Ukraine and the Contest of Global Stamina

“WASHINGTON — Another day, another weapons shipment: On Friday, the Pentagon announced a new transfer of precision-guided shells and multiple rocket launchers to Ukraine, the latest armaments heading east. But will there come a day when that system begins to slow? More than four months after Russia invaded Ukraine, a war that was expected to be a Russian blitzkrieg only to turn into a debacle for Moscow has now evolved into a battle of inches with no end in sight, a geopolitical stamina contest in which President Vladimir V. Putin is gambling that he can outlast a fickle, impatient West. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: As Russia Looms, a Ukrainian City’s Loyalties Divide

Aljazeera - Moscow creates ‘true hell’ in eastern Ukraine offensive: Governor (Video)

POLITICO: Ukraine Foreign Ministry blasts Rep. Victoria Spartz's ‘cynical’ allegations

Destroyed cars in Irpin, Ukraine, this month. More than four months into the Russian invasion, the war has evolved into a battle of inches with no end in sight.

​Free Jazz legend William Parker Plays Original Composition for Sounds of Saving

"’Everything that is beautiful, the reason it's beautiful is because there's music in there’. In this video, William Parker discusses how we must all find perfection inside ourselves.  He invites us into his home to share this story and to play a one time only original composition.”

YouTube  11:16

2022 January: A Guide to William Parker, 2022 February: Raining On The Moon – Corn Meal Dance (2007), 2022 March: William Parker Quartets: Meditation / Resurrection (2017), 2022 May: Painter's Spring - William Parker Trio (2000)

​Histography: Timeline of History

"HISTOGRAPHY is project by Israeli designer Matan Stauber. It uses an algorithm for identifying and extrapolating historical events from Wikipedia’s immense database. Historical events are mapped in an interactive timeline encompassing 14 billion years, from the Big Bang to 2015. Updates are automatic: Each new historical article appearing on the online encyclopedia is added to the website. The timeline is composed of thousands of tiny black dots on a pink background. Each dot represents a historical event, and all together they span horizontally throughout time, showing an increasing quantity and density as they approach the present. ...”

Open History Archive

Histography

​At Europe’s Largest Port, Russia Sanctions Meet Their Toughest Test

“ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — Jolanda Wielenga was checking documents accompanying containers bound for Russia when her heart skipped a beat: One held a substance that could be used to make a chemical weapon. The substance could be used for both civilian and military purposes. Exporting it to Russia would have been legal before the invasion of Ukraine. But the E.U. sanctions imposed on Russia in recent months had changed that. Ms. Wielenga, a two-decade veteran customs investigator at Europe’s largest port, blocked the shipment. ‘I slept pretty well that night,’ she said on a recent morning as she paced up the terminal where hundreds of colorful cargo containers, many bound for Russia, were stacked for detailed manual inspection. ...”

NY Times

BBC - Ukraine-Russia: Hidden tech war as Slovyansk battle looms

GRID - ‘We need heavy weaponry’: A top Ukrainian official tells Grid what Kyiv needs to defeat Russia as fierce fighting shifts east

The Ground Truths in Ukraine

Infrastructure and construction works are conducted in Ukraine's Mariupol, which is under control of Russian forces after long conflicts, as Russia-Ukraine war continue on July 06, 2022.

The Colossus of Maroussi - Henry Miller (1941)

“I was watching the sunset on the Greek island of Hydra with my best friend when I suddenly said, ‘I think I hate Henry Miller.’ I’d just raced through The Colossus of Maroussi and then Tropic of Cancer. So, as my friend and I perched on rough stones by the sea, I forced her to listen to my least favorite passages from Tropic of Cancer. ... Does the moment redeem the mass of it? Can I recommend The Colossus of Maroussi for the sake of one gemlike isle? The question engenders other questions: what, if anything, redeems a work of literature? Is the language of redemption even appropriate? What about the language of possession? Yours, mine. Give, take. ...”

