Duffy shows the experience of suffering from the perspective of a 'War Photographer' remembering images of war:
In 'Half-past Two', the speaker recounts an incident with a child who is given detention by a teacher until half past two but he doesn’t know how to tell the time
The photographer’s emotive memories are disjointed, caught between a detached and cynical tone of the omniscient narrator:
The poet presents the difficult childhood experience as innocent and confusing:
The poem suggests these memories are not easily forgotten and have had a lasting impact on the photographer
Similarly, the memory of the child’s punishment lingers in the child’s mind long after the incident has occurred
‘War Photographer’ conveys the trauma associated with his memories:
Similarly, the child’s inability to understand the concept of time and the consequences of his actions leave him feeling vulnerable and lost
Differences:
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Duffy distances the reader by telling the story of a photographer in a dark-room in narration: voice of the narrator allows the reader insight to the photographer’s thoughts while emphasising his solitude | Despite addressing the themes of confusion and punishment, ‘Half-past Two’ adopts a playful tone: | |
Strong and powerful imagery is used to illustrate the harsh reality of war and human suffering: | In contrast, the child’s perceptions to time and authority are presented through playful imagery: | |
Duffy’s poem uses to convey the photographer’s isolation from the public: “they” | The language conveys the child’s sense of wonder and naivete and ends positively as he is allowed to return to his school day |
Both poems are about the suffering of people who live in deprived areas of the world. Dharker highlights the poverty of people living in a slum in India and their joy at receiving water. Duffy highlights the hardships of people in war-torn, deprived areas by focusing on a photographer who has taken pictures of people in deprived and poverty-stricken parts of the world. Both 'War Photographer' and ‘Blessing’ employ powerful imagery to evoke vivid and poignant scenes, albeit in very different contexts.
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‘War Photographer’ presents powerful imagery through the depiction of “children in a nightmare heat: | Powerful imagery is also depicted in ‘Blessing’: | |
Painful memories are depicted: “a hundred agonies in black and white”: | The poem is about a ‘municipal’ pipe that bursts in an area where the land is so dry that skin ‘cracks like a pod’: | |
Duffy contrasts to show the photographer’s sense of detachment: | The poet uses sensory imagery: ‘drip’, ‘splash’, ‘echo’ and ‘crash’ is onomatopoeic and presents the reader with strong images of how the gift of water gradually builds-up to the steady flow of water | |
In ‘War Photographer’, religious imagery is used to compare the photographer’s actions with that of “a priest preparing to intone a mass”: | Similarly, in ‘Blessing’ the poet refers to a ‘kindly god’, ‘a congregation’: | |
In ‘War Photographer’, the colours are primary: “red”, “black” and “white”: | In ‘Blessing’, the poet uses a range of colours which suggest wealth, such as “silver”, “brass”, “copper”, “aluminium”, “liquid sun”: |
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The speaker focuses on the thoughts and feelings of the photographer and, at times, the photographer is fighting with himself over the ethics of his images: | The speaker of the poem uses language that reflects the benefits water offers to the community: | |
In ‘War Photographer’, the people whom the photographer observes are presented in a negative way, described as a “half-formed ghost” suffering a “hundred agonies”: | The people whom the speaker is referencing in the poem are initially deprived of water and therefore have skin that “cracks”: | |
In ‘War Photographer’, the structure is much tighter with four stanzas of six lines and a consistent rhyme scheme: The poet uses a rhyme scheme of ABBCDD but also uses internal rhyme: | The poet uses free verse in ‘Blessing’ to mirror the rush of water and the commotion that ensues: |
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Sam is a graduate in English Language and Literature, specialising in journalism and the history and varieties of English. Before teaching, Sam had a career in tourism in South Africa and Europe. After training to become a teacher, Sam taught English Language and Literature and Communication and Culture in three outstanding secondary schools across England. Her teaching experience began in nursery schools, where she achieved a qualification in Early Years Foundation education. Sam went on to train in the SEN department of a secondary school, working closely with visually impaired students. From there, she went on to manage KS3 and GCSE English language and literature, as well as leading the Sixth Form curriculum. During this time, Sam trained as an examiner in AQA and iGCSE and has marked GCSE English examinations across a range of specifications. She went on to tutor Business English, English as a Second Language and international GCSE English to students around the world, as well as tutoring A level, GCSE and KS3 students for educational provisions in England. Sam freelances as a ghostwriter on novels, business articles and reports, academic resources and non-fiction books.
By carol ann duffy, war photographer essay questions.
Describe how Duffy uses literary elements (for example, symbols, metaphors, irony, and setting) to connect the four stanzas. What similarities and contrasts are there across the stanzas in terms of literary elements?
We can point to many connections across the stanzas. The themes of suffering, memory, trauma, and religion are developed throughout the poem. For example, the first stanza describes "spools of suffering"; the second describes "ordinary pain"; the third stanza describes the "cries / of this man's wife"; and the fourth stanza references "agonies." By using many synonyms for pain (suffering, pain, agonies), Duffy conveys the same theme of suffering across different stanzas. There are also concrete symbols and objects that are connected across different stanzas. The chemical baths implied in the second stanza ("[s]olutions slop in trays") are described in the fourth stanza as finished photographs—"[a] hundred agonies in black and white." The reference to "grass" in the Bible verse "[a]ll flesh is grass" in the first stanza is reinforced in the third stanza, where the metaphorical grass is turned into blood-stained "dust."
We can also identify many contrasts. Each stanza represents a discrete step in the photographic development process: stanza one describes organizing the rows of trays; stanza two describes submerging the photographs in the trays to develop them; stanza three depicts the photographs beginning to develop; stanza four portrays the completed photographs. There is also a difference in tone across the stanzas. The first stanza is reflective and somber, describing the empty dark room, the "softly glow[ing] light," and the photographer "preparing" to work. The tension builds throughout the poem, with stanzas two and three using visceral imagery to depict the photographer struggling with his traumatic memories. The fourth stanza reduces this tension and returns to the introspective mood of the first, describing the photographer as cynically reflecting on the impassivity of his readers.
How does Duffy use sibilance in this poem?
Sibilance is the repetition of letter sounds that have a hushing or hissing quality. In the second line of the poem, Duffy utilizes sibilance by describing the "spools of suffering," the photographer is working with. This use of sibilance draws the reader to this line, emphasizing the pain and suffering that is contained within the spools. The words "spools" and "suffering" sound similar due to this use of sibilance, which rhetorically connects them together—the spools are closely attached to suffering because they physically contain depictions of the photographer's traumatic memories.
What does Duffy suggest about the documentation of warfare?
We are reminded throughout the poem that the photographer's job is to document the experiences of war. As such, this might bring up questions about people and organizations who profit from the documentation of warfare, and ask whether this is ethical or not. For example, the apathy with which the editor "will pick out five or six for Sunday's supplement" raises questions about the ethics of observing war but failing to intervene. At the same time, Duffy suggests that the photographer is "do[ing] what someone must" by depicting the violence. War photography can call people to action or serve to preserve memories of horrific warfare in order to help prevent it in the future.
The Question and Answer section for War Photographer is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.
what does the religious imagery in stanza 1 suggest about the photographer and his work
The priest imagery is a means of the photographer himself making sense of his work and using metaphor to shield himself from reality, which adds a further layer of meaning. Characteristic of those grappling with trauma, the photographer is unable...
why is the phrase "running children in a nightmare heat" effective
This seems like a powerful metaphor for the effect of war on children.
War Photographer study guide contains a biography of Carol Ann Duffy, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.
Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Carol Ann Duffy — The Presentation of Suffering in “Remains” and “War Photographer”
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"War Photographer" Essay
Choose a poem which explores the theme of loneliness or isolation. Show how the poet explores the theme and discuss, to what extent, your appreciation of the theme was deepened by the poet's treatment.
In your answer you may refer closely to the text and to at least two of the following; theme, imagery, contrast, mood or any other appropriate feature.
