Weird how Elon Musk, the white South African billionaire who got his start from exploitative emerald mines, keeps amplifying the tweets of antisemites and anti-Black racists, huh?
Anyway, one thing that enduring Donald Trump for four years has taught me: whenever Elon starts making waves on Twitter, we should always start looking for whatever it is that he’s really trying to distract us from.
For example:
The U.S. territory asked Manhattan federal court Judge Jed Rakoff in the filing to allow it to serve Musk with the subpoena with Tesla’s registered agent.
That subpoena demands Musk turn over any documents showing communication involving him, JPMorgan and Epstein, as well as “all Documents reflecting or regarding Epstein’s involvement in human trafficking and/or his procurement of girls or women for consensual sex.”
Philip Kwame Apagya was born in Sekondi in Western Ghana in 1958, after a period of apprenticeship in his father’s photo studio (a former crime-scene photographer), he worked as a travelling photographer for a while in Ivory Coast following the colour revolution in the late 1980s. After his photojournalism studies at the Ghana institute of journalism, he opened his own studio in Shama in the Western region of Ghana in 1982.
Philip Kwame Apagya is known worldwide, because of his participation in many personal and collective exhibitions. among others:
‘Snap Me One!’ studio photographers in africa ,special emphasis was put on the studio decorations. the items shown include 150 photographs,
10 original backdrops from ghana as well as other materials.
visitors had the opportunity to be ‘snapped’ in front of a backdrop
of their choice. the photos were taken by Philip Kwame Apagya.
A DesignBoom review of Philip’s works states
“
In africa, a photo studio is the place where dreams come true. for a few pence, ordinary mortals can strike a pose and achieve immortality, have things they haven’t got and may never have, be people they are not and may never be, have access to the inaccessible. People start asking for personal portraits that go beyond the image usually present on identity papers, often the only ‘popular portrait’ available. this open new roads to the art of photographic portrait, with possibility for the artist to catch
special moments in people’s existence: people ask for a picture for several reasons, but with the common desire to have a ‘funny picture’. In this process, new forms of self-representation become part of a new social identity: this is the framework in which we might consider the work of Philip Kwame Apagya.
Philip Kwame Apagya’s formal portraits in front of commissioned painted backgrounds seem to be suspended between realism and a sort of naïvité,
They are both unreal and hyperealistic: the dreams of african people are put on stage - against scenery which praises consumer society.
The subject stands in front of a painted backdrop that portrays everything people dream of having: fake new england country houses
showing off some porcelain, VCRs and TVs in bar closets,
modern kitchens with well-stocked refrigerators with coke and cheetos…
portraits with with a quarter / half / full smile, because nobody in africa is really deceived by make-believe… but for one glorious moment they can have it all.
These portraits are highly amusing for us, ‘western people’,
but are also unintentionally disturbing because of the insight they
offer into a growing cultural vacuum. This is the dream, and it is empty and materialistic”
Philip’s works has toured the world and exhibited in some of the best galleries.
1998
stadtmuseum, munich;
city museum abteiberg, mönchengladbach;
iwalewa-house, university of bayreuth;
1999
smithsonianiInstitute, washington
2000
royal tropical institute, amsterdam
a catalogue with the same title is available.
‘snap me one!’
studio photographers in africa
prestel-verlag, 1998
‘africa by africa’ / ’ l'afrique par elle-même’ / ‘portrait afrika’
a photographic view
1999
maison européenne de la photographie, paris;
barbican art gallery, london;
south african national gallery, cape town;
2000,
third rencontres de la photographie africaine, bamako, mali;
haus der kulturen der welt, berlin;
'africa inside’
2000
noorderlicht 2000 photography festival, fries museum, groningen;
'collezione etro uomo spring/summer 2000’, galleria luisa delle piane, milan
First Apartheid Clyde helped authoritarian governments spread known propaganda, and now he’s ratting out civilians, dissidents and journalists.
The company has not refused a single request since Musk took ownership, according to self-reported data. Before Musk, Twitter’s full compliance rate hovered around 50%; since the takeover, it is over 80%.
It’s been exactly six months since Elon Musk took over Twitter, promising a new era of free speech and independence from political bias. But Twitter’s self-reported data shows that, under Musk, the company has complied with hundreds more government orders for censorship or surveillance — especially in countries such as Turkey and India.
The orders vary widely in scope and subject, but all involve a government asking Twitter to either remove content or reveal information about a user. In one case from January, India’s information ministry ordered Twitter to take down all posts sharing footage from a BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Dozens of posts were removed, including one from a local member of parliament.
Most requests came from a handful of countries
Turkey, Germany and India have sent the most requests since Musk took ownership of Twitter on October 27th, 2022.
Under previous ownership, Twitter actively resisted requests from many of these same regimes. For two weeks in 2014, the platform was banned from Turkey, in part due to its refusal to globally block a post accusing a former government official of corruption. (The executive who led that charge was Vijaya Gadde, one of the first executives fired after Musk took over.)
In July 2022, the company sued the Indian government over an order to restrict the visibility of specific tweets. After Musk’s takeover, however, Twitter complied with more than 100 block orders from the country, including those against journalists, foreign politicians, and the poet Rupi Kaur.
