Bluejay, click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Bluejay, click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Agnes Hasam, a family friend of the Alfred Olango, speaks to protesters gathered at the El Cajon Police Department headquarters to protest fatal shooting of an unarmed black man Tuesday by officers in El Cajon, California, U.S. September 28, 2016. REUTERS/Earnie Grafton
In the latest shooting, two officers responded to calls about an African-American man in his 30s walking in traffic and “not acting like himself,” according to police in El Cajon, a city of about 100,000 residents some 15 miles (24 km) northeast of San Diego.
Police did not immediately identify the victim, but local activists and friends named him as Ugandan-born Alfred Olango. They said he was mentally ill and that he may have been suffering a seizure in the moments before his death.
[…]
El Cajon officers found Olango behind a restaurant at about 2 p.m. PDT (2100 GMT) on Tuesday and ordered him to remove his hand from his pocket. After he refused, one officer drew a firearm and the other readied a Taser device, police said.
Olango paced back and forth as the officers tried to talk to him with their weapons pointed at him, police said.
Police said Olango then pulled an object from his front pants pocket, placed both hands together and extended them toward an officer in “what appeared to be a shooting stance.”
The officers simultaneously shot and used the Taser on the man, who died after being taken to the hospital, police said.
No weapon was found at the scene, El Cajon Police Chief Jeff Davis told reporters. He did not say what the man was pointing.
“Now is a time for calm,” Davis said. “I implore the community to be patient with us, work with us, look at the facts at hand before making any judgment.”
Actually, I think it’s time for cops to explain why they think tasering and gunning someone down at the same time is now the thing to do. Cops everywhere, gunning people down, bearing more similarity to the bad old days of mob rule than any type of “law and order”. FFS, this has to stop, and no more moronic excuses of “I was scared”. Tasers incapacitate people, there’s no need to follow them up with any bullet, let alone a round of fatal ones. Out of control Keystone Cops, yeah, you’re doing a great fucking job out there.
Instead of contemplating a series of sketches or attempting to envision how an artwork will come together, Portuguese artist Bordalo II (previously here and here) begins each of his animal sculptures in a grimy hunt for raw materials in junk yards or abandoned factories. Car bumpers, tires, door panels, mountains of malleable plastic bumpers, and even entire vehicles are stacked and bolted to the sides of buildings to resemble everything from pelicans to foxes and tiny rodents. The pieces grow on-site, taking form as he interprets the available materials. As a final detail each animal is finished with a flourish of spray paint that bestows a near lifelike quality.
Through his art, Bordalo II hopes to draw attention to our culture’s uncontrollable production of waste. “The idea is to depict nature itself, in this case animals, out of materials that are responsible for [their] destruction,” he shares with Colossal. In this way he hopes to make environmental destruction more visible. “Sometimes people don’t recognize that their simple routines are too much, we are using too many resources too fast and turning them into trash, waste, and pollution.”
Bordalo II was one of many artists recently involved with the Unexpected art project curated by JustKids in Ft. Smith, Arkansas where he created a new fox and opossum. He also constructed a flying squirrel at Street Art Jam 2016 in Estonia, and several pieces for the Aruba Art Fair. You can follow his recent work on Instagram.
Via Colossal Art.
Monuments and vaguely descriptive plaques are commonplace around cities and heavily trafficked tourist areas, giving just enough insight into an historic event or landmark. The Staten Island Ferry Disaster Memorial blends in with these weathered monuments, except for the fact that all details on the work are completely false. The monument, which is located in Battery Park, Manhattan, was created by artist Joe Reginella and honors the 400 victims who perished during a giant octopus attack of a Staten Island ferry named the Cornelius G. Kolff on November 22, 1963, the same day as the assassination of JFK.
The elaborate hoax was six months in the making, and is also seen by Reginella as a multimedia art project and social experiment. The website, and fliers distributed around Manhattan by his team, give a false location for a museum, ironically a place you must get to by ferry. You can see more tourist reactions and find real information about the fake event on the Staten Island Ferry Octopus Disaster Memorial Museum’s Facebook.
Now that’s a fun prank.