"War Photographer", a moving poem by Carol Ann Duffy, explores the theme of isloation. The poem, based on an interview the poet had with "War Photographer", Don McCullin, reveals the dilemma within his work and how this work results in his isolation. Through the use of theme and imagery, Duffy successfully deepens the reader's appreciation of the theme of isolation.
The opening line of the poem is ambiguous. Duffy, choosing not to expose the true and horrific nature to war, instead introduces the Photographer's "darkroom" where he will develop the photographs he has taken:
"In his darkroom he is finally alone"
This could suggests that the photographer uses his "darkroom" to reflect on the darkness of the events that he has winessed. The words "finally alone" imply that this place is a sanctuary for him, a haven to escape the brutality of warfare which he, himself has seen and captured. Metaphorically, this "darkroom" could signify a confessional box in a church in which he feels he can face up to his sins and seek forgiveness for his work which he considers expoitative. In this first line, the reader is instantly given a real insight into this photographer's isolation, he chooses to isolate himself as he cannot face the public who don't understand the moral dilemma within his work.
The theme of religion is predominent throughout the poem. The Photographer is repeatedly compared to a priest as they share many similarities both in their work and their isolation. Duffy suggests that the developing of these photographs is closely linked to the work of a priest:
" The only light is red and softly glows/ as though this were a church and he/ a priest preparing to intone a mass."
The red light mentioned here, literally meaning the infra-red light in the darkroom, interestingly is often refered to as a "safe-light" which could further suggest the photographer's need to isolate himself away from the world. The word "softly" reveals the comfort and security the man feels when he "finally" gets to the developing stage of his work in a safe and secluded room. This "light" also has religious connotations as it could be interpreted as the small red candles in a chapel to represent the holy spirit. The reader is given the impression that the photographer, much like a priest, is a man on a mission – preparing to spread the words of truth. While revealing this, the two such different occupations become linked through the photographer and the preist's self inflicted isolation. They have both in a way, sacraficed themselves for the greater cause of informing the nation.
As the developing process progresses, so do the photographer's thoughts and memories of the horrors he has witnessed. The imagery used to represent this gives the audience a real insight into his line of thought and reveals the extent of which his work affects him psychologically:
"A stranger's features/ faintly start to twist before his eyes
a half-formed ghost"
The impersonality of "a stranger's features" reveals the widespread perception of these people as meerly another victim of a war-stricken country rather than a fellow human being. The fact that the victim appears to him "faintly" suggests that this is how the memory is coming back to him while the almost onomatopoeic use of "twist" implies real and immense suffering. This is all materializing "before his eyes" which reinforces that it was he, himself that took the photograph and therfore stood by and witnessed this tradgedy. An almost haunting atmosphere is given by the use of "ghost" while it could be a subtle reference to the spirit of Christ (often refered to as the "Holy Ghost") and its presence during Mass, it also suggests that the photographer will forever be reminded of these images – the price he must pay for doing his job. This gives the reader a deeper understanding of the photographer's moral dilemma in his work which inevitably keeps him secluded. It suggests that it's his knowledge of the world's problems and the public's ignorance of such problems that isolate him.
The Second stanza winesses the photographer faltering to develop the photograph. His emotions reveal to the audience that there's a reluctance within his work, that he forces himself to develop them just as he forces himself to do the job because he knows he must. The dilemma he faces everytime he takes a photograph is introduced in this stanza:
"He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
beneath the hands which did not tremble then"
The abruptness of the ceasura in this first line reveals that the photographer, when he goes through the developing process, must keep his wits about him and remind himself of why he must get on with it while the use of "tremble" further reinforces his reluctance to do the job. The audience is given the impression that the photographer gets little job-satisfaction from taking these photographs. It's this job which cuts him off from the rest of the world as virtually him alone knows these horrors and is willing to damage himself psychologically for the chance to see others taking an interest in, not his work, but what his work represents – the effects of war on the human race on a personal and up-close level. He is willing to isolate himself for this cause.
Carol Ann Duffy's "War Photographer", an account of a photographer isolated by his moral dilemma, succesfully deepens the audience's appreciation of the theme of isolation itself. Through the effective employment of theme and imagery, Duffy explores his dilemma and how it isolates him from the rest of the world. Yet, he continues with his work to try and change the public's perception of these victims as meer foreigners. The photographer, with the hope that his work will one day make a difference, continues to take photographs in the face of evil and soul destroying suffering.
Word count – 984 words
I can successfully compare ‘Poppies’ and Duffy's ‘War Photographer’.
Key learning points.
The title of the poem 'Poppies' may cause the students to immediately link 'Poppies' with another WW1 poem e.g. 'Exposure'.
It is better to look at comparing poems on the basis of themes and big ideas rather than the time periods in which they were based. 'Poppies' is not a WW1 poem but instead uses the symbol of a poppy in the title to explore grief and loss.
Caustic - sarcastic in a scathing and bitter way
Asyndetic - a list separated by commas not conjunctions
Complementary - combining to emphasise the qualities of one another
You will need a copy of the AQA Power and Conflict poetry anthology for GCSE.
Adult supervision suggested.
This content is © Oak National Academy Limited ( 2024 ), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).
6 questions.
Caustic -
sarcastic in a scathing and bitter way
Asyndetic -
a list separated by commas not conjunctions
Complementary -
combining to emphasise the qualities of one another
Subject: English
Age range: 14-16
Resource type: Other
Last updated
21 November 2022
A full essay which explores the question: compare how poets present suffering in ‘Remains’ and one other poem in the power and conflict cluster.
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‘Prayer Before Birth’ and ‘War Photographer’ both reveal poets who are captivated by aspects of society and at the same time are concerned to explore the effects society has on individuals. Both poems are well structured and have imposing language.
Through her poem ‘War Photographer’, Carol Ann Duffy casts a harsh light on the destruction and bloodshed which results from war and how apathetic and uncaring the rest of the world, who is not directly affected by it, is.
The poem starts with a description of the war photographer standing alone in his darkroom. All the photos that he had taken of the war are contained within the rolls which are organized into neat rows, making him feel like a priest who is about to lead a mass funeral. He thinks of all the places he has been to, places which had been torn apart by war, and remembering all the bloodshed he has witnessed.
He feels that everything has to die in the end and return to the earth. He then carries on with his works, but the ironic fact is that he who wasn’t afraid while amidst gunfire and death, now trembles in the safety and sanctuary of his home in rural England, where the most troubling thing is the constantly changing weather and where he does not have to worry about the ground blowing up beneath his feet.
Duffy has used a number of literary devices to describe the horror and agony of war. The phrase ‘spools of suffering’ is a metaphor, along with containing alliteration, as it isn’t the spools that are suffering but the people pictured in the photographs they carry that are doing so. Also, there is a paradox in how he has organized suffering, the chaos of pain and war, into neatly ordered rows.
Again ‘ordered rows’ could act as a metaphor, comparing the rolls to the coffins of the dead soldiers which are neatly organized into rows. The red light is symbolic of the bloodshed that the photographer has witnessed. The imagery of ‘blood-stained into foreign dust’ compliments Duffy’s previous statement that ‘all flesh is grass.’ Also, ambiguity has been used in a couple of places to portray more than one idea to the reader.
In the third stanza, the half-developed picture is described as a ‘half formed ghost’. This either implies that the image is vague and faint or the fact that the photograph shows a dead man, whose spirit is somehow evoked by the developing photograph. The fourth stanza describes the photographs to be in ‘black and white.’ This could mean both the fact that the pictures are monochrome, without color; or the contrast between good and evil.
Louis MacNeice expresses a strong disgust towards the corrupted and evil world through Prayer before Birth in which he takes the persona of an unborn child who prays to God. The poem starts with a plea to be heard as the unborn child asks God to keep away the nocturnal creatures, both real and imaginary away from him so that they might not cause him any harm.
The unborn child’s need to be comforted against people who with the help of deadly drugs and clever lies will control him and dictate his actions is made clear in the second stanza. Wary of the influence man will have on him; the unborn asks to be surrounded by nature, which man has still not been able to corrupt. He prays for a clear conscience that can show him his way on the path of life.
