VOID

Definition of void : opening, gap. b : empty space : emptiness, vacuum. 2 : the quality or state of being without something : lack, absence. 3 : a feeling of want or hollowness.

Take water for example. It is a scarce and precious commodity in southern Alberta, and shortages will get scarier with climate change.

The region’s water security is primarily protected by the integrity of the eastern slopes of the Rockies, which hold and filter clean water for the plains below. 

And it is governed by a specific allocation order allowing water to be assigned to towns, farmers and ranchers, industry and other users.

But Australian coal miners in the Crowsnest Pass don’t have enough water for their proposed open-pit mines and have lobbied the government for help.

Benga Mining and Atrum Coal both got what they asked for.

Without public consultation (a persistent theme here), the Kenney government has put forward a plan to take up to eight billion litres from the Oldman River dam reservoir, reserves that had been set aside for drought and other environmental conditions and emergencies.

Did the Kenney government do any specific studies on the impact of coal mining on water scarcity, climate and selenium pollution in the eastern slopes before giving away this water? No. 

Meanwhile southern Albertans are appalled that the government is proposing to change water allocation rules for Australian companies and undermine the existing market.

Just last week, the municipal districts of Pincher Creek and Ranchland sent off a blistering letter to their local MLA, Roger Reid, about the Kenney government’s glaring Australian bias in overriding the water allocation order.

“It is deeply troubling to see that this Order appears to be in the process of being dismantled, effectively with no consultation. What appears to be passing for consultation, is a rapid ‘drive-by’ where provincial officials appear to be merely giving notice as to what is going to happen, as opposed to seeking meaningful input from the residents and jurisdictions impacted.”

The battle to protect the water security of two million Albertans and their economies has just begun. 

Excerpted from : Don’t Be Fooled: Alberta Is Still Playing the Coal Game:Reinstating the Coal Policy does little to protect the Rockies or already scarce water resources relied on by two million people.

 Andrew Nikiforuk February 10| The Tyee.ca

It can be argued the double entendre in this case is corporate action that is devised to have double messaging, of which one is obviously to attract a positive message to sell ecofriendly product, whereas the other action subverts the eco gain and value thus cancelling the ethic of the eco message and promised results: clever corporate deceptions to distract from the true financial goal and outcome of these contradictory actions.

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Elon Musk wants clean power. But Tesla’s carrying bitcoin’s dirty baggage https://reut.rs/3cY9jgZ

– Tesla boss Elon Musk is a poster child of low-carbon technology. Yet the electric carmaker’s backing of bitcoin this week could turbo-charge global use of a currency that’s estimated to cause more pollution than a small country every year.

Nobody was more responsible for fostering the cult of Trump then the Pious Pasty Mike Pence.

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The martyrdom of Mike Pence https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/07/mike-pence-donald-trump-republicans-religion-evangelical

In celebration of Pious Pasty Mike’s departure from his US Vice Presidential profile in cowardice, Court Painter has assembled a selection of past portraits featuring this God & Trump fearing pale shell of a leader!

Who Should Create Trump’s Presidential Portrait? Duh!

Hyperallergic, as can be seen from the following article, has made a gross error by failing to identify the most obvious choice for the commission of the Donald J. Trump official presidential portrait.

The overwhelming people’s choice is Court Painter.

CLICK LINK FOR ARTICLE

• Who Should Create Trump’s Doomed Presidential Portrait? https://hyperallergic.com/620250/trumps-presidential-portrait-suggestions/

Since the portrait commission has yet to be awarded ,Court Painter Enterprises has put together a series of revelatory portraits of The Donald rendered in various daunting yet historically intimate and newsworthy settings over the years : ample evidence of Court Painter’s ability to capture the black heart & soul-less spectre of Donald J Trump.

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CLICK LINK FOR VIDEO INTERVIEW

Ahmir Questlove Thompson cleans up at 2021 Sundance for his ‘Summer of Soul’ directorial debut

Summer Of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised), the feature documentary directed by the Roots frontman Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, won both the 2021 Sundance grand jury and audience awards in the U.S. Documentary Competition category. Drawing from archival footage that had been hidden and unseen in a basement for over 50 years, Thompson recreated the Harlem Cultural Festival, a massive music event celebrating African American music that 300,000 attended in the summer of 1969.

The film tells the story of the festival staged at Harlem’s Mount Morris Park on six Sundays between June and August 1969. It featured an all-star lineup, including Sly & the Family Stone, Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Max Roach, Mahalia Jackson, and Mavis Staples.

