Tikone Still Rocks!

Neste fim-de-semana, a fechar o mês de janeiro, cruzamo-nos com este spot, onde duas colagens vão resistindo às intempéries. 

O fundo do nosso cartaz, já queimado pelo sol, vai mimetizando o branco da figura.
Ao lado, o desenho do Mestre TIKONE, mesmo sem se ver a boca consegue ainda subentender o sorriso, tal é a sua força expressiva!

Note-se que o nosso cartaz nem bem um ano tem, apresentando um desgaste maior do que o do seu companheiro, este sim colado há uns bons aninhos... Esta superior persistência caracteriza o especial carisma e a mística marcante do Artista Tikone!

De tocaia

Waiting in ambush.

Super-Rich At The Expense Of The Poorest

"It is simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the world population owns no more than a small group of the global super-rich - so few, you could fit them all on a single coach.

World leaders' concern about the escalating inequality crisis has so far not translated into concrete action to ensure that those at the bottom get their fair share of economic growth. In a world where one in nine people go to bed hungry every night we cannot afford to carry on giving the richest an ever bigger slice of the cake.

We need to end the era of tax havens which has allowed rich individuals and multinational companies to avoid their responsibilities to society by hiding ever increasing amounts of money offshore.

Ending extreme poverty requires world leaders to tackle the growing gap between the richest and the rest which has trapped hundreds of millions of people in a life of poverty, hunger and sickness.

It is no longer good enough for the richest to pretend that their wealth benefits the rest of us when the facts show that the recent explosion in the wealth of the super-rich has come at the expense of the poorest."

Mark Goldring (Oxfam GB Chief Executive)

Earth Fits In The Stencil

Independentemente das circunstâncias, o estêncil segura-se horizontalmente. Se for preciso, é a Terra que deve rodar 90 graus.
In the city, every single place can be used to stand a certain point a view. We stay still, Earth does the moving.

Euros encarcerados

A euforia do acaso conduziu-nos ao interior esventrado de uma ruína. Ali, na posse de cartões cortados e uma lata aerossol, quis o silêncio que alguma tinta improvisasse companhia ao esquecimento aprisionado. Tirintaram as moedas de ouro negro, condenadas a permanecer numa cela de musgo, ferrugem e plástico. Os vapores residuais transpiraram através das costelas abertas em direção ao céu.

Disfarçado de Topo Gigio

Para a História, registem-se os resultados eleitorais do dia de ontem, que elegeram o Sétimo Presidente da Terceira República Portuguesa:

52,00% = 2.410.286 votos_ Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa 
22,89% = 1.060.800 votos_ Sampaio da Nóvoa 
10,13% =    469.321 votos_ Marisa Matias 
  4,24% =    196.599 votos_ Maria de Belém
  3,95% =    182.906 votos_ Edgar Silva
  3,28% =    152.049 votos_ Vitorino Silva 
  2,15% =      99.884 votos_ Paulo de Morais
  0,84% =      38.914 votos_ Henrique Neto
  0,30% =      13.759 votos_ Jorge Sequeira
  0,23% =      10.572 votos_ Cândido Ferreira

  1,24% =      58.666 votos_EM BRANCO
  0,92% =      43.758 votos_NULOS

9.700.645 INSCRITOS, dos quais 48,84% = 4.737.514 foram VOTANTES

Fonte: Portal do Eleitor

Rising Inequality: Time To Fight

"Allowing governments to collect the taxes they are owed from companies and rich individuals will be vital if world leaders are to meet their new goal, set last September, to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030. 

Although the number of people living in extreme poverty halved between 1990 and 2010, the average annual income of the poorest 10 per cent has risen by less than $3-a-year in the past quarter of a century. That equates to an increase in individuals' daily income of less than a single cent a year.

Had inequality within countries not grown between 1990 and 2010, an extra 200 million people would have escaped poverty.

One of the other key trends behind rising inequality, set out in Oxfam's report is the falling share of national income going to workers in almost all developed and most developing countries and a widening gap between pay at the top and the bottom of the income scale. This particularly affects women, who make up the majority of low paid workers around the world. 

By contrast, the already wealthy have benefited from a rate of return on capital via interest payments, dividends, etc, that has been consistently higher than the rate of economic growth. This advantage has been compounded by the use of tax havens which are perhaps the most glaring example set out in the report of how the rules of the economic game have been rewritten in a manner that has supercharged the ability of the rich and powerful to entrench their wealth.