The unborn child knows that he will do lots of evil things in this world under the influence of Man, and asks to be forgiven beforehand. Everything that he will say, think, or do will harm someone else, and for that he asks repentance. He then asks to be prepared beforehand for all the roles that he must play in life when the entire world turns against him to the extent that even his children hate him and the beggar is indifferent to him.
Louis MacNeice uses a number of literary devices to make the stark truth behind the poem clear. The most noticeable among these is the repetition: The phrase “I am not yet born” is repeated at the start of every stanza which makes it very clear that even though the child has not appeared in the world, he is aware of the darkness which surrounds it, giving a dark and hopeless tone to the poem.
Then the abundant use of assonance juxtaposed with alliteration such as the assonance of “bat” and “rat” and the alliteration of the letter B in “bloodsucking bat or rat” give an internal rhyme to the poem. Going on to the third stanza one finds nature personified in several instances: “Trees to talk to me. Skies to sing to me” Giving nature the qualities normally attributed to Man emphasizes the disgust that the unborn child feels towards the world as he wants nothing to do with it and craves the company of nature.
However, MacNeice contradicts himself by using the paradox in the next stanza “white waves call me to folly” where white waves, metaphorically resembling purity are personified to be beckoning the unborn towards evil. This thus proves that the intensity of corruption is such in the world that nothing, not even nature, can remain pure for long.
The last stanza is flowing in metaphors as the poet describes how mankind will manipulate the actions and emotions of the child. He fears that he’ll become a “cog in a machine” or be blown like “thistledown hither and thither” or be wasted like water held in hands. These metaphorical comparisons emphasize the acute absence of control that the unborn can exercise in his life.
‘Prayer Before Birth’ makes a sweeping statement on the deplorable state of the world. Living is a painful experience; being born is a terrifying one. The poem reflects the poet’s utter dejection and hopelessness expressing the thought that the world will not correct itself, but perpetuate its evils in an ever-ascending spiraling pattern of violence.
On the other hand, ‘War Photographer’ is a chilling and disturbing poem in general, which evokes many conflicting feelings, a feat which is accomplished widely by Duffy’s use of strong yet simple words to say complex things.
‘War Photographer’ and ‘Prayer Before Birth’ reveal to the reader poets who are fascinated by aspects of society and at the same time are concerned to explore the effects society has on individuals. Both poems are striking in their language and challenging in their subject-matter.
In War Photographer, the reader is given a graphic portrait of a man whose profession is war photography. The poem deals with the experiences he encounters when witnessing the cruelty of war, in parallel with his life back at home.
When he is at home, his darkroom is his sanctuary. Disturbed by all the sights of war that he has encountered in the killing fields of Asia, he is brought face to face with the nightmare scenes he has witnessed as they emerge on the film, trapped in eternity. He thinks of the mourning woman whose permission ‘he sought without words to do what someone must’ in order to take her dead husband’s picture, to bring this image of war’s horror back home.
As he travels from one realm to the other, from the everyday society in which he is living, with its ignorance and apathy, to the warfields where people suffer and die pointlessly, he is deeply saddened: he starts to hate his work and those, like him, who make a living out of recording the misery of others.
That man is the tragic image of our reality. All human values are lost. Wars are fought over wealth, hatred and greed; innocent people die and suffer over causes that have no value. He faces it, he lives it. He takes these moments of despair – ‘A hundred agonies in black-and-white’ and captures them forever in his film and heart, only so that an ‘editor will pick out five or six/ for Sunday’s supplement’.
The typical man will look at them and shed a hypocritical tear ‘between the bath and pre-lunch beers’, thinking he understands and sympathizes. Society lives carelessly of what happens in other parts of the world to people just like us. The war photographer, however, lives both kinds of reality – the mundane life at home in what Duffy describes as ‘Rural England’, a place where ‘fields don’t explode beneath the feet of running children’, and the remote, war-torn existence he records. The tension of these two worlds eats him up inside. He gives a picture of how we go on living, careless with our lives, while others suffer for futile reasons and excuses, and ends the poem with the strong comment ‘they do not care’.
In Prayer Before Birth, the poet presents us with a yet-to-be-born child who despises humanity and prays for death. The child’s words, from the outset, vividly present a picture of a society of demons and horrors: ‘the bloodsucking bat…. club-footed ghoul’. The effect is reinforced by assonance and harsh alliteration: ‘bat’, ‘rat’, ‘bloodsucking bat’.
Such striking sound effects recur throughout the poem; the unborn child fears that humanity may ‘with tall walls wall me’. At times, the horror is softened by softer reflections on what life might be, especially in the third stanza, where the harshness of the opening stanzas is replaced by a gentle view of nature and ‘a white light …to guide me’.
However, this tranquil mood does not last, and the inhumanity of humanity rapidly returns to haunt the unborn child, with fears of death and depersonalisation. He fears society will turn him into ‘a lethal automaton or a ’cog’.
The images are especially tragic because of the fact that we think of newborn children as innocent, so a child not even born yet ought to be even freer from cares: it has no knowledge or understanding of the world or life, but despite this prays not to have anything to do with it.
‘Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me/Otherwise kill me.’ The poem takes the form and style of prayer in its use of an initial repeated phrase, rather like the responses used in many prayers. The fact that the unborn child prays to a God whom we, with our experience of life, can barely comprehend, makes it even more chilling.
To find such despair on the lips of someone who has not lived highlights emphatically the deep flaws in a society that MacNeice feels. The human race, he shows, is one of sin and cruelty, and the pure words of a soul not yet delivered into this world tell the truth with frightening and disturbing honesty.
The two poems are profoundly unsettling in their imagery. They set out to present a strong contrast between a peaceful and simple society and one which is full of horrors: MacNeice’s ghouls are matched by Duffy’s ‘half-formed ghost’.
Both paint dark scenes where life becomes unbearable. Death is never far from the surface, and the settings with their religious imagery and intense feelings highlight the fears of what society is becoming.
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History | June 21, 2024
A new film dramatizes the story of a motorcycle club chronicled by Lyon in the 1960s, offering a tribute to the outlaw spirit
Ellen Wexler
Assistant Editor, Humanities
Danny Lyon considered himself a bikerider, but there were glaring differences between him and the members of the Chicago Outlaws , a notorious motorcycle club. They were blue-collar Midwesterners riding Harleys and living on the outskirts of society. Lyon was a college-educated photographer who rode a Triumph and toted around two cameras and a seven-pound tape recorder .
It was the mid-1960s, and Lyon was following in the footsteps of Hunter S. Thompson, the journalist who rode with—and wrote about —the Hells Angels around the same time. Lyon even sent a letter to Thompson, perhaps expecting encouragement from a like-minded chronicler. Instead, the writer advised Lyon to “get the hell out of that club. … I’ve seen the Angels work, and they scare the hell out of me.” Lyon bristled at this advice, which he later summed up thusly : “[Thompson] advised me not to join the Outlaws and to wear a helmet. I joined the club and seldom wore a helmet.”
Lyon documented the Outlaws for several years, but he was not an objective observer. When The Bikeriders , a collection of photographs and interviews, came out in 1968, Lyon—who had become a full member of the club in 1965—billed it as an “attempt to record and glorify the life of the American bikerider. It is a personal record, dealing mostly with bikeriders whom I know and care for.”
Now, more than 50 years later, The Bikeriders forms the basis of a new movie adaptation of the same name. Directed by Jeff Nichols , the film uses verbatim quotes from Lyon’s interviews for around 70 percent of its dialogue. The plot, meanwhile, is a work of fiction created by weaving the interviews together.
The movie is concerned less with telling a true story than with capturing the feeling of freeways and freedom, of outlaws and open roads—what Lyon calls the “spirit of the bikeriders: the spirit of the hand that twists open the throttle on the crackling engines of big bikes and rides them on racetracks or through traffic or, on occasion, into oblivion.”