February 16,2024 (Updated from previous posts)

Putin critic Alexei Navalny dies in prison

News broke early Friday that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny – a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin – has died in prison. “On 16.02.24 in the correctional colony number three, convict Navalny felt ill after a walk almost immediately losing consciousness,” the Federal Penitentiary Service for Yamal said in a statement, noting that emergency services were unable to revive him.

Navalny, a social media-savvy activist who led an anti-corruption protest movement of hundreds of thousands against Putin a decade ago, was poisoned with a nerve agent in Siberia in 2021 – an attack he blamed on the Kremlin – and flown to Germany for treatment. He later defied the Kremlin and returned to Russia, where he was promptly sentenced to 11 years in prison for fraud and other charges.

In August, a court dumped another 19 years onto his sentence for good measure, and in December, he went missing in the prison system for weeks amid concerns that he was being moved to an even harsher prison.

For more about the opposition leader’s life, check out GZERO’s interview with director Daniel Roher about his Oscar-winning documentary “Navalny,” starring the man himself.

Source: GZERO Feb 16/24

Jailed Russian activist Alexei Navalny ‘not heard from for almost a week’

Mon 11 Dec 2023 The Guardian

December 11,23

• https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/11/jailed-russian-activist-alexei-navalny-not-heard-from-for-almost-a-week?CMP=share_btn_link

February 3, 2021

• Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny will spend the next 2.5 years in prison, following a verdict in Moscow

Court Painter & painting of AN

On February 2,2021 during a hearing that will determine if he remains in prison for several years to come, opposition figure Alexey Navalny addressed the court, delivering a short speech in which he maintained his innocence and condemned Russia’s political and legal system for corruption and repression. Meduza publishes an English-language translation of Navalny’s courtroom remarks below.

“I would like to begin by discussing the legal issue here, which seems to me to be paramount and a bit overlooked in this discussion. There are two people sitting right there and one of them is saying: let’s lock up Navalny because he showed up [to meet with his parole officers] on Mondays, not Thursdays. And the other says: let’s lock up Navalny because he didn’t show up immediately after coming out of his coma. But I would like everyone to remember that the essence of this trial is to lock me up over a case in which I was already exonerated — a case that’s already been recognized as fabricated.

If we look at the criminal statutes — your Honor, I hope you’ve already done this once or twice — we’ll see that the European Court of Human Rights is part [of the Russian justice system] and its decisions are binding. The Russian Federation halfway acknowledged this ruling and even paid me compensation here. Despite this, my brother spent 3.5 years in prison because of this same case. I spent an entire year under house arrest for this same case.

Let’s do a little math. The verdict was in 2014, it’s 2021 now, and I’m still being prosecuted for this. Why this case exactly? There’s a reason and it’s not because there’s some shortage of criminal charges against me. Somebody wanted me arrested, the moment I crossed the border [after returning from Germany]. 

The explanation is one man’s hatred and fear — one man hiding in a bunker. I mortally offended him by surviving. I survived thanks to good people, thanks to pilots and doctors. And then I committed an even more serious offense: I didn’t run and hide. Then something truly terrifying happened: I participated in the investigation of my own poisoning, and we proved, in fact, that Putin, using Russia’s Federal Security Service, was responsible for this attempted murder. And that’s driving this thieving little man in his bunker out of his mind. He’s simply going insane as a result.

There’s no popularity ratings. No massive support. There’s none of that. Because it turns out that dealing with a political opponent who has no access to television and no political party merely requires trying to kill him with a chemical weapon. So, of course, he’s losing his mind over this. Because everyone was convinced that he’s just a bureaucrat who was accidentally appointed to his position. He’s never participated in any debates or campaigned in an election. Murder is the only way he knows how to fight. He’ll go down in history as nothing but a poisoner. We all remember Alexander the Liberator [Alexander II] and Yaroslav the Wise [Yaroslav I]. Well, now we’ll have Vladimir the Underpants Poisoner. 

I’m standing here, guarded by the police, and the National Guard is out there with half of Moscow cordoned off. All this because that small man in a bunker is losing his mind. He’s losing his mind because we proved and demonstrated that he isn’t buried in geopolitics; he’s busy holding meetings where he decides how to steal politicians’ underpants and smear them with chemical weapons to try to kill them.

The main thing in this whole trial isn’t what happens to me. Locking me up isn’t difficult. What matters most is why this is happening. This is happening to intimidate large numbers of people. They’re imprisoning one person to frighten millions. 

We’ve got 20 million people living below the poverty line. We have tens of millions of people living without the slightest prospects for the future. Life is bearable in Moscow, but travel 100 kilometers in any direction and everything’s a mess. Our whole country is living in this mess, without the slightest prospects, earning 20,000 rubles [$265] a month. And they’re all silent; they try to shut people up with these show trials. Lock up this one to scare millions more. One person takes to the streets and they lock up another five people to scare 15 million more.

I hope very much that people won’t look at this trial as a signal that they should be more afraid. This isn’t a demonstration of strength — it’s a show of weakness. You can’t lock up millions and hundreds of thousands of people. I hope very much that people will realize this. And they will. Because you can’t lock up the whole country. 

The only thing growing in [Russia] is the number of billionaires. Everything else is declining. I’m locked up in a prison cell and all I hear about on TV is that butter is getting more expensive. The price of eggs is rising. You’ve deprived these people of a future.

Everything I’m saying now reflects my attitude toward the performance you’ve staged here. This is what happened when lawlessness and tyranny become the essence of a political system, and it’s horrifying. 

But it’s even worse when lawlessness and tyranny pose as state prosecutors and dress up in judges’ robes. It’s the duty of every person to defy you and to defy such laws. 

I am fighting as best I can and I will continue to do so, despite the fact that I’m now under the control of people who love to smear everything with chemical weapons. My life isn’t worth two cents, but I will do everything I can so that the law prevails. And I salute and thank the staff at the Anti-Corruption Foundation who have been arrested and all the honest people across the country who aren’t afraid and who take to the streets. Because they have the same rights as you. This country belongs to them just as it does to you and everyone else. We demand proper justice, decent treatment, participation in elections, and participation in the distribution of the national wealth. Yes, we demand all this.

I want to say that there are many good things in Russia now. The very best are the people who aren’t afraid — people who don’t look the other way, who will never hand our country over to a bunch of corrupt officials who want to trade it for palaces, vineyards, and aqua discos.

I demand my immediate release and the release of all political prisoners. I do not recognize your performance here — it’s a deception and completely illegal.”

AHM Press Attache to Court Painter is often seen on his Sunday stroll as a hunched, plodding figure with his beady eyes firmly fixed ground ward. However this Sunday he had a camera clutched tightly in his shaky left hand in anticipation of hitting the magic button with the finger of his right hand as soon as an image of delight caught his keen attention! ( this in spite of the microscopic fibres within the vitreous tending to clump and casting tiny shadows on his retina.)

Completing his stroll ,he promptly turned the images over to Court Painter for artful rendering in spite of Court Painter’s dislike of working off photographs produced by amateur shutterbugs.

The Court Painter Vestigial Digital Initiative (CPVDI) has undertaken the arduous yet rewarding task to digitize all of Court Painter painting commissions in an effort to preserve and share them with the teeming masses who have a voracious appetite for buying all kinds of stuff. This digital technology effort will make it possible to spread the message of Court Painter over land & sea & challenging terrain by promoting his precious images on fridge magnets, children’s lunch boxes, SMLXL T shirts, face masks, inner fashions, teardrop flags, fine art prints suitable for framing, indoor & outdoor posters, wedding table talkers, wedding belly bands, disposable place mats ,roller banners suitable for flying behind Piper Cubs, wrapping paper, strut cards and stickers to name just a few.

Dr. Missy Mayhem PHD an expert on all things digital has trained unpaid studio interns to scan the masterworks using a Fujitsu contactless overhead scanner. The ScanSnap SV600 scanners overhead design eliminates any contact or friction with the precious paintings being scanned. It proves to be the ideal device for such an exercise because of the delicate surface condition and age of the Court Painter works. It was also a technological leap compared to previous efforts, which used a combination of flatbed and wand scanners, stitching together photos from digital cameras.

Court Painter’s spacious studio has come alive with the hum of many types of digital printing machines, including production printing presses such as sheet-fed production printers, cut-sheet digital presses, production inkjet printers and continuous feed printers.

Investor seen with Court Painter on the shop floor

Once scanned and processed, the digital images are ready to be printed on various substrates and value added products ,ready for distribution to prestigious upper crust brick & mortar sales outlets as well as farmers markets and (get this) online.

It is impossible for the naked eye to tell the difference between the original hand crafted painting and a digital copy.

The CDVDI will operate as a public service and profit centre by making a digital record of all the painted works the Court Painter has and will continue to produce in his illustrious career as a celebrity painter who specializes in painting celebrities.

If this initiative proves profitable, Court Painter would consider skipping the messy painting part which requires a small army of apprentices and go directly to digital. Stay tuned!

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