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Global Multimedia and Multidisciplinary Cultural Organization Empowering and Inspiring Minds to Promote Social Change and Raise Consciousness

A DREADFUL TIME FOR THOSE AT HOME, IN HELL. Think

A DREADFUL TIME FOR THOSE AT HOME, IN HELL.

Thinking of you. Those who are at a greater risk now of being attacked, hurt, burnt, raped, humiliated, beaten, assaulted and killed. .

Those who have no choice at the moment but to stay in, locked in in isolation with their abuser. Those who were already in grave danger now feeling completely helpless. .

Those who felt they couldn’t leave now feeling a million times more afraid. Those who are silently suffering in pain. Thinking of you. Every day.

PHOTOGRAPHY AS ART But the very question of wheth

PHOTOGRAPHY AS ART

But the very question of whether photography is or is not an art is essentially a misleading one. Although photography generates works that can be called art --it requires subjectivity, it can lie, it gives aesthetic pleasure-- photography is not, to begin with, an art form at all. .

Like language, it is a medium in which works of art (among other things) are made. Out of language, one can make scientific discourse, bureaucratic memoranda, love letters, grocery lists, and Balzac's Paris. Out of photography, one can make passport pictures, weather photographs, pornographic pictures, X-rays, wedding pictures, and Atget's Paris. .

Photography is not an art like, say, painting and poetry. Although the activities of some photographers conform to the traditional notion of a fine art, the activity of exceptionally talented individuals producing discrete objects that have value in themselves, form the beginning photography has also lent itself to that notion of art which says that art is obsolete. .

The power of photography --and its centrality in present aesthetic concerns-- is that it confirms both ideas of art. But the way in which photography renders art obsolete is, in the long run, stronger.
- Susan Sontag 📸 @robwoodcoxphoto

LANGUAGE ALONE IS MEDITATION . Is there no contex

LANGUAGE ALONE IS MEDITATION .

Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? You are an adult. The old one, the wise one. Stop thinking about saving your face. Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. .

We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and nothing is left but their scald. Or if, with the reticence of a surgeon's hands, your words suture only the places where blood might flow. We know you can never do it properly - once and for all. Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. .

Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul. You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures. Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.
- Toni Morrison 📸 @edgarazevedo

THE COLLECTION OF MYTHS The American Negro has th

THE COLLECTION OF MYTHS

The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors, that American men are the world's most direct and virile, that American women are pure. .

Negroes know far more about white Americans than that; it can almost be said, in fact, that they know about white Americans what parents—or, anyway, mothers—know about their children, and that they very often regard white Americans that way. And perhaps this attitude, held in spite of what they know and have endured, helps to explain why Negroes, on the whole, and until lately, have allowed themselves to feel so little hatred. .

The tendency has really been, insofar as this was possible, to dismiss white people as the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing.
- James Baldwin 📸 @bloomandplume

SELF ISOLATION CAN HEAL YOU . Look around. Among

SELF ISOLATION CAN HEAL YOU .

Look around. Among your family, coworkers, and friends, can you see how everyone has different levels of perception? Just observe this closely. If you know a few people who seem to have a greater clarity of perception than others, watch how they conduct their body. They often have a certain poise without practice. .

But just a little practice can make an enormous difference. If you sit for just a few hours a day with your spine erect, you will see that it will have an unmistakable effect on your life. You will now begin to understand what I mean by the geometry of your existence. Just the way you hold your body determines almost everything about you. Another way of listening to life is paying attention to it experientially, not intellectually or emotionally. .

Choose any one thing about yourself: your breath, your heartbeat, your pulse, your little finger. Just pay attention to it for eleven minutes at a time. Do this at least three times a day. Keep your attention on any sensation, but feel free to continue doing whatever you are doing. If you lose attention, it doesn’t matter. Simply refocus your attention. .

This practice will allow you to move from mental alertness to awareness. You will find the quality of your life experience will begin to change.
- Sadhguru 📸 @neringarekasiute 👦🏾 @the.greatdane

CHILDREN AND SEXUAL ABUSE Both boys and girls can

CHILDREN AND SEXUAL ABUSE

Both boys and girls can be victims of sexual abuse, but girls are six times more likely to be abused. What are the signs that a child is being sexually abused? .

