Sunday 3 November 2024

stratocracy (11. 971)

Coming into force six months later as an amendment to the Meiji Constitution of 1890, the current supreme law of Japan was promulgated on this day in 1946, drafted primarily by American civilian officials of the occupation after the country’s unconditional surrender. The document provides for certain fundamental human rights and the supremacy of the parliament (the national Diet, favouring the British model though eliminating peerage with the upper house, like the House of Lords, formerly restricted to the nobility), reducing the role of the emperor to a symbolic head of state with only a ceremonial role. Also referred to as the Peace Constitution (Heiwa-Kenpล, ๅนณๅ’Œๆ†ฒๆณ•), its composition was supervised by Douglas MacArthur with input from Japanese scholars and subject matter experts, Article 9 renounces the country’s right towage war or raise armies despite its military capabilities and sending forces in presence of a substantial American military presence. Sovereignty restored in 1952, attempts for further revision were frustrated over a number of legal hurdles and the requirements for change built into the system.

Saturday 2 November 2024

the balfour agreement (11. 959)

In anticipation of control of Mandatory Palestine from the Ottoman Empire as a result of ongoing negotiation and with the express understanding that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities,” the British government proclaimed its support of a “national home for the Jewish people” in a missive from Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfoud to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild on this day in 1917. The pledge to this community leader appeared in the press a week later. First drafted three years earlier to secure Jewish support in a wider war by appealing to ambitions for statehood, an exploratory committee was launched by Sir Mark Sykes (see above) but without consultation with the local Palestinian population. Although Israel did come into existence until after World War II concluded (the term used, “national home” was intentionally ambiguous and had no basis in international law, unclear how it might manifest, as a republic, a territory within the mandate or a spiritual centre), the declaration of support (with approval from the US and other Allies) strengthened the movement and has led to one of the most intractable geopolitical situations of the twentieth century and beyond.

Tuesday 22 October 2024

berlin-krise (11. 924)

Instigated by a relatively routine control stop that quickly escalated into an international incident following the construction of the Berlin Wall and increased tension among the occupying forces, culminating with the partition of the city and the Soviets seeking a separate peace with East Germany. Resulting with the standoff between Russian and American tanks eventually withdrawn in stalemate five days later, the crisis was sparked on this evening in 1961 when US Deputy Chief of Mission in West Berlin, Edward Allan Lightner, Jr and his wife were asked to present their identifications at Checkpoint Charlie en route to attend an opera in East Berlin. Refusing to comply (Khrushchev had relented on earlier demands of restricted movement of the Allies) and thought their USAREUR plated vehicle was sufficient proof for passage. In response to this dispute, US president JFK recalled Lucius Clay from retirement as a show of American resolve, dispatching several armoured vehicles to the crossing along with a retinue of troops and a military police escort for the Lightners. A plan by the Americans to bulldoze the inchoate wall was countermanded, but there was a face-off nonetheless, which in addition to the tanks included US soldiers armed with Davy Crockett guns, an over the shoulder personnel launcher for tactical nuclear warheads. Under terms negotiated by spy, diplomat and back-channel contact Georgi Bolshakov, both sides stood down. Bolshakov later helped dispel thoughts that Khrushchev and the USSR conspired in the assassination of Kennedy for the public, his brother RFK and widow.

Saturday 19 October 2024

.io (11. 915)

Since 1968, the UK and US have operated a joint military base, Diego Garcia, on the Chagos Islands—with the official demonym of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT, also previously known as the Oil Islands)—and Mauritius (which gained independence from the UK the same year after being ceded as a French colony to Britain under the terms of the 1814 Treaty of Paris) has claimed the archipelago as its own, supported by a ruling of the International Court of Justice to end decolonisation. After more than half a century, the UK conceded and in exchange for a ninety-nine year lease on the military base has handed over sovereignty to Mauritius earlier this month. And while a significant move for justice and reconciliation, these developments—not tracked by the tech world—have an equally sizeable impact on the internet with repatriation, we learn via Web Curious. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which issues top-level country domains will remove the suffix, IO, not allowing any new registration under that code (like with the governing body for emoji no longer accepting submissions for flags) and begin the process of retiring existing ones: github, twitch, et al. At a time when domain names can be a considerable portion of a country’s economy (see also) and how many have hitched their identity to a particular brand and legacy with an expectation of permanence, it’s pretty consequential—and of course not without protocol and precedent, albeit established in times when the online world did not play such an overwhelming part of our lives, geopolitically or otherwise. Granted less than a year earlier, the Soviet Union .su domain was replaced with .ru with understanding it would eventually be shutdown in 1991—but the former’s transformation into an unpoliced space and refuge of the dark web convinced authorities that regulations needed to be in place and enforced regarding transition and closure. The 1992 dissolution of Yugoslavia was arguably a better managed affair, with the ISO and IANA having learned from their previous experience, with .yu splintering into its successors .me and .rs respectively.

