Deep Art Nature

How a Distant War Is Threatening Livelihoods in the Arctic Circle

"In this corner of Norway’s far north, just five miles from the border with Russia, road signs give directions in Norwegian and Russian. Locals are used to crossing from one country to the other visa-free: Norwegians to fill up on cheap Russian gasoline; Russians to hit the Norwegian malls. A few years ago, those cross-border ties inspired Terje Jorgensen, the director of the Norwegian port of Kirkenes, to propose closer ties with the Russian port of Murmansk to build on the surging interest in cross-Arctic shipping routes, which connect Asia to Western Europe. He wanted to develop joint standards for sustainability and easier transport between the two ports. But then President Vladimir V. Putin sent his troops marching into Ukraine, bringing the whole project to a halt. ...”

NY Times

NY Times - Dirty Socks and Rotting Bodies: What Russians Left Behind in the Trenches

CSIS - Cluster Munitions: What Are They, and Why Is the United States Sending Them to Ukraine?

NY Times: Opinion | The Editorial Board | The Flawed Moral Logic of Sending Cluster Munitions to Ukraine

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created a chasm in a part of the world that had prided itself as a place where Westerners and Russians could get along.

Bill Saxton Keeps the Spirit of Jazz Alive

"Bill Saxton boasts one of the most fitting names in jazz. He was born in Harlem in 1946, and after attending NYC public schools began playing sax professionally in 1965, since then jamming with jazz greats around the world and being honored at the White House, the Harlem Jazz Museum, and the Library of Music at Lincoln Center. With his wife, author Theda Palmer Saxton, he now runs Bill’s Place, on 133rd Street between Lenox and 7th Avenues in Harlem, eschewing advertising and thriving solely on word of mouth. Saxton plays two sets to a packed house every Friday and Saturday night, with lines down the block; according to him, during the Prohibition era, 133rd Street boasted more speakeasies than any neighborhood in Manhattan. ...”

Voice

2014 November: A Harlem Throwback to the Era of Billie Holiday

Environmentalism in The Lord of the Rings

"The theme of environmentalism in The Lord of the Rings has been remarked upon by critics since the 1970s. The Hobbits‘ visions of Saruman‘s industrial hell of Isengard and Sauron‘s desolate polluted land of Mordor have been interpreted as comments on modern society, while the destruction of Isengard by the tree-giant Ents, and ‘The Scouring of the Shire‘ by the Hobbits, have a strong theme of restoration of the natural environment after such industrial pollution and degradation. However, Tolkien’s love of trees and unspoilt nature is apparent throughout the novel. ...”

Wikipedia

The Lord of the Rings: Exploring Environmental Themes

[PDF] J.R.R. Tolkien and Environmental Concerns in Mid-20th Century England

2010 January: The Lord of the Rings, 2018 January: An Atlas of Literary Maps Created by Great Authors: J.R.R Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island & More, 2019 January: The Largest J.R.R. Tolkien Exhibit in Generations Is Coming to the U.S.: Original Drawings, Manuscripts, Maps & More, 2020 January: Hear Christopher Tolkien (RIP) Read the Work of His Father J.R.R. Tolkien, Which He Tirelessly Worked to Preserve, 2020 August: The Complete Guide to Middle-earth - Robert Foster (1971), 2021 September: When the Nobel Prize Committee Rejected The Lord of the Rings..., 2021 October: When J.R.R. Tolkien Worked for the Oxford English Dictionary..., 2022 March: J.R.R. Tolkien Tolkien Estate, 2022 October: One Ring, 2023 May: Old Forest

Pastoral vision of an unspoilt England: the Old Mill at Hobbiton, reconstructed for the filming of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings

Zelenskyy hails Ukraine’s forces from symbolic Black Sea island to mark 500 days of war

"Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted a video of himself visiting Snake Island — the tiny Black Sea outpost that became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance — to mark the 500th day of the war with Russia. ‘Snake island. The free island of free Ukraine,’ Zelenskyy said in a caption alongside a video, which shows him traveling to the island and laying a bouquet of flowers at a memorial. ... The island took on almost mythological status for Ukraine’s resistance, when officials in the country released an audio recording of a conversation between Russia’s flagship Moskva and Ukrainian soldiers defending the island. ...”

