“The Cuban sugar economy is the principal agricultural economy in Cuba. Historically, the Cuban economy relied heavily on sugar exports, but sugar production has declined since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. ... The boom collapsed shortly thereafter, however, and the banks took over the defaulting Cuban sugar producers. ... Cuban sugar producers were able to protect the national production after the Revolution, but Cuba did not reenter the US market or grow its annual production level past five million tons. ... After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Fidel Castro's government sought to end the mono-production of sugar and shift the Cuban economy towards self-reliance through industrialization and economic diversification. ...”
Why I Drive 5 Miles Under the Speed Limit
“Getting behind the wheel of my 2013 Subaru turns me into a bit of a troll—just not the kind you might think. I’m not a tailgater, and I don’t honk. I’ll always let you merge, likely with one of those two-fingered courtesy waves ubiquitous on country roads where I live in Vermont. But I am slow. I often drive five under the speed limit on the interstate, cruising through the Green Mountains at an unhurried 60 miles per hour. I take it pretty easy through towns. In a country where more than 70 percent of drivers admit to exceeding legal speed limits, that makes me an outlier. (Probably a little annoying too; that’s where the troll part comes in.) I have good reasons for being poky, ranging from safety concerns to environmentalism. ...”
A Soldier’s Life: Conversations Inside Ukraine’s Defense Force
“Kydrava did not expect to be stationed on the frontlines of the war. She did not expect that, for five months, she and her unit would be facing constant combat, or that she would never have a chance to catch her breath. The idea of Russia launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the 21st century did not seem to her like something that could really happen. But then that unthinkable scenario became reality—Kydrava has spent the time since the first attacks living at the forefront of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Before the war began, Ukraine’s military was estimated to consist of 500,000 total military personnel, according to data collected by Statista. ...”
Investigation: Barcelona’s financial crisis and what the rest of football thinks of it
“As the football industry shuddered from the reverberations of the COVID-19 pandemic, the bright minds in the Barcelona boardroom concocted a plan. With the club beset by financial angst, one of their executives approached UEFA, the organiser of the Champions League, with a proposal. Barcelona required loans to ease the pain caused by years of poor decision-making in the transfer market and extravagance on player salaries, all of which was exacerbated by a pandemic that shattered commercial and matchday income. The idea, therefore, was to apply for a loan from a bank and use anticipated future broadcast revenues from playing in the Champions League as the security for the loan. ...”
Eva Hesse’s ‘Expanded Expansion’ Has Aged at Human Scale
“Like visiting an aging parent after years away, going to an Eva Hesse show puts mortality on the mind. The materials of her late career—latex, fiberglass, rubber—decompose, becoming more brittle each time we see them. Her forms themselves evoke bodies. Ringaround Arosie (1965), a Masonite relief mounded with electrical wire and cloth, resembles a large areola. Dangling in nets, the polyethylene spheres of Untitled or Not Yet (1966) suggest the gonads of an unknown species. In artificial chemical compounds, Hesse found a volatile, pangender, even posthuman fleshiness, marking a distinct territory in the crowded field of 1960s artists. ...”
Expanded Expansion. Installation view, Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, May 19–July 6, 1969
The Prosecution of Russian War Crimes in Ukraine
“Before the war, one could have used the western suburbs of Kyiv to study the history and aspirations of modern Ukraine. Bucha, Irpin, and smaller towns and villages formed alongside a railroad constructed in the early twentieth century. During the Soviet period, Bucha, which had a glass factory that manufactured canning jars, became a minor industrial center. In neighboring Irpin, where century-old pines dominated the landscape, the Soviets built sanatoriums and a writers’ resort. Boris Pasternak wrote in a 1930 poem, ‘Irpin is the memory of people and summer, of freedom, of escape from oppression.’ In this century, the suburbs became a site of bourgeois ambition. Entrepreneurs and high-ranking officials built houses with forest views and in-ground pools. Developers erected high-rises that appealed to young families who were priced out of Kyiv. Traffic jams started to clog the bridges connecting the suburbs to the city. Big-box stores and tiny espresso bars popped up around the towers. ...”
Satellite photos of the site released by Maxar Technologies on July 30 appear to show damage only to the section of the detention center housing Ukrainian prisoners, with no collateral damage to surrounding buildings.