The Paris Review

W - The Colossus of Maroussi

amazon

2010 March: Dinner With Henry (1979), 2011 December: Asleep & Awake (1975), 2013 April: Henry Miller, 2014 April: Henry Miller, Brooklyn Hater, 2015 July: Henry Miller Interviews, 2015 August: The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1970), 2016 January: Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957)

​Barbara Kruger: ‘Anyone who is shocked by what’s happening has not been paying attention’

“Few creators can claim the Museum of Modern Art and Rage Against the Machine as fans and collaborators. Yet, this is the unifying power of 77-year-old conceptual artist Barbara Kruger’s work: it’s immediate, powerful, and, as her legion of imitators has proven, it also looks great on a T-shirt.Known for iconic text works proclaiming ‘I shop therefore I am’ and ‘Your body is a battleground’ – the latter given new life last spring as an incendiary cover for New York Magazine – the artist remains ever humble. ...”

Guardian

2008 February: Barbara Kruger, 2013 February: The Globe Shrinks, Barbara Kruger, 2014 June: Barbara Kruger at Modern Art Oxford, 2021 February: the artwork - Oral History: Barbara Kruger

​Ukraine war: 21,000 alleged war crimes being investigated, prosecutor says

“Ukraine says it is investigating more than 21,000 war crimes and crimes of aggression allegedly committed by Russia since the start of its invasion. Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova told the BBC she was receiving reports of between 200 to 300 war crimes a day.She admitted that many trials would be held in absentia, but stressed that it was ‘a question of justice’ to continue with the prosecutions.Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February. It denies all war crimes allegations. Speaking to the BBC's World Service Outside Source programme, Ms Venediktova warned that Russian soldiers who killed, tortured or raped civilians ‘should understand that it's only a question of time when they all will be in court’. ...”

BBC (Video)

GRID - ‘Russkiy mir’: What Putin’s worldview tells us about the war in Ukraine, the Russian people and himsel

Aljazeera: Ukraine exacts punishing cost on Russian forces’ eastern advance (Video)

NY Times: For Foreign Fighters in Ukraine, a War Unlike Any They’ve Seen

Fighters in Ukraine’s Odin Unit, made up of Ukrainians and foreign volunteers including Britons and Americans, during an operation in March in Irpin.

​Tour de France stage 6: Tadej Pogačar takes stunning win and yellow jersey

“Tadej Pogačar followed up his strong showing on the cobbles with a similarly impressive blitz through the Ardennes on Thursday, nabbing the seventh Tour de France stage win of his career. The UAE Team Emirates rider answered an early jump by Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) inside the final 400 metres of a hilly finale, blasting clear of the others in a select front group and hitting the line first. ...”

VeloNews (Video)

BBC - Tour de France 2022: Tadej Pogacar sprints at finish to win stage six and take overall lead

Guardian: Thibaut Pinot still France’s favourite but hopes of home glory thin on the ground (July 3)

VeloNews - Tour de France stage 4: Wout van Aert romps to solo victory (Video)

W - 2022 Tour de France

Relentless fighters: The favorite to win the Tour, Slovenia's Tadej Pogacar, and the other riders struggle through dust and over cobblestones on Stage 5

Twyla Tharp and David Byrne - The Catherine Wheel (1982)

“An evening-long collaborative work between Tharp and David Byrne (of The Talking Heads), The Catherine Wheel is a continuous piece of dance/theater that makes its way toward a firework-like finale [see: The Golden Section] through episodes presenting the disintegration of the nuclear family, while ruminating on the detonation of nuclear weapons. The dance ensemble becomes a cast of specifically defined characters: The Leader and The Chorus; The Mother; The Father; The Sister; The Brother; The Maid; The Pet; and The Poet. A pineapple prop plays a part as its natural self and as its symbolic self, as a nickname for explosive devices. ...”

UbuWeb (Video)

How War in Ukraine Roiled Russia’s ‘Coolest Company’

“What a difference a war makes. Just a few months ago, Yandex stood out as a rare Russian business success story, having mushroomed from a small start-up into a tech colossus that not only dominated search and ride-hailing across Russia, but boasted a growing global reach. A Yandex app could hail a taxi in far-flung cities like Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Oslo, Norway; or Tashkent, Uzbekistan; and the company delivered groceries in London, Paris and Tel Aviv. Fifty experimental Yandex robots trundled across the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus, bringing Grubhub food orders to students — with plans to expand to some 250 American campuses. ...”