NBC News

Aljazeera - Photos: Russia’s war in Ukraine crosses 500-day mark

POLITICO: Western powers race to finish security pledges for Ukraine (Audio)

The Intercept_: Russian Militia Has Links to American Neo-Nazi and Anti-Trans Figures

President Volodymyr Zelensky marked 500 days of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine by visiting Snake Island, located 35 kilometers south of the mainland.

The East Village, Home of Punks and Poets: Here’s a Tour

"By the 1960s, the neighborhood took on its bohemian title: the East Village, home to Beats, hippies and no wave bands, to Allen Ginsberg, W.H. Auden, Abbie Hoffman, Fillmore East and the Poetry Project, to graffiti artists — and, in recent years, to droves of New York University students.It used to be simply the northeast quadrant of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where, to repurpose a phrase by another former resident, William S. Burroughs, layers of history are ‘wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes.’ ... The writer and artist Luc Sante is the author of Low Life, about the seamy underside of bygone New York, and The Other Paris, an alternative history of the French capital. ...”

NY Times

2015 December: The Other Paris - Luc Sante, 2020 September: Luc Sante: ‘Money doesn’t kill people, but it changes the fabric of daily life’

Record, Remix, Repeat

"Hatim Belyamani is grinning as he and nine other musical artists take their places on the small stage to the applause of a sellout, standing-room-only audience of some 200 people at Public Records, a state-of-the-art music hall in Brooklyn. Shaking off nerves, Belyamani slides behind his digital mixing board, grips the mic and introduces his fellow performers for the musical journey they have prepared and called Tanfis, an Arabic word describing a spiritual release and renewal akin to releasing a long-held breath. All has been made possible by the nonprofit Remix⟷Culture, which he founded to record, film, digitally remix and disseminate the sounds of musicians playing within underrepresented acoustic traditions around the world. ...”

AramcoWorld (Video)

Prigozhin’s Putsch Propped up Putin

"The proposition that the abortive mutiny led by Yevgeny Prigozhin will result in a more vulnerable and weakened Vladimir Putin is appealing to those of us hoping for a quick victory for Ukraine and possibly even regime change in Moscow. After all, as we were reminded by the Arab Spring movements in 2011 that led to the downfall of several longstanding authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, such regimes seem stable—until they’re not. Hopes for major political turmoil in Russia and/or threats to Putin’s iron grip on power, however, may prove premature. Recent examples in other countries offer reasons for caution. Prigozhin’s failed play for power may lead to a further consolidation of power in Putin’s hands, at least temporarily. And even if successful, a coup in Moscow may not produce a more benign leadership, though this is not to argue we should root for Putin to stay in power. ...”

The Bulwark

Vox: Why cluster bombs would be different from other US weapons sent to Ukraine

Aljazeera - Russia’s Wagner fighters have not visited Belarus barracks: Minsk (Video)

NBC News - Wigs, guns and a giant sledgehammer: Russian media attacks mercenary chief over lavish home (Video)

Armored vehicles and fighters of Wagner on streets after the Wagner paramilitary group took control of the headquarters of Russia's southern military district in Rostov-on-Don, Russia on June 24, 2023.

2023 Tour de France

"The 2023 Tour de France is the 110th edition of the Tour de France. It started in Bilbao, Spain, on 1 July and will end with the final stage at Champs-Élysées, Paris, on 23 July. 22 teams are scheduled to take part in the race. All 18 UCI WorldTeams have been automatically invited. They were joined by 4 UCI ProTeams: the two highest placed UCI ProTeams in 2022 (Lotto–Dstny and Team TotalEnergies), along with Uno-X Pro Cycling Team and Israel–Premier Tech who were selected by Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), the organisers of the Tour. ...”