Children often don't talk about sexual abuse because they think it is their fault or they have been convinced by their abuser that it is normal or a "special secret". .

Children may also be bribed or threatened by their abuser, or told they won't be believed. A child who is being sexually abused may care for their abuser and worry about getting them into trouble.

Here are some of the signs you may notice:

Changes in behaviour – a child may start being aggressive, withdrawn, clingy, have difficulties sleeping or start wetting the bed.
Avoiding the abuser – the child may dislike or seem afraid of a particular person and try to avoid spending time alone with them.
Sexually inappropriate behaviour – children who have been abused may behave in sexually inappropriate ways or use sexually explicit language.
Physical problems – the child may develop health problems, including soreness in the genital and anal areas or sexually transmitted infections, or they may become pregnant.
Problems at school – an abused child may have difficulty concentrating and learning, and their grades may start to drop.
Giving clues – children may also drop hints and clues that the abuse is happening without revealing it outright. - National Health Service, UK 📸 @leilaamat

A COMMON FORCE The Black female is assaulted in h

A COMMON FORCE

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.
- Maya Angelou 📸 @jamallosterholm 👧🏿 @rock_riv

THE WOMAN’S PERSPECTIVE . Men who are in prison

THE WOMAN’S PERSPECTIVE .

Men who are in prison for rape think it's the dumbest thing that ever happened... it's isn't just a miscarriage of justice; they were put in jail for something very little different from what most men do most of the time and call it sex. .

The only difference is they got caught. That view is nonremorseful and not rehabilitative. It may also be true. It seems to me that we have here a convergence between the rapists's view of what he has done and the victim's perspective on what was done to her. .

That is, for both, their ordinary experiences of heterosexual intercourse and the act of rape have something in common. Now this gets us into immense trouble, because that's exactly how judges and juries see it who refuse to convict men accused of rape. A rape victim has to prove that it was not intercourse. She has to show that there was force and that she resisted, because if there was sex, consent is inferred. .

Finders of fact look for "more force than usual during the preliminaries". Rape is defined by distinction from intercourse - not nonviolence, intercourse. They ask, does this event look more like fucking or like rape? But what is their standard for sex, and is this question asked from the women's point of view? .

The level of force is not adjudicated at her point of violation; it is adjudicated at the standard for the normal level of force. Who sets this standard?
- Catharine A. MacKinnon 📸 @__adey__

FIRE OF HATRED Acid throwing is a specific and ho

FIRE OF HATRED

Acid throwing is a specific and horrible act of violence which, according to official statistics, is on the rise in Iran.

This kind of violence is mostly against women and children. These attacks are often done with the intent to disfigure, maim, torture and destroy the social life and future of their victims.

The motivation to commit this type of violence is cultural destitution and intolerance. It most often happens in situations of family conflict: whether rejected marriage proposals, divorce requests or revenge.

In addition to physical and psychological damage, the victims face the experiences of social stigma and blame.

Across Iran, such victims are in dire need of medical and financial support as well as counseling services. Unfortunately, there is no governmental or even non-governmental organizations who attend to these issues in the country. Thus, burn victims have to treat themselves with recourse only to public aid and charitable donations. —Asghar Khamseh for Lens Culture 📸 Asghar Khamseh

DEEP SOCIAL INEQUALITIES EXPOSED The lockdown is

DEEP SOCIAL INEQUALITIES EXPOSED

The lockdown is necessary, no doubt, but it is a catastrophe for poor Indians. Some families at least live together in urban slums, but millions of migrant labourers are separated from their wives, parents and children back in the village. Lockdown means being confined to dingy cells that pass for rented accommodation, usually shared with six or seven other labourers.

In pre-Covid-19 days, they could spend some time outside these cells, chatting with others on the stairs or landings of their tenements, inhaling some of Delhi’s particulate matter. Now social distancing has made even that impossible.

Former maid Pushpa used to spend the day with her toddler in a tiny rented room while her husband and in-laws went out to work. Now all of them are locked up in that one room 24/7.

The lockdown has stripped the poor of the one thing that allowed them to hang on to a shred of dignity: work. When a poor Indian saw a rich man rushing off to work in his car, getting busy to support his family, he could feel that he too was working to be able to put food on the table that evening for his children. The lockdown has taken away this function and rendered him truly helpless.