Via Colossal Art.
Alicia Machado, who won the Miss Universe pageant in 1996, was photographed in May of this year in Los Angeles. Credit Emily Berl for The New York Times.
The undeniably beautiful Ms. Machado, who is beautiful at any size, (preferably a well-nourished one) speaks out about her treatment at Trump’s hands, and the trauma she’s lived with for 20 years. As I understand it, Ms. Clinton had quite a moment in the debate regarding Trump’s abusive tactics with Ms. Machado. The whole article is a good read. I’d dearly like to think that Trump was at the very least moderately shamed, but no. All he cared about was how he was caught out. Nasty creep, that one.
For 20 years, Alicia Machado has lived with the agony of what Donald J. Trump did to her after she won the Miss Universe title: shame her, over and over, for gaining weight.
Private scolding was apparently insufficient. Mr. Trump, at the time an executive producer of the pageant, insisted on accompanying Ms. Machado, then a teenager, to a gym, where dozens of reporters and cameramen watched as she exercised.
Mr. Trump, in his trademark suit and tie, posed for photographs beside her as she burned calories in front of the news media. “This is somebody who likes to eat,” Mr. Trump said from inside the gym.
[…]
“I was sick — anorexia and bulimia for five years,” she said in an interview with The New York Times in May. “I was 18. My personality wasn’t created yet. I was just a girl.”
Mr. Trump has acknowledged pressuring her to lose weight, saying it was her job as Miss Universe to remain in peak physical shape. On Tuesday morning, he made no apologies for that.
“She gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem,” Mr. Trump told Fox News.
The full story is here.
Sixty investors representing $2.1 trillion in managed assets have called on North Carolina to repeal HB2, the controversial law limiting protections for LGBT people.
Earlier this month it was estimated that HB2 has so far cost North Carolina in the region of $395 million from sporting organizations, the entertainment industry and business interests. In March, more than 80 CEOs and businesses – including Apple’s Tim Cook and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg – signed a letter urging Governor Pat McCrory to overturn HB2.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday alongside some of the investors who have signed the statement calling for repeal, Matt Patsky, chief executive officer of Trillium Asset Management, said North Carolina “appears to be headed for what I would call a state-government-inflicted recession.” According to Associated Press, Trillium – one of the organizers of the statement along with environmental research group Croatan Institute and the New York City comptroller, Scott Stringer – has more than $2 billion in assets under management. Stringer was unable to attend the press conference because of a New York ban on travel to North Carolina.
In a separate statement, Stringer said:
“As long-term investors, we can’t sit idly by as HB2 undermines fundamental human rights at our expense. For the last 25 years, New York City’s pension funds have pushed more than 100 companies to enact non-discrimination policies that protect LGBTQ individuals and ensure they attract, retain, and promote the best and the brightest. These policies are essential if we want companies – and our economy – to succeed, and we can’t let a hate-filled law get in the way.”
Bonny Moellenbrock, executive director of North Carolina-based Investors Circle, added:
“This fallout is real. It has had a devastating impact on our reputation and that has a direct impact on entrepreneurs’ ability to grow their business here.”
McCrory replied in a statement:
“This latest attack on North Carolina values is being coordinated by the same people who manage the New York City pension fund that is on the verge of an ‘operational failure,’ according to a recent report. For New York hedge fund billionaires to lecture North Carolina about how to conduct its affairs is the height of hypocrisy.”
Pat McCrory, the Asshole Bigot’s Asshole Bigot.
Via Towleroad.
The Sierra Club has a column up on No DAPL:
…In addition to its potential impacts on land and water, new analysis shows that building the pipeline would also be inconsistent with the United States’ climate goals. According to a new analysis by Oil Change International (OCI), the pipeline would lock in greenhouse gas emissions in an amount equivalent to the emissions of 30 coal plants. By reducing shipping costs for large amounts of dirty oil, particularly with current oil prices so low, building this pipeline would significantly increase the amount of crude oil getting to market. OCI calculated that, at typical utilization rates of 95 percent of capacity, total lifecycle emissions from producing, transporting, processing, and burning the products derived from the oil would amount to 101.4 million metric tons of CO2e per year. Given this estimated impact and the White House’s recent guidance on how federal agencies should assess climate impact, it is only logical that a climate test be applied to this project, but thus far none has been conducted by the Administration.