Wikipedia

Independent - Tour de France 2023 stage-by-stage guide: Route maps and profiles for all 21 days

letour (Video)

cycling news (Video)

YouTube: 9 Things You Should Know! | Tour De France 2023

Stage 8 map

Sound of a City: A journey through Paris in 20 songs

"Those of you that have visited Paris will know it’s a city in which the past lives in tandem with the present. This is especially true when it comes to its musical life. Indeed, to walk by lamplight from Montparnasse to Montmartre is to be consumed by centuries of sound, to relive its many golden ages as if they were all unfolding at once. It’s impossible to talk of Paris without mentioning La Belle Époque, a period between the 1870s and the dawn of the First World War in which France’s cultural and artistic climate flourished, leading to the creation of some of the most intoxicating musical works of the day. Before the likes of Debussy, Saint-Sans, Bizet, Erik Satie and Maurice Ravel, Germany was regarded as the centre of European musical excellence. ...”

FAR OUT (Audio)

‘Dig, Dig, Dig’: A Russian Soldier’s Story

"The Russian soldier was captured only days after arriving on the front line in eastern Ukraine. He had little training. But he knew how to disassemble and fire his rifle and where to put a tourniquet. The soldier, who went by the call sign Merk, was lured into the hands of Ukrainian soldiers near Bakhmut last month when he heard cries for help from a comrade, he said. With permission from his Ukrainian captors, Merk, 45, agreed to an interview by New York Times journalists just hours after his capture. A Ukrainian soldier sat in the next room during the interview. ...”

NY Times

NBC News: Ukraine and Russia are warning about imminent attacks at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Should the world be worried? (Video)

NY Times: Ukraine and Russia Accuse Each Other of Plotting Attack on Nuclear Plant

BBC - Ukraine war: Major Moscow airport flights disrupted by drone attack (Video)

A captured Russian soldier known by the call sign Merk during an interview.

Zones: Post-industrial aesthetics and environments after Stalker

"... Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) is as enigmatic as it is visually arresting. The film retains an ability to mystify contemporary audiences. Its philosophical meditations and spiritual themes are as relevant as ever. Stalker‘s imagery continues to inspire artists, writers, and filmmakers. The relationship between Stalker‘s human protagonists and their post-industrial settings, and the representation of these settings through a refined environmental aesthetic, are essential to the film’s identity. The film radically advanced artistic representations of industrial and post-industrial landscapes, complicating existing aesthetic tropes while updating them for new generations of artists. In many ways we are still learning to be Tarkovsky’s contemporaries. ...”

Off Screen

Off Screen: The Passion of the Zone (Pt. 2)

2012 May: Solaris, 2018 October: Andrei Rublev (1966), 2020 December: Bruegel as Cinema, 2022 December: Mirror (1975), 2023 January: Stalker (1979)

The Strange World Of... African Head Charge

"The African Head Charge project is led by producer Adrian Sherwood and Jamaican percussionist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah and started off as a combination of traditional Rasta drumming (including percussion instruments that had become neglected in reggae before AHC’s debut) and Sherwood’s experimentation with cut-up collage and rule-breaking approaches. They’re part of On-U Sound, which is not just a record label but a collective of musicians from different styles merging together for a variety of dub-based ventures, most of them playing across different projects simultaneously. ...”

The Quietus (Audio)

Cinema of Algeria

"Cinema of Algeria refers to the film industry based in the north African country of Algeria. During the era of French colonization, movies were predominantly a propaganda tool for the French colonial state. Although filmed in Algeria and viewed by the local population, the vast majority of ‘Algerian’ cinema in this era was created by Europeans. ... Algeria became an independent nation in 1962, a topic which garnered heavy attention amongst Algerian movie productions of the 1960s and 1970s. Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina's canonical 1967 film The Winds of the Aures depicts a rural farming family whose lives are destroyed by colonialism and war. ...”

