ecopolis

Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina) is a contemporary artist, graphic designer and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene and became known initially for his “André the Giant Has a Posse” sticker campaign and finally for the series of posters supporting Barack Obama’s candidacy for President in 2008, including the “HOPE” portrait

http://www.thegiant.org/

LauraMansfield.com announces the release of “The Al Qaeda 2007 Yearbook Volumes 1 and 2: A Complete Reference and Translation of Al Qaeda Messages in 2007“.

During 2007, As Sahab, the media production department of Al Qaeda, has released an unprecedented number of videos. Because of size restrictions by our printer, the Al Qaeda Yearbook for 2007 is being released in two volumes. Volume I is available for shipment on December 1; Volume 2 will be available shortly after the beginning of the year.

This publication includes the videos and audios produced and released by As Sahab during 2007.

The “Yearbook” is heavily indexed, with extensive footnotes.

Germany was ruled by the Nazis since 1933, and Hitler wanted to capitalize on the Olympic Games to present Germany as an open-minded and peaceful nation to prove that the “Aryan race” was superior to all other “races” in all aspects of life, including tollerance of (inferior) diversity and sports.

But the Nazis had not counted on Jesse Owens’s talent and his determination to win: he managed to win four Olympic gold medals (100m, 200m, long jump and 4×100m relay): No other athlete had ever won four medals at the Olympic Games. That feat was performed again only by Carl Lewis at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles 1984.

The audience was enthralled by his performance and Jesse Owens became the celebrated hero of Berlin. Jesse Owens had won the heart and mind of Germany and the world.
In the streets, children “played” Jesse Owens, and the “Führer’s” radio sports reporters had a hard time explaining how an African-American had managed to relegate the sure, prospective and “white” winners to second places. Everybody could see how upset Hitler was about this success. And Jesse Owens did not get a handshake.

But when Jesse Owens returned to the USA, even the US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, ignored the top athlete and did not invite him to the White House: Roosevelt was campaigning for his re-election and he feared protests in the Southern States if he welcomed and honoured Owens publicly.
Owens remarked later that he felt insulted by Roosevelt rather than Hitler.

These are the only images of the 6 terrorists accused of realizing 9/11.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Walid bin Attash

Mustafa al Hawsawi

Mohammed Al-Qahtani

Ramzi Binalshibh

Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali

The myth of Garibaldi and the bicentenary of his birth

In the bicentenary of the birth of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Genoa is commemorating Italy’s famous hero with a series of exhibitions and other initiatives.
For this unique occasion, the Palazzo Ducale, the Gallery of Modern Art (Nervi), the Wolfsoniana, the Museum of the Risorgimento and the Accademia Ligustica will be exhibiting a spectacular assembly of works, ranging from great nineteenth-century historical and genre paintings to Michelangelesque paintings in a symbolist vein, and from sculptures to propaganda iconography to reconstruct the myth of Garibaldi and the appeal of his epic story.

The works on display give an idea of the themes and images that ran through political culture in both the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries and demonstrate how firmly the myth of Garibaldi was rooted in the common people.

From Lega to Guttuso, Palazzo Ducale, Appartamento del Doge

Bringing together works by various generations of artists who were alive and active during the second half of the nineteenth century – included are artists who belonged to the Macchiaioli movement from Tuscany, Lombard Romantics and also Verists from
Naples and Sicily – the exhibition aims to illustrate the Garibaldi myth in its various manifestations, looking back over the development of historical painting and so-called genre painting in relation to the popular epos of Garibaldi. The exhibition is divided
into twelve sections; it opens with the crucial period Garibaldi spent in Rome between 1848 and 1849, his flight to Venice and the death of Anita, going on to look at his later legendary exploits, and ending with his period of solitude on Caprera and his final
victorious expedition in aid of the French Republic.

From Rodin to D’Annunzio: a Monument to the Thousand at Quarto, Galleria d’Arte Moderna

Works by Italian and European artists who were active in the period between the end of the nineteenth century and the first world war (including masters such as Auguste Rodin, Antoine Bourdelle, Ivan Mestrovic, Franz von Stück, Gaetano Previati and Leonardo Bistolfi) bear witness to the return to a Michelangelesque classicism that is interpreted in a symbolist vein which points towards the tastes of the younger generations.
The exhibition gives an idea of how, in the context of European symbolism, the characteristics and artistic legacy of Michelangelo were adopted to celebrate the myth of Garibaldi. The visitor to the exhibition is offered a compelling reconstruction of this
symbolism in the form of its leading figures. In particular, it gave inspiration to the sculptor Eugenio Baroni (Taranto 1880 – Genoa 1935) in his design for the monument celebrating Giuseppe Garibaldi and the departure of the Thousand from the rocks
of Quarto.
In addition to Baroni’s work, the exhibition also shows paintings, sculptures and graphic works by famous figures active in the figurative field at the turn of the century such as Giulio Aristide Sartorio, Adolfo De Carolis, Antonio Rizzi, Angelo Zanelli,
Adolfo Wildt, Hans Stolte Lerche, Libero Andreotti, Galileo Chini, Mario Rutelli, Domenico Rambelli, Plinio Nomellini, Hendrik Christian Andersen, EdoardoDe Albertis, Pietro Dodero, Giovanni Prini, and G.B. Salvatore Bassano.

