#but this interview was in 1948. he was aware that it was a problem from the beginning

[probablyasocialecologist]

Israeli president Isaac Herzog insisted that “an entire nation” was to blame for Hamas’s actions, and that the idea of “civilians not being aware, not involved” was “absolutely not true”. While Rageh Omar reported on this for ITV News, it did not make the BBC or the New York Times or Sky News. Nor did it make most anglophone outlets. Ariel Kallner, in a now-deleted tweet, called for another Nakba on the Palestinians, repeating the crime of 1948 in which 700,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed. “Right now, one goal: Nakba!” He exhorted. “A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48.” This was picked up by Associated Press but missed by most anglophone broadcasters and press. When Tally Gotliv, a Knesset member for Likud, called for a nuclear strike on Gaza – “Jericho Missile! … Doomsday weapon!” ­– and for “crushing and flattening Gaza … Without mercy! Without mercy!”, this also went curiously unnoticed. Again, when an anonymous Israeli defence official briefed Israeli broadcasters that Gaza would become “a city of tents” where “there will be no buildings”, it was largely ignored. When Sara Netanyahu’s advisor, Tzipi Navon, said that it would not be enough to “flatten Gaza”, and that Palestinians suspected of involvement in the Hamas attack should have their nails pulled out, their genitals removed and their tongues and eyes saved for last “so we can enjoy his screams”, “so he can see us smiling”, that too was curiously overlooked. The studied obtuseness of Western media includes carefully ignoring the most severe warnings about what is about to be done by Israel to Gaza. On Friday 13th, Israel ordered residents in the north of Gaza to “evacuate” to the south within 24 hours on pain of being bombed. Former Israeli ambassador Danny Ayalon suggested with a cynical smirk that they could go to the Sinai desert and live in “tent cities”. The Biden administration appears determined to enable this to happen, lobbying Egypt to take the refugee population. The language of evacuation, widely used by newspapers, was euphemistic. Over a million Gazans had just been given a death threat. They were being told at gunpoint to flee in an unrealistic amount of time, on just two roads that they were assured were safe from bombardment, only for a convoy fleeing south to be bombed, killing seventy people. They had no reason to believe they could ever return to their homes or that their homes would even exist. Here was the second Nakba that Ariel Kallner shouted for. A UN press release warned of “mass ethnic cleansing”, that would repeat the Nakba of 1948 “yet on a larger scale”. Two days after that warning, only the Independent among British newspapers had covered it. One honourable exception to the general omerta on explaining what the “expulsion” order means is the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire who, interviewing former Israeli ambassador Mark Regev, quoted former UN head of humanitarian affairs Jan Egeland, saying: “The Israeli order for civilians to move from north to south is impossible and illegal. It amounts to forcible transfers and a war crime.” No anglophone newspaper, of course, mentions the word “genocide” in this context, though that is the term used by both Palestinians and Jewish groups opposed to Israel’s war, and is clearly what is implied by Israeli statements and actions. As Mustafa Bhargouti told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Israel is inflicting the triumvirate of “siege and collective punishment”, “genocide” through bombardment, and “ethnic cleansing”. The Israeli historian of the Holocaust, Raz Segal, describes Israel’s indiscriminate war on Gazan civilians and its assault on the conditions for life for the whole community, as “a textbook case of genocide” unfolding in front of us. For the press and the majority of pundits, the problem cannot be named. At most, liberal dissent attains to the insight that vengeance is not justice, as though what Israel is now threatening is merely reactive rather than programmatic.

[ayahhass]

Blog Deliverable #3 (stakeholders and leaders)

Stakeholders in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are diverse and have various interests and perspectives on the issue. To better understand the stakeholders, I have identified some of the main groups and their positions on the problem:

Palestinians: The Palestinian people are at the heart of this conflict. They have been impacted the most, facing forced evictions from their homes, loss of lives, and ongoing displacement that has been going on for decades. 

Israelis: They have their perspective on this issue. They are viewed as the victims by America and are being funded $4 Billion each year to help in the killing of Palestinians. Mind you, on Palestinian land. 

International Community: The international community, including governments, organizations, and individuals worldwide, has a stake in this conflict due to its potential for destabilizing the region and its humanitarian consequences. Various countries and international bodies have different positions on the matter. 

Online Advocacy Groups: Online advocacy groups play a significant role in raising awareness and advocating for different solutions. Pro-Palestinian groups especially recently have been using social media and the internet to spread the truth. 

Media Outlets: Newspapers, magazines, and online news sources are crucial stakeholders as they shape public opinion and provide information on the conflict. Their coverage can influence public perception. 

Activists: Activists from various backgrounds, including human rights activists, peace activists, and right now pro-Palestine activists, are actively engaged in advocating for their respective causes. 

US Taxpayers: US taxpayers contribute to funding through their tax dollars, which are sent as foreign aid to Israel. As I said above, nearly $4 Billion is being sent to the IDF yearly.

Now let's delve into an interview with a key stakeholder in the conflict: 

Interviewee: Ahmed, a Palestinian Refugee. 

Interviewer: Ahmed, can you share your perspective on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and your personal experiences?

Ahmed: This conflict has taken so much from my people. It’s not just about land; it's about our homes, our families, our lives. I’m a refugee, and my family was forced to leave our home in 1948. We’ve been struggling for generations to regain what was lost. 

Interviewer: What do you believe are the main challenges and hopes for Palestinians in this conflict? 

Ahmed: The challenges are immense. Forced evictions, daily hardships, and the loss of innocent lives, especially children, are heartbreaking. Our hope is simple but profound: to have a place to call home, to live in peace, and to be treated with dignity and respect. 

Interviewer: How can people from around the world support your cause? 

Ahmed: The world needs to know our story, the real story. Stand up for justice, support organizations working for peace, and hold your governments accountable for where they invest your tax dollars. We all deserve a future without fear and suffering.

This interview with Ahmed, a Palestinian refugee, provides a personal and heartfelt perspective on the conflict and the stake he holds in the matter. It reflects the experiences and aspirations of many Palestinians who have been deeply affected by the ongoing crisis.

[beardedmrbean]

This week's written communication emanating from Russia has been a traumatic experience for Finns, with much more coverage in Finnish media than in other countries that received similar letters.

To recap: on Monday Russia sent a list of demands relating to security policy to several EU and Nato countries, asking them to reply individually.

To many Finns, this echoes the 'Note crisis' of 1961 when the Soviet Union invited Finland for talks under the 'Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance agreement' that governed relations between the two states after 1948. The talks would be aimed at securing both countries' borders.

This note came soon after the Berlin Crisis and the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and was interpreted as an attempt to strengthen Finnish President Urho Kekkonen ahead of elections.

So when Russia sends its demands on paper, Finns tend to take notice.

Ilta-Sanomat asks (siirryt toiseen palveluun) former diplomat Rene Nyberg what is special about a note, and he says there isn't much to it: a note does not carry a signature, a letter does.

As this one was signed by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, it's a letter not a note. So can we all breathe a sigh of relief?

Perhaps we can, according to the Russian academic interviewed (siirryt toiseen palveluun) by Helsingin Sanomat. Alexey Makarkin says that Russia is trying to divide the west by sending these letters, and wants to see if different responses can be obtained.

That's why Russian media reported the letters sent to Austria and Finland first. Both countries are non-Nato members with a long history of international diplomacy and east-west summits.

Could they answer differently to their partners in the west? If so, Russia would count that as a diplomatic win, says Makarkin. Finnish politicians seem aware of the danger and have said they will co-ordinate with western partners before they respond. Sweden's Foreign Minister Ann Linde has already said her country would co-ordinate its response with Finland.

Waiting on banks

Finnish online banking is more advanced than in many countries, but service in actual bank branches can be slow. Tampere daily Aamulehti went to test that proposition (siirryt toiseen palveluun).

The paper found that Danske Bank had the longest wait in central Tampere, with an hour and 19 minutes queueing time from taking a queue number to service at the counter.

The other five banks in the test were all under an hour, but some had customers wait outside for part of their queueing time.

Danske Bank said the problem is known, but they have a shortage of staff amid the Covid pandemic and that many customers want to go to the bank regardless.

"We have tried to ensure customers reserve enough time, but for many a trip to the bank is a social event too," said branch manager Timmy Mattila. "They get to see people's faces and exchange a couple of words with the staff. Some even visit twice a week."

Dirty Olympic snow

The Winter Olympics start this week and Iltalehti has a story (siirryt toiseen palveluun) on the problems faced by cross-country skiers.

Dirty snow is the issue IL raises, with the machine-produced snow carrying lots of dust and sand onto the tracks. IL took snow from the tracks indoors in a bottle to melt and demonstrate the issue, and it does indeed look a little murky.

It's a problem for skiers, as the extra sand increases the friction they face and slows them down. Added to the altitude and the layout of the tracks, with long, straight climbs, the conditions for these Olympics look quite difficult.

[blackwoolncrown]

This article is a must read, and so I have posted it here. Douglas Rushkoff is a fantastic human, please follow him on twitter here. Check out his books and Ted talks, he also has interviews on Youtube.

Anyway this article is just...incredibly revealing. America is really just one big PsyOp. His comments on civilization are A+++:

“Until quite recently, films like 1954’s Abstract in Concrete were banned for American viewers. Although produced with U.S. tax dollars, this cinematic interpretation of the lights of Times Square was meant for European consumption only. Like the rest of the art and culture exported by the United States Information Agency, Abstract in Concrete was part of a propaganda effort to make our country look more free, open, and tolerant than many of us preceived or even wanted it to be. In the mid-1940’s, when conservative members Congress got wind of the progressive image of America we were projecting abroad, they almost cut the USIA’s funding, potentially reducing America’s global influence.