As the 8th Annual White House Tribal Nations Conference (WHTNC) kicked off Monday in Washington DC, the White House released a massive plan of continued action, entitled “An All-of-Government Approach to Serving Indian Country.” Vincent Schilling.
As the 8th Annual White House Tribal Nations Conference (WHTNC) kicked off Monday in Washington DC, the White House released a massive plan of continued action, entitled “An All-of-Government Approach to Serving Indian Country.”
The White House Tribal Nations Conference is the result of the promise President Barack Obama made during a visit to the Crow Nation in May 2008 to host an annual summit with tribal leaders to ensure tribal leaders a seat at the proverbial governmental table…
Troy Williams via Flickr.
Fossil Fuels Investment Takes Nosedive:
A revolution is taking place in the global energy sector, with investments in oil and gas declining by 25 percent in 2015 while energy produced from renewables rose by more than 30 percent.
“We have never seen such a decline [in oil and gas investment],” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), at the London launch of its first ever report into world energy investment.
“Our findings carry a very important message for climate change and for the Paris agreement. Anyone who does not understand what is going on—governments, companies, markets—is not in the right place.”…
Trahant Photo.
Make No Mistake: Standing Rock Is On the Ballot:
TRAHANT REPORTS—On social media and in real life we hear this often: “What can I do to help Standing Rock?” Some answer the question by donating money, many send supplies, and hundreds of people jump in their car and travel to the camps near Cannonball, North Dakota. Once there folks pray, some engage in direct action, and all of us learn more about the challenges facing humanity.
There is something else that can be done: Vote.
Chase Iron Eyes, who is running for Congress from North Dakota, made that point on his web page this week. “I don’t believe North Dakota is racist, a certain percentage of the ReTrumplicans are—but we can vote them out—if you would only vote,” he wrote. “The majority of us are evolving in mutual respect. That’s our North Dakota.”
The congressional race is a stark example of these various differences: The incumbent, Rep. Kevin Cramer, wrote a position paper for Donald Trump that says any new climate policy should not “punish coal” or other fossil fuels. The Republican considers himself a climate change skeptic dismissing both international commitments made by the United States and the mountain of scientific evidence. …
‘Short! Winning Side’ What It Will Take to Capture an Election:
TRAHANT REPORTS—It’s time.
It’s time for politicians to treat American Indians and Alaska Natives as an important constituency, not an outside group living in our own homeland.
The words of North Dakota’s representative in Congress, Kevin Cramer, capture the old thinking perfectly. He told Oil and Gas 360 that the Dakota Access Pipeline will be built no matter what. “I think DAPL will be finished due to the investment and amount of construction already completed. Regardless of short-term decisions, I don’t see how you can’t eventually finish the pipeline. In the short-run, the question is whether the three agencies’ review will further delay the project by implementing a full-blown EIS or whether the review will approve of the process and apply any changes prospectively rather than retrospectively. I’m optimistic that [the work] will be up and running in a few weeks.”
And what about his constituents, the people of Standing Rock, who object? “I think the appropriate people at the tribe didn’t pay enough attention to the proceedings, but I don’t have any insight as to why they chose not to meet with the Corps of Engineers. I will say that the government to government expectations of tribal governments can sometimes get in the way of participation in more mundane, routine aspects of the regulatory process, which is unfortunate because they miss the opportunity to have their say in the matter.”
Geesh. No additional comments are needed. Add this quote to the dictionary as an example for “condescending.”
The “72 horas con Rodin” edit-a-thon in Mexico City was the longest ever completed and is recognized by Guinness World Records. There will be one in October focusing on Indigenous Peoples. Courtesy Wikipedia.
Wikipedia Wants Improved Content on Indigenous Peoples, Needs Your Help:
Wikipedia volunteers and the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that oversees the free encyclopedia, recognize and want to close content gaps that exist in race and gender topics on the site. One of those gaps includes coverage of all things having to do with Indigenous Peoples.
