quilting-bee: fantastic gallery of modern quiltmaking
corpse bride: vis-ร -vis those paranormal paramours, a guide to posthumous marriage
rapper’s delight: woman walking her dog dances her heart out for a Bruxelles street performer
uncommon-grounds: coffee cups moulded from recycled coffee dregs
demarcation: a look at twenty-two plus international borders
Monday 1 June 2015
five-by-five
Friday 10 October 2014
b is for bruxelles—that's good enough for me
Philosopher Philippe van Parijs presents a rather brilliant lesson in the post-war history and civics that led—indecisively, to Brussels (Brussel, Bruxelles) becoming if not the de facto but customary capital of the European Union. Though the Belgian capital city had the support of the Western European powers, the nation was itself unwilling to accept that yoke, rallying for its own domestic seat of industry, the ancient town of Liรจge, as the union was constituted back in 1952 was focused on the efficient use of Europe's raw materials and iron and coal resources for rebuilding and remediation.
After much consternation, the political organs of the West became the journeyman body-politic that has endured to the present day, the court migrating from Strasbourg (with sufficient office space) to Luxembourg (an alternative to Paris, which only the French viewed as a natural consequence and the obvious choice), and ultimately to Belgium, too, and points further depending on its charge. It is strange how natural endowments became the stuff of toy kingdoms and the restoration of old boundaries. Liรจge never stood as a candidate as the Walloon population rejected the return of their exiled monarch, while the rest of Belgium was for it. Support evaporated as violence arose in Belgium, in response to the restoration of the king. In the turmoil, however, when no decision could reached, Belgium due to alphabetical order, gained order of precedence: Aachen was disqualified out of hand as German, as was Amsterdam as too much of a logistically accomodating challenge, as were others in the founding coalition of six. Brussels, realising that this indecision was likely to continue as commission powers expanded, acquired more and more viable space for the functionaries to meet, ultimately becoming the winter-quarters of this traveling greatest show on Earth, though the placement remains unofficial.
catagories: ๐ง๐ช, ๐ช๐บ, ๐, foreign policy, language
Friday 5 September 2014
superfecta or theatre-in-the-round
NATO representatives have gathered in Wales in order to reassert the relevance of their club and address a depressing array of threats to broader peace. Such short workshops rarely result in any lasting resiliency or reflection, and instead in greater polarisation for fear of admitting to motivations that lie beneath hidden by the beards of รฉminence gris—but that's the trident of institutional problems. Nationally endemic problems can happily be ignored in such an ideological environment, and provocation buffets attention from all corners: Western powers are making a calculated (even unto failure) to punish Russia's stance in the Crimea with economic sanctions that are curiously—if not backfiring—only punishing to the sanction-givers, as Russia has independent means and no shortage of other buyers—and oddly chosen rhetoric, like attributing the false hubris that it might take Russia as much as two weeks to take Ukraine, when in fact it would be much quicker.
catagories: ๐ง๐ช, ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ท๐บ, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, ๐ฑ, foreign policy, revolution
Tuesday 20 May 2014
arbitagรฉ or rub-a-dub
It could be that the US Central Bank never really introduced a tapering-scheme, meant to ween the economy off of its massive subsidy programme and has actually increased its printing of script, each bill redeemable for less and less.
Perhaps those whom try to project rosy futures to keep the whole rigged system on life-support realised that the American dollar was wholly untenable otherwise when they essentially—it seems—laundered some one hundred forty billion in bonds (debt—ungood) to hide their addiction to quantitative-easing (drawing money out of thin air—double-plus-ungood) to the country of Belgium. Belgium cannot live beyond its means as the European Central Bank and the European Union simply does not allow members to spin straw into gold. Whether such maneuvers actually took place are subject to question but it does seem quite plausible if not an eventuality, but certainly that college-try for tapering ought to be the subject of investigation, like with previous manipulation of the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) exchanges.
Saturday 12 April 2014
saargebiet oder neutral moresnet
Prior to the treaties and terms that were drawn up at the conclusion of the World Wars, the German state of Saarland had no cohesive identity and did not exist as an administrative division, until after WWI, French forces governed the area as a protectorate, the resource-rich region having historic connections to both countries and, like neighbouring Alsace, dominated by each power at different times over the centuries. The goal of long term occupation was that France could recover from the industrial ravages of the Great War and prevent Germany's rearmament through the coal and mineral deposits in this land. With the end of the following war, Saarland once again became a French protectorate with the surrender and when German territory was divided amongst the Allied Forces, which was not reunited with the rest of Western Germany until 1957 with what is referred to as die Kleine Wiedervereinigung. The French also had designs on another region, to the north, the heavily industrial and more resource-rich lands of the Ruhr Valley (Ruhrgebiet) of North-Rhine Westphalia.
French negotiators felt that the Ruhrgebiet should either be managed like the Saar Protectorate or be created as a separate condominium state—like the singular case of Andorra, ruled by two co-princes, the president of France and the Spanish bishop of Urgell, or the strange compromise reached a century earlier in the sliver of land called Neutral Moresnet (Esperanto was also the official language of this tiny country), which was a shared responsibility between the Kingdoms of Prussia and Belgium. A zinc mine, the region's only significant source, was located here and the committee that redrew the map after the last spate of warring wanted to ensure that no one country could monopolise the supply. American and British representatives, however, felt that France's demands went too far and taking away the country's industrial-base would make rebuilding the war-torn land impossible. Concessions were arrived at, however, and in exchange for being able to re-establish itself as an independent federal republic, West Germany agreed to pool its coal and steel resources with the rest of Europe and impose quotas on how much it could use domestically.