Here’s what you need to know about The Bikeriders (both the book and the adaptation) as the film, which stars Austin Butler , Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy , arrives in theaters in the United States on Friday.
In 1957, about a decade before The Bikeriders , Jack Kerouac published On the Road , his famous chronicle of disillusioned, peripatetic young travelers wandering the country and searching for answers. One reviewer described Kerouac as a “kind of literary James Dean,” the actor responsible for a formidable percentage of the motorcycle’s cultural cachet.
Like many young men, Lyon, who was 15 when On the Road came out, was inspired by the book. In the summer of 1962, after wrapping up a semester at the University of Chicago, he asked friends to drop him off along Route 66, “ the road Jack Kerouac used ,” and hitchhiked to Cairo, Illinois, where he saw future congressman John Lewis speak and began photographing scenes from the civil rights movement. By 1964, he was back in Chicago , where he started planning The Bikeriders .
Around this time, Lyon wrote to a publisher about the project. When he revisited the letter many years later, he realized he came across as “a kind of crazy person who writes in this sub-Jack Kerouac-style prose about the open road and the freedom of being an outlaw,” as he told the Observer in 2014.
American motorcycle clubs were also fueled by this outlaw spirit. Their history stretches back to the end of World War II , when returning veterans —particularly those having trouble reintegrating into civilian life—began to form new groups. The lifestyle combined several values these former soldiers clung to: As Vox put it in 2015, “Nostalgia for the camaraderie and risk-taking of the war made the clubs’ focus on male bonding and dangerous activities like, say, riding motorcycles particularly attractive.”
Many such clubs were part of the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA). Membership in the organization, which was founded in 1924 and still exists today, requires adherence to strict rules. Some clubs resisted these rules and formed without the group’s stamp of approval. As Lyon wrote in The Bikeriders , they “are so far in spirit from attitudes of the AMA that they neither want nor could receive AMA sanction. These are known as outlaw clubs.”
Members of outlaw clubs are also known by another term: “ one-percenters .” This identifier comes from an oft-repeated (but possibly false) story about the AMA insisting that 99 percent of motorcyclists are mainstream, law-abiding Americans. The outlaw clubs proudly position themselves in that remaining 1 percent.
One of the first such clubs was the McCook Outlaws , which formed in McCook, Illinois, in the 1930s. After a period of dormancy during World War II, the group came back together and ultimately relocated to Chicago, becoming the Chicago Outlaws in the 1950s, about a decade before Lyon started tagging along.
Each of Lyon’s interviewees had a unique perspective on outlaw culture and how they fit into it. Cal, a former airman, had been to 18 countries and “seen what most people have read about.” Rodney Pink, meanwhile, was a motorcycle racer who insisted that “being on a motorcycle don’t make you special at all” and lamented that while “everyone wants to be part of something,” nobody wants to “have any responsibility unloaded on ’em.”
The bikeriders also spoke candidly about the dangers of their lifestyle. Johnny Goodpaster, who once broke his leg in 17 places, called such injuries an “occupational disease,” while “Funny Sonny” described watching a “little guy on his Honda” with a “helmet and everything” who accidentally drove over a cliff.
But as Lyon recalled in a 1997 preface to a new edition of the book, the “best storyteller” of the group was Kathy Bauer , 26, who “didn’t even ride a motorcycle, but was married to Benny, a member of the club.”
According to her interview, Kathy noticed Benny while she was at a bar with a friend, who advised her not to get involved. “Every time he gets up on his bike, he has an accident,” the friend warned. Benny persisted, planting himself outside Kathy’s house and refusing to go home.
“My boyfriend would still come over, and Benny would still sit here, and I’d tell him, ‘You better go home.’ And he wouldn’t go,” she recalled. “So finally, my boyfriend left, and Benny was still around. So he says, ‘Let me take you to the meeting. Everything’ll be real nice.’ So I went to the meeting. After that, I started goin’ out with him. I only went out with him, never with any of the other guys in the club. And five weeks later, I married him.”
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Danny Lyon (@dannylyonphotos2)
In The Bikeriders , Kathy describes the arc of the couple’s relationship in a series of startling anecdotes and off-the-cuff reflections:
I’ve had nothin’ but trouble since I married Benny. I’ve seen more jails, been to more courts and met more lawyers, and it’s only a year. That’s a short time for so much to happen. Benny thinks that when you die, you’re better off than when you’re living. You know, like when his dad died, he said, “It’s just as well, he’s better off that way.” When his friends got killed, well, they’re better off that way. No feelings. I thought I could change him, you know? Every woman thinks that she can change a guy. Not to her own ways, but to be different. Not to be different, but to be, I don’t know. Like he’s wild. I used to think he’d get over that. But he don’t.
Lyon’s book features one photograph of Kathy. Sporting a dark beehive haircut with side-swept bangs, she stands in a bathroom with three mirrors, each reflecting her profile at a slightly different angle. In the main reflection, she looks directly at the camera, lips slightly parted, at ease but alert.
Benny, meanwhile, is an elusive figure. While Kathy describes him at length, he was never interviewed. The book features two photographs identified as him: One shows him gripping a pool table covered with ring stains; his head hangs between his shoulders, obscuring his face. The other captures him from behind on his motorcycle, wearing a “Chicago Outlaws” jacket and backlit by headlights.
The film adaptation, which debuts Friday, follows characters based on Kathy (played by Comer), who also narrates the story, and Benny (Butler). Some scenes play out just as the anecdotes in the book, such as the pair’s first meeting. Kathy is at a bar with a friend when she notices Benny, who is leaning against a pool table in a nearly perfect recreation of Lyon’s photo. Here, though, he looks up. We see his face, hear his voice and find out what happens next.
Ahead of the movie premiere, Lyon heard from a man named Kirk: Kathy and Benny’s son. He learned that Kathy had died, but Benny was living in Florida. “So I call Benny up,” Lyon tells the Telegraph . “We have a great talk. He’s totally upbeat. And then he says, ‘Hey, you know the picture of me at the pool hall?’ I said, yeah. He says, ‘It’s not me.’ What? ‘Check out the tattoos. It’s not me.’”
The movie is structured in two parts. The first half follows a group of misfits finding a family; much like Lyon’s book, it is meant to “glorify the life of the American bikerider.” As one of the club members, Brucie (Damon Herriman), says, “We don’t belong nowhere else, so we belong together.” The second half is a darker meditation on the dangers of outlaw life. As members of a younger generation join up, they introduce a newfound aggression and propensity for cruelty.
“[The violence] in the second half is fairly cruel, and that’s the important part,” Nichols tells PA Media . “If you just have the first hour, this would be a film glamorizing violence. Nobody wants that, nobody needs that, the world doesn’t need that. If you take the two parts as the whole, I think it says, ‘Here are the consequences of choosing to live this kind of life.’”
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Benjamin Nichols (@benlucero74)
The book does not feature this second chapter. But while Lyon has retained an affection for the outsider spirit—“I like rebels and think they are intrinsic to the survival of our democracy,” he told the Chicago Reader in 2014—his views have evolved with time.
By the end of his stint with the Outlaws, Lyon was already growing disillusioned with the group. As he said to the Observer , he remembers getting into a “big disagreement with this guy who rolled out a huge Nazi flag as a picnic rug to put our beers on. By then, I had realized that some of these guys were not so romantic after all.”
Today, more than 300 outlaw motorcycle gangs operate across the United States. According to the Department of Justice , which defines the groups as “organizations whose members use their motorcycle clubs as conduits for criminal enterprises ,” the Outlaws have some 1,700 members in more than 100 chapters around the world. The club has engaged in criminal activities such as “arson, assault, explosives, extortion, fraud, homicide, intimidation, kidnapping, money laundering, prostitution, robbery, theft and weapons violations.”