Well, America today is in no danger of projecting too free, open, or tolerant a picture of itself to the world. But I’m starting to wonder if maybe the nationalist, xenophobic, inward-turned America on display to the world these days might just be the real us — the real U.S. Maybe the propaganda we created to make ourselves look like the leading proponents of global collaboration and harmony was just that: propaganda.

~Once the USSR and the U.S. divided Europe into East and West and the Cold War began, America went on a propaganda effort to present itself as more enlightened and free than the communists.~

Since the great World Wars, America has had a vested interest in fostering a certain global order. President Woodrow Wilson, who had run for president on a peace platform, ended up bringing America into World War I. When it was done, he established something called The League of Nations, which was meant to keep the peace. Thanks to an isolationist Congress, however, the United States never actually joined the League of Nations. That should have been a big hint that America’s interest in global cooperation was fleeting, at best.

During World War II, Roosevelt took his shot at global harmony with his “Declaration by United Nations,” which eventually gave birth to the UN, dedicated to international peace and basic human rights around the world. To most Americans, however, the United Nations represented little more than a way of preventing the sort of war that would again require American intervention. Yes, it was in New York, and yes, it was conceived and spearheaded by Americans but this didn’t mean that America really thought of itself as part of a great international community. The UN was really just a way for us to avoid having to go “over there” again.

This was surprising to me. I grew up in the 1970s, at the height of America’s cultural outreach to Europe and the world. I remember how great Russian artists and ballet dancers would come to New York, and how American artists and writers would go to Europe. There were exchange students in my high school from Italy, France, and Germany. The outside world — the international society of musicians, writers, thinkers that America was fostering— seemed more artistic, cultural, and tolerant than what I knew here, at home. It seemed like the future.

~~~

This was by design, and part of a propaganda effort that began in the 1940's. Once the USSR and the U.S. divided Europe into East and West and the Cold War began, America went on a propaganda effort to present itself as more enlightened and free than the communists. The State Department, the CIA, and the United States Information Agency, as well as an assortment of foundations from Rockefeller’s to Fulbright’s, all dedicated themselves to painting a positive picture of America abroad. This was big money; by the late 1950’s the USIA alone spent over $2 billion of public money a year on newsreels, radio broadcasts, journalism, and international appearances and exhibitions. This included everything from Paris Review articles to Dizzy Gillespie concerts.

The problem was that the image of America that these agencies projected to the world wasn’t the image many Americans had of their country. Information agencies were busy trying to make us look like an open and free society, as sophisticated and cosmopolitan as any European one. So, abstract art exhibits and films, book collections with modernist novels, intellectuals, people of color, modern dancers, and all sorts of avant-garde culture was sent for consumption abroad.

Conservative Americans, as well as the senators who represented them, saw this stuff as gay, communist, Jewish, urban, effete, and an altogether terrible misrepresentation of who we were and what we stood for. Why, they asked, should we be spending upwards of two billion dollars exporting decadent, self-indulgent art and culture to the world?

~~~

So Congress — convinced that there was still a national security advantage, or at least a business justification, in maintaining American global outreach — passed a compromise called the Smith-Mundt Act in 1948. The law made it illegal for the USIA to release any of its propaganda within the United States. Ostensibly, this was to protect Americans from the potentially manipulative propaganda it was spreading abroad. Information is a form of PSYOPS (psychological operations), after all, and we are not going to use such weapons on our own people.

But the real reason for the Smith-Mundt act was to prevent Americans from seeing themselves represented in ways that they didn’t agree with. The books in the traveling library were titles that many Americans thought would be better burned than celebrated. And the overall ethos of the program — to promote America’s internationalism and free society — were in direct contradiction to the values that many Americans held. The Smith-Mundt act created a wall between the image of America we exported to the world, and the one we maintained about ourselves.