Thursday 27 March 2014
epimethius
Ever ready to take recourse to its core values—seemingly that of safeguarding the interest of powerful industry lobbies that know no bounds of patriotism but are exceedingly well-versed in all sorts of jingoism—the United States invoked a star-spangled jibe at its European allies during the G7 summit, which seemed to make quick amends of all America's recent transgressions and wiped the collective memories of those in attendance.
catagories: ๐ง๐ช, ๐ช๐บ, ๐ท๐บ, ๐บ๐ธ, foreign policy, labour, transportation
Thursday 9 May 2013
leute heute
This day, coinciding the late night capitulation of Nazi Germany of 1945 to the Soviet army, after midnight according to Moscow time (executed in Reims, France) but observed on the day prior by Western European countries, is universally recognised as Europe Day for the Schuman Declaration of 1950 that founded what would become the European Union.
The fatefulness of the coincidences are muted (but not mooted) by the spirit of the day, reserved for lessons in civics, integration and harmony, but it is a little off-putting to have such a significant collusion of anniversaries that the political overtones cannot (and should not) be fully ignored or forgotten.
Much could hinge on any given date on the calendar and maybe there is a certain hopefully affinity to be found in infamy but the designation of does seem a bit of a bombast, considering the certain friggatriskaidekaphobia to be overcome. The day also falls on the eve of the invasion of France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg in 1940 in addition to Victory Day, and curiously is precisely offset by a half-year with the German declared Schicktsalstag (Day of Destiny). 9 November, from a German point of view and the perspective of Weltsanschuung, is marked by the execution of cooler-heads in 1848 in Vienna that led to later crises of state, the overthrow of the monarchy and formation of the Weimar Republic, Hitler’s coup (Putsch) in Munich, the horrors of Kristallnacht (Reichspogromnacht) a few years later, the founding of the SS, an unruly and disenfranchised bunch of malcontents despite the lent prestige, and the razing of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Maybe that date will never be fully reformed but did redeem itself, and it was originally celebrated as the German Day of Reunification, though later shifted to October of the following year when all formalities were complete in order to not dither on a day already associated with atrocity. The culling of time and dates is certainly not limited just to the past and perhaps Europe Day is really an avenue towards redemption and unhinging.
catagories: ๐ง๐ช, ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ซ๐ท, ๐ท๐บ, ๐, ๐, holidays and observances, revolution, Wikipedia
Wednesday 11 January 2012
stamp act or omm-nomm-nomm
Saturday 19 November 2011
baby out with the bath water
Both sides ought to realize the limits of reparations and accusations before diplomacy is exhausted as well: sacrificing national self-determination for the sake of monetary-security is as big a farce as the security-theatre of the absurd of the States. And although the old arrangements have been shown to be less than ideal and Europe’s true-believers have been given a great gift in the chance to re-think and re-build the framework of this cooperative, one should not be tempted to dismiss the overall health and well-being of the EU with such prejudice. Some are crying socialism and collectivism, very reminiscent I think of the harsh treatment and fear-mongering propagated by the opponents of Obamacare when they cited horror stories from the British NHS (National Health Service) as reasons to avoid socialized medicine, but in large parts of Europe, the people are seeing benefits from the taxes they contribute realized in affordable health-care, less gentrification, labour laws that protect the worker, preservation of heritage and the environment, rule of law without tolerance for corruption. The financial institutions that are ailing for the most part are limited to those that were over-extended in the American real-estate market and the imaginary numbers game of derivatives, Volkswagen is worth more in real assets than all of American auto manufacturers combined, and though employment and future prospects have sadly diminished in many places, there is great potential for recovery, should national entities only be able to deliver on their original promises. There is not, I think, so much outside pressure mandating change as restructuring for competition, enforcement of regulation (taxation) and growth, within reason. There's already enough crap in the world to satisfy any consumer (though possibly not at the right price), but the de-industrialization of the world's former factories (the US and the UK have grown a bit shrill in their criticism along with moving to a service-based economy) had nothing to do with a grand-anti-consumerism movement and more to do with greed.
Countries that retained their manufacturing sector continue to enjoy economic health and good levels of employment all around--not to over-simplify matters and not to disparage those nations that have picked up the slack with the outsourcing and off-shoring of corporate colonialism, tasked nominally with the production and export of things out-of-proportion with their own needs, means and tastes. It is not just the cars, planes, computers, etc. but also the management and control in line with demand and the dirty part of the business that leaves a mess to clean up: increased demand and improvements in standards of living has not pushed the tolerance of the environment to unseen heights but the struggle to maintain profit and productivity has. Remanded to one's own backyard, manufacturing and the challenge to do it all better and within one's neighbourhood imperatives, I believe, to mend the environment and the economy. National branding won't heal rifts nor will it safeguard statehood but maybe without the artificial threats of endless debt and austere futures, nations can resume talking about what works and what hasn't and without entendre and vitriol.
catagories: ๐ง๐ช, ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐, ๐ก, ๐ฅธ, economic policy, environment, lifestyle