Wikipedia

Jacobin: Algerian Film Was Born in the Struggle Against French Colonialism

Algerian cinema: A new wave is emerging (Video)

Algerian Cinema: Its History and Current Complexities (Video)

2021 May: The Battle of Algiers, 2022 July: The Algerian Revolution Changed the World for the Better

In Small Victory, Signs of Grueling Combat Ahead in Ukrainian Counteroffensive

"The Ukrainian soldiers thought the Russians would quickly retreat from Neskuchne, a tiny village in southern Ukraine, especially after a concerted artillery barrage and a rocket strike on their headquarters.Instead, the Russians dug in, fighting for two days before giving up the village last month, leaving their dead decaying on the roadside and piles of expended ammunition around their makeshift defenses. The Russian defeat, on June 9, was Ukraine’s first win in a prolonged counteroffensive that is well into its fourth week but moving at a slower pace than expected. In that respect, the battle for Neskuchne served as an early warning that Kyiv’s and the Western allies’ hopes for a quick victory were unrealistic and that every mile of their drive into Russian-occupied territory would be grueling and contested. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Opinion | A Salute to the Honest(ish) Russian Warlord (Video)

Vox: What the Wagner rebellion might mean for Russia’s war in Ukraine

The Intercept_: Prigozhin Told the Truth About Putin’s War in Ukraine

NY Times: Reading the Tea Leaves on the End of the War in Ukraine

Ukrainian soldiers in June at the entrance of a destroyed school that Russians had occupied in Neskuchne before the village was abandoned.

Two Decades of Sonic Exploration: History of Berlin

"Berlin in the 90s was not the cosmopolitan city it is today; much of the music scene did not look far beyond its own connections and experiences. CTM’s founders were then active in Berlin’s club and art scenes, and struck by the novel role of clubs as extended art spaces, relatively free from convention and fundamentally based on the interplay of various artistic and social practices. Many artists active in this context weren’t musicians first and foremost, and saw their work and its settings as continuously shifting and necessarily hybrid. Despite this supposedly porous social and cultural character, exchanges between nightlife and other communities were yet to be developed, as was its wider recognition as a serious form of art. ...”

CTM

Burnt Friedmann's Korg synth at CTM.

Queens, NYC-Born and Bred / Bari, Italy-Based Cear One on His Passion for Writing, His Influences, His Graff Adventures and More

"Born and raised in Queens, New York and based now in, Bari Italy, Cear One has left his mark not only in his native city, but in Central America and now in his current hometown in Southern Italy. I recently had the opportunity to interview him. When did you first ‘get up?’ I started practicing tags when I was about 13 or 14. But I didn’t actually go outside with spray paint until I was 17. That’s when I did my first throw-ups and fill ins on Queens’ rooftops. Where were you living at the time? I was living in Flushing, but I also went around Astoria, Jackson Heights and other parts of Queens. What inspired you to? My uncle, the Original KR1, was a writer. He was a big influence. Graffiti magazines and videos also inspired me. ...”

Street Art NYC

Camp spotted on suspected Wagner site in Belarus

"A new high-resolution satellite image obtained by the BBC reveals hundreds of new tent-like structures at the site of a suspected Wagner camp in Belarus. This follows an agreement to relocate Wagner mercenaries and their controversial leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, to Belarus, following the recent mutiny against Russian forces. What does the satellite image show? The satellite image appears to show activity at a disused military base about 13 miles (21km) from the town of Asipovichy - around 64 miles from Minsk, the capital of Belarus. The area has been reported in Russian media as a place which could house Wagner fighters. ...”

BBC

Aljazeera: Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 492 (Video)

POLITICO: West to Putin: We hate you. Don’t go. (Video)

Vanity Fair: How Ukraine Viewed Russia’s Aborted Coup (June 26, 2023)

A Ukrainian military serviceman holds a defused cluster bomb from an MSLR missile, among a display of pieces of rockets used by the Russian army, October 21, 2022. CNN: Biden administration could soon approve sending controversial cluster munitions to Ukraine

The Shores of Bohemia: A Cape Cod Story, 1910-1960

"There is something ineffable about the appeal of the outer reaches of Cape Cod to generations of writers, artists and architects. Maybe it’s simply that, as Thoreau observed, ‘a man may stand there and put all America behind him.’ Maybe — and this was certainly true for the first part of the 20th century — it was the place’s remoteness and isolation, the sense that as the land reaches out toward the Atlantic, in a single long, crooked limb, the present conventional world slips away, allowing you to rethink, reinvent and get away with all manner of things. Maybe a sort of pre-modern living — with so few amenities and creature comforts — drew the urban cliques who gravitated there, repelled as many were by the excesses of capitalism. Still, the scope of the attraction is astounding. In John Taylor Williams’s account of 50 years of bohemian life in and around the last three towns on Cape Cod, ‘The Shores of Bohemia,’ you’re almost overwhelmed with famous names. ...”