The real Outlaws are “certainly aware of the film,” Nichols tells the Globe and Mail , but he has not had any contact with them. In the film, the club is called the Vandals, a fictional name intended to distance the project from existing groups, which the director had no desire to portray on screen. “If I’m being completely honest, I’m not really interested in contemporary biker culture,” he adds. “I was interested in the people in Danny’s book.”
Besides, Lyon believes the two groups have little in common. The people he knew in the 1960s were quite different from today’s biker types, whom he notices in connection with news events like the January 6 insurrection . Instead, the photographer tells A Rabbit’s Foot , the closest analogues are perhaps “the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux fighting the oil pipeline and the catastrophe of climate change.”
Today’s Outlaws appear to have an internet presence, albeit a limited one. One website, belonging to the Outlaws M.C. , instructs, “Everything is done face to face NOT online DO NOT write us asking how to join! Find an Outlaw and ask him!” Another site, belonging to the Outlaws M.C. World , features an article titled, “What is [an] Outlaw M.C. one-percenter today?” “To say that one-percenters are criminals or people of a lesser moral code than the rest of society is a tainted opinion,” the pseudonymous author argues. “We may not live by the rules of society, but we do live by its laws.”
Another language quibble: “Bikerider” is not a word, strictly speaking. It does not appear in the dictionary. According to Lyon, it is a word that once held a narrow definition, describing a subculture as it existed at a specific time and place.
“Back then in Chicago, they had a lot of names for things, names that were of the Midwest, and of that city, words belonging to that place and to the people who lived there,” wrote Lyon in the 1997 preface. “One of those words was bikeriders . No one there ever called them motorcyclists . The machines were called bikes , and the riders were called bikeriders . The word biker was simply never used in the Midwest by anyone at that time.”
After finding a publisher for the book, a copy editor explained that the title would need to be two words: The Bike Riders . Lyon pled his case—and won. In the years that followed, he was aghast to see “biker” become widespread. “I even use it myself,” he wrote. “The term that I heard and loved, and used with such pride, has all but been forgotten.”
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Ellen Wexler is Smithsonian magazine’s assistant digital editor, humanities.
W hat a time we are all living through. Like so many people, I have been watching the awful events happening in the Middle East over the last year and trying to determine how to react. I have been seeing the brazen antisemitic incidents in my own city and feeling a mix of anger, fear, and astonishment that we are at this place in our country. Saying nothing at this point feels like I am betraying my own conscience. But what do you say? How does one express the complicated and very real feelings in this scary world of social media, where it seems any sentiment opens you to online vitriol from one side or another? The issues we are dealing with are so nuanced and complicated that short statements cannot in any way express fully what I want to say from my heart. As a public advocate for refugees, I’ve been struggling to reconcile my silence with that work. Please bear with me as I explain. And to be clear, what I say here is my personal view, not that of any organization–it’s just how I feel.
I was given the opportunity in 2016 to work with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, a global organization dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights, and building a better future for people forced to flee their homes because of conflict and persecution. The agency was created to help the millions who fled the Second World War and leads international action to protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, ensuring that everyone has the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge from violence, persecution, or war at home.
With UNHCR I have visited refugees and those impacted by war and violence in Lebanon, Guatemala, Jordan, Poland, and Ukraine. I visited Lebanon just before the eighth anniversary of the Syrian conflict and met refugee families struggling to survive, among the millions living on the razor’s edge. I went to Kyiv after the full-scale Russian invasion and talked to people whose lives have been upended by this senseless war. I’ve advocated for refugees at the UN and in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, imploring the U.S. government not to look away from this global humanitarian crisis. I say this not to toot my own horn, but to explain that for me, if I am to speak out about these issues in these places, I can’t ignore the crisis that is front and center in the world right now.
I am Jewish. I’m also half Irish. My father’s mother came to the United States as a refugee from Poland. His father’s grandfather came from Ukraine, where over 100,000 Jewish people lost their lives in the ethnic pogroms that preceded the great horror of the Holocaust by just two decades. My mother’s grandparents came from Ireland seeking a better life. They arrived in New York with a surplus of hope and not much else.
My dad served in the U.S. Army at the end of World War II. He met my mom and they got married–he was Jewish, she was Catholic. At the time that was an issue. They dealt with judgment from both sides of their families and the outside world. They turned that tension into humor and based their stand-up comedy act on their ethnic differences, which brought them together – and brought them success.
My mom converted to Judaism when they married. Ours was not a religious household, but we learned the traditions of inclusion and tolerance. After my Bar Mitzvah, I didn’t really go back to synagogue too often. But I always felt connected to my heritage, both Irish and Jewish, and valued the bonds I saw formed by both sides of my family. Eventually they came together through my parents’ love for each other. It was a palpable and beautiful thing I experienced as a child. As a kid growing up surrounded by that love, in New York City in the ‘70s, I never really experienced antisemitism. Where we find ourselves now is a place I never thought I would be.
Like so many Jews I grieve for those who suffered in the barbaric Hamas attack on October 7 and for those who have suffered as a result of those atrocities . My heart aches for the families who lost loved ones to this heinous act of terrorism and for those anxiously waiting these long months for the return of the hostages still in captivity. It’s a nightmare. I also grieve for the innocent people in Gaza who have lost their lives in this conflict and those suffering through that awful reality now.
I detest war, but what Hamas did was unconscionable and reprehensible. The hostages have to be freed. Terrorism must be named and fought by all people of conscience on the planet. There is no excuse for it under any circumstances.
I stand with the Israeli people and their right to live in peace and safety. At the same time, I don’t agree with all of the Israeli government’s choices on how they are conducting the war. I want the violence to end, and the innocent Palestinian people affected by the humanitarian crisis that has resulted to receive the lifesaving aid they need. And I know that many in Israel share this sentiment.
I believe, as many people in Israel and around the world do, in the need for a two-state solution, one that ensures that the Israeli people can live in peace and safety alongside a homeland for the Palestinian people that provides them the same benefits.
I also see a troubling conflation in criticism of the actions of the Israeli government with denunciations of all Israelis and Jewish people. And as a result, we are seeing an undeniable rise in global antisemitism. I am seeing it myself, on the streets of the city I grew up in. It isn’t right and must be denounced.
Antisemitism must be condemned whenever it happens and wherever it exists. As should Islamophobia and bigotry of all kinds. There is a frightening amnesia for history in the air. We must remind ourselves that we can only manifest a more hopeful, just, and peaceful future by learning from the past.
Obviously I am no politician or diplomat. I have no solutions for these world conflicts and claim to offer none. I think I, like so many people, am struggling with how to process this all. But as an advocate for displaced people, I do believe this war must end. As I write this, there are about 120 million people all over the world who have been displaced by conflicts. In the Middle East, in Ukraine, Sudan, and many other countries. They all deserve to live in safety and peace. The human suffering must end. We must demand this of our leaders. Peace is the only path.
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Ukraine is caught in a strategic trap. It barely has the strength to keep Russia from making major advances, yet it is not strong enough to eject Russian forces from the territory it held prior to the 2022 invasion. The result is a war of attrition that Ukraine can't win.
The solution? Build up Ukrainian military power and compel Russia to agree to peace, argues a Ukrainian security expert. But that can't happen unless Ukraine devises a grand strategy that extends beyond mere survival that's characterized much of the war in 2024 as Russia exploited the long delay of US arms support.
"The lack of a strategy for victory will turn this war into a war of attrition for Ukraine, which completely coincides with Russian interests," Oleksandr Danylyuk told Business Insider.
Danylyuk dismisses the notion that even with Western aid, Ukraine can match Russia in the sheer numbers of military power like tanks, artillery and troops. "Trying to win a war with Russia at the expense of only a symmetrical mass increase is a flawed strategy, given that Russia has a larger number of [military-age] human reserves (about 30 million people in Russia, compared to about 8 million people in Ukraine), significant stockpiles of weapons and military equipment inherited from the USSR or built by 2022, as well as a developed defense-industrial complex and a powerful mining industry that satisfies its needs for a significant amount of strategic materials," he wrote in an essay for the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.
