RZA - domestic violence

straight down the line

Apocalypse

My man Leo Todd's "end o the earth" pictures. Its kinda like he stabbed some fag ends up some beautiful pics, murdering them to distort their original sublime value all towards nihilism and smoke and drugs. I blame the alcohol. No I blame the earth and then his fags. The last picture is the bomb.

------ 10:58 AM
my daughter from the future came and visited my house yesterday. But I wasn’t in. She came three times wanting to leave her number. The first time she came she found Julia aka ghost girl and asked her about me. Julia rightfully gave her pointless information. The second time she tried to leave her number but left a blank postcard. Apparently she is beautiful, tall with long black hair. Third and with the final intention to leave her number - Julia even made her go to the shop to get a pen - with a glum face she then returned dejected and said, "no, lali only deals with idiots, better not.”

ZOMBIE POVERTY - CUT&UP V

The idea being that as the poor are rejected and vilified they may as well be seen as the walking dead. This for our final image to be placed as a mosaic on the streets of central Lima.


words from kapuscinski -

i wrote in part for ethical reasons: above all because the poor tend to be silent. Poverty does not cry. Poverty has no voice. Poverty suffers, but suffers in silence. Poverty does not rebel. It rebels - the poor rebel only when they can hold on to some hope. Thus they rebel in the hope of something better. In most cases, they get mistaken: though the component of hope is fundamental for the reaction.

Edir Macedo - The Bishop

Aside from Opus Dei sex scandals, the dodgiest Christians today tend to be the Evangelists. Most notably in Brazil - the largest Catholic country in the world - where one million Catholics switch every year to Evangelical Protestant Churches, often considered fundamentalist sects. Fervent and hugely politicized, many of the 40 evangelist Pastors and Bishops in the Brazilian Parliament are often the ones most often cited in corruption scandals, further powered by the churches where followers are obliged to pay a tenth of their wages.

Edir Macedo is the name of “the bishop”. Seen as a dark figure in Rio, he has created an empire in telecommunications through his Church (Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus) seen almost all over Brazil as well as Africa, Asia, USA and Europe. He even has a Church in Brixton, London. In 1992 Macedo was imprisoned for accusations of charlatanism, and spent some days in prison. Today Edir Macedo is the owner of TV Record, one of Globo’s main rivals.

CUT&PASTE POVERTY 4 - PORNOMISERIA

This image is from a documentary. The Bullshit that sells. The Bullshit Vice rates. Or as they put it - This is the story of Hakani – whose name means "smile" – one of hundreds of children who are targeted for death each year amongst Brazil's 200 plus indigenous tribes. Physical or mental handicaps, being born a twin or triplet or being born out of wedlock – all are considered valid reasons for taking a child's life.
What is validity of anyone seeing this other than a sick anthropological fantasy for the wicked, savage and destitute?

CAPOEIRA

Ive taken up capoeira like this guy here. All part of my 'earthy' new ways. Yes. Done four classes so far. Its like Im Screetch from Saved By The Bell. But its all good. My earthy way is coming along. Discipline innit.
And yes, its a dance not a fight.

ZOMBIE POVERTY - CUT&UP 3

Im hoping this will be the final image we put to the streets. Im not sure of its original point, we were always trying to be less blatant, less direct. So as not to think poverty means begging. Im hoping this beggar might be seen as a zombie. Not a nut. And perhaps interpret it as ridiculing poverty. Or beautifying it. Or being pointless. This man was actually a beggar who confronted my friend Alan when he snapped. ACTUALLY WE SHOULD TURN HIM INTO A ZOMBIE WITH HIS EYES WHITE.
Its difficult to insinuate some sort of other reality, the 'others' reality, without you yourself realizing you have been conditioned into thinking what will make and impression or not. I mean to separate from your viewer. Yes I should have lived in the barriada and seen it for myself. Yes I still want to give cameras to little kids and see what they will come up with. Still, on a billboard until the spaces are truly liberated and burnt, these pieces have to compete against the language of commerce, using perhaps the same tools they use. SENSATIONALISM. For the moment I am looking at what will work and will not. Composition is everything. Later we can become more abstract. The colours you see are more to do with the palette of the 'foodstuff' which is ready all chopped up.