NY Times

Aljazeera: What’s next for Ukraine after the fall of Luhansk? (Video)

NY Times: Three War Scenarios

Reuters: Russia will focus on Ukraine's Donetsk region after taking Luhansk, regional governor says

A man walks in the rubble near damaged buildings, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine in this still image obtained from a social media video released on July 2, 2022.

Nerval's Lobster: Is walking a crustacean any more ridiculous than a dog?

“Before Rimbaud, before the Surrealists, there was Nerval (1808 – 1855), living his life as if it were a lucid dream. Of course, it didn't hurt that his mental skies flickered with the chain lightning of madness—bouts of insanity that condemned him to periodic stays in asylums and, ultimately, self-murder. ... T.S. Eliot sampled him in his modernist mash-up The Waste Land. Proust thought he was one of the most important French writers of the 19th century. Yet Nerval lives on in the collective unconscious of the Google Age not as the visionary Romantic who wrote the hallucinatory sonnet sequence Les Chimères but as the eccentric's eccentric: the boulevardier who took his pet lobster for a walk, on a leash made of blue ribbon, in the jardins of the Palais-Royal. ...”

BoingBoing

Harpers - Nerval: A Man and His Lobster

2016 June: Voyage to the Orient (1851), 2017 March: Selected Writings of Gerard De Nerval (1957), 2017 October: Les Filles du feu (1854), 2019 March: Sylvie (1853), 2020 May: Queen of Sheba

Stephen Scott – New Music For Bowed Piano (1984)

“Take the 200-year-old tradition of piano music for four hands, multiply it by, oh, two and a half, and cross it with Henry Cowell and John Cage’s experiments on the pianoforte’s inner regions, otherwise known as prepared piano. When the room stops spinning, what you might end up with is Stephen Scott. ... Piano preparation has the rep of being noisy and cranky, but Cage’s early pieces were often purposely lovely and gamelanlike. Scott explores similarly exotic territory, preferring echoey sonorities and consonant harmonies over grating and dissonance. ...”

Chicago Reader

Discogs (Video)

YouTube: The Bowed Piano Ensemble perform Stephen Scott's Entrada (Live), Stephen Scott demonstrates the Bowed Piano (Live)

YouTube: New Music For Bowed Piano - 6 videos

​‘Like ghosts’: Inside an occupied apartment building in Ukraine

“Hostomel, Ukraine – Andrii Kurpich, a towering, leather-clad 49-year-old chauffeur, manoeuvres his way through the dark and dingy basement of a half-ruined apartment block in Hostomel, a town about 20km (12 miles) northwest of Kyiv. Water drips from the overhead pipes into murky puddles and a stale humid smell hangs in the air. This eerie underground network of corridors and partially flooded rooms was home to nine of the block’s residents, including Andrii and his wife, Viktoria Kurpich, for more than a week after Russian troops stormed the building on March 5, 2022. Viktoria, a cheerful 51-year-old homemaker with short blonde hair, dressed all in black, says she was ‘terrified the soldiers would kill us’ when they knocked on their front door and ordered them outside with their hands up. ...”

Aljazeera

BBC - The sole survivor of a Russian shooting - he lived by playing dead (Video)

VOX - Inside Ukraine’s lobbying blitz in Washington

BBC - Ukraine war: Putin presses on after Lysychansk capture

Russian shelling has laid waste to large areas of the city

The Algerian Revolution Changed the World for the Better

“Algeria today presents the world with a closed, distrustful face. Although its revolutionary state survived the tumultuous ruptures of the late twentieth century, it has been plagued by border conflicts, Islamist insurgencies, and, most recently, widespread youth protests. However, the legacy of the Algerian people and their liberation state is as dynamic, internationalist, and courageous as any in the world — the proud equal of a Cuba or a Vietnam in revolutionary heroics. A century ago, Algeria stood at the heart of the French empire, as central to the French imperial project as India was to the British. Algeria was partly settled by white colons, who considered it their homeland and did not view themselves as a caste of imperial administrators. ...”