That leaves improving the quality of Ukraine's military. But this involves more than better weapons and tactics. Danylyuk argues that political mobilization is just as important, a view that seems reminiscent of the 19th Century German military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz, who envisioned a nation's war effort as a trinity comprised of the people, government and military.
"The political effectiveness of a military organization consists of its ability to receive financial support, the provision of weapons and military equipment, and the replenishment of human forces in the volume and quality necessary to eliminate existing threats," Danylyuk wrote. However, "the political effectiveness of the [Armed Forces of Ukraine] remains insufficient, as Ukraine's defense needs are currently only partially met."
Danylyuk blames Western restrictions on the types of weapons being supplied, and how they can be used. The US and Europe have long imposed restraints on using long-range weapons, such as ATACMS long-range guided rockets , to hit targets deep inside Russia. Only recently has the Biden administration begun to relax that policy . Easy victories with Western weapons have failed to materialize as the war has dug in. It's also clear that even with robust EU and US support, Ukraine is still at a disadvantage against the Russian war machine in a years-long fight.
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Danylyuk also worries that political divergences between Ukraine and its allies are undermining Ukrainian military effectiveness. Ukraine's current government wants to liberate all occupied territory, which is "undeniably fair and rational, but it ignores the fact that the liberation of territory does not necessarily mean the end of the war," he wrote. On the other hand, US and European desires for a negotiated settlement "will be viewed by Russia as a tactical respite which can be used to restore and build capabilities and plan a new phase of aggression."
In other words, Russia could exploit a peace deal to rebuild its battered forces before launching another invasion of Ukrainian lands.
The result is that the Ukrainian military isn't sure what kind of war to prepare for. "The AFU are in an extremely difficult situation, as the political leaderships of both Ukraine and its partner countries see these goals in different ways, which negatively affects the ability of the AFU to develop and implement a military strategy aimed at achieving them," wrote Danylyuk.
Without a grand strategy for victory, the most that Ukraine can do is hold its own, Danylyuk told Business Insider. "The planning of individual operations, the assessment and provision of the needs of the AFU, the development of training programs and preparation, and the introduction of new tactical techniques can at best support Ukraine's ability to conduct the war, but not to win it."
There are too many competing visions of Ukrainian victory, he argues. These include retaking all lost Ukrainian territory, threatening Russia's hold on Crimea to force it into negotiations, punishing Russian industry and exports to try to force Russians to reconsider the war's costs, or exacting such a heavy toll that Russian leaders are compelled to withdraw similar to the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan.
Danylyuk does fault Ukraine for some military mistakes, such as failure to adequately prepare and train for the failed counteroffensive against well-entrenched Russian forces in summer 2023. But he considers tactical improvements to be at the bottom of Ukraine's to-do list.
The West can boost Ukrainian military power by focusing on weapons that have already proven devastating against Russian vulnerabilities, according to Danylyuk. This includes cheap naval drones that have sunk numerous Russian warships and driven Russia's Black Sea Fleet from the Ukrainian coast, as well as giving Ukraine more Western aircraft and air-to-air missiles to contest Russian airpower.
Interestingly, Danylyuk blames the West for failing to adapt its equipment to the lessons of the Ukraine war. "This concerns, first of all, their ability to quickly improve military equipment not only because Ukraine needs it, but also because the security of the partners themselves depends on its improvement. The current pace of this improvement is completely unsatisfactory, and the approaches to identifying and eliminating the shortcomings of such systems require a complete revision."
Danylyuk's analysis does leave some questions unanswered. For example, as the Germans discovered on the Eastern Front in World War II, quality doesn't always triumph over quantity. And as Ukraine's failed 2023 counteroffensive demonstrated, achieving decisive battlefield success is no easy matter . With Russian society mobilized for total war, and with Moscow able to procure resources from allies such as China, North Korea and Iran, Russia's ability to wage a long war is considerable.
Also, choosing a grand strategy is easier said than done. For example, the Ukrainian government vows to liberate all occupied territory, including the Crimean peninsula and eastern Ukraine which Russia has annexed. Some critics say this is unrealistic, and Ukraine will have to accept some loss of territory.
Whatever strategy Kyiv chooses, Danylyuk argues, it can't be the status quo.
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn .
BJP leaders accused Asaduddin Owaisi of violating the Indian Constitution by chanting for Palestine.
A usually staid swearing-in procedure where Indian parliamentarians take their oath of office has exploded into a controversy after veteran opposition legislator Asaduddin Owaisi chanted “Jai Palestine” after reading out the pledge on Tuesday.
In Sanskrit, the word “jai” literally translates to victory, but is used more broadly to connote support, so in effect, Owaisi’s slogan amounted to: “Long live Palestine.”
India election results: did ‘secular’ parties let muslims down, too, mapping which countries recognise palestine in 2024, coca-cola ad in bangladesh sparks backlash for ‘denying ties with israel’, india exports rockets, explosives to israel amid gaza war, documents reveal.
Parliamentarians from the governing Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have accused him of violating the very constitutional pledge he was taking by, according to them, demonstrating loyalty to another nation – a charge Owaisi has denied.
So what really happened, why have Owaisi’s words become controversial, what else happened in the Indian Parliament on Tuesday and what’s next for Owaisi?
Owaisi took his oath as a member of parliament (MP), alongside 542 other legislators who were declared winners of India’s mammoth national election.
The white kurta-clad Owaisi advanced to the podium in Parliament amid scattered applause from other parliamentarians before reading out his oath in Urdu.
“I, Asaduddin Owaisi, who has been elected as a Lok Sabha member, swear in the name of Allah, that I will remain solemn and loyal to the Constitution of India. I will maintain the supremacy and integrity of India and I will fulfil my duties, assigned to me under this position, with loyalty,” he pledged in Urdu. The Lok Sabha is the directly elected lower house of India’s Parliament.
Then, he chanted “Jai Bhim, Jai Meem, Jai Telangana, Jai Filisteen” before stepping away from the podium.
“Jai Bhim” is a pro-Dalit slogan that refers to Bhimrao Ambedkar, the Dalit founding father of the Indian Constitution. Dalits have historically been at the bottom of India’s complex caste hierarchy. Meem is a part of the Urdu alphabet that transcribes closely to “M” in English, and Owaisi is believed to have been referring to his party, the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) , mostly known just as MIM – pronounced “meem”.
Telangana is the state Owaisi comes from, and Filisteen is the Urdu and Hindi word for Palestine.
Sworn in as member of Lok Sabha for the fifth time. Inshallah I will continue to raise issues of India’s marginalised with sincerity pic.twitter.com/OloVk6D65B — Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) June 25, 2024
Asaduddin Owaisi has been a five-time MP of the Lok Sabha, from Telangana’s Hyderabad constituency since 2004. He comes from a political family and was preceded by his father, Salahuddin Owaisi, a six-time MP of Hyderabad from 1984 to 2004.
Owaisi is also the president of the AIMIM since 2008. The regional party’s manifesto espouses Muslim rights , the broader rights of all religious minorities, as well as Dalit rights. Owaisi is also known for his fiery oratory in Parliament.
During this election, AIMIM was neither part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) spearheaded by the BJP, nor was it allied with the opposition INDIA alliance led by the Congress Party.
In evoking Palestine, and effectively invoking Israel’s war on Gaza, Owaisi drew criticism and allegations that he had signalled his allegiance to Palestine.
BJP members argued that Owaisi flouted the Indian Constitution. The BJP’s information technology head, Amit Malviya posted on X on Tuesday: “As per extant rules, Asaduddin Owaisi can be disqualified from his Lok Sabha membership, for demonstrating adherence to a foreign State, that is Palestine”.
Malviya posted a snippet of Article 102 of the Indian Constitution, that lays out grounds for disqualification from Parliament, underlining a clause of the article that says a person shall be disqualified for showing adherence to a foreign state.
