“George Smiley OBE is a fictional character created by John le Carré. Smiley is a career intelligence officer with ‘The Circus’, the British overseas intelligence agency. He is a central character in the novels Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley’s People, and a supporting character in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Looking Glass War, The Secret Pilgrim and A Legacy of Spies. The character has also appeared in a number of film, television, and radio adaptations of le Carré’s books. …“
How to Decolonize a Museum? Try an Ax.
“El Museo del Barrio has had its own internal struggles, concerning whether to focus on its Nuyorican roots or represent the Latin American diaspora more broadly. But “Raphael Montañez Ortiz: A Contextual Retrospective” proves that at its best it can do both. The ambitious exhibition turns the spotlight on the museum’s founder, who continues to make radical and compelling work at the age of 88. With this show, Montañez Ortiz’s legacy should be cemented both for his art as well as for the museum he started. ...”
Raphael Montañez Ortiz’s “The Memorial to the Sadistic Holocaust Destruction of Millions of Our Ancient Arawak-Taino-Latinx Ancestors Begun in 1492 by Columbus and His Mission to, With the Conquistadores, Colonize and Deliver to Spain the Wealth of the New World No Matter the Human Cost to the New World’s Less Than Human Aborigine Inhabitants” (2019-20)
Zelenskyy calls POW bombing ‘deliberate Russian war crime’
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of a ‘war crime’ for bombing a jail containing Ukrainian prisoners of war in the eastern Donetsk region. ‘It was a deliberate Russian war crime, a deliberate mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war,’ Zelenskyy said in a video-message Friday night. More than 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war died in the shelling in the town of Olenivka, in territory controlled by Moscow-backed separatists since 2014, according to authorities in the Donetsk People’s Republic. Ukrainian authorities accused Russia of bombing the building to hide tortures happening in the prison. ‘I call on all partners to strongly condemn this brutal violation of international humanitarian law and recognize Russia a terrorist state,’ Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said. Russia’s defense minister argued, without providing evidence, that Kyiv was responsible for the ‘provocation.’ ...”
Antonio Guiteras, Eduardo Chibás, Corruption in Cuba
W - Antonio Guiteras, Imperialism and Revolution Episode #23, W - Eduardo Chibás, W - University of Havana
Jacobin: Cuba Before the Revolution Dictator Fulgencio Batista, W - Fulgencio Batista
Slum ("Bohio") dwellings in Havana, Cuba in 1954, just outside Havana baseball stadium. In the background is advertising for a nearby casino.
Saype Takes “Beyond Walls” to the Shore in Brazil
“Thank god Saype finally gets to go to the beach! – after hanging around in those dreadful Swiss Alps painting on the side of a grass-covered mountain, he can finally get some surf. The ‘Beyond Walls’ project takes him now to Rio de Janeiro, where his tenth stage of the campaign addresses those who take treacherous journeys via oceans, and some never return. ‘To feel again the desperate embrace of those who saw them drift away forever… from African origin to American destination, from light to night, from freedom to slavery,’ he says. The multi-stage global artwork is revealed in pieces as the land/street artist travels the globe. He recognizes the divisions between people and actively proposes a message of unity through his biodegradeable paintings. ...”
Russia Is Making Heaps of Money From Oil, but There Is a Way to Stop That
“The United States and its allies are leaning heavily on economic sanctions to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. But a key element in that strategy, restrictions on Russian oil exports, mostly appears to be causing pain for ordinary people in other countries. European nations, in particular, are causing considerable damage to their own economies without reducing Russia’s oil revenue. Nations seeking to help Ukraine are aiming at the wrong target. They have focused on reducing Russia’s energy exports instead of reducing Russia’s earnings from energy exports. Russia is exporting less oil but, in a perverse twist, it is earning more money, according to the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, based in Finland. The sanctions have raised prices, more than offsetting the decline in exports. In May 2022, Russia earned 883 million euros per day from oil exports, up from 633 million euros per day in May 2021. ...”
People playing in an outdoor pool in Augsburg, Germany. The city has lowered the temperature of outdoor public pools by one degree to save energy.
Mario Vargas Llosa: Fiction and hyper-reality
“When Mario Vargas Llosa, the precocious star of the 1960s ‘boom’ in Latin American fiction, ran for president in 1990 in his native Peru, many of his most avid readers prayed he would lose. As his friend, the Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante, observed: ‘Peru’s uncertain gain would be literature’s loss. Literature is eternity, politics mere history.’ That may have been scant consolation to the vanquished Vargas Llosa when the dark-horse victor, Alberto Fujimori, seized dictatorial powers in 1992 and fell only in 2000 in one of the most bizarre corruption scandals in Latin American history. ...”