Action to recover the missing billions lost to tax havens needs to be accompanied by a commitment on the part of governments to invest in healthcare, schools and other vital public services that make such a big difference to the lives of the poorest people.

Governments should also to make sure work delivers an acceptable standard of living for those at the bottom as well as for those at the top - including moving minimum wage rates towards a living wage and tackling the pay gap between men and women."

OXFAM

European Union Titagreek (Step by Step)

Finalmente apresentamos o nascimento, etapa a etapa, desta obra.

Discretamente

Here is a good example of how to use your bombing kit.
You can even act at daylight. Of course, make sure nobody's watching.
Just be fast and clean. It only takes a few seconds.
Easy as a piece of cake ;)

The City Is Alive

Constante é o pulsar da cidade e as sucessivas mudanças da pele urbana.

A potência do que se quer

"O desejo não é o que falta. O desejo é a potência do que se quer. Seja na artimanha da ausência ou no jogo fugidio da presença."

Glória Diógenes

62 People Own Same As Half World

 

"Pre-Davos report shows how 1% now own more than rest of us combined

Runaway inequality has created a world where 62 people own as much as the poorest half of the world's population, according to an Oxfam report published today ahead of the annual gathering of the world's financial and political elites in Davos. This number has fallen dramatically from 388 as recently as 2010 and 80 last year.

An Economy for the 1%, shows that the wealth of the poorest half of the world's population - that's 3.6 billion people - has fallen by a trillion dollars since 2010. This 41 per cent drop has occurred despite the global population increasing by around 400 million people during that period. Meanwhile the wealth of the richest 62 has increased by more than half a trillion dollars to $1.76tr. Just nine of the '62' are women.

Although world leaders have increasingly talked about the need to tackle inequality, the gap between the richest and the rest has widened dramatically in the past 12 months. Oxfam's prediction - made ahead of last year's Davos - that the 1% would soon own more than the rest of us by 2016, actually came true in 2015, a year early.

Oxfam is calling for urgent action to tackle the inequality crisis and reverse the dramatic fall in wealth of the poorest half of the world. It is urging world leaders to adopt a three-pronged approach - cracking down on tax dodging, increased investment in public services and action to boost the income of the lowest paid.  As a priority, it is calling for an end to the era of tax havens which has seen increasing use of offshore centres by rich individuals and companies to avoid paying their fair share to society. This has denied governments valuable resources needed to tackle poverty and inequality.

[...]

Globally, it is estimated that super-rich individuals have stashed a total of $7.6tr in offshore accounts. If tax were paid on the income that this wealth generates, an extra $190bil would be available to governments every year.

As much as 30 percent of all African financial wealth is estimated to be held offshore, costing an estimated $14billion in lost tax revenues every year. This is enough money to pay for healthcare for mothers and children that could save 4 million children's lives a year and employ enough teachers to get every African child into school.

Nine out of ten WEF corporate partners have a presence in at least one tax haven and it is estimated that tax dodging by multinational corporations costs developing countries at least $100billion every year. Corporate investment in tax havens increased almost quadrupled between 2000 and 2014."

OXFAM

Daily Bombing Kit

1 - bag / mochila

2 - gloves / luvas

3 - pocket cans / latas de bolso (150 ml ou 250 ml)

4 - little plastic bag with spare caps / pequena bolsa de plástico com difusores sobressalentes

5 - cleaning cloth / pano de limpeza

6 - small stencils / estênceis pequenos

Who Pays For The Reproduction Of The Labor Force

"in the developed world a minority of workers are directly involved in production. A large percentage are employed in areas that relate to the reproduction of the labor force—its education, health care, and welfare. While these workers are very much part of the working class and subject to oppression and exploitation, their conditions are not determined directly by their relation to the production process. [...] the labor market has to be seen as responding both to changes in production, and, primarily, to the needs of the reproduction of labor.