CHACALON ES DIOS

Chacalon es la espumita que sale cuando orinas
Chacalon es tu vieja
Chacalon es la rima sin sonoridad
Chacalon es una mierda
Chacalon es la chica que te hace silbar
Chacalon es la flaca que te choteo ayer
Chacalon is a mutherfucker
Chacalon es un borracho sentado en una esquina
Chacalon es cristal
Chacalon son las luces de neon
Chacalon es un huevon
Chacalon es tu mano con la mia
Chacalon Escorpion
Chacalon es el falso arrugado, pero sigue ahi
Chacalon hace taxi
Chacalon es un pendejo
Chacalon es una pechuguita light
Chacalon es amor
Chacalon es la miel y las avejas
Chacalon habla frances
Chacalon Chacalon, is like chocolate rain but better
Chacalon es chileno
Chacalon es fiel
Chacalon es el condon que se rompio
Chacalon no existe
Chacalon sigue preso debajo del pentagonito
A Chacalon le dieron el papel de Guason, pero no hablaba ingles
Chacalon corre tempranito
Chacalon brilla
Chacalon es actor
Chacalon es un momento de flacidez
Chacalon es Cesar Gutierrez y Micaela Galvez
Chacalon is a Somali pirate
Chacalon is looking baffled
Chacalon, y tu como te llamas?

PISCO ONE YEAR FROM THE EARTHQUAKE

(click on the picture to see the head)



these pictures I took in the cemetry of Pisco. I had read that the bones were popping out from the graves. these kids showed me where they were.
that town was still in rubble a year from the 8 richter scale earthquake. Still Pisco was in bits. 80% of the buildings were destroyed. Chavez gave to one hundred lucky bingo winners lovely 1950s houses. While the rest thanks to the ever so generous punk-ass Garcia gave them tents, and pithy hand outs. Still as the mayor says you cant build a 300 year old city in the space of a year.

Pornomiseria 2

you have to see this. its brilliant, especially the end. a spoof on how journalists and documentary makers suck on the poverty issue and misery though as people barely responding to them. being as effective as the rest. Insuring the status quo. Looking for a way to win awards. Bloodsucking anthropological journalists. I love my job.

Filming Poverty - "pornomiseria"

"el oportunismo de los documentalistas deshonestos que hacen 'documentales socio-políticos' en el Tercer Mundo con el objeto de venderlos en Europa y ganar premios."


DIRECCION: Carlos Mayolo, Luis Ospina

Barrington Levy and Smiley Culture

César Nakasaki, Alberto Fujimori's lawyer

where's wally?

1990 - Shabba Ranks vs Ninja Man

Amazon Tribes in Extinction

When Europeans arrived five centuries ago there were once seven million people living from the Jungles of the Amazon - accounting for two thousand indigenous tribes – of which today there are less than 400 tribes with two million individuals, about 5,000 of which still resist contact with ‘civilization’.

Extinction can be seen in several ways – real extinction (genocide) and the other, comes in the form of a generalised, but emphatic, cultural change. Soon enough the country’s main language is learnt and old values are swapped for t-shirts, baseball caps and coca cola.

In Peru, for example, there are differentiations in describing tribes particularly when noting those that live in voluntary isolation – which can be defined in two groups, those that have never been contacted and those that after initial contact then decided to hide in the jungle and lose contact from the rest of the world. The paradox goes that by investigating more about them we often place them in more danger. There have been accounts of missionaries, that having gone in good faith, to advise tribes about petroleum explorations have either got blow piped and killed or set off the flu that brought about the end of them.

The UN accounts there being a ‘cultural genocide’ made on the – Korubo from Brazil, the Tagaeri from Ecuador, the Ayoreo from Paraguay and the Ashaninkas, Mashco-Piros and Yaminahuas from Peru.