NY Times: The Outer Limits

the arts fuse

amazon

50 Years of Hip-Hop: A History of the Genre’s Evolution

"Hip-hop was born in the summer of 1973 at a block party in New York City’s Bronx when DJ Kool Herc extended the beat of a recording using two turntables and a mixer to fade between them, then started emceeing as the music continued. His techniques came to be known as scratching and rapping — two of the key elements in hip-hop music. It would be another six years before the first hip-hop song was recorded and released, introducing the genre to a wider audience and gaining popularity in the mainstream. By the 1980s, hip-hop had expanded beyond New York and could be heard on the airwaves and in clubs in cities such as Los Angeles, Atlanta, Toronto, St. Louis, and New Orleans. By 1989, hip-hop had established itself as a mainstay in popular music. ...”

Discogs

NY Times: Hip-Hop, Still Fly at 50

NPR: 50 Years of Hip-Hop (Audio)

21 Miles of Obstacles - The Ukrainian counteroffensive faces an enemy nearly as daunting as the Russians: the terrain.

"The southern offensive could determine the fate of the war, many military analysts believe. Much of Ukraine is rolling steppe and forests, but the south is especially flat, making it more dangerous for advancing troops. Ukrainian officials have said the counteroffensive is going as planned, even though it’s clear, through open source accounts, that Ukrainian vehicles — including recently supplied western tanks and armored personnel carriers — are being damaged and destroyed. Kyiv’s formations have managed to take several small villages, but Ukrainian casualties are mounting. The slow pace is most likely the result of several factors. Russian troops have shown competency fighting defensively, and Moscow’s formations have improved their tactics since earlier in the war. ...”

NY Times

BBC - Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia

The Feminist Art Journal

"The Feminist Art Journal was an American magazine, published quarterly from 1972 to 1977. It was the first stable, widely read journal covering feminist art. By the time the final publication was produced, The Feminist Art Journal had a circulation of eight thousand copies, and ten thousand copies of the last edition were printed. Cindy Nemser, Patricia Mainardi, and Irene Moss, the three founding members of the Feminist Art Journal all formerly staffed the magazine Women and Art, a publication funded by the Redstocking Artists. ...”

Wikipedia

Criticism: A Feminist Reckoning

Cindy Nemser: FEMINIST ART JOURNAL

YouTube: Artist & Critic with Don Gray, "Cindy Nemser, Feminist Art Journal"

Anarchy in Action – Colin Ward (1973)

"The argument of this book is that an anarchist society, a society which organizes itself without authority, is always in existence, like a seed beneath the snow, buried under the weight of the state and its bureaucracy, capitalism and its waste, privilege and its injustices, nationalism and its suicidal loyalties, religious differences and their superstitious separatism. ... Through a wide-ranging analysis—drawing on examples from education, urban planning, welfare, housing, the environment, the workplace, and the family, to name but a few—Colin Ward demonstrates that the roots of anarchist practice are not so alien or quixotic as they might at first seem but lie precisely in the ways that people have always tended to organize themselves when left alone to do so. ...”

PM Press

W – Anarchy in Action

Anarchy in Action – Colin Ward (1973)

amazon

Just How Much Trouble Is Vladimir Putin In?