Weirdest of all, none of this suffering is visible. Homebound as the rich are, the poor have become truly invisible, apart from the images on the news and in the papers. They have been walled off. And yet you can feel it. In one passage, Proust talks of how, as a child, he could experience the summer heat outside more intensely and vividly, lying inside his darkened bedroom, than he could if he had been outside in the bright sunshine. That is what some of us are feeling now, safe inside our homes while the suffering happens outside somewhere. - Amrit Dhillon, The Guardian

TOXIC MASCULINITY KILLING MEN The concept of toxi

TOXIC MASCULINITY KILLING MEN

The concept of toxic masculinity encourages an assumption that the causes of male violence and other social problems are the same everywhere, and therefore, that the solutions are the same as well. But as Connell and her cohort have spent years demonstrating, material realities matter. While themes of violence, entitlement, and sexism recur across communities, they show up differently in different places. In one Australian Aboriginal violence-prevention program that I evaluated with colleagues, Aboriginal educators worked in partnership with men and boys to identify the key drivers of gendered violence and inequality. Solutions were rooted in cultural pride, tailored to local contexts, and underpinned by recognition of the intergenerational impacts of racism and trauma. The program understood that masculinity itself isn’t toxic, and instead sought to understand and change the roots of toxic gendered behavior.

Those roots are quite different than, for example, the roots evident in majority white, wealthy communities, where male violence and sexism are commonplace. Responses to gender inequality in professional workplaces, such as programs to stamp out sexism in employment culture and practices, have particular purchase in middle-class communities. They’re not universal solutions—and they don’t have to be. Recognizing differences in the lives of men and boys is crucial to the effectiveness of efforts to resolve gender violence and inequality. - Michael Salter, The Atlantic 📸 @juansebastianf

TO INTERRACIAL COUPLES EVERYWHERE I have always h

TO INTERRACIAL COUPLES EVERYWHERE

I have always had a fascination with interracial relationships. You do not only discover a new person, you discover an entire culture, heritage, language and country when the person you admire hails from a different land. - Pablo Ganguli 📸 Helmut Newton @helmutnewtonfoundation @gracejonesofficial @dolphlundgren

WHY ARE YOU DECORATING YOUR EGO Nobody can say an

WHY ARE YOU DECORATING YOUR EGO

Nobody can say anything about you. Whatsoever people say is about themselves. But you become very shaky, because you are still clinging to a false center. That false center depends on others, so you are always looking to what people are saying about you. And you are always following other people, you are always trying to satisfy them. You are always trying to be respectable, you are always trying to decorate your ego. This is suicidal. Rather than being disturbed by what others say, you should start looking inside yourself…

Whenever you are self-conscious you are simply showing that you are not conscious of the self at all. You don’t know who you are. If you had known, then there would have been no problem— then you are not seeking opinions. Then you are not worried what others say about you— it is irrelevant!

When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don’t know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.
- Osho 📸 @__adey__ 🧔🏻👩🏼 @faryad.mrt @marenbjorn

MEXICO’S CULTURES AT RISK OF A DANGEROUS CRISIS

MEXICO’S CULTURES AT RISK OF A DANGEROUS CRISIS

Mexico’s coronavirus-skeptical president is setting up his country for a health crisis. Some doctors say Mexico could become the new Italy — or worse.

As Mexico fast approaches what’s highly likely to be a large coronavirus outbreak, the country’s leadership — mainly its president — mostly insists that everything is fine.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) tells Mexicans they shouldn’t fear Covid-19, even as hundreds of thousands of people have confirmed infections worldwide. Despite warnings from global health officials, he continues to hold political rallies, kiss supporters, and request that Mexicans go out shopping to prop up the country’s sputtering economy during a global slowdown. “Live life as usual,” he said in a video posted to Facebook on March 22, showing him outside at a restaurant. “If you’re able and have the means to do so, continue taking your family out to eat … because that strengthens the economy.” AMLO’s advice, experts say, is deadly. What makes matters worse is that his policies over the past few years have set the stage for a profound health crisis. In a major effort to cut government spending, AMLO has reduced funds for the country’s hospitals and medical centers by millions. It’s left the nation short of physicians, medical equipment, beds, and coronavirus tests.