As per extant rules, Asaduddin Owaisi can be disqualified from his Lok Sabha membership, for demonstrating adherence to a foreign State, that is Palestine. Please note: @LokSabhaSectt pic.twitter.com/wh7bYbep8p — Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) June 25, 2024
Yet, other experts said Owaisi had broken no rule – even if he had deviated from convention, like many other politicians on Tuesday.
“I don’t think [Owaisi can be disqualified] because while taking the oath, nearly all members have raised different kinds of slogans,” political analyst and Hindi professor Apoorvanand told Al Jazeera.
Apoorvanand explained that while being sworn into office after earlier elections , parliamentarians would typically confine themselves to the oath. “This time, the election was different and different issues were at stake. The atmosphere became different and members felt the need to express themselves”. The election was a tense, high-strung contest between the BJP and the Congress-led INDIA alliance, in which Modi’s party failed to win a majority for the first time after a decade in power, but managed to form a government in coalition with allies.
Apoorvanand also pointed out that Owaisi’s Palestine chant had come after he had completed his official oath – in which he had pledged allegiance to India.
“Hailing Palestine does not violate the Constitution of India. You’ve taken the oath and after that, if you say anything, it’s not on record,” said Apoorvanand.
Even the BJP’s Radha Mohan Singh, who was in the chairperson’s seat, tried to reassure angry BJP parliamentarians that slogans made after the oath-taking would not go on the record.
Still, local media reported that Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said he would review the rules regarding this issue.
The BJP’s Chhatra Pal Singh Gangwar ended his oath with “Jai Hindu Rashtra” (Long live the Hindu nation). The BJP’s ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) , has long called for India to be made a Hindu state.
Gangwar’s chant drew protest slogans from lawmakers belonging to the INDIA alliance. India is constitutionally a secular nation. Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav objected to the chant, saying that “it was against the values of the Constitution.”
Another BJP member, Atul Garg, said “Narendra Modi Zindabad” [long live Modi] after he took his oath. Heckled by the opposition, he returned to the podium and said “Dr Hedgewar Zindabad,” referring to Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS.
Many opposition legislators, including Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Congress party, and Yadav, took the oath while holding out a copy of the Indian Constitution in their hands as a sign of protest against the alleged excesses of the BJP under Modi.
However, Modi and other BJP leaders hit back, accusing the Congress of hypocrisy. Tuesday also marked the anniversary of the imposition of a state of national emergency by then-Congress Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975. During the state of emergency that was lifted in 1977, thousands of critics and political activists were arrested, civil liberties were suspended, and the press faced a crackdown.
“Those who imposed the Emergency have no right to profess their love for our Constitution,” Modi wrote in an X post on Tuesday.
Apoorvanand argued that the myriad debates that erupted out of Tuesday’s oath-taking ceremony pointed to a more complex reality confronting India.
“The election hasn’t ended yet, unlike previous years,” he said. “This battle is continuing and has not ended with the declaration of results.”
B Y THE TIME children born today are in kindergarten, artificial intelligence ( AI ) will probably have surpassed humans at all cognitive tasks, from science to creativity. When I first predicted in 1999 that we would have such artificial general intelligence ( AGI ) by 2029, most experts thought I’d switched to writing fiction. But since the spectacular breakthroughs of the past few years, many experts think we will have AGI even sooner—so I’ve technically gone from being an optimist to a pessimist, without changing my prediction at all.
After working in the field for 61 years—longer than anyone else alive—I am gratified to see AI at the heart of global conversation. Yet most commentary misses how large language models like Chat GPT and Gemini fit into an even larger story. AI is about to make the leap from revolutionising just the digital world to transforming the physical world as well. This will bring countless benefits, but three areas have especially profound implications: energy, manufacturing and medicine.
Sources of energy are among civilisation’s most fundamental resources. For two centuries the world has needed dirty, non-renewable fossil fuels. Yet harvesting just 0.01% of the sunlight the Earth receives would cover all human energy consumption. Since 1975, solar cells have become 99.7% cheaper per watt of capacity, allowing worldwide capacity to increase by around 2m times. So why doesn’t solar energy dominate yet?
The problem is two-fold. First, photovoltaic materials remain too expensive and inefficient to replace coal and gas completely. Second, because solar generation varies on both diurnal (day/night) and annual (summer/winter) scales, huge amounts of energy need to be stored until needed—and today’s battery technology isn’t quite cost-effective enough. The laws of physics suggest that massive improvements are possible, but the range of chemical possibilities to explore is so enormous that scientists have made achingly slow progress.
By contrast, AI can rapidly sift through billions of chemistries in simulation, and is already driving innovations in both photovoltaics and batteries. This is poised to accelerate dramatically. In all of history until November 2023, humans had discovered about 20,000 stable inorganic compounds for use across all technologies. Then, Google’s GN o ME AI discovered far more, increasing that figure overnight to 421,000. Yet this barely scratches the surface of materials-science applications. Once vastly smarter AGI finds fully optimal materials, photovoltaic megaprojects will become viable and solar energy can be so abundant as to be almost free.
Energy abundance enables another revolution: in manufacturing. The costs of almost all goods—from food and clothing to electronics and cars—come largely from a few common factors such as energy, labour (including cognitive labour like R & D and design) and raw materials. AI is on course to vastly lower all these costs.
After cheap, abundant solar energy, the next component is human labour, which is often backbreaking and dangerous. AI is making big strides in robotics that can greatly reduce labour costs. Robotics will also reduce raw-material extraction costs, and AI is finding ways to replace expensive rare-earth elements with common ones like zirconium, silicon and carbon-based graphene. Together, this means that most kinds of goods will become amazingly cheap and abundant.
These advanced manufacturing capabilities will allow the price-performance of computing to maintain the exponential trajectory of the past century—a 75-quadrillion-fold improvement since 1939. This is due to a feedback loop: today’s cutting-edge AI chips are used to optimise designs for next-generation chips. In terms of calculations per second per constant dollar, the best hardware available last November could do 48bn. Nvidia’s new B 200 GPU s exceed 500bn.
As we build the titanic computing power needed to simulate biology, we’ll unlock the third physical revolution from AI : medicine. Despite 200 years of dramatic progress, our understanding of the human body is still built on messy approximations that are usually mostly right for most patients, but probably aren’t totally right for you . Tens of thousands of Americans a year die from reactions to drugs that studies said should help them.
Yet AI is starting to turn medicine into an exact science. Instead of painstaking trial-and-error in an experimental lab, molecular biosimulation—precise computer modelling that aids the study of the human body and how drugs work—can quickly assess billions of options to find the most promising medicines. Last summer the first drug designed end-to-end by AI entered phase-2 trials for treating idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease. Dozens of other AI -designed drugs are now entering trials.
Both the drug-discovery and trial pipelines will be supercharged as simulations incorporate the immensely richer data that AI makes possible. In all of history until 2022, science had determined the shapes of around 190,000 proteins. That year DeepMind’s AlphaFold 2 discovered over 200m, which have been released free of charge to researchers to help develop new treatments.
Much more laboratory research is needed to populate larger simulations accurately, but the roadmap is clear. Next, AI will simulate protein complexes, then organelles, cells, tissues, organs and—eventually—the whole body.
This will ultimately replace today’s clinical trials, which are expensive, risky, slow and statistically underpowered. Even in a phase-3 trial, there’s probably not one single subject who matches you on every relevant factor of genetics, lifestyle, comorbidities, drug interactions and disease variation.
Digital trials will let us tailor medicines to each individual patient. The potential is breathtaking: to cure not just diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s, but the harmful effects of ageing itself.
Today, scientific progress gives the average American or Briton an extra six to seven weeks of life expectancy each year. When AGI gives us full mastery over cellular biology, these gains will sharply accelerate. Once annual increases in life expectancy reach 12 months, we’ll achieve “longevity escape velocity”. For people diligent about healthy habits and using new therapies, I believe this will happen between 2029 and 2035—at which point ageing will not increase their annual chance of dying. And thanks to exponential price-performance improvement in computing, AI -driven therapies that are expensive at first will quickly become widely available.