By the time the Internet emerged, this division became impossible to keep up. YouTube, the Internet Archive, and Facebook bring everything to everyone. So in 2012, Smith-Mundt was repealed. Concerned netizens saw a conspiracy. Did this mean the government would now be free to use its psychological warfare on U.S. citizens? Perhaps. But the real intent was to relieve the government’s communications agencies from trying to hide their messaging from Americans in an age when hiding such programming is impossible.

~~~

But now that Americans are becoming more aware of America’s internationalist activities and sentiments, many are horrified and calling for retreat. This is the province of George Soros, the Rothschilds, and the Zionist conspiracy — not the good old U.S. of A. I wonder: was the Smith-Mundt Act hiding an internationalist and open-minded America from the few Americans who weren’t ready for it? Or was it simply hiding the nationalist and backwards-thinking America from the world? For all our efforts at telling Europe otherwise, maybe we are not really the modern society we self-styled proponents of public diplomacy like to think we are.

The measure of a civilization’s advancement is its capacity to insulate its people from the cruelty of nature. Right now, Americans don’t seem to be dedicated to that principle. Civilizations build public roads, baths, aqueducts, and later transportation, healthcare, and education into the fabric of society, as givens. Instead of seeing the poor as deserving of discomfort, civilizations see all human beings as deserving of essential human dignity. The more a civilization can spread these basic human rights and freedoms through the world, the more advanced the civilization.

However, this particular understanding of modernity and enlightenment is not universal. Instead of breaking down boundaries and building an international society, America’s current stated goal is to reject globalism, build walls, and treat other nations as business competitors. The America we were once hiding behind billion-dollar international culture campaigns is now the America we are broadcasting to the world. Instead of compensating for our American-made missiles with progressive art and media, now we are justifying their sale and use with America-first rhetoric.

America’s best hope for cross-border connection, identification, and intimacy is its people. This means you and me, sharing our beliefs, aspirations, culture, and compassion with as much of the world as possible. Just as conservatives fought against the export of an America they didn’t agree with is, it’s the progressives’ turn to speak on behalf of the connected and collaborative world we still hope for — even if we aren’t fit to be its leader, anymore.

(emphasis mine)

[aces-and-aros]

Asexual Awareness Week, Day Six

Most of these are taken from the Wikipedia entry for “Timeline of Asexual History” With a few extra facts taken from AVEN’s wikia page, and other news sources.

Asexual History

1869: Karl-Maria Kertbeny uses the word "Monosexuals" to refer to people who only masturbate. While not really a distinction in modern asexual discourse, it is similar to other categories coined such as "autoerotic" and "asexual" people described by Myra Jonson in the 1970s, among others.

1896: A German sexologist, Magnus Hirschfeld, wrote the pamphlet "Sappo und Sokrates," which mentions people without any sexual desire.

1948:The Kinsey scale included a "group x" for those who did not feel sexual attraction, which was roughly 1% of those surveyed.

1974: Singer and composer David Bowie discusses asexuality in the Rolling Stone in the article "David Bowie in conversation on sexuality with William S. Burroughs by Craig Copetas in the Rolling Stone February 28, 1974"

1977:Myra Jonson wrote one of the first academic papers about asexuality as part of The Sexually Oppressed. Johnson mainly focused on the problems still facing asexual women as they were ignored, or seemingly left behind by the sexual revolution going on.

1979:In a study published in Advances in the Study of Affect, vol. 5, Michael D. Storms of the University of Kansas outlined his own reimagining of the Kinsey scale, using only fantasizing and eroticism, and placing hetero-eroticism and homo-eroticism on separate axes rather than at two ends of a single scale; this allows for a distinction between bisexuality (exhibiting both hetero- and homo-eroticism in degrees comparable to hetero- or homosexuals, respectively) and asexuality (exhibiting a level of homo-eroticism comparable to a heterosexual and a level of hetero-eroticism comparable to a homosexual, namely, little to none). This type of scale accounted for asexuality for the first time. Storms conjectured that many researchers following Kinsey's model could be mis-categorizing asexual subjects as bisexual, because both were simply defined by a lack of preference for gender in sexual partners.

1980: Writer and Artist Edward Gorey, Comes out as asexual in an interview. When asked ‘...the press makes a point of the fact that you have never married. What are your sexual preferences?’, Gorey responds “Well, I'm neither one thing nor the other particularly.” and goes on to talk about how his lack of attraction affects his work.

1983: The first study that gave empirical data about asexuals was published in by Paula Nurius, concerning the relationship between sexual orientation and mental health.

1993:Boston Marriages: Romantic but Asexual Relationships Among Contemporary Lesbians by Esther D. Rothblum and Kathleen A. Brehony was released on November 17, 1993.

1994:A survey of 18,876 British residents found that 1% of the respondents “never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all”.

1997:First online Asexual Community appears in the comment section for an article titled “My Life As An Amoeba”

2000: A Yahoo group for asexuals, Haven for the Human Amoeba, was founded.

2001: David Jay founded the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), which became the most prolific and well-known of the various asexual communities that started to form since the advent of the World Wide Web and social media.

2004: The New Scientist dedicates an issue to asexuality.

2004: Discovery dedicates an episode of "The Sex Files" to asexuality.

2005: L'amour sans le faire by Geraldin Levi Rich Jones (Joosten van Vilsteren) is released. The first book on asexuality. Geraldin was at the head of the asexual movement, launching "The Official Asexual Society" in 2000 and performing asexual comedy shows. She also was a prominent face in the early '00's asexual media boom.

2005: A common symbol for the asexual community is a black ring worn on the middle finger of the right hand. The material and exact design of the ring are not important as long as it is primarily black. This symbol started on AVEN in 2005.

2007: Award winning Novelist, Keri Hulme, comes out as asexual in an interview, saying “It is part of who I am: the major impact is that I am not– and never have been– interested in sex. It was more a slow realisation that I was different from most people. By my mid-teens, I’d realised that what was of great moment and interest to other young people – their sexuality and relationships – didn’t intrigue me in the slightest.”

2009: AVEN members participated in the first asexual entry into an American pride parade when they walked in the San Francisco Pride Parade.

2010: A flag was announced as the asexual pride flag. The asexual pride flag consists of four horizontal stripes: black, grey, white, and purple from top to bottom.

2010: The New York State Division of Human Rights updated its discrimination complaint form to include asexuals in the protected sexual orientation category.

2010: Asexual Awareness Week was founded by Sara Beth Brooks in 2010. It occurs in the later half of October, and was created to both celebrate asexual, aromantic, demisexual, and grey-asexual pride and promote awareness.

2010: Fashion Consultant, Tim Gunn, says in an interview that he has identified as asexual since the 80s, saying  "Do I feel like less of a person for it? No… I'm a perfectly happy and fulfilled individual."

2010: Comedian Janeane Garofalo comes out as asexual while live on stage in Seattle. 

2011: The Documentary “(A)sexual” is released.

2012: The first International Asexual Conference was held at the 2012 World Pride in London.

2013: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th edition changed the diagnosis of Hypoactive sexual desire disorder conditions to include an exception for people who self identify as asexual.

2014:The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality, by Julie Sondra Decker, was published; it was the first mainstream published book on the subject of asexuality.

2015: George Norman became Britain’s first openly asexual parliamentary election candidate.

2017: ‘Asexual’ is updated in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to include the sexual orientation.

2018: ‘Ace’ and ‘Aromantic’ are added to the Oxford English Dictionary, and ‘Asexual’ is updated to include the sexual orientation.

[dailynewswebsite]

In its troubled hour, polling could use an irreverent figure to reset expectations

Pollsters predicted a a lot greater vote for Joe Biden, together with in Florida, the place employees on the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Workplace in Largo course of voters' ballots on Nov. 3. Octavio Jones/Getty Photos

Polling is hardly a flamboyant area that draws lots of colourful characters. It’s a quite reserved career that now finds itself below siege within the aftermath of yet one more polling shock in a nationwide election.

The sector is buffeted by intense criticism – by even excessive claims that it could be doomed – following mischaracterizations in nationwide polls that former Vice President Joe Biden was sure for a blowout victory.

Many preelection polls prompt it was to be a “blue wave” election by which Biden would simply take over the White Home, whereas fellow Democrats would sweep to manage within the Senate and fortify their majority within the Home of Representatives.

The 2020 election was nearer and extra advanced than most nationwide polls indicated, and it marked the second successive polling shock in a U.S. presidential election. In 2016, polls in key Nice Lakes states underestimated help for Donald Trump, states that had been essential to his profitable the White Home.

In its troubled hour, polling might use a outstanding, outspoken and irreverent character who is aware of the career’s intricacies and whose default isn’t to defensiveness. Such a determine might place polling’s newest misstep in helpful and believable perspective, and achieve this candidly, with out seeming too haughty or arcane about it.

The reply is ‘No’ to the query posed in a Nov. Three Wall Road Journal story. Wall Road Journal

‘To show we’re not yellow’

Polling has no such colourful, outspoken character now. It did as soon as, in Burns (“Bud”) Roper, the Iowa-born son of a pioneer in fashionable survey analysis, Elmo Roper. Bud Roper was disarming sufficient to inform a newspaper reporter within the 1950s: “I suppose the primary motive we do these election polls in any respect is to show we’re not yellow,” or cowardly.

Roper, who died in 2003, was in polling a lot of his grownup life, getting into his father’s market analysis agency after World Struggle II. He retired as the corporate’s chairman in 1994. He was round when the Roper ballot dramatically miscalled the 1948 presidential election, predicting that Thomas E. Dewey would defeat President Harry Truman by 15 share factors.

Truman received reelection by 4.5 factors, which meant Roper’s polling error was a staggering 19.5 share factors – virtually as dreadful because the Literary Digest failure in 1936, when the venerable journal’s mail-in survey erroneously pegged Alf Landon to unseat President Franklin D. Roosevelt by a large margin.

The 1936 debacle occurred on the daybreak of contemporary opinion analysis and, as I write in my newest guide, “Misplaced in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections,” it left a legacy of nagging doubt in regards to the effectiveness of polling in estimating election outcomes.