"The last few days have been alternately strange, confusing and nerve-wracking. The world watched as tension between several of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most loyal lieutenants broke into the open, and one of them turned his guns on targets in his own country.For now, the situation appears to have been resolved with an offer of exile to Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, who resisted having his forces integrated into the Russian army and sent them into Russia to confront the military leadership. But it remains unclear to what extent Putin and the autocratic regime he has spent the last 23 years building has been damaged by the display of defiance, either short term or long term. So we asked some of the most astute observers of Russia and its leader to share their thoughts on what we’ve learned about Putin in the last few days, and what that might mean for Russia — and the West — going forward. ... Here’s what they had to say. ...”

POLITICO

NY Times: A Mutiny That Showed the Stress on Putin’s System of Rule

NBC News: Mutiny and mayhem in Russia a probable boon for Ukraine (Video)

The Intercept_: Ukraine Blocks Journalists From Front Lines With Escalating Censorship

POLITICO: Prigozhin’s Wagner mutiny is over. What now? (Audio)

NY Times: Opinion | Prigozhin and the Long and Infamous History of Failed Russian Rebellions

NY Times: His Glory Fading, a Russian Warlord Took One Last Stab at Power

An advertising board of Wagner group in St. Petersburg yesterday

Fernando Pessoa’s Unselving

"On July 11, 1903, a long narrative poem called ‘The Miner’s Song’ by Karl P. Effield appeared in the Natal Mercury, a weekly newspaper in Durban, South Africa. Effield—who claimed to be from Boston—was actually none other than the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, then a high school student in Durban. This was the first of Pessoa’s English-language fictitious authors to appear in print—the beginning of Pessoa’s unusual mode of self-othering. The adoption of different personae allowed him to go beyond a nom de plume, and take on unpopular, controversial, and even extreme points of view in both his poetry and prose. ...”

The Paris Review

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

Pessoa in 1934. From Os Objectos de Fernando Pessoa

‘Make Me Famous’ – and Other Things People Want From Art

"In the fascinating art-world documentary Make Me Famous, painter Edward Brezinski finally gets his wish. Although he died — probably — in 2007, Brezinski’s largely unrealized goal in his lifetime was to be a successful artist. Even his mysterious death, in the South of France, didn’t raise his profile or prices — as it has for others and as perhaps he hoped it would do for him. Unclear. But this film succeeds where the artist failed, turning his life and art into the main attraction, with enough conviction to ensure he’ll be more than a footnote in art history. ...”

Voice

‘Make Me Famous’: Film Review

W - Make Me Famous (2021 film)

YouTube: Make Me Famous trailer

Outside the Mudd Club, 1980.

Impulse! Records: An Alternative Top 20 Zeitgeist Seizing Albums

"There can be little argument that a jazz label ever captured a zeitgeist more completely than Impulse! did during its original 1960s incarnation. In the US, the fight back against white racism was cresting, opposition to the Vietnam war was growing, outrage over the assassinations of figures of hope such as President Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X was boiling over, and inner cities were literally ablaze with protest. Impulse! entered this arena in 1961. ... [Shabaka] Hutchings represents a socially informed style of jazz which confronts racism, poverty and political authoritarianism much like the New Thing did in the 1960s. On the threshold of its 60th anniversary in 2021, Impulse! has made a great start in regaining its foundational relevance. ...”

All About Jazz

The Dial

"The Dial was an American magazine published intermittently from 1840 to 1929. In its first form, from 1840 to 1844, it served as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists. From the 1880s to 1919 it was revived as a political review and literary criticism magazine. From 1920 to 1929 it was an influential outlet for modernist literature in English. ... The first year of the Watson/Thayer Dial alone saw the appearance of Sherwood Anderson, Djuna Barnes, Kenneth Burke, William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, E. E. Cummings, Charles Demuth, Kahlil Gibran, Gaston Lachaise, Amy Lowell, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Arthur Wilson later known as Winslow Wilson, Odilon Redon, Bertrand Russell, Carl Sandburg, Van Wyck Brooks, and W. B. Yeats. ...”