From its inception, capitalism has faced a contradiction: the end of unfree labor released the exploiting class from the requirements of maintaining their labor force, but provided no clear means for reproducing future generations of laborers. Slaveowners had to feed and clothe their slaves and support children until they were old enough to work (although slaveowners managed to reduce all those things to the very bare minimum). Capitalists, on the other hand, are not responsible for the maintenance of their workforce; they simply pay wages in return for labor. As individual capitalists, the reproduction of that labor force is of no concern to them, but for the system as whole it is, and there has been a consistent struggle from the early days of capitalism about who would bear the cost of that reproduction. Would it be forced onto the private sphere of the family and disproportionally onto the labor of women in the home, or would it be socialized and borne as a public service?

[...] a significant portion of the labor force is tied closely to the reproduction of the labor force, which has far more restrictions on its mobility and flexibility. Whatever the dreams of neoliberal ideologues, it is of little use to capitalism to off shore hospitals or schools to China or South Asia."

Geoff Bailey

A Billion

" If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."

"Se você consegue contar o seu dinheiro, é porque não tem um bilhão de dólares."

Jean Paul Getty

The Name

"Graffiti, though it often employs images, is fundamentally a form of writing, and indeed graffiti artists refer to themselves as “writers.” The medium of much of it is the name. The name itself occupies an uneasy or ambiguous zone of the language."

Johannes Stahl

L'amour vrai

"O dinheiro compra tudo. Até amor verdadeiro."

"Money buys everything, even true love."

"L'argent achète tout, même l'amour vrai."

Nelson Rodrigues

Vai buscar!

"Dinheiro não traz felicidade: manda buscar."

Márcio Casaroti

Acima das possibilidades

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from lack of imagination."

Oscar Wilde

A General Officer Goes To Retirement

This stencil has tackled more than a thousand walls and had to be repaired a few times. It's been a loyal warrior! After years of spray and courage, it's time for retirement. Without any repair, just keeping its beautiful appearance forever, it is going directly to our museum. It looks nice and powerful just as it is.

A decadência do voto

"Pela primeira vez, há no planeta mais sistemas democráticos e mais alternâncias democráticas de governo do que nunca. [...] Actualmente, o número de países democráticos – em distintas fases de consolidação – é superior, segundo a Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU), a 85. Ou seja, a democracia converteu-se no sistema de governo com maior legitimidade no mundo global. No entanto, nunca estivemos tão descontentes com a democracia. Os sintomas deste mal-estar são mais visíveis a cada dia que passa. O número de potenciais eleitores que decide não votar é cada vez maior. Segundo uma sondagem realizada pela Gallup Internacional em sessenta países «democráticos», só um em cada dez inquiridos pensava que «o governo do seu país obedecia à vontade do povo».

[...]

Ou seja, estamos perante um paradoxo dramático: nunca tivemos tanta democracia, mas também nunca houve tanta desafectação e tanta desconfiança em relação à democracia representativa. Entre as causas dessa desafectação podemos listar as seguintes dez: 1) demasiadas desigualdades (ricos cada vez mais ricos, pobres mais pobres); 2) crise do Estado e do público, atacados pelas teorias neoliberais ligadas ao «Estado mínimo»; 3) falta de uma sólida cultura democrática; 4) efeito negativo dos casos de corrupção (tão frequentes em Espanha); 5) dificuldades na relação entre os partidos e o resto da sociedade civil; 6) subordinação da actividade política aos poderes fácticos (mediáticos, económicos, financeiros); 7) submissão dos governos às decisões das organizações supranacionais (e não democráticas) como o Banco Central Europeu (BCE), o G-20, o Fundo Monetário Internacional (FMI), o Banco Mundial, a Organização de Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Económico (OCDE), a Organização Mundial do Comércio (OMC), etc.; 8) aumento dos confrontos entre a sociedade civil e os governos; 9) discriminações ou exclusões de categorias sociais ou de género (imigrantes, homossexuais, indocumentados, ciganos, muçulmanos, etc.); 10) dominação ideológica de grupos mediáticos que assumem o papel de oposição, defendendo os seus interesses e não os dos cidadãos."

Ignacio Ramonet

Repairing Stencils

Na reparação de estênceis é necessário um olhar meticuloso, paciência e precisão nos gestos.

Ferro, cimento e madeira

O mundo construído pelo Homem civilizado.

Iron, cement and wood: the concrete civilized world.

Remendando frente e verso

Cold rainy winter nights are appropriate for repairing damaged stencils.

Las noches de invierno frías y lluviosas son apropiadas para reparar plantillas dañadas.

Rainbow In Progress

Como nasce um arco-íris :)