As Latin America Shifts Left, Leaders Face a Short Honeymoon
“In Chile, a tattooed former student activist won the presidency with a pledge to oversee the most profound transformation of Chilean society in decades, widening the social safety net and shifting the tax burden to the wealthy. In Peru, the son of poor farmers was propelled to victory on a vow to prioritize struggling families, feed the hungry and correct longstanding disparities in access to health care and education. In Colombia, a former rebel and longtime legislator was elected the country’s first leftist president, promising to champion the rights of Indigenous, Black and poor Colombians, while building an economy that works for everyone. ...”
Students taking part in an anti-government protest in June in Santiago.
Why don't Jupiter's rings look like Saturn's?
“Nature has given the biggest planet in the solar system an anemic set of rings. Saturn’s rings have been marked as one of the solar system’s splendors since the invention of the telescope, but no one even noticed Jupiter had its own much smaller set until the Voyager 1 spacecraft flew by on March 5, 1979. Why should the rings of Saturn, which has a third of Jupiter’s mass, so outshine the feeble ones around the larger, more massive planet? ...”
Using Nuclear Reactors for Cover, Russians Lob Rockets at Ukrainians
“NIKOPOL, Ukraine — Along most of the front line in Russia’s war in Ukraine, when one side lets loose with an artillery attack, the other shoots back. But not in Nikopol, a city deep in southern farm country where the Ukrainian military faces a new and vexing obstacle as it prepares for a major counteroffensive: a nuclear power station that the Russian Army has turned into a fortress. Nikopol, controlled by the Ukrainians, lies on the west bank of the Dnipro River. On the opposite bank sits a gigantic nuclear power plant — Europe’s largest — that the Russian Army captured in March. The Russians have been firing from the cover of the Zaporizhzhia station since mid-July, Ukrainian military and civilian officials said, sending rockets over the river at Nikopol and other targets. It is, in effect, a free shot. ...”
A dummy dressed as a soldier sat at a Ukrainian military checkpoint on the edge of Nikopol.
The blissful Upper West Side garden hiding on top of a condo garage
“Neighborhood gardens planted on vacant lots and between buildings are magical places. Walking around the city, I’ve stumbled upon many of these, each with their own enchanting landscape and walkways, sitting areas, and koi ponds. The Lotus Garden, on 97th Street between Broadway and West End Avenue on the Upper West Side, has these delights as well. What sets this lovely green space apart, however, is that you can’t really stumble upon it from the sidewalk. ...”
Black Mountain, Intermedia, Deep Image, Ethnopoetics
“Among the several streams which made up the New American Poetry was a group known as the Black Mountain poets, so named for the experimental college in North Carolina where many of them taught or attended classes in the 1950s. The most prominent of these poets were of course Charles Olson, rector of the college in its last five years, and Robert Creeley, who edited The Black Mountain Review. The work of both has exerted an extraordinary influence on the course of American poetry in the latter half of this century. ...”
Robert Creeley and Dan Rice at Black Mountain College, 1955.
Financial Incentives May Explain the Perceived Lack of Ransomware in Russia’s Latest Assault on Ukraine
“In early May 2022, a state of emergency was declared in Costa Rica following a ransomware attack against government systems. The hacking group linked to the attacks–Conti–is thought to work from Russian territory. In a dramatic message, the gang even encouraged Costa Ricans to overthrow the government if officials do not transfer the ransom. In Italy, a ransomware attack that security officials believe is linked to Russian actors disrupted railway ticket vending machines. In Austria, Russian hacking group Black Cat demanded $5 million to unlock encrypted servers and refrain from leaking sensitive information. What about Ukraine? Ukraine has, in recent years, not suffered large financially motivated ransomware attacks. This might have been because, Ukraine has been historically more a provider of ransomware operators (e.g. Maksim Yakubets) rather than a target. In 2020 and 2021, Ukraine suffered less than 1 percent of ransomware attacks globally. This aligns with a trend where criminal groups avoid attacking systems on territories of the former Soviet Union. ...”
Council on Foreign Relations (July 26)
A Brief History of George Smiley by John Le Carré
“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
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…”