Wikipedia

The Dial Magazine

Modernist Magazines: The Dial

Online Books: The Dial

As Putin’s Trusted Partner, Prigozhin Was Always Willing to Do the Dirty Work

"Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the mercenary leader who led an armed rebellion in Russia on Saturday, was never afraid of a dirty task, many say. Emerging from jail as the Soviet Union was collapsing, he began his post-criminal career selling hot dogs on street corners in St. Petersburg, Russia. There, he befriended Vladimir V. Putin, then a minor official in the city government, developed a catering business and earned billions on government contracts when his friend Vladimir became prime minister and then president of Russia. Mr. Prigozhin quickly earned the trust of his benefactor, who assigned him a number of important tasks that were best handled at arm’s length from the government. ...”

*****NY Times

*****NY Times: How a Rebellion in Russia Unfolded Over 36 Hours (Video) “Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner private military company, led an armed rebellion in Russia on Saturday and claimed that his forces came within 125 miles of Moscow. Here is how the events unfolded. ...”

***NY Times - Timeline: What Led to the Standoff Between Russia and Prigozhin

***NY Times - Here is the latest on the standoff between Prigozhin and the Russian military.

NY Times: Russia in Crisis as Mercenary Revolt Threatens Putin

NY Times: Putin embraced turmoil, and now it is rattling his leadership.

W - Wagner Group rebellion, W - Wagner Group, W - Neo-Nazism

The Intercept_: Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Coup Targets Putin and His “Oligarchic Clan”

POLITICO: Wagner rebels career toward showdown with Putin as they push to Moscow (Audio)

BBC: Is this a coup? What is Prigozhin doing in Russia? IVideo)

Guardian: Even if Wagner rebellion fails, Putin’s presidency has never looked weaker

Map shows Wagner Group’s movements

Ukraine Blocks Journalists From Front Lines With Escalating Censorship

"After Ukrainian forces regained control of the port city of Kherson last November, following eight months of Russian occupation, some journalists entered the liberated city within hours. Without formal permission to be there, they documented the jubilant crowds welcoming soldiers with hugs and Ukrainian flags. Ukrainian officials, who tightly control press access to the front lines, responded by revoking the journalists’ press credentials, claiming that they had ‘ignored existing restrictions.’ In the months since then, as Ukraine has sought to liberate more territory occupied by Russia, the Ukrainian government has intensified its efforts to control the narrative of the war by tightening journalists’ access to the conflict. ...”

The Intercept_

The Intercept_: On the Ground in Ukraine (Audio)

NY Times: Ukraine’s Western-Trained Brigades Begin to Enter the Fight, NY Times: Understanding Ukraine’s Counteroffensive (Audio)

Aljazeera: Zelenskyy urges world to heed Ukraine’s ‘terror’ attack warning (Video)

BBC - Ukraine war: Living without water in a town devastated by dam breach

The damage caused to the Kakhovka dam earlier this month wiped out homes and left families without water

A Day At The Cage

"It overflows with history and diversity, sweat, blood, and Air Jordans. It’s where all five boroughs come to play, but this isn’t your usual recreational rookie tomfoolery. ‘The Cage,’ on West 4th Street and Sixth Avenue, is NYC’s iconic basketball court — NBA legends such as Stephon Marbury, Rod Strickland, and Jayson Williams all stepped foot through the magical gates to play some streetball here. Whispers are traded around the court that even Julius Irving played here. ...”

Voice

Behold the Cage

W - West Fourth Street Courts

vincenzo d’alto - West 4th Street Courts

Clef (left) and Skisso bringing their best to the court.

When Afrobeat Legend Fela Kuti Collaborated with Cream Drummer Ginger Baker

"At the end of the 60s, superstar drummer and angriest man in rock Ginger Baker was on the verge of collapse. Strung out on heroin, deeply grieving Jimi Hendrix’s death, and alienated from his former Cream and Blind Faith bandmates, he needed a new direction. He found it in Nigeria, where he decamped after driving a Range Rover from Algeria across the Sahara Desert. (A madcap adventure captured in the 1971 documentary Ginger Baker in Africa). Once in Lagos, Baker started jamming with Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti. The meeting of these two musical forces of nature produced a suite of recordings. ...”

Open Culture (Video)

YouTube: Ginger Baker in Africa (1971) 53:35, Ginger Baker’s Air Force 2 (1970) 49:10