The goal, as Kelly Doyle, Wikipedian in Residence for Gender Equity at West Virginia University Libraries, told ICTMN is to make “Wikipedia more accurate, more diverse, and to fully represent the world around us… a lot of the articles about Indigenous Peoples are short and we want those be fleshed out.”
They are looking for anything and everything having to do with Indigenous Peoples, from articles about tribes to movements, and historical figures, or even Native American political figures, past and present.
“Any issue that has to do with Indigenous people, even creating new articles, as long as they are notable enough,” Doyle told ICTMN. “Anything that would be included in a regular encyclopedia.”
The upcoming WikiConference North America 2016 will include an edit-a-thon that will focus on those content gaps. …
A Kermode or Spirit Bear from the Great Bear Rainforest. The Kermode is a rare subspecies of the American black bear that holds a prominent place in oral traditions of many First Nations peoples in the British Columbia area. (Wikipedia)
Inclement Weather Doesn’t Stop William and Kate’s Bella Bella Visit:
Even though the visit didn’t go quite as planned, the coastal community of Bella Bella in the Great Bear Rainforest, welcomed Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge on September 26.
The royal couple took a bumpy flight into Bella Bella, but had to cancel boat-related tours of the Great Bear Rainforest because of heavy rains and gusting winds.
Bella Bella is home to the Heiltsuk Community of about 1,600 people, reports Metro News, and they gave the royal couple quite the welcome. Telegraph Video called the welcome they received “rapturous,” and Global News reported a “rousing cheer” as the couple arrived at Wawiskas Community Hall. …
As President Barack Obama took the stage at the 8th Annual White House Tribal Nations Conference (WHTNC) National Congress of American Indians President Brian Cladoosby broke the age-old rule from Politico that presidents should never wear a hat. Alex Hamer.
A Cedar Hat for Obama! At His Final Tribal Nations Conference:
As President Barack Obama took the stage at the 8th Annual White House Tribal Nations Conference (WHTNC) National Congress of American Indians President Brian Cladoosby broke the age-old rule from Politico that presidents should never wear a hat. Moments after the President took the stage, Cladoosby wrapped the President in a traditional blanket, then took off his own traditional cedar hat and placed it on Obama’s head.
With a huge smile, Obama tipped the cedar hat to the crowd while continuing to wear the blanket.
“What an amazing honor, and what a kind gesture for the honor song and the blanket and the hat,” said Obama. “I’m also very glad that you also have a blanket for Michelle so she doesn’t steal mine. She would, too. I’m just saying.”
Obama told the crowd of hundreds of tribal leaders and Native youth he mostly wanted to say thank you. …
Via ICTMN.
Heading back to camp, just for the day, we’re trucking wood in. I wish we could stay again, I know Rick feels the same. Every day, it feels so wrong to be away, and it’s been particularly difficult on Rick, given the sheer amount of bigots he works with, and the constant sussuration of damn Injuns…
I’ll try to come away with more photos, but mostly, I just want to sink back in, even if only for a while. I have things scheduled to post, so do some reading and looking, have fun, and don’t burn the blog down.
Click for full size.
© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
The continuing growth of corrosion from Giliell. Click for full size.
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Going through files, I still haven’t had a day to sit and dinosaur watch. White-breasted Nuthatch, click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Credit: Shutterstock.
The United States should give African Americans reparations for slavery, UN experts said Tuesday, warning that the country had not yet confronted its legacy of “racial terrorism.”
Amid a presidential election campaign in which racial rhetoric has played a central role, the UN working group on people of African descent warned that blacks in the US were facing a “human rights crisis.”
This has largely been fuelled by impunity for police officers who have killed a series of black men — many of them unarmed — across the country in recent months, the working group’s report said.
Those killings “and the trauma they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynchings,” said the report, which was presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday.
Addressing the deeper causes of America’s racial tensions, the experts voiced concern over the unresolved “legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality.”
“There has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent,” the report said.
Just as there has no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for Indigenous people in the U.S. either. The uStates government has always been good at the gift of gab, with their constitution, freedom for all, blah blah blah. The trouble with it all is that it was aimed at white people alone. Other people were subjected to slavery, others to genocide. The aftermaths of both those things was nearly as terroristic as the initial events. Indigenous people are still dealing with that racial terror today, both the generational echoes of committed travesties, and the current assaults. The same can be said for Black people, who are still treated as little more than slaves, and always viewed through the lens of suspicion. We’ve all been herded, whether it’s into reservations, ghettos, or “that neighbourhood”.
I was reading an article the other day, about my old stomping grounds in SoCal, where white people still build enclaves to keep them safe from all those Mexicans, except for the cleaning and maintenance staff, natch. A 15 year old was quoted as saying something along the lines of “it’s not racism, it’s not segregation! People prefer to be with their own.” Right. Well, that sort of thing is easy when you don’t allow anyone in. I was quite pleased to see that Santana (Santa Ana) is very majority Hispanic now. I wasn’t born there, that was in LA county, but I did grow up there, and I also grew up with the familial grumbles and complaints about all those Mexicans.
The States are a seething hotbed of racism, and it’s not new, it did not show up with our current President, it’s the blood, bone and skin of this country, built upon all those ruthlessly slaughtered so their land could be stolen, and built upon the backs of those people who were stolen and put in chains. Until the day the U.S. government fully acknowledges all the horrendous wrong it did, and agrees not to just reparations and the return of much of what was stolen, and goes well past that by actually addressing the problems caused by those past actions, we won’t be moving past the racism here. And for those who would respond to this with a sneer and a “if you don’t like it here, leave”, I’ll lob that one back atcha. As a person who is part Lakota, I’ll point out to all the white folks that we were here first, and if you don’t like it, you’re more than welcome to leave Turtle Island.
Via Raw Story.
Neil Frias (left) and Jeff White were pepper-sprayed. Photo: Jeff White / Courtesy Jeff White.
What was supposed to be a weekend of revelry and excitement for two friends in town for San Francisco’s Folsom Street Fair turned ugly Saturday night when five assailants attacked the men with pepper spray for no apparent reason other than they are gay.
The violence was particularly shocking for Neil Frias and Jeff White, both 28, because they were assaulted in a city lauded for its progressive values and broad acceptance of the LGBT community.
[…]
Frias and White said they were attacked at about 9 p.m. outside a McDonald’s at Golden Gate Avenue and Fillmore Street in the city’s Western Addition. As Frias left the fast-food restaurant, he said five men pulled up in a blue minivan. “They were saying, ‘You fags are destroying family values,’” Frias said. “I said I didn’t want any trouble, and one of them got out of the van. I thought he was going to take a swing at me, but he sprayed me across the face.”
Frias said he was hit with the unmistakable “searing sting” from the pepper spray as a second man came at him with another can of the aerosolized weapon. A third assailant, he said, attacked White, who crawled into a ball to protect his face from the painful blast.
“I was completely vulnerable,” he said. “I thought they were going to start beating me.”
A nearby woman shouted that she was calling the police, prompting the mob to jump back into the minivan and speed away. Police and paramedics responded to the attack, and the two victims returned to their Union Square hotel.
“The thing that was the most remarkable about the situation is how unprovoked it was,” White said, still reeling from the encounter Sunday morning. “I was literally tying my shoe when they came at me. It’s mind-boggling.”
“You fags are destroying family values”. Why don’t these assbrained individuals ever wonder just what kind of family values teach you that it’s perfectly okay to go out and assault people? Those are indeed values, and they are seriously bad ones. It’s past time that every person start pointing this out, in a very loud way – if your values are immoral, evil, unethical and harmful, you need to sit down, shut up, and figure out just what in the fuck is wrong with yourself. If you’re fueled by hate, sit down, shut up, and figure out just what in the fuck is wrong with you. If you think it’s a fine, upstanding thing to go out and stalk strangers and dole out violence, you need to lock yourself up in your residence until you can get that poor brain of yours exercised enough to figure out just what in the fuck is wrong with you.
Via SFGate.