Metafiction
“Metafiction is a form of fiction which emphasises its own constructedness in a way that continually reminds the audience to be aware they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and story-telling, and works of metafiction directly or indirectly draw attention to their status as artifacts. Metafiction is frequently used as a form of parody or a tool to undermine literary conventions and explore the relationship between literature and reality, life, and art. ... Metafiction became particularly prominent in the 1960s, with works such as Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth, ‘The Babysitter’ and ‘The Magic Poker’ by Robert Coover, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles, The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, and Willie Master's Lonesome Wife by William H. Gass. ...”
The Ukraine War in data: 869 attacks on healthcare facilities
“On the first day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces attacked a hospital in the eastern Ukrainian city of Vuhledar, killing four people and wounding 10 others. The next day, a children’s hospital and cancer center were hit in other parts of the country. Perhaps the most memorable attack on the country’s healthcare infrastructure came in March, when a Russian missile struck a maternity hospital in Mariupol. Seventeen hospital workers and patients were wounded; a pregnant woman died from her injuries. This week, as war entered its sixth month, the Ukrainian government gave an assessment of the toll war has taken on the nation’s healthcare system — caregivers and facilities both. ...”
The Art of Turntablism
“Three different albums that explore the art of experimental, free-improvised playing on turntables by three wizards of this unique art - Viennese dieb13 (aka Dieter Kovačič), Swiss and Berlin-based Joke Lanz and Barcelona-based Ferran Fages. This 10’’ vinyl-only solo album was recorded live at the SmallForms series at Château Rouge in Vienna in August 2020 under the title interlockdown kleptosonics, as a reference to hacking essence of turntablism. It was the 1044th live set of dieb13, and apparently a rare opportunity to play live between the Covid-19 lockdowns. ...”
The mystery of the mermaid on East 23rd Street
“At the northeast corner of Third Avenue and 23rd Street—a busy intersection at the border of Kips Bay—stands a squat, two-story building. With a tan-brick facade and cookie-cutter rectangular shape, the building is empty of ground floor tenants, which not long ago included unglamorous neighborhood shops like a mattress outlet and cell phone store. The one distinguishing factor of this building is how undistinguished it is in a neighborhood where restored cast-iron commercial spaces share the streets with low-rise walkups, tenements, and modern high-rise residential towers. ...”
Germany Counts on Chilled Gas to Keep Warm Over Winter
“WILHELMSHAVEN, Germany — When a major energy company wanted to bring liquefied natural gas to Germany through the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven three years ago, the proposal hit a brick wall. The company couldn’t find enough customers, the government offered only tepid support and residents denounced the scheme as a threat to a local apple orchard. ... Now, steel pipes are being rammed into the sea floor to prepare for the arrival of a nearly thousand-foot-long L.N.G. processing vessel, the Höegh Esperanza. Nearby, construction crews in bulldozers are digging along the perimeter of a forest to clear the way for a new 20-mile pipeline to connect to Germany’s gas grid. The hope is for gas to start arriving here before the end of winter, Uniper said, as the demand for heating homes soars. ...”
A port station for shipments of liquefied natural gas is under construction in Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
Photographer Bob Gruen Gets Candid
“... While too many of his rock-star subjects—and friends—have passed away, due to vagaries of the lifestyle or simply bad luck, Gruen is 76 and blessed with a vivid memory matched only by his kind mien. Both are eminently clear in his book Right Place, Right Time: The Life of a Rock & Roll Photographer, an absorbing tome that should also bear the label “right person.”Many of the Long Island native’s photos capture a relaxed intimacy achieved only via an easygoing creativity that creates a kinship, sometimes forged over decades, notably with NYC-based subjects including Debbie Harry, David Johansen, and John Lennon. ...”
Revolution Rock: Joe Strummer and other icons
‘Sinsemilla’: Black Uhuru’s Creative And Compelling Roots Reggae Triumph
“At its peak Black Uhuru brilliantly merged uncompromising roots militancy with a keen sonic progressivism, establishing itself as the most creatively vital and commercially successful of reggae’s second-generation groups. Founded in the Waterhouse section of Kingston in the early 70s by vocalist Derrick ‘Duckie’ Simpson, the group’s sound wouldn’t fully coalesce until a few years later when, post-several personnel changes, lead singer Michael Rose and South Carolina-born singer, dancer, and former social worker Sandra ‘Puma’ Jones joined Simpson to form the trio’s most celebrated iteration. ...”
