NO MORE FACEBOOK

WHAT'S THE POINT?

Israeli warplanes have launched a wave of air strikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip.More than 200 Palestinians have been killed, 300 others were hurt in the attacks.

Missiles hit security compounds and militant bases across Gaza. Israel said the operation would go on "as long as necessary".

Israel said the strikes were in response to continued rocket fire by Palestinian militants against Israeli towns.

The strikes, the most intense Israeli attacks on Gaza in decades, come after the expiry of a truce with Hamas earlier this month.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Hamas of having triggered the new bout of violence.

Israel said it initially began a staged easing of the blockade, but this was halted when Hamas failed to fulfil what Israel says were agreed conditions, including ending all rocket fire and halting weapons smuggling.

From BBC News_

Power and Influence

Roughly speaking, power is the ability to make people do things (or suffer the consequences); influence is the ability to get people to do things on their own (to gain the benefits). NATO has lots of power (and a good bit of influence), while the EU has an enormous amount of influence, but less power. Pointy-haired bosses use their power; good businesspeople use their influence.

Influence is not a second-rate type of power (soft rather than hard); it’s a separate, if related, capacity. So: power and influence.

GOING ON IN EUROPE...

RESISTANCE: The ability not to be affected by something, especially adversely _Thesaurus English Dictionary

Sullo Stereotipo dell'Italia e degli Italiani In Giappone
_di Andrea Gobbi

CHALO INDIA CHALO
best advertisement
by Times of India

Ripescato dallo scaffale-Rescued from a shelf

PLAY

To those who knew him

-his friends-
we called him Roy.
To others he was known
as that horrible Toxic Boy.

He loved ammonia and asbestos,
and lots of cigarette smoke.
What he breathed in for air
would make other people choke!

His very favorite toy
was a can of aerosol spray;
he'd sit quietly and shake it,
and spray it all the day.

He'd stand inside the garage
in the early-morning frost,
waiting for the car to start
and fill him with exhaust.

The one and only time
I ever saw Toxic Boy cry
was when some sodium chloride
got into his eye.

One day for fresh air
they put him in the garden.

His face went deathly pale
and his body began to harden.

The final gasp of his short life
was sickly with despair.
Whoever thought that you could die
from breathing outdoor air?

As Roy's soul left his body
we all said a silent prayer.
It drifted up to heaven
and left a hole in the ozone layer.

ROY, THE TOXIC BOY

Deserved To Be Posted!

BAGHDAD — To throw shoes at the president of the greatest superpower in the world is not something that you see every day in Iraq. It never happened before, and who knows when it will happen again.

The Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, 28, a correspondent for Al Baghdadia, an independent Iraqi station, stood up about 3.5 meters, about 12 feet, from Bush and shouted in Arabic: "This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!" He then threw a shoe at Bush, who ducked and narrowly avoided it.

As stunned security agents and guards, officials and journalists watched, Zaidi then threw his other shoe, shouting in Arabic, "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!" That shoe also narrowly missed Bush as Maliki stuck a hand in front of the president's face to help shield him _ (International Herald Tribune)

During the press conference Mr. Bush said: “That’s what people do in a free society, draw attention to themselves.” Well, I don’t know how true is this but I know one thing: no one during Saddam’s era would have dared to think about doing that. He would have been executed, and maybe also his family, and the journalists who witnessed the incident. (Atheer Kakan)

ViDEO

I don't know either he was wrong or right. I just know I would have liked somebody to do it soon or later. No one in the world can blame on that journalist. Somehow it did not feel wrong, at least to me...

Japanese Photographic Culture

志賀　理江子
Shiga Lieko
"On Your Body"



岡部　東京、
Okabe Tokyo
ヨッシヲールド
"Yosshi World"



保谷　綾乃
Hoya Ayano
"Gift"

LiNks:

New Cosmos of Photography
Tokyo Exhibition 2008
Metropolitan Museum of Photography

Eguchi Masaru
Sawada Tomoko
Shiga Lieko

From a Friend...

自分で自分が解らなくなった。
自分は何だろう。
自分はお母さんから生まれたが、この自分という気持ちはどこから生まれたのだろう。
自分は何で自分と思うのだろう『。。』

(...Gracias)

From _Heaven Lake

What is the purpose, I wonder of all this restlessness?
I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias (...)

JAPANESE WOMEN REBELS

" Since I was at girls school, all our teachers taught us that to achieve our happiness we must learn to be satisfied with our lot. They taught us to close our eyes and eliminate all the impulses that well up in our hearts (...) What is this happiness that we are taught by our teachers to seek? How agonizing and painful it must be to suppress, one's natural inner desires . I feel pity rather than anger at the shallow-so-called educators who teach us that this must be endured for the meager, temporary peace and happiness of the moment. I feel deep sorrow for the women who have been crippled by the ignorant- I do not hesitate to use this term- educators."

_Noe Ito, 伊藤 野枝 1895-1923.
Anarchist, social critic, author and feminist. Beaten to death_

From:
PEASANTS, REBELS, WOMEN AND OUTCASTS.
The Underside of modern Japan.
(Mikiso Hane)

see also:
_Kanno Suga, 1881-1911.
Japanese Political activist. Sentenced to death by hanging_

_Fumiko Kaneko, 金子 文子1903 - 1926.
Japanese anarchist and nihilist. After having been arrested, she died in prison_