Nonetheless, it’s also true that journalists, and the general public, inevitably flip to polls – and the phantasm of precision they provide – in searching for readability in regards to the dynamics of a presidential marketing campaign. Even after the back-to-back embarrassments in 2016 and 2020, election polling is unquestionably not destined for collapse or dissolution. Polling could also be an unglamorous career; it is also a hardy one.

Bud Roper was keen to criticize his career. Screenshot, The Roper Middle for Public Opinion Analysis

Bud Roper’s lengthy profession traced pretty nicely polling’s entrenchment in American politics and tradition. He as soon as mentioned that he entered the sphere when it was someplace between “a kooky off-the-wall and a longtime business.”

In some methods, Roper’s most noteworthy contribution was candor and a refreshing disinclination to take survey analysis all that critically. In that sense, he was like his father, who started conducting preelection polls in 1936 however got here to doubt their worth.

Within the run-up to the 1948 election, for instance, Elmo Roper equated polling to “a stunt, like balancing cocktail glasses on prime of one another or tearing a phone guide in two. It’s spectacular. It has a sure fascination. However it tells us little or no that we wouldn’t discover out even when poll-taking had by no means been invented.”

Bud Roper equally tended towards colourful outspokenness. He was not hesitant to name out his career for its shortcomings and flaws.

Related Press journalists within the Washington bureau tabulate election returns Nov. 5, 1940, retaining the rating on each electoral and fashionable votes for the nation. AP Photograph

‘Largely artwork’

In 1984, at a time when election polling was going via one other tough patch, Bud Roper mentioned in a speech to the American Affiliation for the Development of Science, “Our polling strategies have gotten increasingly more refined, but we appear to be lacking increasingly more elections.”

Roper was frank about a few of polling’s unresolved complications, equivalent to differentiating between seemingly and unlikely voters – a willpower essential to a survey’s accuracy.

“One of many trickiest elements of an election ballot is to find out who’s prone to vote and who just isn’t,” Roper as soon as mentioned, including with attribute frankness, “I can guarantee you that this willpower is basically artwork.”

The likely-voter conundrum stays a defiant and protracted downside. It additionally is a crucial motive that election polling is a mix of artwork and science, which Roper favored to emphasise. In actual fact, he mentioned it tended to be extra artwork than science.

“I’ve heard it mentioned that opinion analysis is half artwork and half science,” Roper acknowledged in an tackle to members of the American Affiliation for Public Opinion Analysis on the shut of his yearlong presidential time period in 1983. “I might say {that a} whole lot greater than half is artwork and correspondingly lower than half is science.”

Roper held some out-of-the-mainstream concepts about polling. He was not enamored with surveys carried out by phone, noting they too typically interrupted respondents and disrupted their routines. Roper argued, considerably vaguely, an answer to the sharp decline in response charges to phone surveys was to “return to non-public interviews. Phone received’t do it, web received’t do it, e mail received’t do it,” he mentioned late in his life.

He added: “I don’t have all of the solutions as to how, but when [the problem of declining response rates] just isn’t solved, I believe the business as we’ve recognized it’ll be – oh, it’ll survive, however it’s going to outlive with worse and worse outcomes each time we go up.”

Taking accountability for a foul ballot

Roper was not one to sidestep controversy. He conceded error with out hesitation when, in 1993, his firm carried out a survey for the American Jewish Committee that prompt 22% of People doubted the Holocaust had occurred.

It was a stunning, controversial and off-target discovering that Roper quickly questioned, noting the query’s wording included a double detrimental and may have been rephrased. When the query was revised and posed in a separate survey, only one.1% of the respondents mentioned they doubted the Holocaust.

[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]

Roper mentioned he regretted that the unique ballot’s discovering “served to misinform the general public, to scare the Jewish group needlessly and to provide assist and luxury to the neo-Nazis who’ve a dedication to Holocaust denial.”

In saying so, Roper confirmed he might rise up and take accountability for a foul ballot. It’s a lesson that has enduring relevance.

W. Joseph Campbell doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or group that may profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their educational appointment.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/in-its-troubled-hour-polling-could-use-an-irreverent-figure-to-reset-expectations/ via https://growthnews.in

[mastcomm]

The Rise and Sudden Fall of the Houston Astros

The Houston Astros took four years to mutate from baseball’s worst team to its best. But even at their lowest point, as they stumbled to a franchise-record 111 losses in 2013, they constantly emphasized their brand of ambition.

Everywhere they went that season, the Astros took an upright, game show-style spinning wheel for their clubhouse. Words like “leadership,” “trust” and “desire” filled the slots. So did an image of the World Series trophy.

It was a gimmick to encourage the players: Keep pushing the wheel in hopes of a breakthrough. The club soared to the pinnacle of the sport, propelled by an unapologetic desire to change the game, and won the franchise’s first World Series in 2017.

But on Monday, a scathing report by Major League Baseball exposed the Astros as cheaters, trashing their reputation, ousting their leaders and igniting the sport’s biggest scandal since the steroid revelations of the 2000s.

The shock waves have been seismic. Three managers and one general manager have lost their jobs: A.J. Hinch and Jeff Luhnow of the Astros, Alex Cora of the Boston Red Sox and Carlos Beltran of the Mets — all implicated in a brazen scheme to illegally use electronics to steal opposing catchers’ signs and tip off their own batters to what pitch was coming.

So a month before spring training, baseball is grappling with at least one tainted championship, a moral and practical quandary over using technology and unsettling questions about the credibility of the competition. On Friday, Representative Bobby L. Rush, a Democrat from Illinois, requested a congressional oversight hearing “to determine the extent to which this cancer has spread.”

For some, this kind of cheating is worse than using performance-enhancing drugs. Alex Wood, a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers — whom the Astros defeated for the title in 2017 — tweeted on Thursday: “I would rather face a player that was taking steroids than face a player that knew every pitch that was coming.”

Wood helped the Dodgers win a World Series game at Minute Maid Park in Houston in 2017. In the rest of their home games that postseason, the Astros went 8-0, stealing signs and legacies along the way.

“The word that keeps popping into my mind is ‘unfathomable,’” said the veteran catcher Stephen Vogt, who played for the Oakland Athletics in 2017, in an interview on Friday. “Maybe that’s me being naïve, but you would never even think to do it. The integrity of our game is what we have, and now that’s been broken.”

Suspicions simmered before a rapid unraveling.

On Oct. 19, life was grand for the Astros. After leading the majors with 107 wins in the regular season, they clinched their second World Series berth in three years with a towering home run by Jose Altuve off the Yankees’ Aroldis Chapman in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series.

Yet almost from the moment that drive cleared the left field fence, the organization descended into chaos.

In the clubhouse celebration after that game, the assistant general manager Brandon Taubman gloated profanely to a group of female reporters about the Astros’ acquisition of pitcher Roberto Osuna, who had been serving a suspension for domestic violence when the team traded for him in 2018. The Astros compounded the problem by publicly denying the incident, another public-relations blunder for a team that had barred a credentialed reporter from its clubhouse in August to placate pitcher Justin Verlander.

Taubman was fired during the World Series, which the Astros lost to the Washington Nationals in seven games.

Houston’s ace starter, Gerrit Cole, joined the Yankees in December, signing a nine-year, $324 million contract. The Astros also lost Nolan Ryan, the Hall of Famer and team icon, who quit as an executive adviser after the team owner Jim Crane elevated his son Jared in the team’s hierarchy and demoted Ryan’s son Reid, who had been president of business operations.

But the worst news, by far, came on Nov. 12, when The Athletic published a story in which the former Astros pitcher Mike Fiers confirmed the team’s sign-stealing methods in 2017: Players decoded the catcher’s signals from a live video feed, then communicated the signal to the hitter by banging a trash can in the tunnel near the dugout.

Over the next two months, Commissioner Rob Manfred’s investigators interviewed 68 witnesses, including 23 current and former Astros players, and scoured thousands of emails, Slack communications, text messages and videos. Because the scheme was player-driven, there was no substantial email trace tying it to management, and Luhnow told investigators he had no knowledge of it.

Even before The Athletic’s revelations, the Astros had a reputation for using data analysis to find any small edge. They used video modeling and algorithms that could pick up tells from pitchers’ subtle movements, trying to determine which pitch would come next. That is legal as a form of pregame preparation, and while many clubs most likely do it now, the Astros were probably among the first to try to detect pitch-tipping with a computer rather than the naked eye.

But they also raised suspicions that they were breaking the rules. Some teams, including the Yankees, have sent suspicious Astros footage and images to M.L.B. over the past few seasons. Vogt, who now plays for the Arizona Diamondbacks, respected Houston’s hitters but sensed something shady.

“When you’d go to Houston, it always seemed like they were on pitches,” Vogt said. “As a catcher, when you see your pitcher execute a perfect slider down in the zone with two strikes and someone doesn’t even flinch at it, you start to get alarm bells going off in your head. I spent a lot of time wondering if I was doing something in my setup that would be tipping pitches to the other team.”

It was clear the Astros were doing something unusually effective. While power hitters generally strike out frequently — a trade-off for swinging aggressively — the Astros’ lineup has an extraordinary knack for slugging without whiffing. From 1910 through 2016, only two teams — the 1948 Yankees and the 1995 Cleveland Indians — led the majors in slugging percentage while also recording the fewest strikeouts. The Astros did it in both 2017 and 2019.

“I don’t want guys swinging at a pitch unless they can hit a homer,” said Dave Hudgens, then the Astros’ hitting coach, explaining the team’s philosophy in a 2017 interview. He added later: “If you go in with that mind-set, you’re not going to miss your pitch as often.”

Of course, it helps to know what pitch is coming, and the Astros’ scheme not only led to victories but also made their rivals look worse than they should have — possibly costing players money and jobs.

“Now you’re telling me that could have potentially shortened my career or sent me back down” to the minor leagues, Indians pitcher Mike Clevinger said in a video posted to YouTube, “because they knew what I was throwing when I was in their park?”

The Astros’ players have mostly stayed silent on social media since the revelations, but many rivals have not hid their anger.

“It’s time for the players involved to step forward,” the veteran reliever Jerry Blevins tweeted. “Take your lumps publicly. Your name is coming out sooner or later. Maybe there’s some integrity still in you somewhere.”

The ‘model organization’ created a firestorm.

The Astros were hardly the bullies of the league when Crane, the Astros’ owner, picked Luhnow as his general manager in December 2011. Crane, a former college pitcher who earned his fortune in shipping, plucked Luhnow from the St. Louis Cardinals, who had just won the World Series with many players Luhnow drafted as scouting director.