Ukraine Is the Next Act in Putin’s Empire of Humiliation
“Valentyna told me that not long after Russian troops arrived in Yahidne, her village in northern Ukraine, a tall, blond soldier came to use her bathroom. She asked him what the Russians were doing in Ukraine. ‘We want you to be with us,’ he told her, ‘for you to be with Russia.’ In Yahidne, the reality of being “with us” meant the following: The Russian soldiers herded some 300 villagers into a cellar underneath a school next to their artillery, turning them into human shields. The oldest villager was 96. ‘We are here to protect you,’ the Russian soldiers told them. But they held the villagers in the cellar for about a month, and 10 died after Russians did not provide proper medical care. Others, including Valentyna, a pensioner who lives alone, stayed in their homes, which Russian soldiers ransacked, looking for money and loot. ...”
Literary Tourism: Jack Kerouac’s New York
“In this silent five minutes of 16mm film, Jack Kerouac is considering Lower Manhattan. He’s on 3rd Avenue and 6th Street with Ginsberg, Lucien Carr and the Carr family, appearing to be partaking in the hippest meal of the day, brunch, in all his casual glory. While Ginsberg takes care of pleasantries and corrals all in attendance, he makes special check-ins with his notoriously moody friend, coming up to him here and there to speak quietly and closely. ...”
2009 November: Another Side of Kerouac: The Dharma Bum as Sports Nut, 2010 July: Kerouac's Copies of Floating Bear, 2011 March: Jack Kerouac on The Steve Allen Show, 2013 September: On the Road - Jack Kerouac, 2014 May: “Walker Evans and Robert Frank – An Essay on Influence by Tod Papageorge” (1981), 2015 March: Pull My Daisy (1959), 2015 December: Hear All Three of Jack Kerouac’s Spoken, 2016 July: Mexico City Blues (1959), 2017 February: The Jack Kerouac Collection (1990), 2017 May: The Subterraneans (1958), 2017 June: The Town and the City (1950), 2018 January: Big Sur (1962), 2018 March: A Slightly Embarrassing Love for Jack Kerouac, 2019 March: Jack Kerouac’s “Beat Paintings:”..., 2020 April: Book of Dreams (1960), 2020 August: Camp Like Kerouac in a Fire Lookout Station, 2022 March: The road well travelled: 100 years of Jack Kerouac
Analysis of Joseph Conrad’s The Duel
“As with many of his shorter pieces, Joseph Conrad interrupted work on a novel—in this case Chance—to write the Napoleonic novella The Duel. It was originally published serially in Britain as ‘The Duel—A Military Tale’ in Pall Mall Magazine in January through May of 1908. That same year, in July through October, it was published in the United States, in Forum, as ‘The Point of Honor.’ Following the serial publication in Britain, A Set of Six was released in August 1908, in which The Duel was collected with five shorter works. ...”
2011 November: Heart of Darkness, 2014 May: Nostromo (1904), 2015 December: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad – a trip into inner space, 2016 July: Lord Jim (1899-1900) , 2019 October: Victory (1915)
Nord Stream: Key Russian pipeline resumes pumping gas to Europe
“Russia has resumed pumping gas to Europe through its biggest pipeline after warnings it could curb or halt supplies altogether. The Nord Stream 1 pipeline restarted following a 10-day maintenance break but at a reduced level. On Wednesday, the European Commission urged countries to cut gas use by 15% over the next seven months in case Russia switched off Europe's supply. Russia supplied Europe with 40% of its natural gas last year. Germany was the continent's largest importer in 2020, but has reduced its dependence on Russian gas from 55% to 35%. Eventually, it wants to stop using gas from Russia altogether. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February sent wholesale gas prices soaring in Europe, with a knock-on impact on consumer energy bills. ...”
Nord Stream 1 runs under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany
Julio Antonio Mella
“Julio Antonio Mella McPartland (25 March 1903 – 10 January 1929) was a Cuban political activist and one of the founders of the original Communist Party of Cuba. Mella studied law at the University of Havana but was expelled in 1925. He was working against the government of Gerardo Machado, which had grown increasingly repressive. Mella left the country, reaching Central America. He traveled north to Mexico City, where he worked with other exiled dissidents and communist sympathizers against the Machado government. He was assassinated in 1929, but historians still disagree on which parties were responsible for his death. The 21st century Cuban government regards Mella as a communist hero and martyr. ...”
Premier League owners: Who is in charge of your club?