That last part is especially frustrating, because Mexico has been hit hard by outbreaks before. In 2009, the H1N1 influenza originated in Mexico before it spread around the world, killing hundreds of thousands of people. Then, Mexico aggressively tested hundreds of thousands of its citizens to identify clusters of infection and stem the tide against transmission, said Alejandro Macías, the “czar” for the government’s emergency response at the time. “We acted then like South Korea has today,” he told me.

That’s not happening this time. The country has barely tested people, likely accounting for the low official number of 475 cases as of March 26. That comes as millions continued to move freely outside, including tens of thousands who attended a large outdoor festival. - Alex Ward, Vox 📸 @jimmy.nelson.official

GRACE IS ALWAYS PRESENT Grace is always present.

GRACE IS ALWAYS PRESENT

Grace is always present. You imagine it is something somewhere high in the sky, far away, and has to descend. It is really inside you, in your Heart, and the moment you effect subsidence or merger of the mind into its Source, grace rushes forth, sprouting as from a spring within you. .

The mind is by nature restless. Begin liberating it from its restlessness; give it peace; make it free from distractions; train it to look inward; make this a habit. This is done by ignoring the external world and removing the obstacles to peace of mind.

Solitude is in the mind of man. One might be in the thick of the world and maintain serenity of mind; such a one is in solitude. Another may stay in a forest, but still be unable to control his mind. He cannot be said to be in solitude. Solitude is a function of the mind. A man attached to desire cannot get solitude wherever he may be; a detached man is always in solitude.
- Ramana Maharshi 📸 @luissh 👦🏻 @ivanmontis 👦🏾 @ladriade

ASIANS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VIRUS We’ve been

ASIANS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VIRUS

We’ve been down this road before, too many times. In the 14th century the Black Death provoked mass violence against Jews, Catalans, clerics and beggars; when syphilis spread in the 15th century, it was called variously the Neapolitan, French, Polish and German disease, depending on who was pointing the blame; when the plague struck Honolulu in 1899, officials burned down Chinatown. And so on, down to our times, when epidemics like Ebola, SARS and Zika fueled animus toward specific regions or peoples.

Here we are in 2020, with Asians being assailed across the United States and around the world as purported sources of the “Chinese flu,” the “Wuhan coronavirus” or simply the “foreign virus.” Once again, a mysterious, fast-spreading and sometimes lethal disease is exacerbating racism and hatred — only now with the help of the potent megaphone of social media.

As the coronavirus has spread from its beachhead in Wuhan, China, old anti-Asian prejudices have spread with it, from the “Yellow Peril” canard that led to the lynching of Chinese in the 1870s to stereotypes of Chinese as dirty and decrepit.
As The Times reported on Monday, Chinese-Americans and other Asians lumped together with them by racists are being beaten, spat on, yelled at and insulted from coast to coast, driving some members of the maligned minority to purchase firearms in the fear of worse to come as the pandemic deepens.

The United States is not alone in this blight of xenophobia. Japan’s Kyodo News agency described similar incidents of anti-Asian bigotry wherever the coronavirus has struck: Asian students pelted with eggs in Leicestershire, England, or people in Egypt yelling out “corona” when passing Asians in the street. Vile posts on social media have made graphic threats in rants against Asians over the coronavirus.

However much mystery still surrounds the coronavirus, these are not the Dark Ages, and there really should be no reason to remind people that this terrible new virus makes no distinction among races or nations. - @nytimes

SOCIAL DISTANCING IN A COUNTRY WHERE MILLIONS WERE

SOCIAL DISTANCING IN A COUNTRY WHERE MILLIONS WERE ALREADY FORGOTTEN BY SOCIETY

Social Distancing Is Not an Option for India’s Poor. Indian PM Modi has announced a lockdown, but the strategies adopted in other countries simply aren’t possible for millions of Indians.

As the world practices social distancing to keep the novel coronavirus at bay, 40-year-old Lata Jadhav still spends 13 hours a day in eight different homes in suburban Mumbai. Working as domestic help, she cooks, cleans, and picks up waste. She has heard of the COVID-19 pandemic from her employers, most of whom are now working from home. Already apprehensive, her fears escalated when another domestic worker in Mumbai tested positive for the virus after contracting it from her U.S.-returned employers. .