Jacobin

2021 May: The Battle of Algiers

A celebration to mark the independence of Algeria in the summer of 1962.

Kondi Band – We Famous (2021)

“Kondi Band finds, or maybe forges, the link between hand-hewn folk music and modern electronic music. Led by Sierra Leone’s Sorie Kondi playing a custom-build 15-pin lamellophone called the ‘kondi,’ the band is a collaboration with producers Chief Boima and Will LV, based in Los Angeles and London respectively. But Kondi (the man) and kondi (the instrument) are unmistakably the star of Kondi (the band). The modern production is always graciously at service to Kondi’s beautiful voice, and rhythmic playing. ...”

AfroPop (Video/Audio)

Discogs (Video)

​What is life like in Russia-occupied areas of Ukraine?

“Kyiv, Ukraine – It wasn’t a knock, it was loud banging – at about 7:30 on a recent Saturday morning. Taras opened the door of his two-bedroom apartment in Kreminna, a town in Ukraine’s southeastern Luhansk region that was taken over by Russia in late April, to see three gun-toting soldiers in camouflage. ‘Do you have a garage on the corner?’ the oldest of them, a redhead in his late 20s, asked Taras imperatively. Without waiting for his answer, the soldier continued: ‘Open it up.’ He was talking about a group of three dozen garages built in the early 1980s, an area which had become an informal club, where men could have a drink, crack a joke and play backgammon or chess. ...”

Aljazeera (Video)

NY Times: Orchestras rethink the ‘1812 Overture,’ a remembrance of Russia’s defeat of Napoleon’s army. (Video)

POLITICO: Last major Ukraine-controlled city in Luhansk region falls to Russia

Destroyed vehicles are pictured in the city of Lysychansk in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donba 

A History of Rucker Park: The True Mecca of Basketball

“Walk into Harlem’s Rucker Park, located on 155th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard in New York City—right across the street from where the Polo Grounds used to stand—on an ordinary afternoon, and you might not understand. Not right away at least. Sure, there are bleachers, both metal and concrete, surrounding the single court, and there’s a scoreboard above the seats by midcourt. Other than that though, it’s just one more blacktop in a city that has thousands of them. ...”

COMPLE

W – Rucker Park

NYC Street Ball: Rucker Park

​Derrida (2002)

“DERRIDA is a complex personal and theoretical portrait of the internationally renowned French philosopher, Jacques Derrida. Best known for generating a movement known as ‘deconstruction’, Derrida's radical rethinking of the founding precepts of Western metaphysics has profoundly influenced the fields of literature, philosophy, ethics, architecture and law, inalterably transforming the intellectual landscape of the 20th and 21st centuries. Produced with Derrida's full cooperation and consent, the film is the most ambitious cinematic project ever undertaken with a world-class philosopher. ...”

UbuWeb (Video)   1:25:49

​Investigators of War Crimes in Ukraine Face Formidable Challenges

“KOROPY, Ukraine — Four men tugged at long strips of fabric to lift a coffin out of the gaping hole in the backyard of a small house. They flung the lid open to reveal the moldy corpse of Oleksiy Ketler, who had been killed instantly by shrapnel when a mortar fell on the road in Koropy, a village outside Khavkiv in northeastern Ukraine, in March. Mr. Ketler, a father of two young children, would have celebrated his 33rd birthday on June 25, if he had not been outside his house at the wrong time. Now, his body has become another exhibit in Ukraine’s wide-ranging effort to collect evidence to prosecute Russia and its military for war crimes in the brutal killings of Ukrainian civilians. ...”

NY Times

Aljazeera: The Georgian village facing Russian ‘creeping occupation’ (Audio)

Guardian: Yes, Nato has a new vitality. But its united front could collapse when it has to deal with Russia

BBC: Ukraine confirms Russia captured eastern city Lysychansk

The fighting caused a blaze at an oil refinery near Lysychansk

 

​Liquid Light: Painting in Watercolours

“Featuring approximately 200 works from more than 170 artists, this large exhibition features the Laing Art Gallery's nationally significant collection of watercolours, spanning more than three centuries of art. The show includes important pictures from the 'golden age' from about 1780 to 1880, when British watercolours became established as an influential art movement, admired in Europe. Landscape painting was the initial focus of this, with artists achieving pictures than glowed with light or recreated the sensation of weather, generating drama and emotion. ...”