Some in the Astros’ organization were more enthusiastic about the hire than others. Luhnow, who has a master’s degree in business administration from Northwestern and consulted for McKinsey & Company in Chicago in his pre-baseball career, overhauled the team’s scouting operations, emphasizing objective data over gut instincts. Somewhat symbolically, he removed the lists of every team’s 40-man roster from the walls of his office in Houston.

“One of the first things I did was ask them to take it out,” he said in an interview there, a few months after taking the job. “Depth charts are something that I can get online at the stroke of a button.”

Luhnow — who did not respond to an interview request for this article — inherited a team with the majors’ worst record and a poorly regarded farm system. A new collective bargaining agreement had made losing more attractive by providing the worst teams with the most money to spend on amateur talent, so the Astros unloaded veterans and prepared for a stretch of several painful seasons.

“The players couldn’t understand why the best 25 guys weren’t breaking camp with us,” said Dave Trembley, who coached for the Astros in 2013 and 2014. “We tried to develop those guys as best we could, we had early work every day, we’d come out and do fundamentals. But it was a tough situation trying to keep the players motivated knowing that they were pretty much aware of what the plan was.”

Even before the N.B.A.’s Philadelphia 76ers popularized it, the Astros used the word “process” as a euphemism for tanking — a strategy of fielding a threadbare roster to get better prospects and accelerate a rebuild. Houston’s attendance sank below 1.7 million, a 20-year low for a non-strike season, but Luhnow eagerly sold fans on his logic. The team’s supporters, in turn, embraced his bold vision to put the Astros at the forefront of baseball’s analytical and technological revolution.

“To me, there was nothing sinister about what they were doing; they were just on that leading edge and they wanted to show it off a little bit,” said the Texas Rangers broadcaster Dave Raymond, who was the Astros’ radio play-by-play voice from 2006 through 2012. “They brilliantly educated the fan base on what they were doing and how they were going about it. One of the most interesting parts of the process was how the fans really embraced the losing. They believed immediately.”

The results began revealing themselves in 2015, when the Astros earned a surprise playoff berth. But that season was marred by troubling news: The Astros’ database had been hacked by the Cardinals’ scouting director, Chris Correa, a former analyst for Luhnow in St. Louis.

Correa eventually pleaded guilty to five counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer and was sentenced to 46 months in prison. His rationale for the crime, he said, was a suspicion that the Astros had stolen proprietary data from the Cardinals, an accusation the Astros denied.

In hindsight, that suspicion seems prescient. When the Astros were caught aiming a camera at the dugouts of the Indians and the Red Sox in the 2018 playoffs, Correa — who declined an interview request — could not resist commenting. “Guess who isn’t surprised?” he tweeted.

Baseball acted quickly to suppress that controversy, accepting the Astros’ explanation that they were simply playing defense against possible electronic spying by the Indians and the Red Sox. But the issue had flared before — as the Red Sox were found to have used an Apple Watch in their dugout in 2017 — and last fall teams took extra precautions with their signs, especially when facing the Astros.

In the World Series, the Nationals took no chances: Each of their pitchers took a card to the mound with five sets of signs he could switch to at any time, and all four of Washington’s wins came at the Astros’ park in Houston.

Sign-stealing has a long and colorful history in baseball, but the sport has clearly struggled to keep up with the potential for misuse created by the rapid spread of technology. M.L.B. officers monitor video replay rooms now — they did not do so in 2017 — and the league will most likely reinforce its rules with prominent signage in clubhouses.

But the Astros’ scandal has brought the issue to a crossroads: Should baseball run from technology to crack down on cheating, or lean into it? League officials are considering a ban on players’ looking at live video during games, yet they are also working on prototypes of electronic signs between catchers and pitchers, though nothing is considered close to game-ready.

Those will not be the only efforts to beat back the Astros’ influence. The M.L.B. players’ union hopes to discourage tanking in the next collective bargaining agreement, and the Astros’ model may already be losing its appeal. Most imitators have not seen the same results, and this winter’s robust free-agent market — after two slow off-seasons — seems to indicate that more teams are trying to be competitive.

The Astros should still be a force on the field this season, if their talent can overcome the organizational upheaval, the public skepticism over their achievements and the newfound awkwardness of their place within the players’ fraternity. In any case, the scandal has disgraced the dominant team of this era — and threatens to swallow up the game.

“None of us, if we looked ourselves in the mirror, would have said, ‘Wow, these guys are morally corrupt, these guys are cheaters,’” said one general manager, who requested anonymity to candidly discuss another team. “Let’s not kid ourselves, they were the model organization. But we know more now.”

David Waldstein and James Wagner contributed reporting.

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/the-rise-and-sudden-fall-of-the-houston-astros/

[nyskateboarding]

About a year ago now, I saw down for a drink and conversation to feel out this guy’s film he was working on and get a feel if it was legit or not. We had a long talk, and I came away hopeful but in a wait and see kind of status because I didn’t really understand it. Fast forward a year and I am happy to see all the progress Michael has made and pleased to be able to share this with you all. It was hard to nail down everything from that one conversation so I had Michael write out his answers and have posted his full responses below. His project called Humanity Stoked covers many topics but the general gist is about humanity helping humanity. We spend so much time absorbed in our day to day and see a lot of negativity out there wishing there was more that could be done…or waiting on someone else to step in. The film interviews people who make strides everyday to make the world a better place and how everyone can do so in their own lives. There’s a laundry list of names that share their stories and as with any project like this, a short summary doesn’t grasp its full spectre. Get comfortable and dive in to find out more in my interview with Michael…

Name: Michael Ian Cohen Age:  52 Hometown: Brooklyn, NY Current Location: Long Island Years skating: 44 Years

It’s about the love of humanity, the importance of living an open, loving life, giving back, and the issues that affect us all, from music and art, human rights, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, the environment, science, activism and more.

What’s up Michael, for those who haven’t heard of it, can you briefly tell our readers what Humanity Stoked is all about? Humanity Stoked is an unprecedented feature length documentary featuring the biggest names in skateboarding, including Nyjah Huston, Bob Burnquist, Tony Hawk, Leticia Bufoni, Tony Alva, Christian Hosoi, Vanessa Torres, Brian Anderson, Chris Cole, P-Rod and many others. There’s also dozens of musicians, artists, activists, scientists and more, ALL of whom are also skaters.  What’s cool as hell is that it’s a skateboarding doc…and it’s NOT. It’s about the love of humanity, the importance of living an open, loving life, giving back, and the issues that affect us all, from music and art, human rights, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, the environment, science, activism and more. These are the issues we dig into with everyone, and share their personal stories related to it all.  The end game is to make a film that’s totally unique, interesting as hell, and that inspires people to think more deeply about these issues. I’m not trying to tell people what to think about issues, as that would just make me part of the problem that’s dividing people. I’m trying to get to people to think more deeply and with an open mind, before jumping to conclusions and worse, voting for people that create legislation based on knee-jerk reactions, unjustified fears and twisted facts.  I also want to inspire people to live a life that’s more open, authentic, purposeful and to give back a bit more in the process. As we say at the WhatStopsYou.org Foundation,  to “Live more and give more!” It’s a beautiful mission as much as it’s a film. The fact is, we’re giving away all our distribution revenue and nobody on the crew, myself included as the producer and director gets paid. We’ve been fortunate to have some amazing people in the film and companies supporting us, including, Steve Van Doren and VANS, Wing Lam and Wahoo’s, Jet Blue, Loaded Boards and many others as well.

Tony Hawk Squawking

Why did you decide to do this? What’s your motivation? That’s a damn good question Chris. I had not been living a particularly authentic life and was ignoring the things that were critical to living a happy life, including being able to express myself creatively and doing my part to make this world a better place. It was clear to me how much activism and  volunteerism is needed right now and I wanted to make a positive difference in people’s lives. Around 2015, I began sliding into a devastating depression. I ended up in a very dark place for nearly 2 years. Often, I would just break down in tears. As I emerged from it, it became clear I had to make some fundamental changes in the way I was living.  The fact is, I was lucky enough to have some great influences in my life, especially my Grandfather, Ralph Bofshever, a FDNY member that was awarded a gold medal of valor from the Mayor of NYC in 1948. Actually, they named a day after him in Brooklyn! From the way he lived his life, I learned the importance of people helping and supporting one another in any way one can. My grandfather was never wealthy, but he volunteered his time to various causes he believed in his entire life. Wanting to pay that forward, I ended up creating a non-profit, the WhatStopsYou.org Foundation to help ensure other children had a positive inspiration in their life too. I also knew an epic documentary could have an even greater reach to inspire people to help make this world a better place if it was done right and featured interviews with the right people to make it interesting. I didn’t want to produce some preachy condescending bullshit. I’ve been skateboarding my whole life and it occurred to me I’ve only seen professional skateboarders talk about skateboarding and their social lives. I wanted to have deeper conversations with them all about some really important issues that affect us all. To make it even more interesting, I wanted to involve musicians, artists, scientists, politicians, activists, philanthropists and more. I wanted to keep with my original concept of skaters however and wondered if I could find people from all of those other areas of life, but that also happen to love skateboarding. Fortunately, I was able to pull it off and the result is the film Humanity Stoked.