“With the 2022-23 campaign quickly coming into focus and the summer transfer window in full flow, many Premier League owners are in the spotlight once again. Following the Chelsea takeover and the promotion of Fulham, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest, there will be some new faces at the table this season. So, who owns your lot? See below for a breakdown of the ownership structure and board make-up of all 20 Premier League clubs…”
Last Stand at Azovstal: Inside the Siege That Shaped the Ukraine War
“The two Mi-8 helicopters tore across enemy territory early on the morning of March 21, startling the Russian soldiers below. Inside were Ukrainian Special Forces fighters carrying crates of Stinger and Javelin missiles, as well as a satellite internet system. They were flying barely 20 feet above ground into the hottest combat zone in the war. Ukraine’s top generals had conceived the flights as a daring, possibly doomed, mission. A band of Ukrainian soldiers, running low on ammunition and largely without any communications, was holed up in a sprawling steel factory in the besieged city of Mariupol. The soldiers were surrounded by a massive Russian force and on the verge of annihilation. The plan called for the Mi-8s to land at the factory, swap their cargo for wounded soldiers, and fly back to central Ukraine. Most everyone understood that the city and its defenders were lost. ...”
By May, after months of battle, the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works was a charred skeleton.
PUSHING IT FORWARD: ILLicit Creatives Claiming Space on the Streets of Queens, New York
“Queens is major stomping ground. It has been for generations – from the Long Island Railroad in Jamiaca. to Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights. At the turn of the century, Queen’s 7-line train, rooftops, tunnels, and streets were notorious for their graffiti. From 74th street and Roosevelt Avenue all the way up to Flushing Main Street, graffiti was rampant. But then with elected officials like Mayor Rudy Giuliani and District Attorney Peter Vallone, it became scarce. These politicians, alongside prosecutors and judges, came down heavily on graffiti writers. Years went by with very little action on the 7 line. Then came the pandemic. ...”
2018 April: Corona Is Queens’ Cultural Smorgasbord, 2018 April: The Many Languages (and Foods) of Jackson Heights, 2019 October: Your Guide to Jamaica: Queens’ First, Bustling Downtown
Welcome to Chicago, Hot Dog Town, U.S.A.
“CHICAGO — Before leaving the city for graduate school, Heidi Ratanavanich got a shoulder tattoo of a Chicago-style hot dog. Painterly and bright, the tattoo depicts a poppy-seed bun cradling a shiny frankfurter, which is topped with a squiggle of yellow mustard, neon-green sweet pickle relish, chopped white onion, two tomato slices, a pickle spear, pickled sport peppers and celery salt. You can’t see the celery salt, but it’s implied. There is, perhaps most significantly, no evidence of ketchup to be seen. ...”
Kherson’s secret art society produces searing visions of life under Russian occupation
“Under the threat of imprisonment, interrogation and the constant pressure of searches by Russian soldiers, six artists secretly met in a basement studio in the occupied Ukrainian city of Kherson. In the months after their homes were taken over by Putin’s forces, the artists formed a residency during which they created dozens of works, including drawings, paintings, video, photography, diary entries and stage plays. The results, which they have named Residency in Occupation, offer a harrowing insight into the horrors endured by millions of Ukrainians living under the Russian invasion. Images show agonising embraces at train stations, families sheltering in basements – death looming behind them – houses on fire and figures dancing, human skeletons underfoot. ...”
Parting sorrow: Marka Royal’s painting, Impossible to stay/leave 04/18/2022.
The Ephemeral Art of Mexico City’s Food Stalls
“In the heart of Mexico’s capital, the colorful signs that have come to define the urban landscape of the city are being erased. Mexico City’s street stalls were not, until recently, aiming for subtlety. Their walls were covered with primary colors, loudly announcing their specialties. Tortas — Mexican sandwiches — weren’t just tortas. They were ‘gigantic tortas,’ ‘hot tortas,’ ‘delicious tortas,’ and ‘super tortas.’ Juices could be super, delicious and ‘curative.’ The signs were part of a long tradition of hand-painted advertisements adorning the facades of small businesses across Mexico. ...”
The Long Revolution of the Ultras Ahlawy
"CAIRO, Egypt — On Sunday, as Ahmed Abdel Zaher turned to celebrate scoring his side’s second goal in the final of the African champions league, he did something strange with his outstretched right hand. He extended his four fingers, and tucked his thumb over his palm. The goal itself was significant—it ensured that Cairo’s mighty Al-Ahly team would beat South Africa’s Orlando Pirates for its eighth champions league title. But in Egypt, it was Abdel Zaher’s celebration that later stole the limelight. For his four-fingered salute has over the past three months become a potent and divisive sign of opposition to the overthrow of Egypt’s former president, Mohamed Morsi. ..."