The case is often the same - Besieged by oil explorations, logging and tourism, the Tagaeri peoples from Ecuador voluntarily hide away from the rest of the world. They have made their presence felt with various deaths in their territory in the Yasuní National Park opposing any foreign filtration. Similarly the Mashco-Piro peoples from Peru – of 1100 – are affronted by a diverse amount of threats, created mainly by oil and gas drilling and exploration. The Ashaninkas, a fighting people, have gone up in arms to reclaim land that was lost and contaminated.

And so it continues – A hunter-gatherer tribe the Ayoreo were chased and exhibited as prized animals during the 1950’s, from where they hid further into the jungle. Near the end of the 90’s they attacked with bow and arrows workers trying to build routes through the jungle of Chaco. Situated near the Bolivian border their land has become even more limited by cattle farming and agriculture.

All Paraguayan natives, as like in most Amazonian countries, face the hounding from American-funded Evangelical missions. The missions are often charged with shaming and vilifying ancient practices, bringing an end to age-old values and dress codes. In the case of the Ayoreo they bitterly opposed conversion during the 80’s leading to violent confrontations....

Household Slavery in Haiti

Wherever poverty, greed, corruption and government inaction coincide, people are traded as commodities - none more so than in Haiti where slavery takes on a quotidian form. Sometimes even modest aspirations -- to provide one's children with an education, for example -- can perpetuate slaving practices. In rural Haitian villages families are known to hand over one or more children to a ''courtier,'' or middleman. Although fear, shame, and regret pours out of the parents, the system in which unpaid child laborers are sent to middle-class homes as ''restaveks'' (Creole for ''rester avec,'' or stay with) is deeply entrenched in Haiti. Many of the children are physically and sexually abused. But with no jobs and no schools in the parents' calculus a question comes into focus: Maybe the middleman's promises of sending their children to school will prove true?

The custom reaches even further. Recently in Miami an ex-teacher was sentenced to 10-years in prison for the force labour of a Haitian minor. A Haitian herself, the case of Maude Paulin, has exposed a hitherto unseen network in human trafficking new to the United States.

PHOTOGRAPHER GIHAN TUBBEH - POVERTY IN PERU

the amazing depictions of poverty in its nooks and crannies, where smiles too exist and people subsist on the bare minimum.

The Ant Plague from Haiti

Dominican authorities are adopting all means to put a halt to a plague of devouring carnivorous ants at the doors of its border with Haiti. A spokesman said “all” instructions would be adopted, including revisions in food commerce.

The ants, whose scientific name is paratrechina longicornis Latreille have invaded 60.000 hectares in three departments of Haiti. The species is known to be ravenous and attacks cattle, game, chickens and any other thing unable to run.

Listin Diario - Santo Domingo:

Ha surgido un proyecto peligroso para los dominicanos, proveniente de la Organización de Estados Americanos que involucra a nuestra Cancillería y a la Junta Central Electoral, con la finalidad de auxiliar a Haití en la cedulación de los haitianos diseminados por todo el país. La vicecanciller Rosario Graciano dio declaraciones al LISTÍN aparecidas el 31 de julio. La noticia de esta cedulación ha tenido mala acogida entre los dominicanos. Una cosa es que por humanidad cedulen a familias enteras que durante años residan aquí, sentimentalmente ligadas a los dominicanos; otra cosa es que cedulen a los haitianos que al violar la frontera deambulan por el país. Entonces tendrían que cedular a millón y medio de ellos que están por todas partes. Este proyecto de la OEA, en caso de que así sea, sería sencillamente inaceptable, auxiliarían a Haití hundiendo a nuestro país. Estamos concientes de que en Haití se está pasando hambre, esto es tristemente trágico; lo que habría que hacer es tratar bajo todos los medios de lograr que la OEA se decidiera a ayudar a Haití en su tierra.

CUT&PASTE POVERTY II

here again the image becomes a little diluted like a detail from an impressionist painting

CUT&PASTE POVERTY

the first trial out. Cut & Paste from various food-amassed images. A small vignette of life in poverty. The image is a bit washed with barely much detail. Which now means a small reviewing, in tones and image res.

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Attempting to depict POVERTY

in the attempt of choosing the right image that 'objectively' depicts poverty, we fall for the same traps as usual. In the end we reflect, perhaps, more on ourselves than the subject.