Laing Art Gallery (Video)

Clara Montalba, A Festa on the Grand Canal, Venice, 1870

​Frantz Fanon – The Political Writings from Alienation and Freedom

“The 23 essays that appear in The Political Writings were extracted from the collection of recently discovered writings by Frantz Fanon called Alienation and Freedom, first published in French in 2015. Edited by Jean Khalfa and Robert J. C. Young and translated by Steven Corcoran, The Political Writings largely draws from Fanon’s contributions to the radical Algerian independence newspaper El Moudjahid, and they date from August 1957 to February 1961. Each was written in direct response to events in an ongoing anticolonial revolution, at the center of which was May 13, 1958, and its aftermath....”

LA Review of Books: Fanon Can’t Save You Now

amazon: The Political Writings from Alienation and Freedom

2017 October:  The Wretched of the Earth (1961), 2021 January: Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask - Isaac Julien (1995)

​Ukraine demands the seizure of Russian-flagged grain ship off Turkey

“Ukraine has called for a ship carrying grain from a Russian-occupied part of the country to be seized. The ship is currently lying off the Turkish coast. We've monitored the Russian-flagged ship, the Zhibek Zholy, on its route from the Ukrainian port of Berdyansk to the Turkish port of Karasu. It is not clear where its cargo came from or how it was obtained, but Russia has been accused of stealing grain from areas of Ukraine it controls - allegations Russia denies. ...”

BBC

NY Times: How the Russian Media Spread False Claims About Ukrainian Nazis

The Intercept_: Foreign Fighters in Ukraine Could Be a Time Bomb for Their Home Countries

NY Times: Ill Prepared for Combat, Volunteers Die in Battles Far From Home

​Rebel Music: 11 Of The Best Reggae Protest Songs

“Whether fighting for the legalization of cannabis or battling dark forces in politics, the best reggae protest songs spoke to their times yet continue to resonate today. Whether warning rudies of doom around the corner, fighting for the legalization of cannabis, or battling dark forces in politics, the best reggae protest songs have spoken to their times and yet continue to resonate today. Here are 11 of the best reggae protest songs that remain timeless classics. ...”

udiscover (Video)

​Why Can’t They See? The Lost World Of The Twenties Group

“Look at this: a painting of a worker, crucified. Here is an image of poverty that shocks despite the obviousness of the metaphor. At the foot of the cross sits his grieving wife and dog. On his left some co-workers shake their fists at three Bullingdon Club types on the right. A soldier armed with a rifle protects the nabobs. In the background policemen on horses bop strikers. Is this a vision of now? Is it by Coldwar Steve? No – this is An Allegory of Social Strife, the work of Archibald Ziegler done sometime in the 1920s. Ziegler? Who he? Who knew we had our own George Grosz? ...”

The Quietus

Towner Eastbourne (Video)

Robert Greenham, On the Beach, 1934

Ukraine war: Russian missile strikes kill 21 in Odesa region - emergency service

“At least 21 people, including one child, have died in overnight Russian missile strikes on Ukraine's southern Odesa region, Ukrainian officials say. The state emergency service, DSNS, says 16 people were killed in a nine-storey building hit by one missile in the village of Serhiyivka. Another five people, including the child, were killed in a separate strike on a holiday resort in the village. Russia has fired dozens of missiles on Ukrainian cities in the past few days. On Friday Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov again denied that Russia was hitting civilian targets. ...”

BBC

GRID: 3 ways Vladimir Putin has already lost in Ukraine

Aljazeera: Putin says Western sanctions pushing Russia-Belarus unification (Video)

The Russian missiles hit several targets in Serhiyivka - including this residential building - at about 01:00 on Friday

Tour de France Preview: Pogacar Leads the Way Once Again

“The Tour de France is preparing to roll out of the starting gate again on Friday, with this year’s race set to feature a dominant young champion, a climb up the famous Alpe d’Huez and the debut of a multistage women’s race after the men’s event concludes. How can I watch? USA Network will show most of the stages in the United States, with NBC jumping in for Stage 2 — the first mass-start road stage on Saturday — and the final two stages. Peacock will stream every stage of the race. ...”