You’ve got a lot of big names that have gotten involved in the project. Who from New York is on board and what do they bring to the film? Yeah, we’ve been really blessed with the support of so many iconic people who chose to be in this film and support it (the full list can be seen at www.HumanityStoked.com). From my home town of New York, we’ve got Brian Anderson, Tyshawn Jones, 6-Time Afro-Latin Jazz Grammy winner Arturo O’Farrill, Virgin Blacktop’s Charlie Samules and more. Other cool East Coast dudes include Bam Margera, Brandon Novak, Jesse Margara, McRad’s Chuck Treece, and more.  Everyone brings their own personal stories related to the issues in the film. With Tyshawn for example, we get into his childhood, growing up poor and being raised by a single mom. It’s not about just telling the story however, it’s about the value of a mother’s love and guidance and positive ways it has impacted his life. Of course, Brian Anderson gets into issues such as LGBTQ rights and equality, but so much more. The lessons people can learn from his experiences go far beyond that of one’s sexuality. Having the courage to live truly, fully, and authentically is important to all of us, and Brian’s life is a great example of that. I’m lucky to call him a good friend. With other guys like Bam and Brandon, of course we talk a lot about addiction and recovery. They’ve both spoken about that before of course, but we hit that from a different angle. Guys like O’Farrill and Treece talk about the importance music and creative expression and the way it can impact our society and even legislation. In the end, what these people bring to the film is their perspectives and personal stories of triumph, failure, giving in to fear and overcoming it as well, living life fully and giving back. Beyond the people of New York, everyone knows New York has its own energy and vibe, and that comes across for sure. We filmed all over the world, but our New York locations include all 5 boroughs, and specifically, LES, Battery Park, Long Beach, the Wythe Hotel, the Brooklyn Bowl and other iconic New York spots.

What I’m trying to do however is help make sure whatever direction we move in, wherever we end up, it’s because it’s a result of careful, open minded, reasonable contemplation, and not as a result of insecurities, ignorance, fear, hate, intolerance and the turning of our backs on science and facts in general. 

On your website it says you are raising money and awareness while making the film, how does that work and who is benefitting from it? Great question, Chris! The importance of giving back in life is a real part of the film, so we shine a light on lots of charities that many of the people in the film are involved with. Some of the famous people have their own foundations, and that’s great, but it’s important to understand each of us is already  empowered to make a difference. It’s doesn’t even have to take money. Most people don’t have the time and other resources to create and grow their own charitable foundations, but we don’t need to. Everyone can help out in any number of ways that don’t require money or even much time. Actually, Nyjah Huston speaks about that in the film specifically.  As for the money, that’s another area we’re very proud to speak about, and with hope that it can inspire others. The fact is, we are producing the entire film for free. Nobody in the cast and nobody in the crew gets paid. Even as the producer and director, I do not take a salary of any kind. The WhatStopsYou.org Foundation has already been granted its 501c3 Non-Profit status and we’re giving every cent of our film distribution revenue to it. More specifically, in addition to producing non-profit films for the betterment of humanity, the main purpose of the foundation is providing amazing leaders from the worlds of action sports, science, business, music, the arts and more, as inspirational speakers to schools, youth groups, and other qualified non-profits that would otherwise be unable to do so. I’m proud to say the vast majority of pro skaters in the film have already filmed promos for the launch of the foundation. 

BA looks like he covered the gamut of emotions here.

When the film comes out, what do you hope the impact is? It’s funny you ask that, because at the end of each interview we complete for the film, while the cameras are still rolling, that’s one of a few questions I ask every interview subject. We also ask everyone exactly why they wanted to be featured in the documentary. The answers are often deeply moving and sometimes damn funny. We will be posting everyone’s answers on our social media and on a special website: www.WhyHumanityStoked.com. Anyway, my hope is that the film inspires people think more deeply about all sorts of things that affect the peaceful advancement of humanity…the issues that affect us all. Again, I don’t want to tell people what to think or what direction we should be headed in as a society. What I’m trying to do however is help make sure whatever direction we move in, wherever we end up, it’s because it’s a result of careful, open minded, reasonable contemplation, and not as a result of insecurities, ignorance, fear, hate, intolerance and the turning of our backs on science and facts in general. 

Who has been the most inspiring or influential person you’ve met during the making of this film? Okay, that question really makes me smile! It’s because I’ve set out to make a film that can inspire people, and was surprised to learn it began working from the very first days of production. During almost every interview we’ve done for the film, both myself, the interviewee and the crew have all talk about how inspiring the process was! Seriously man, most interviews end with heartfelt hug and even some applause, as was the case with Chuck Treece’s interview in Havana, Cuba. As for the most influential person, there are some obvious names like Tony Hawk because of their massive global reach and also because the impact the Tony Hawk Foundation has had in so many communities. In terms of the most inspiring people for me personally, there have been so many but two that come to mind are Tony Alva, Brian Anderson, Valeria Kechichian, Brandon Novak, Ray Barbee, and Vanessa Torres…just to name a few. A few of the most inspiring skateboarders to me have deeply moving stories in the film and will surprise everyone because you’ve not likely heard of them before; truly amazing people like Hamish Brewer, Ray LeVier and Chris Koch.

What’s been the best part of this whole experience for you? Without a doubt, being able to finally live my life more authentically, with purpose and being able to have a positive impact on people is an amazing feeling, although there was something else that caught me by surprise. This all began as a selfless endeavor yet in the process, my life became enriched with new friendships with some truly wonderful human beings that inspire me every day and help broaden my perspectives on so many things.

Have you encountered many challenges getting the film made? [laughs] Ummmm, fuck yes!!. There are endless challenges to making any film, but especially so on a film like this. Remember, not only is this my first film, I’m making it with zero financing so I’ve had to be very creative with just about every aspect. I also began without a single connection to anyone from the worlds of filmmaking, skateboarding, music, art, politics, etc…so I had to literality start from scratch in every imaginable respect. To this day, I am the sole producer of the film. As far as shooting the interviews, I’ve been beyond blessed with a team of amazing, selfless, talented professionals that donate their time and equipment because they believe in the mission and social responsibility as much as I do. From almost the very beginning, Nick Lang out of Philadelphia came on board as my main DP. He’s a talented filmer and also an amazing drone cinematographer. More recently, another talented Filmer and truly excellent colorist came on board, Ian Gibson from Brooklyn by the way of Texas.  Both these guys will hop on a flight with me for a 4 day shoot, working 15 hour days with no break and NO PAY. I have endless respect for them as human beings and as gifted professionals. They both deserve so much so if you know anyone that can use their services, reach out to Nick Lang at nicklangmedia.com or on Instagram @nicklangmedia and Ian Gibson at frostedindependentfilms.com or on Instagram @iangibson_fif. For the record, there are over a dozen people on the crew, all of whom have donated their time and talent at one time or another so be sure to check them all out at http://www.HumanityStoked.com

When and where can people go to see the film? The plan is for a release in the spring of next year. We are in talks now for an official screening in the Olympic Village at the 2020 games in Tokyo, as well as in New York and California. In addition to any film festivals, look for it on Netflix, Amazon Prime or Hulu. Keep an eye on our website, for progress reports and of course, like and follow us on Facebook and Instagram @humanitystoked. You can see the first official mini teaser/trailer featuring Iconic skateboarding pioneer Tony Alva and read about why I chose him for the first teaser at the website www.HumanityStoked.com. You can also look up Humanity Stoked on IMDB and see the trailer there.

Any parting words for our readers? As a non-profit film and mission, it’s critical we build out social media following, so please follow us, like and share our posts. It really will help us so damn much down the road! Facebook, Instagram and youtube are all /humanitystoked. If you are in a position to make a credit card donation to the charity, please visit www.WhatStopsYou.org

Lastly, if you want to jump out of an airplane at 12,000 feet with me and Bob Burnquist this summer, be sure to look for our upcoming contest announcement on our social media…no skydiving experience necessary 🙂

Here's the details on the 2020 Documentary featuring skateboarding's biggest names. About a year ago now, I saw down for a drink and conversation to feel out this guy's film he was working on and get a feel if it was legit or not.

[lewishamledger]

Beating heart of the NHS

WORDS: REBECCA THOMSON; PHOTO: HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

The NHS was 70 years old last year, and has been rightfully revered for everything it does. It might be creaking at the seams, but without it, Britain would be unrecognisable.

Less appreciated, however, is the role that immigration has played in keeping the NHS alive. Since it was formed in 1948, throughout the 1960s – when then health minister Enoch Powell asked Jamaican women to come and train as nurses – and into the present day, there would have been no NHS to speak of without immigrants.

Today, nearly a quarter of staff at the Greenwich and Lewisham NHS Trust are non-UK born, and once the children and grandchildren of previous generations are considered, the impact of immigration becomes even more apparent – nearly half (46%) of Lewisham and Greenwich’s current permanent workforce are from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, a figure that is roughly mirrored in the borough’s population.

Lewisham East MP Janet Daby is from one of these families. “My mother – now a retired nurse – and many other relatives of mine from the British colonies responded to a skills shortage in the UK in the Sixties. Many of them felt they were coming to the ‘motherland’, moving here for a fulfilling life and using their skills and ability to care for others,” she says.

Lewisham resident Arthur Torrington, who co-founded the Windrush Foundation charity in 1996, says healthcare was a huge part of the Windrush generation’s contribution.

“The NHS relied on migrant nurses immediately after the war,” he says. “It desperately needed people to serve in all aspects. Most of the nurses were women but there were a good number of male nurses too. My brother was one, in the 1960s. They worked in mental health hospitals a lot.”

He says that in the 1960s a huge number of the NHS’s workforce came from Commonwealth countries such as India and the Caribbean. “They were the cream of the crop who came over and a lot of acknowledgment has to be given to those pioneers.”

Nola Ishmael is a Barbadian nurse who joined the NHS in 1963. She was appointed director of nursing in Greenwich in 1989, becoming the first black director of nursing in London. She said that she, and others like her, faced unique challenges.

“It was a breakthrough moment for black nurses,” she told the BBC earlier this year. “I got telephone calls far and wide offering congratulations to me. One question I got asked was whether it was a fluke. I said, oh no, it wasn’t. It was midnight oil, early morning toil, and reading and learning as I got on with the job.”

She said there was a “steadfastness” about black nurses she worked with, who persevered despite often being passed over for promotion.

“In the early days you never called it prejudice. I don’t think we had that word. We just knew that some people got promoted and you didn’t get promoted.”

