Friday 19th of April 2024
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full frontals...

full frontals

A copy of Michelangelo's David recently put on show in central St Petersburg may be dressed up because a resident objected to its nakedness.

Organisers of a sculpture exhibition in the city say they'll ask residents to decide whether to cover up the 5m (16ft) plastic statue, after a local woman complained to the children's rights ombudsman that it was an eyesore and a bad influence on pupils at a nearby school, the Lenta website reports. "How could you put this bloke without any trousers on in the centre of St Petersburg, next to a school and a church?" the ombudsman's website quotes the letter as saying. "This giant spoils the city's historic appearance and warps children's souls."

Its officials apparently tried to convince the woman that Russia's former imperial capital contained many such statues and residents are accustomed to their state of undress, but to no avail. "Children are around, looking at this giant nude man. Is that normal?" she responded, and warned she'd take the matter further. She was even unfazed by school director Maksim Pratusevich's assurance that his students were "sufficiently cultured and educated" not to be shocked by the Renaissance masterpiece.

Her determination may yet win out, it seems. An official of the Michelangelo - Creation of the World exhibition told the RIA-Novosti news agency it "couldn't ignore the criticism". Under the "Dress David" initiative, city residents will first be asked to suggest clothes for the statue, and will then vote in a 16-23 August poll on what to put him in, with one option being to just "keep him as he is".

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-36913915

 

Meanwhile at Pell Inc.:

 

A man has spoken publicly about allegedly seeing Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, expose himself to a group of young boys at a surf lifesaving club in the late 1980s.

Les Tyack, from Victoria, who reported the alleged incident to police and also provided a statement to the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, has gone public with his story in the hope it will support survivors who have also spoken out about coverups and abuse by members of the hierarchy of the Catholic church.

Tyack told Guardian Australia: “I witnessed Pell involved in a situation where he very clearly exposed himself to three young boys at Torquay Life Saving Club in the summer of 1986 or 87.”

Tyack has also spoken to the ABC’s 7.30 program, which reported police are investigating multiple child abuse allegations against Pell along with Tyack’s allegation.

Pell has denied all the allegations, saying they are “totally untrue and completely wrong” and “nothing more than a scandalous smear campaign”. He said if the claims had “any credibility,” they would have been pursued by the royal commission by now.

The other allegations involve two former St Alipius students, who allege Pell repeatedly touched their genitals while swimming with them at the Eureka pool in Ballarat in 1978-79. At the time, Pell was episcopal vicar for education in the Ballarat diocese.

read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jul/28/george-pell-exposed-himself-to-young-boys-at-surf-club-says-victorian-man

 

The obvious best cover up is a Tony Abbott red Speedo, as suggested by Gus in the picture above. And when curious kids ask what's in the bulge, the simple answer is: "budgies".

 

 

the naked truth...

Mainstream media can apparently no longer tell the difference between when Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is being bombastic and when he’s joking. Telling the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton and the State Department was the latter, he says.


On Wednesday, news outlets across the country freaked out when Trump weighed in on the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) leaked emails and Clinton’s use of a private email server when serving as secretary of state. The comments were made during a speech at Trump National Doral, in Doral, Florida.
https://www.rt.com/usa/353758-trump-sarcastic-russia-emails/

Note to Donald: please do not make jokes. The media is dumber than it looks, especially the pseudo-intellectual media. I was waiting on how long it would take Donald to have to explain he had made a sarcastic comment about the DNC and their emails hacks, because the MMMM was so enamoured with Hillary that they could not see that Donald was taking the piss.

facebook pc filters gone mad...

verboden

Met een ludiek filmpje én een open brief stelt Toerisme Vlaanderen samen met een netwerk van musea en culturele instanties de artistieke censuur op populaire sociale media in vraag. https://www.toerismevlaanderen.be/nieuws/ludieke-stunt-tegen-artistieke-censuur …

 

Currently, Facebook's nudity censorship automated filters do not distinguish between pornography and images of artistic or historic significance. The Flemish Tourist Board believes that the company's strict advertising rules have made it almost impossible to promote great artists.

“Our Flemish Masters tempt hundreds of thousands of people every year to visit Flanders and we are very proud of that,”says Peter De Wilde, CEO of Flanders Tourism. “Unfortunately, promoting our unique cultural heritage today is not possible via the most popular social media. Our art is classed under the heading of indecent and even pornographic. That is very unfortunate.”

In order to address the loophole, which censors private parts in the works of great Flemish painters, the Tourist Board made a video where the “nudity police” prevent the visitors of the Rubens House in Antwerp from looking at any sort of depiction of nudity. After Facebook allegedly removed posts and adverts featuring Peter Paul Rubens’ ‘The Descent from the Cross,’ in which Jesus is naked in his loincloth, the wardens of the museum are seen asking visitors to step away from the masterpiece if they have a social media account.

The agency, which is currently trying to attract over 3 million visitors as part of a two-year initiative promoting the Flemish masters, has also written an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, inviting him out for coffee to discuss censorship policy.

“The bare breasts and buttocks painted by our artists are considered by you to be inappropriate,” the letter signed by a network of museums and cultural institutions reads. “Even though we secretly have to laugh about it, your cultural censorship is making life rather difficult for us.”

Noting that art lovers use Facebook too, the Tourism Board urged the social media giant to reconsider using the word “indecent” to describe the breast, buttocks and cherubs of Peter Paul Rubens or any other Flemish artists.

“If Peter Paul Rubens had created a Facebook account in his lifetime, he would have had an extraordinary number of people following his fan page,” the letter reads. “Are you willing to help us think of a solution to this problem? That way everyone in the world can marvel at the magnificent brushstrokes made by Rubens and our Flemish Masters.”

Facebook agreed to discuss the issue with the Belgian cultural institutions, noting that it will not ban artistic nudity from regular posts. Restrictions, however, would still be applied to advertisements.

READ MORE: Facebook cracks down on iconic Vietnam War photo over nudity, Norway goes berserk

Facebook’s handling of nudity put it into hot water on more than one occasion. In 2016, it sparked outrage in Norway over the network’s insistence that an iconic image of a naked girl, who survived napalm bombing in Vietnam, was not appropriate.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/434064-flemish-artistic-nudity-facebook/

 

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