NY Times (Video)

Guardian - Tour de France 2022: stage-by-stage guide to this year’s race

VeloNews, Beginner’s guide to the Tour de France

W - 2022 Tour de France

Steephill (Video), Guardian (Video), NY Times (Video), BBC (Video)

2008 July: Tour de France 2008, 2009 July: Tour de France 2009, 2010 July: Tour de France 2010,  2011 July: Tour de France 2011, 2012 July: 2012 Tour de France, 2015 July: 2015 Tour de France, 2015 July: Tour de France 2015: Team Time Trial Win Bolsters American’s Shot at Podium, 2015 July: Tour de France: Chris Froome completes historic British win, 2016 July: 2016 Tour de France, 2017 July: 2017 Tour de France, 2018 May: 2018 Giro d'Italia, 2019 July: 2018 Tour de France, 2019 July: Tour de France 2019, 2021 July: 2021 Tour de France

Renata Adler: Troll or Treasure?

“... And knowing this, I understand that there is something truly, yes, psychedelic about Renata Adler. I don’t mean drugs, of course. Forget drugs. Adler, now 76, has always written as if she’s never taken a drug in her life—as if the fiercest, purest jinni of a mind-expanding molecule, upon approaching the crystal ramparts of her consciousness, would wither up in shame. Her reputation, in mid-2015, feels floaty and diffracted—quite Internet, really, in that it doesn’t completely scan, and it has an undertow. Some people adore her fiction: her two novels, Speedboat (1976) and Pitch Dark (1983), were reprinted to fresh accolades in 2013. ...”

The Atlantic (2015)

Is this a novel? Speedboat & Pitch Dark by Renata Adlert

2012 September: Renata Adler, 2013 March: The Novels of Renata Adler

​2022 Snake Island campaign

“On 24 February 2022, the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Navy attacked Snake Island, a Ukrainian island in the Black Sea, and captured it along with its entire garrison. The attack was widely publicized when an audio clip of Russian cruiser Moskva hailing the island's garrison over the radio demanding their surrender and being told ‘Russian warship, go fuck yourself‘ ... in response went viral, along with initial inaccurate reports of the garrison's deaths. ... Following its capture Ukraine launched a campaign to retake the island, deploying anti-ship missiles to force Russian naval forces to withdraw from the area around the island while continued air, artillery, and missile strikes made the Russian position on the island untenable. This caused Russia to withdraw from the island on 30 June 2022. ...”

Wikipedia, W - Snake Island (Ukraine)

NY Times: Ukraine drives Russian forces from Snake Island, a setback for Moscow.

Aljazeera - Russia-Ukraine war: The struggle for Snake Island (Video)

​At the Existentialist Café – Sarah Bakewell

“Three young  and brilliant philosophers — the good-hearted Jean-Paul Sartre, the elegant Simone de Beauvoir, and the debonair Raymond Aron — sat in a bar on Paris’s rue du Montparnasse sometime around 1932. As they sipped apricot cocktails, they discussed how philosophy could be about everyday things, like apricot cocktails. Galvanized by the tipsy banter, Sartre had an epiphany: ‘Finally there is philosophy.’ So recounts Sarah Bakewell in her new book, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails, throwing her reader into a world of dazzlingly brilliant and revolutionary 20th-century philosophers, including the aforementioned threesome, as well as Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. ...”