Historian, writer and former Lewisham resident Julian Simpson’s book Migrant Architects of the NHS features interviews with 40 south Asian GPs who moved to Britain in the 20th century. By the 1980s, around 16% of GPs working in the NHS had been born in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, delivering care for about a sixth of the population.

One of Julian’s interviewees, Rooin Boomla, was a GP in Woolwich for 40 years until the late 1980s and a medical officer at Millwall football club. He took over the practice that his father, Faridoon, bought in the 1920s when the family moved here from Mumbai. Rooin’s own son Kambiz now works as a GP in Tower Hamlets.

In the 1980s, south Asian doctors mostly worked in highly populated, urban areas, serving working class communities who otherwise would not have had access to primary care.

“If the migration of these doctors hadn’t happened, the NHS would have had a fundamental problem,” Julian says. “The GP system would have collapsed in many parts of the country where 30, 40 and sometimes 50% of practitioners were originally from the Indian subcontinent.”

Julian says he wanted to write about the stories of south Asian doctors because so many migrant histories like theirs have been erased. “There’s a general idea that there is ‘Britishness’ and then there’s migrants. We need to recognise migrants have shaped Britain. The NHS is a symbol of Britishness and it could only exist because of migration.”

Dame Elizabeth Anionwu is a British-born emeritus professor of nursing of Nigerian-Irish descent who campaigns to reduce inequalities facing black and minority ethnic nurses and patients. She says the NHS’s efforts to stamp out prejudice are slowly improving, following years of institutional ambivalence.

Every NHS Trust must now collect data on its black and minority ethnic staff at all levels to check it is not promoting disproportionate numbers of white staff to senior roles. Trusts must also be clear on the steps they are taking to improve the balance in senior management.

Dame Elizabeth says that in 2017, there was a small incremental difference in the number of black and minority ethnic people at senior levels for the first time. “It’s taken a long time for the NHS to realise that individuals can’t tackle this – it has to be tackled from the top,” she says.

Treating NHS staff who are already here more fairly is one challenge Britain is facing; and with Brexit looming, the other is continuing to convince new staff to come.

Author and editor-at-large of the Guardian, Gary Younge, is the son of a Barbadian nurse who came to the UK in the 1960s. He says: “People say it’s because of immigrants you can’t see a doctor, when actually it’s far more likely that your doctor is an immigrant.”

He says politicians have failed to challenge the harsh, negative language that gets used around immigration. As a result, there is little awareness of how necessary it is to Britain’s health.

The NHS was founded in 1948, the same year the Empire Windrush first docked; it has relied on immigration ever since. But Britain has a challenging time ahead: by under-appreciating everything immigrants have done over the last 70 years, it is likely to face difficulty in recruiting the people it needs in the future.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: The Palestinians have long been seen as an obstacle by Israel’s leaders; an irritant to be subjugated. Noam Chomsky commented: Traditionally over the years, Israel has sought to crush any resistance to its programs of takeover of the parts of Palestine it regards as valuable, while eliminating any hope for the indigenous population to have a decent existence enjoying national rights. He also noted: The key feature of the occupation has always been humiliation: they [the Palestinians] must not be allowed to raise their heads. The basic principle, often openly expressed, is that the “Araboushim” – a term that belongs with “nigger” or “kike” – must understand who rules this land and who walks in it with head lowered and eyes averted.1 Recent events encapsulate this all too well. On Friday, March 30, Israeli soldiers shot dead 14 Palestinians and wounded 1400, including 800 hit by live ammunition. By April 5, the death toll had risen to 21. During a second protest, one week later on Friday, April 7, the Israelis shot dead a further 10 Palestinians, including a 16-year-old boy, and more than 1300 were injured. Among those killed was Yasser Murtaja, a journalist who had been filming the protest. He had been wearing a distinctive blue protective vest marked ‘PRESS’ in large capital letters. The brutality, and utter brazenness with which the killings were carried out is yet another demonstration of the apartheid state’s contempt for the people it tried to ethnically cleanse in 1948, the year of Israel’s founding. On the first day of the protest, on March 30, many Palestinians had gathered in Gaza, close to the border with Israel, as part of a peaceful ‘Great March of Return’ protest demanding the right to reclaim ancestral homes in Israel.  One hundred Israeli snipers lay in wait, shooting at protesters, including an 18-year-old shot in the back while running away from the border. The Israel army boasted in a quickly-deleted tweet that the massacre had been planned, deliberate and premeditated: Nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed. BBC News and other ‘mainstream’ news outlets, including the Guardian, carried headlines about ‘clashes’ at the Gaza-Israel border ‘leaving’ Palestinians dead and injured. As we noted via Twitter, an honest headline would have read: Israeli troops kill 16 Palestinians and injure hundreds When the Israelis shot dead yet more Palestinians on the second Friday of protests, the BBC reported, ‘Deadly unrest on Gaza-Israel border as Palestinians resume protest’. BBC ‘impartiality’ meant not headlining Israeli troops as the agency responsible for the ‘deadly unrest’. Adam Johnson, writing for Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, observed of news reports carrying inappropriate headlines about ‘clashes’: We do not have one party’s snipers opening fire on another, unarmed party; we have “violent clashes”—a term, as FAIR has noted before, that implies symmetry of forces and is often used to launder responsibility. Later, the Guardian quietly removed the word ‘clashes’ from its headlines, while adding Israeli military spin: that the protest was a Hamas ploy to ‘carry out terror attacks’; compare this early version with a later version. On the first Friday of mass killing, we noted that the Israeli newspaper Haaretz had reported the presence of Israeli snipers. We asked the public to look for any mention of this on BBC News. Around the time we made the request, the Newssniffer website picked up the first reference to ‘snipers’ on the BBC News website (albeit buried in a tiny mention at the bottom of a news article). Coincidence? Or were BBC editors aware that their output was under public scrutiny? Within just one day, the BBC had relegated the news of the mass shootings in Gaza to a minor slot on its website. It considered ‘news’ about television personality Dec presenting Saturday Night Takeaway without Ant, and royal couple Harry and Meghan choosing wedding flowers, more important than Israel killing and wounding many hundreds of Palestinians. When BBC News finally turned to Gaza, with a piece buried at the bottom of its World news page, it was from Israel’s perspective: Israel warns it could strike inside Gaza and: Palestinian groups using protests as a cover to launch attacks on Israel This disgraceful coverage strongly suggested that Israel was the victim. As political analyst Charles Shoebridge observed: Editors especially at the BBC aren’t stupid, they know exactly what they’re doing, and the use of very many devices such as this isn’t somehow repeatedly accidental. Indeed, it’s a good example of how the BBC is perhaps history’s most sophisticated and successful propaganda tool. By contrast, a powerful article in Haaretz from veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy pointed to the reality that the mass shooting by Israeli ‘Defence’ Forces: shows once again that the killing of Palestinians is accepted in Israel more lightly than the killing of mosquitoes. The Silence of Liberal ‘Interventionists’ Last year, Jeremy Corbyn was hounded by ‘mainstream’ media journalists, demanding that he condemn acts of violence by the socialist government in Venezuela. But there was no corporate media campaign calling upon Theresa May to denounce much worse Israeli violence. The same media that devoted sustained, in-depth coverage of Spanish police brutality during the Catalan independence referendum swiftly relegated Israel’s mass murder to ‘other news’. Imagine if Russian or Syrian troops had shot dead almost 30 civilians, and injured well over 1000, during peaceful protests. ‘MSM’ headlines and airwaves would be filled with condemnations from senior UK politicians and prominent commentators. But not so when it is Israel doing the killing. We tweeted: twitter task for today: think of any of the famously impassioned, outraged “humanitarian interventionists” in the Guardian, The Times, the Observer and so on, and check how much they’ve tweeted about the mass killings and woundings in Gaza. Go ahead, try it. Examples were glaring by their absence. Writing for The Intercept, journalist Mehdi Hasan asked rhetorically: Where is the moral outrage from former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, the famously pro-intervention, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a “A Problem From Hell,” which lamented U.S. inaction in Rwanda […]? Where is the demand from Canadian academic-turned-politician Michael Ignatieff, who was once one of the loudest voices in favor of the so-called responsibility to protect doctrine, for peacekeeping troops to be deployed to the Occupied Territories? Where are the righteously angry op-eds from Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, or Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, or David Aaronovitch of The Times of London, demanding concrete action against the human rights abusers of the IDF?’ Hasan concluded: The ongoing and glaring refusal of liberal interventionists in the West to say even a word about the need to protect occupied Palestinians from state-sponsored violence is a reminder of just how morally bankrupt and cynically hypocritical the whole “liberal intervention” shtick is. Global realpolitik was highlighted yet again when the US government blocked a vote at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council calling for an international investigation into the mass shooting of civilians by Israeli troops on March 30. The US repeated its block a week later after the second wave of Israeli killing. We have found no coverage in the UK ‘mainstream’ media of the US blocking a UN investigation. In other words, Israel can act with impunity when committing grievous crimes against humanity, backed to the hilt by its biggest sponsor in Washington. Weaponising ‘Antisemitism’ Against Corbyn Meanwhile, the ‘MSM’ was continuing to deploy charges of alleged antisemitism against Corbyn-led Labour; and, seen in a wider political context, against realistic hopes of even moderately progressive changes to UK government policy. A Facebook comment made in 2012 by Corbyn about a mural depicting Jewish and non-Jewish bankers was unearthed and used to mount a remarkable barrage of vehement media attacks. BBC News took its lead from the obviously right-wing, anti-Corbyn agenda across the ‘spectrum’ of the country’s ‘free press’. The attacks continued with a vicious front-page ‘exclusive’ in the extreme right-wing Sunday Times: Exposed: Corbyn’s hate factory The article, based on a trawl of Facebook posts, painted a hugely exaggerated picture of ’racism, violent threats and abuse by leader’s fan base’. Alex Nunns, author of The Candidate, a book about Corbyn’s ‘improbable path to power’, pointed out the absurdly cynical nature of this Murdoch ‘journalism’. Nunns undertook his own Facebook search for posts by Conservatives and quickly discovered examples of misogyny, abuse, an implied threat of violence and implicit racism. The Tory Facebook page he found: Appears to have links to The Bruges Group, which in turn has links to leading Conservative politicians including Iain Duncan Smith. Headline: “EXPOSED: Iain Duncan Smith’s hate factory.” See how this is done? Guardian columnist Owen Jones picked up Nunns’ tweets and pointed out in a live BBC interview: Why has there been no coverage of the despicable racism and abuse found in Conservative Facebook groups? The BBC news presenter replied: Because Labour is the story at the moment. That the ‘MSM’, including the BBC, had made Labour ‘the story at the moment’ was simply not worthy of comment by corporate journalists or, perhaps, permissible thought. Shamefully, the BBC published a big splash based on the Sunday Times article on ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s hate factory’. The BBC piece was almost gleeful in saying that there was ‘no let up for Labour’: With negative stories on the front pages of at least four newspapers, this is not a happy Easter Sunday for Labour. In other words, as it so often does, the BBC was following the lead of the right-wing, anti-Corbyn ‘mainstream’ press. The onslaught of ‘news’ linking Corbyn to ‘antisemitism’ continued with an account of how Corbyn had attended a ‘left wing Jewish event’ organised by Jewdas. The BBC stated: Jewdas, which describes itself as a “radical” and “alternative” Jewish collective, is at odds with mainstream Jewish groups over allegations of anti-Semitism in Labour. Three of the principal pro-Israel bodies in the UK, the Jewish Board of Deputies, Jewish Leadership Council and Jewish Labour Movement, criticised Corbyn for attending the event. The BBC reported: Jonathan Arkush, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: “If Jeremy Corbyn goes to their event, how can we take his stated commitment to be an ally against anti-Semitism seriously?” The BBC not only ran with this latest ‘story’ linking Corbyn to antisemitism, but promoted it as the lead item on the BBC News website. However, there is nothing that says we must allow BBC News to determine what is ‘mainstream’ and what is not. And, in particular, when it comes to the Jewish Board of Deputies, Jewish Leadership Council and Jewish Labour Movement, journalist Asa Winstanley of Electronic Intifada notes: Their primary function is to lobby for Israel, an institutionally racist, apartheid state. A measure of the Jewish Board of Deputies’ staunch pro-Israel stance can be seen from the tweet they sent in the wake of the brutal Israeli killings in the first Friday border protest: Alarming developments at Gaza border as Hamas once again using its civilians – inc children – as pawns. The lack of condemnation from ‘mainstream’ voices in politics and the media to such a disgraceful message reveals widespread deep fear of being accused of antisemitism. This fear, used to constrain reasoned debate, needs to be seen in a broader historical context. In 2002, former Israeli minister Shulamit Aloni explained the rationale behind the charge of antisemitism: Well, it’s a trick – we always use it. When from Europe somebody’s criticising Israel then we bring up the Holocaust. And it works. Professor Greg Philo of the Glasgow Media Group related that he was once told by a senior BBC News editor: The BBC waits in fear for the telephone call from the Israelis. None of the above is to deny that there is a significant problem of antisemitism in British politics, or in wider British society. But, as the group Jews for Justice for Palestinians notes, the facts are that: Levels of antisemitism among those on the left-wing of the political spectrum, including the far-left, are indistinguishable from those found in the general population. Moreover, antisemitism has decreased in Labour under Corbyn, and public polling indicates that it is more prevalent among Conservative and UKIP members than among Labour and Liberal members. Indeed, there is ample evidence of an extraordinary scale of Tory racism and abuse. In summary, then, here is the horrible irony of recent coverage on Israel and antisemitism: the corporate media continued to headline Corbyn’s ‘antisemitism crisis’ – supposedly triggered by a comment about a mural in 2012 – while quickly relegating Israel’s massacres of civilian Palestinians to ‘other news’ at the bottom of the page and running order. The truth is that the deadliest racism today is indicated by the casual way in which the West and its allies rain violence down on countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. Although human rights are typically used as a pretext, the real goal is control of natural resources and the global economy; the tears of compassion evaporate the instant that an Official Enemy obstructing Western control has been overthrown. As Chomsky has noted, this is actually closer to a kind of speciesism than racism: Namely, knowing that you are massacring them but not doing so intentionally because you don’t regard them as worthy of concern. That is, you don’t even care enough about them to intend to kill them. Thus when I walk down the street, if I stop to think about it I know I’ll probably kill lots of ants, but I don’t intend to kill them, because in my mind they do not even rise to the level where it matters. There are many such examples. To take one of the very minor ones, when [President Bill] Clinton bombed the al-Shifa pharmaceutical facility in Sudan, he and the other perpetrators surely knew that the bombing would kill civilians (tens of thousands, apparently). But Clinton and associates did not intend to kill them, because by the standards of Western liberal humanitarian racism, they are no more significant than ants. Same in the case of tens of millions of others. A further example, as we have seen, are the yawns of indifference from the corporate media as hundreds of civilian protestors – Palestinian ‘mosquitoes’ – are gunned down by Israeli snipers. * Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, Pluto Press, 1999, p.489. http://clubof.info/

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Hyperallergic: Lucio Fontana’s Psychedelic, Ceramic Crucifixes

Lucio Fontana, “Crocifisso” (1955–57), polychrome ceramics, 17 x 14 x 4 1/3 in (© Fondazione Lucio Fontana, by SIAE 2017, courtesy Galerie Karsten Greve Cologne, Paris, St Moritz; photo by Saša Fuis, Cologne)

PARIS — The visual experience transmitted by Lucio Fontana’s ceramic crosses, currently on view at Galerie Karsten Greve, evokes hallucinogenic transmutation and transubstantiation. Made between 1948 and 1961 — and thus predecessors of quasi-religious acid art — their woozy motifs reek of the high “sacramental vision” that Aldous Huxley discovered under the influence of mescaline, as recounted in his book The Doors of Perception.

Lucio Fontana, “Crocifisso (O Cristo)” (1955–57), polychrome ceramics, 16 1/4 x 4 3/4 x 3 1/2 in (© Fondazione Lucio Fontana, by SIAE 2017, courtesy Galerie Karsten Greve Cologne, Paris, St Moritz; photo by Christoph Münstermann, Düsseldorf)

I first discovered just one of Fontana’s quivering crosses in Sèvres at the Cité de la Céramique in the extensive group exhibition Ceramix, but here I was thrilled to discover the fruits of years and years of obsessive creation. On first glance, the sparsely hung show, which spans three floors, has the look of the Stations of the Cross. But soon one discovers that there are almost only crucifixions here. The loss of clarity, the submersion, the writhing attempt at escape of the oozing Christ figures in all of them marks their contemplative power. In that respect, they are spiritually orgasmic.

Fontana’s predominantly twisted and asymmetrical pieces, such as “Crocifisso (O Cristo)” (1955–57), were clearly worked with vivid virtuosity. The hardened wet clay he formed with his fingers creates a trembling and wobbly look that is accentuated in the pieces that are glazed to shine. Some of the sculptures recall those mind-expanding, multisensory light show spectacles (like Mark Boyle’s or Joshua White’s) for which the late 1960s and early ‘70s became famous.

Installation view of Lucio Fontana Crosses at Galerie Karsten Greve (photo by Nikolai Saoulski, courtesy Galerie Karsten Greve)

The psychedelic, tortured Christ hanging in agony and/or ecstasy on Fontana’s churning crosses also prefigures the emergence of body art performance in the ‘70s as a major form in which the human physique was exploited as an integral and expandable perceptual instrument — stimulated to reach states of euphoric, erogenous frenzy. Indeed, his piece “Crocifisso” (1955–57) is in effect erotic, as the mangled Christ figure appears to have a mammoth erection. It is a piece that could have easily slipped into Leo Steinberg’s classic reference book The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion. With its presentation of predominantly white wobbling substance, it is also typical of the hallucinogenic immoderation that I find spiking Fontana’s methodology in this series.

Lucio Fontana, “Crocifisso” (1950–55), polychrome ceramics, 14 1/4 x 7 2/3 x 4 3/4 in (© Fondazione Lucio Fontana, by SIAE 2017, courtesy Galerie Karsten Greve Cologne, Paris, St Moritz; photo by Saša Fuis, Cologne)

Acid’s sacred, expanding visions — especially those tied to inward contemplation — resonate with Fontana’s 1951 “Manifesto tecnico dello spazialismo” (or “Technical Manifesto of Spatialism”). In it, he said he wanted to open up art forms so as to penetrate space; to create a new dimension that ties in with the cosmos as it endlessly expands beyond the image. Such a secular ambition connects to what Dr. Albert Hofmann, a biochemist at the Sandoz pharmaceutical firm in Basel, discovered in 1943 when he accidentally absorbed a small amount of d-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate: that LSD has expanding and visionary spatial properties that are nearly cosmic-religious.

The problems of describing LSD’s effects are notorious, and the typology of its consequences vary, but Fontana’s crosses display the central, salient acid experience. When experiencing the chemical, the awareness of individual body identity somewhat evaporates and subject/object relationships tend to dissolve; the world seems as if it is simply a fluid, shifting extension of the mind. Thus, even as I have no inkling that Fontana ever tripped, his cosmic crucifixes are trippy. Regardless of what he swallowed, it is well known that he punctured the buchi (Italian for “hole”) in his canvases for cosmic reasons, as a means of integrating the theoretical space represented on the surface of his paintings with the tangible space that surrounded them. Speaking with Tommaso Trini of the buchi works in his last interview, Fontana said, “the discovery of the cosmos is a new dimension, it is the infinite, so […] I have created an infinite dimension. That is precisely the idea, a new dimension corresponding with the cosmos.”

Lucio Fontana, “Crocifisso” (1948), polychrome ceramics, 16 1/2 x 10 2/3 x 4 1/2 in (© Fondazione Lucio Fontana, by SIAE 2017, courtesy Galerie Karsten Greve Cologne, Paris, St Moritz)

With LSD, things pondered often melt into the environment and become contiguous with it, something Fontana’s slightly visible Christ figures do, even in the early “Crocifisso” (1948), in relationship to their undulating crosses. This undulating figure-ground relationship is also part and parcel with Fontana’s Spatialist aesthetic, which aimed at spatial, social, religious, political, and sexual liberation. Fontana’s objective for his art was the breaking of dimensional limitations, both physical and metaphysical, and it still achieves his goal. Fontana still has the power to overcome the tyranny of the discreet paradigms into which acid art and religious art are placed, to re-contextualize them away from certitude and keep art an open, fluid, mythical conduit.

The Crosses exhibition can be a very liberating experience, especially for the art historically trained. What is particularly important about Fontana’s acid crucifixes is that they provide a new way to consider his (and his Spazialismo group’s) theoretical “Manifesto Bianco” (or “White Manifesto”) and the “Spatial Manifesto” (both from 1946). Some of  the works, like “Crocifisso” (1950–55), have an almost spatially crushed, panicky feel to them, even as the show casts a transcendental spell in the air. This open, sweeping invocation is the stuff that great art, given its pre-linguistic potential of unchaining common codes, sometimes achieves — and does once more here.

Lucio Fontana : Crosses continues at Galerie Karsten Greve (5 Rue Debelleyme, 3rd arrondissement, Paris) through July 29.

The post Lucio Fontana’s Psychedelic, Ceramic Crucifixes appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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