The Economy Putin Didn’t Actually Ruin
“LVIV, Ukraine — The hassles never end for Yuriy Adamchuk, a Ukrainian executive who spends most of his waking hours coaxing 3,000 software coders to deliver projects on time, despite the obstacles and occasional horrors of war and a never-ending series of interruptions. Sitting in his office, he starts to elaborate, then is interrupted. The sounds of air raid sirens fill the streets of this historic, elegant city and an automated voice is heard, from loudspeakers in all directions, urging citizens to head to the nearest bomb shelter. From Mr. Adamchuk, the 43-year-old chief operating officer of Avenga, a software developer based in Lviv, there is no sense of concern. He resigns himself to evacuating the building and stands up, wearing a turquoise Lacoste shirt and the grudging smile of a world-weary man. ...”
5 takeaways from the January 6 hearing
“The January 6 committee concluded its first series of public hearings Thursday night with a revelatory look at what then-President Donald Trump was doing, and who was trying to influence him, during the 187 minutes between when he finished his Stop the Steal speech at the rally on January 6, 2021, and when he tweeted a video calling for the rioters at the Capitol to leave. ... 1) During the siege, Trump watched Fox News and “poured gasoline” on what he saw unfolding. For nearly three hours, according to the committee, Trump watched Fox News as it broadcast live images of the Capitol being breached and the mob attacking law enforcement officers. That matched previous press reports about Trump’s activities at the time. ...”
A writer recalls “the beauty of it all” after a visit to 1890s Manhattan Beach
“During summer in the early 1890s, a huge electric sign dominated the side of the St. Germain Hotel, at Broadway and 22nd Street. The St. Germain stood on the sliver of land that would be home to the Flatiron building less than a decade later. But at that time, nothing obstructed the ad—which faced the fashionable hotels, streetcar lines, and shopping emporiums of Madison Square. ... The electric sign hoped to lure sweltering city residents to this middle class resort, a more genteel version of Coney Island on the same Brooklyn peninsula. But it also captivated Theodore Dreiser, who was new in New York City after a stint as a journalist in the Midwest. ...”
The Manhattan Beach Hotel, 1900
Europe’s gas crisis is here
“Nord Stream 1, the pipeline that delivers natural gas from Russia to Germany, was shut down this week for annual maintenance. Typically, this is routine. But typically, a war isn’t raging in Europe. That’s why Germany — and the rest of the European Union — was nervous that when the 10-day maintenance was scheduled to end on July 21, the pipeline wouldn’t come back online. Instead, Russia might keep it closed, or drastically reduce its flows, as retaliation against Germany and the rest of Europe for sanctions and their support for Ukraine. The worst didn’t happen. Gas is flowing through Nord Stream 1 again as of Thursday morning, though at less than half of its capacity. ...”
A young Ukrainian rallies against Uniper Energy, Germany’s largest importer of gas from Russia, in front of the company’s headquarters in Duesseldorf, Germany, on July 14
Pessoa (2022)
“... In Pessoa, you are one of Pessoa’s most famous heteronyms — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos, and Bernardo Soares — and move between the metaphysical space of Pessoa's head and the physical spaces of Lisbon to gain inspiration from the iconic cafés, visit bookshops to expand your library and knowledge, and seek inspiration to write poems, thereby scoring victory points. Whoever has the most victory points at the end of the game wins.In more detail, Pessoa is a worker-placement game with special rules in which players can place their heteronyms since each player is a different heteronym, but all players are also the same physical person, that is Fernando Pessoa. ...”
2008 March: Fernando Pessoa, 2012 October: The Book of Disquiet, 2012 November: Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems, 2014 May: Aspects by Fernando Pessoa, 2016 March: Passoa's Trunk - 13+ ways of looking at a poem, 2017 September: Fernando Pessoa’s Disappearing Act, 2020 February: Strange Music Of Silence: Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet, 2021 August: The Heteronymous Identities of Fernando Pessoa By Richard Zeniths, 2022 January: Conceptual Personae: The many imagined lives of Fernando Pessoa
Body and Soul - Coleman Hawkins (1939)
“The language of jazz is built on small phrases — riffs that pass like coveted currency from one musician and one generation to the next. But every now and then, there comes a moment when that tried-and-true vocabulary no longer serves, and by rejecting it, an artist arrives at a statement that nudges or catapults the music in new directions. Coleman Hawkins' 1939 treatment of ‘Body and Soul’ is one of those great evolutionary leaps. Hawkins, who's been called ‘The Father of the Tenor Saxophone,’ was by all accounts the first to establish the tenor sax as a jazz instrument. ...”
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