Posters and Propaganda, Wolfsoniana

The exhibition puts on display a significant collection of posters, postcards, graphic material and memorabilia from public and private collections. More than twenty posters, some particularly large in size, illustrate how both the various themes surrounding Garibaldi and the man himself have been used for media and propaganda purposes: from Risorgimento hero to icon of early fascist
movimentism, from romantic and national-popular hero to point of reference for the Democratic Popular Front at the 1948 elections. Among the authors of the posters the following should be mentioned: Mario Borgoni, Leonetto
Cappiello, Aurelio Craffonara, Plinio Nomellini and Filippo Romoli.

Garibaldi’s Genoa, Museo del Risorgimento

Paintings, relics, scarves, flags, arms, original writings and newspapers serve here to show the role that Genoa played in the origin and development of the myth of Garibaldi both in the city itself and in the world at large. They once again reflect how
word of his exploits spread, as they captivated the interest of journalists of the day, for whom Garibaldi embodied a mythical image from the unrest in Uruguay onwards.
Genoa is the city Garibaldi left from and came back to after his journeys overseas, the place where he made preparations for the departure of the Thousand in 1860; and it is also the city which constructed and consolidated his image as a man who
was driven by a great passion for freedom, who had the capacity to involve and sway people and who was able to fight for strong ideals. Rounding out the image of the myth of Garibaldi are works from private and public collections (including those of Francesco Paolo Tronca and of the Spadolini Foundation).

The preparatory sketch for the equestrian statue of Garibaldi will be positioned so that the visitor examining it will at the same time also be able to look out on to the statue itself, which since 1893 has dominated the most prestigious square in the city. Archive material and vedute – paintings and engravings – illustrate the genesis of the monument and the evolution of the surrounding setting from the Piazza di San Domenico of medieval times to today’s Largo Pertini.

“Garibaldi. Il mito”
17 nov 2007 – 2 mar 2008

Palazzo Ducale
Genova

Blackwater USA is a private military company founded in 1997 by Erik Prince and Al Clark. It has alternatively been referred to as a security contractor or a mercenary organization by numerous reports in the international media. Blackwater is based in the U.S. state of North Carolina, where it operates a tactical training facility that it claims is the world’s largest. The company trains more than 40,000 people a year, from all the military services and a variety of other agencies. The company markets itself as being “the most responsive, cost-effective means of affecting the strategic balance in support of security and peace, and freedom and democracy everywhere.”

Last week I subscribed myself to the Blackwater Newsletter, just to see what do they talk about and what do this kind of global private police thinks.

On september 16th Iraqi officials said 17 people, including women and children, were killed and 27 were wounded when Blackwater guards fired on motorists around Nusoor Square. The Iraqi investigation has concluded the shootings were an act of “premeditated murder” and recommended that Blackwater pay $8 million to families of each of the people killed.

Then Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki asked the U.S. State Department to “pull Blackwater out of Iraq”.
So these are not good times fot Balckwater, although they received more than 700 millions dollars in contracts from the governement, they decided to ask help to every american citizen, just yesterday arrived to me a really funny message that invites subscribers to make pression to the congress:

“While we can’t ask that each supporter do everything, Blackwater asks that everyone does something. Contact your lawmakers and tell them to stand by the truth. Correspondence should be polite and professional. We don’t support generating negative messages. Tell the Blackwater story and encourage your representatives to seek the truth instead of reading negative propaganda (?? 17 deads are negative propaganda??) and drawing the wrong conclusions.

Suggested themes:

- Cost efficiency of Blackwater – saving the US taxpayer millions of dollars so that the US Government doesn’t have to take troops from their missions or send more into harms way

- Professional population of service veterans and mature law enforcement personnel

- Sacrifice in lives lost by Blackwater saving US diplomats without one single protectee harmed

Expanding our communications effort starts with you. Pass the word – pass the truth.”…….

Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday, and the former vice president used the attention to warn that global warming is “the greatest challenge we’ve ever faced.”

World leaders, President Bush among them, congratulated the winners, while skeptics of man’s contribution to warming criticized the choice of Gore.

Gore in a statement said he was ” deeply honored … We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”

But the Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth made by former US Vice-President was found wanting when it was scrutinised in the High Court in London.

Mr Justice Burton told London’s High Court that distributing the film without the guidance to counter its “one-sided” views would breach education laws.

The judge said nine statements in the film were not supported by mainstream scientific consensus. The nine errors alleged by the judge included:

Mr Gore’s assertion that a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of ice in either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”. The judge said this was “distinctly alarmist” and it was common ground that if Greenland’s ice melted it would release this amount of water – “but only after, and over, millennia”.

Mr Gore’s assertion that the disappearance of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro in East Africa was expressly attributable to global warming – the court heard the scientific consensus was that it cannot be established the snow recession is mainly attributable to human-induced climate change.

Mr Gore’s reference to a new scientific study showing that, for the first time, polar bears had actually drowned “swimming long distances – up to 60 miles – to find the ice”. The judge said: “The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm.”

The “Unchained Goddess” 1958 – represents a felicitious collaboration between legendary Hollywood director Frank Capra and animation geniuses Shamus Culhane and William T. Hurtz. Appearing in live action, Dr. Research (Frank Baxter) and The Fiction Writer (Richard Carlson) set about to explain how weather is created, and how scientists have endeavored to predict and control it. They are aided by several animated character, foremost among them the beautiful but somewhat haughty Meteora, the Goddess of Weather (whose long gown rather resembles the funnel cloud of a tornado) and her subjects: Winds, Clouds and Rain. A copacetic blend of entertainment and education (Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide).

This video, made with agit-pop.com with music by DJ Spooky, helped launch the campaign against the so-called Clash of Civilizations–starting with a call for real Middle East peace talks now. Take action now at www.avaaz.org, the web platform for the suppport of the protest.