This is AI ’s most transformative promise: longer, healthier lives unbounded by the scarcity and frailty that have limited humanity since its beginnings. ■
Ray Kurzweil is a computer scientist, inventor and the author of books including “The Age of Intelligent Machines” (1990), “The Age of Spiritual Machines” (1999) and “The Singularity is Near” (2005). His new book, “The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge with AI”, will be published on June 25th.
By invitation june 22nd 2024, vladimir putin’s war against ukraine is part of his revolution against the west.
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The Biden administration has played dirty and shown staggering incompetence, argues Joe Lonsdale
Or it could try to change the EU from within—which would be worse, reckons Jean Pisani-Ferry
It is more in touch with voters, says the longest-serving female MP—but there is more work to do
He is leading Russia into a new phase of strategic confrontation, says Stephen Covington, a longtime NATO adviser
Bringing gene therapies and obesity drugs to the masses will require financial innovation too, says Steven Pearson
They need to be clear about what opposing populism does and doesn’t mean, argues Yair Zivan
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Powered by LitCharts content and AI. "War Photographer" is a poem by Scottish writer Carol Ann Duffy, the United Kingdom's poet laureate from 2009 to 2019. Originally published in 1985, "War Photographer" depicts the experiences of a photographer who returns home to England to develop the hundreds of photos he has taken in an unspecified war zone.
While Duffy's War Photographer uses a detached, third-person voice, Weir chooses a nostalgic and emotional first-person reflection in Poppies to portray the wide-reaching impact of conflict. Evidence and analysis. War Photographer. Poppies. Duffy distances the reader by telling the story of a photographer in a dark-room in third-person narration.
Carol Ann Duffy. 'War Photographer' Poem. 'War Photographer' is a poem that focuses on a man who is in the process of developing his latest batch of images from his latest war. He is in a darkroom, a place where chemicals meet to produce photographic images. Carol Ann Duffy was inspired to write this poem, first published in 1985 in her book ...
Both 'War Photographer' and 'Remains' explore guilt. In the third stanza of War Photographer, Duffy makes the photographer's guilt clear by writing that he sees a 'half-formed ghost' when he develops one of the photographs. Duffy's imagery in the words 'half-formed' helps the reader to imagine the photograph slowly ...
Here is an exemplar AQA Power and Conflict poetry essay - Grade 9 GCSE standard - based upon the AQA English Literature exam (June 2019). The essay compares two poems from the Power and Conflict collection (AQA exam board) and would achieve full marks. ... In 'War Photographer', there is a semantic field of violence, which conveys the ...
War Photographer Study Guide. " War Photographer " initially appeared in Carol Ann Duffy 's first published collection of poetry, Standing Female Nude (1985). The poem depicts a photographer developing pictures he has taken in different war zones and reflecting on the pain and trauma inflicted by war on both soldiers and society more broadly.
AQA Power and Conflict. War Photographer by Carol Ann Duffy examines the emotions and frustrations of a photographer who has come home from conflict situations to develop the images he has taken. The poem explores the role of the media in documenting wars, and the response of the general public. It is a challenging read.
War photographer War photographer. War photographer. This poem addresses the peculiar challenge faced by war photographers, whose job requires them to record terrible, horrific events without ...
War Photographer Summary and Analysis of lines 1-6. Summary. The first stanza introduces the photographer, using only the pronoun "he.". The photographer is alone in his "dark room.". A darkroom is a completely dark room that is used by photographers to process "negatives"—undeveloped images registered on film—into full black ...
For Higher English study a poem which looks at the challenges faced by war photographers and explores the job of recording horrific events. ... Writing a Descriptive Essay; Scottish Poetry Library ...
Carol Ann Duffy. Nationality: Poem Analyzed by Dharmender Kumar. Degrees in English Literature, Mass Communication, and Law. ' War Photographer ' begins in a very private setting, which is "In his darkroom," which means a place of peace and tranquillity. The man (photographer) has been to all the trouble spots of the world, such as ...
A summary of the poem 'War Photographer'. 'War Photographer' was written by the poet Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2019. Published in 1985, 'War Photographer' depicts the solitary experience of a photographer at home in England developing photographs taken in conflicts around the world.
War Photographer Essay Questions. 1. Describe how Duffy uses literary elements (for example, symbols, metaphors, irony, and setting) to connect the four stanzas. What similarities and contrasts are there across the stanzas in terms of literary elements?
The war photographer clearly makes an experienced attempt at detaching himself from the "hundred agonies in black-and-white" so he can focus on the work at hand as a desperate coping mechanism, however a certain memory weaves its way to the front of his mind as he remembers "the cries of this man's wife" and reconnects with a very ...
GCSE Grade 9 AQA Power and Conflict Poetry Essay - Comparing Carol Ann Duffy's 'War Photographer' with Simon Armitage's 'Remains'You can also access this com...
GCSE English. "War Photographer" Essay. Choose a poem which explores the theme of loneliness or isolation. Show how the poet explores the theme and discuss, to what extent, your appreciation of the theme was deepened by the poet's treatment. In your answer you may refer closely to the text and to at least two of the following; theme, imagery ...
For your 'Power and Conflict' essay, you will be given one poem and you have to choose one to compare it with. 'Poppies' could compare well with 'Remains', 'Kamikaze' or Duffy's 'War Photographer'. 'Poppies' and 'Kamikaze' explore less-recognised perspectives of war and show that these are nonetheless painful.
War Photographer. Carol Ann Duffy. In his dark room he is finally alone. with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows. The only light is red and softly glows, as though this were a church and he. a priest preparing to intone a Mass. Belfast.
MRS BOURNE WAR PHOTOG UESTION AND MARK SCHEME 20.9.2017 Modern Poetry Read the following poem, 'War Photographer' by Carol Ann Duffy and then answer the question that follows. In this poem Duffy explores the role of a war photographer. Explore how Duffy, presents the impact of conflict in the poem and compare with one other poem of your choice
The agonies of war are curated for the Sunday .supplementary papers. This seems distasteful. The use of alliteration emphasises the readers' frivolous nature. The singsong rhyme 'beers' and 'tears' also suggests this. While the readers are seemingly moved to tears, these seem disingenuous to photographer; he later states 'They do not care'.
A full essay which explores the question: compare how poets present suffering in 'Remains' and one other poem in the power and conflict cluster. International; ... 'Remains' and 'War Photographer' essay 24/30 Grade 7/8. Subject: English. Age range: 14-16. Resource type: Other. vlittler1. 3.93 41 reviews. Last updated. 21 November 2022 ...
Essay #2. 'War Photographer' and 'Prayer Before Birth' reveal to the reader poets who are fascinated by aspects of society and at the same time are concerned to explore the effects society has on individuals. Both poems are striking in their language and challenging in their subject-matter. In War Photographer, the reader is given a ...
In the midst of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the resilience of the Ukrainian people shines in the photographer Brett Lloyd's photo essay, "Ukraine Today." Commissioned by Vogue Ukraine ...
After a period of dormancy during World War II, the group came back together and ultimately relocated to Chicago, becoming the Chicago Outlaws in the 1950s, about a decade before Lyon started ...
In an essay, Stiller writes about reconciling about his work as a public advocate for refugees with the difficulty of speaking about the Israel-Hamas war. The actor, filmmaker, and humanitarian is ...
"Trying to win a war with Russia at the expense of only a symmetrical mass increase is a flawed strategy, given that Russia has a larger number of [military-age] human reserves (about 30 million ...
In evoking Palestine, and effectively invoking Israel's war on Gaza, Owaisi drew criticism and allegations that he had signalled his allegiance to Palestine. BJP members argued that Owaisi ...
Mr. Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, whose support Mr. Netanyahu needs to maintain his government, are strongly opposed to stopping the war in Gaza, even for a temporary truce.
Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine is part of his revolution against the West From the June 22nd 2024 edition Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
In a tribute delivered 40 years later from a Normandy cliff, President Ronald Reagan reminded us that "the boys of Pointe du Hoc" were "heroes who helped end a war."