All posts tagged: vital

IOC official says charter changes on sports neutrality vital in ‘complicated’ world

IOC official says charter changes on sports neutrality vital in ‘complicated’ world

Published by Sam Flores

LAUSANNE, June 25 : A senior International Olympic Committee official said on Thursday that Olympic Charter changes aimed at reinforcing sport’s political neutrality were vital for maintaining IOC independence in what he called an increasingly complicated world. The IOC approved amendments on Wednesday strengthening language emphasising that sport should be free from political interference. Critics say the reforms could ease Russia’s return to international sport. “It is more necessary than ever that the charter give us the power to maintain our independence. We have to keep the independence, it’s more difficult every day. It’s more complicated.
We are subject to more pressures. The world is getting more and more complicated,” Vice-President Juan Antonio Samaranch told reporters on the sidelines of the two-day extraordinary meeting in Lausanne. “We need to arm ourselves and protect ourselves through the charter, to be able to take the right decisions,” he added.  Samaranch said IOC changes to its sports programme which would evaluate Olympic inclusion by discipline rather than by sport were fair. “Small sports are going to have their fair …

A Vital Unconscious | Coco Fusco

A Vital Unconscious | Coco Fusco

Published by Jenni Sidey

I wanted with all my heart to paint the drama of my country, but by thoroughly expressing the negro spirit, the beauty of the plastic art of the blacks. In this way I could act as a Trojan horse that would spew forth hallucinating figures with the power to surprise, to disturb the dreams of the exploiters. I knew I was running the risk of not being understood either by the man in the street or by the others. —Wifredo Lam In the middle of the twentieth century the Cuban-born painter Wifredo Lam made the African presence in his homeland the driving force of his oeuvre, in drawings and paintings filled with totemic figures that often float in dark, monochromatic spaces. It has taken a long time for the originality of that aesthetic and political orientation to be fully appreciated in the United States. His most famous painting, La jungla (The Jungle, 1942–1943), was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 1945, but for many years it hung by the coatroom in the museum’s …

Vital freshwater fish migrations are rapidly collapsing all over the world

Vital freshwater fish migrations are rapidly collapsing all over the world

Published by Daniella Wilson

Hidden beneath the surface of the world’s rivers, some of Earth’s great animal movements unfold – migrations that rival, in sheer biomass, the famous mass movements of zebra and wildebeest across the Serengeti. For centuries, fish migrations were as predictable as the seasons. Salmon, sturgeon, giant catfish and many other species moved through rivers in vast numbers, guided by rising water, flood pulses and evolved biological cues. These species are extraordinarily diverse, ranging from beluga sturgeon – massive fish that can live for more than a century and produce the world’s most prized caviar – to giant river carp, tropical eels, gold-flecked shad and goliath catfish, all of which travel to survive, in some cases over hundreds or even thousands of miles. Their journeys can span continents. But the fish and their migrations are disappearing. For most migratory fish, movement is not optional; it is how they survive. When dams block routes, when fishing intensifies at migratory bottlenecks and when floodplains and spawning grounds are cut off or degraded, most migratory fish do not simply …