Los Angeles Review of Books

W – At the Existentialist Café

amazon

Orbital Patterns Live

"The YouTube channel of Orbital Patterns is always worth returning to. Over a year has passed since the Michigan-based musician’s The Lonely Orbit album, and in advance of news of a follow-up, there’s a steady stream of live ambient jams to fill the void. The latest is trademark Orbital Patterns: glitchy atmospherics, shimmery foundational sonics, slushy melodicism. He mixes in vocalizing and field recordings with a sublime sense of balance. The music is at once oceanic in its swelling, and wondrously detailed in its production. This is the latest video I’ve added to my ongoing YouTube playlist of fine live performance of ambient music. Video originally posted at youtube.com.”

disquiet (Video)

 

TRUMP SOUGHT TO JOIN JAN. 6 MOB: Enraged, He Lunged for Limo Wheel to Go to Capitol

The Jan. 6 Committee Produces a Very Special Episode: “The Jan. 6 committee’s hearings have a lot in common with scripted TV mini-series: narrative, editing — even surprise reveals, as when the committee sprang a bonus episode, featuring Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, on a day’s notice. One thing the hearings do not have, however, is episode titles. But if they did, it would be hard to resist calling this jaw-dropping installment ‘The Beast.’ As White House watchers know, ‘The Beast’ is a nickname for the presidential vehicle. It also evokes the mayhem that Ms. Hutchinson described inside the vehicle as the attack began.  ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Cassidy Hutchinson’s Testimony Highlights Legal Risks for Trump (Video)

NY Times: A President Untethered (Video/Live)

GRID - ‘Bombshell after bombshell’: What was revealed at Cassidy Hutchinson’s January 6 hearing testimony (Audio)

POLITCO - Secret Service: Jan. 6 committee didn't reach out before Hutchinson's explosive Trump testimony (Video)

​War has been raging in Ukraine for 4 months. What comes next, and when will it end?

“Four months into the war in Ukraine, and three months after the Russians announced that they would focus their attacks on the eastern part of the country, the war has become a ferocious battle for the region known as the Donbas. And hopes for a swift victory — or even one that might come in the next several weeks — appear to have vanished for both sides. At various stages of the war, Grid has taken stock of where things stand on the battlefield, potential scenarios for the war’s end and the global impact of the conflict, beyond Ukraine and Russia themselves. ...”

GRID (Audio)

NY Times: After Rapes by Russian Soldiers, a Painful Quest for Justice

NY Times: Ukraine announces largest prisoner exchange yet, including Mariupol fighters.

Ukrainian servicemen fire toward Russian positions at a front line in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas on June 15.

The ultimate American movie road trip

"The myth of the American road is one of the oldest and most patriotic stories ever to be told in the United States, featuring lonely, wandering characters trying to find purpose in the wasteland of the desolate country. Wide, endless and sprawling, these American back roads and highways represent a poetic landscape rife for self-discovery, led by the inspiring muffled vibrations of the music of the liberating car stereo. Much like the classic American Western, the road movie relies on an exploratory narrative where characters explore their own frontiers whilst pushing the physical borders of discovery. ...”

FAR OUT (Video)

At least 16 dead as Russian missile hits shopping centre in Ukraine

“A Russian missile hit a crowded shopping centre in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk on Monday, killing and injuring scores of people, the Ukrainian authorities said. Ukraine’s president, Volodoymyr Zelenskiy, said more than 1,000 people were inside the building at the time of the strike. Images from the scene showed giant plumes of black smoke and flames, with emergency crews rushing in to search for victims and put out fires. ... Ukrainian war crimes prosecutors told the Guardian earlier that 14 bodies had been found in the ruins, and one person died from their wounds in hospital. At least 40 missing persons reports had been submitted by locals searching for loved ones who had gone missing in the building. ...”

Guardian (Video)

NY Times: On Front Lines, Communication Breakdowns Prove Costly for Ukraine

BBC - Ukraine war in maps: Tracking the Russian invasion

Les Temps modernes

“Les Temps Modernes (Modern Times) is a French journal, founded by Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It first issue was published in October 1945.  It was named after the 1936 film by Charlie Chaplin. Les Temps Modernes filled the void left by the disappearance of the most important pre-war literary magazine, La Nouvelle Revue Française (The New French Review), considered to be André Gide's magazine, which was shut down by the authorities after the liberation of France because of its collaboration with the occupation. ...”

Wikipedia

Guardian - Les Temps Modernes: Paris mourns passing of the intellectual left’s bible

Les Temps Modernes : media and ideology in the case of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir