybody and everything at hand were/was crazy if not something worse, and were back up in their loaded-rifle-rack four-by-fours before anybody could say "Hey, let's go rip down the exit signs from the coast highway again!!"
Tom,
ReplyDelete"black bird rising from a bush near Burns"
Hurricane Hill, at 10,000 feet, atop the Front Range -- must have been a bit of a physical/geographical adjustment (all that thin air) not to mention a shift in kulture (or maybe not, some hardy souls up there no doubt, and around here too, at least back in the proverbial day . . . ) . . .
Ammon and his Gang would've fit right in there at Smileys, plaid lumberjack shirts, rifle racks in the backs of pickups and all. My earliest and almost only recollection of that venerable establishment was of a bearded guy in red and black plaid shirt, black rubber boots up to his knees, a bowie knife strapped to his thigh (this was back in '73, we'd just moved here, what a wet winter it was) -- maybe it was Russ Riviere?