Jadhav quickly bought a mask, but social distancing—a choice between life and livelihood—is unthinkable to her. “If I sit at home, I will lose pay for the days off. I have two daughters to marry, and loans to pay off,” says Jadhav. “I earn 14,000 rupees (U.S.$183) a month and 8,000 goes as monthly installment on my loans. My husband runs a food stall but is now out of work as the government has cleared all vendors from streets. Illness or its anticipation cannot be excuses to miss wages. .

Every day of work counts.” But although limiting human-to-human interactions is the only way to control the spread of the coronavirus, public health experts say social distancing is not an option for the hundreds of millions in India’s unorganized sector. Tactics being employed in other countries are just aren’t possible here. “These are workers who need their daily wages to sustain their families and to afford food and nutrition. They work in crowded markets and travel by public transport. It is extremely difficult for them to adopt the social distancing approach,” says K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, a not-for-profit public-private health initiative.

By PUJA CHANGOIWALA You can read the full article on slate.com 📸 @stevemccurryofficial

HORROR STORY The world will not forgive you. Two

HORROR STORY

The world will not forgive you. Two complete morons. This is what happens when people with brains the size of a peanut runs your country. Actually the peanut is more interesting.

HUMANITY TRANSFORMED Part 2 of 2 (see previous po

HUMANITY TRANSFORMED
Part 2 of 2 (see previous post) .

8) It is reminding us to keep our egos in check. It is reminding us that no matter how great we think we are or how great others think we are,
a virus can bring our world to a standstill.

9) It is reminding us that the power of freewill is in our hands. We can choose to cooperate and help each other, to share, to give, to help and to support each other or we can choose to be selfish, to hoard, to look after
only our self. Indeed, it is difficulties that bring out our true colors.

10) It is reminding us that we can be patient, or we can panic. We can either understand that this type of situation has happened many times before in history and will pass, or we can panic and see it as the end of the world and, consequently, cause ourselves more harm than good.

11) It is reminding us that this can either be an end or a new beginning. This can be a time of reflection and understanding, where we learn from our mistakes, or it can be the start of a cycle which will continue until we finally learn the lesson we are meant to.

12) It is reminding us that this Earth is sick. It is reminding us that we need to look at the rate of deforestation just as urgently as we look at the speed at which toilet rolls are disappearing off of shelves. We are sick because our home is sick.
13) It is reminding us that after every difficulty, there is always ease. Life is cyclical, and this is just a phase in this great cycle. We do not need to panic; this too shall pass.

14) Whereas many see the Corona/ Covid-19 virus as a great disaster, I prefer to see it as a *great corrector*

It is sent to remind us of the important lessons that we seem to have forgotten and it is up to us if we will learn them or not. - @thisisbillgates 📸 @aboya.8

A WORLD TRANSFORMED . I’m a strong believer tha

A WORLD TRANSFORMED .

I’m a strong believer that there is a spiritual purpose behind everything that happens, whether that is what we perceive as being good or being bad.

As I meditate upon this, I want to share with you what I feel the Corona/ Covid-19 virus is really doing to us:

1) It is reminding us that we are all equal, regardless of our culture, religion, occupation, financial situation or how famous we are. This disease treats us all equally, perhaps we should too. If you don’t believe me, just ask Tom Hanks.

2) It is reminding us that we are all connected and something that affects one person has an effect on another. It is reminding us that the false borders that we have put up have little value as this virus does not need a passport. It is reminding us, by oppressing us for a short time, of those in this world whose whole life is spent in oppression.

3) It is reminding us of how precious our health is and how we have moved to neglect it through eating nutrient poor manufactured food and drinking water that is contaminated with chemicals upon chemicals. If we don’t look after our health, we will, of course, get sick.

4) It is reminding us of the shortness of life and of what is most important for us to do, which is to help each other, especially those who are old or sick. Our purpose is not to buy toilet roll.

5) It is reminding us of how materialistic our society has become and how, when in times of difficulty, we remember that it’s the essentials that we need (food, water, medicine) as opposed to the luxuries that we sometimes unnecessarily give value to.

6) It is reminding us of how important our family and home life is and how much we have neglected this. It is forcing us back into our houses so we can rebuild them into our home and
to strengthen our family unit.

7) It is reminding us that our true work is not our job, that is what we do, not what we were created to do.
Our true work is to look after each other, to protect each other and to be of benefit to one another. - @thisisbillgates
To be continued. 📸 @elroysalam

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