Wednesday 16 October 2024

frostbite falls (11. 907)

The fictional terra nullius, an island in the middle of the Lake of the Woods (Pikwedina Sagainan) neither claimed by the US or Canada since conditions there were said to be inhospitable to human life, of Moosylvania is governed by presumed namesake Bullwinkle J Moose. In the finale of the first run of the series, an insidious plot to destroy the island by Fearless Leader was foiled by the duo’s ingenuity, and in hopes of getting the show renewed for syndication, Rocky and Bullwinkle producer Jay Ward dispatched an assistant to Minnesota to purchase an uninhabited island on the cross-border lake suitable as a stand-in and then launched a campaign to petition for statehood. A publicity team gathered sufficient signatures across America and Ward and associates arranged for an audience with president John F Kennedy on this day in 1962. Arriving however just as the Cuban Missile Crisis began (see also here and here), they were escorted off the premises of the White House at gun-point.

synchronoptica

one year ago: e-textiles (with synchronoptica) plus Don’t Look Now
 
seven years ago: rehabilitating cephalopods, occupational gender equity in Russia plus translating IKEA accessory names
 
eight years ago: denim televisions, Brexit and Marmite shortages plus clowns try to improve their public image
 
nine years ago: assorted links to revisit plus drone wars
 
twelve years ago: ISPs policing IPs

Sunday 29 September 2024

and that my friend is only the beginning of how this makes america great—you’ll be so overwhelmed with all the winning that you won’t know what you’ve lost until it’s too— (11. 882)

Via Memo of the Air, we are directed towards this rather brilliant reminder of the illiberal horrors contained in Project 2025—which Trump disavows though his agenda fits the blueprint point-for-point—as an homage to Schoolhouse Rock, which despite reaching the series fifth decade, the 1950s that it would transport back the United States to is far darker, distant and regressive. For the rest of the world, enduring America’s seemingly endless whinging about its democracy is taxing, and it will be over within weeks—either with the country crowing with pride as the untoppled beacon for freedom, when even at the best of times its record is not so perfect, or else an insular and fascist theocracy with the hollow procedural trappings of free elections—but either way, America will throw its weight around and have serious consequences globally, impacting everyone. The lyrics (though missing some major curtailments of rights and norms, like support for the arts, banning pornography, support for veterans, etc but I guess the song would never end otherwise) helping cite the pages where each proposal appears and has the coda of how to overcome this bleak future. Draping the Statue of Liberty in a Handmaid’s costume was a nice touch too.

Wednesday 25 September 2024

sword of damocles (11. 869)

On this day in 1961, US president John Fitzgerald Kennedy delivered his address to the UN General Assembly, amidst the recent and unexpected death of Secretary General Dag Hammarskjรถld and anxiety over posturing and sabre-rattling over the paused negotiations towards disarmament. In his forty-five minute exhortation, Kennedy praises the intra-national organisation and challenges the bipolar world to turn an arms race into a race for peace:

But to give this organisation [the Troika, the principals, the US, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, on nuclear test bans] three drivers—to permit each Great Power to decide its own case, would entrench the Cold War in the headquarters of peace. Whatever advantages such a plan may hold out to my own country, as one of the great powers, we reject it. For we far prefer world law, in the age of self-determination, to world war, in the age of mass extermination.

Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.

Men no longer debate whether armaments are a symptom or a cause of tension. The mere existence of modern weapons—ten million times more powerful than any that the world has ever seen, and only minutes away from any target on earth—is a source of horror, and discord, and distrust. Men no longer maintain that disarmament must await the settlement of all disputes—for disarmament must be a part of any permanent settlement. And man may no longer pretend that the quest for disarmament is a sign of weakness—for in a spiralling arms race, a nation’s security may be shrinking, even as its arms increase.

For fifteen years, this organisation has sought the reduction and destruction of arms. Now that goal is no longer a dream—it is a practical matter of life or death. The risks inherent in disarmament pale in comparison to the risks inherent in an unlimited arms race.

Listen to or watch the entire stirring speech at the link above. We think the rhetoric could also speak to contemporary events and the climate catastrophe, also hanging by a thread over us all and severed by wilful ignorance, neglect and misinformation.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: a blogoversary of note (with synchronoptica) plus some ruinous remixes

seven years ago: right wing elements gain influence in the Bundestag plus film cuts mimic visual perception

eight years ago: Idiocracy was not supposed to be prophetic plus phantom islands

nine years ago: data-plans and Roman calendars plus innovations in 3D printing

ten years ago: an early version of the Line (with greenhouses), Roman emperor Caracalla plus a graffiti gallery

Tuesday 24 September 2024

the tanaka memorial (11. 868)

First introduced to English readership on this day in 1931 in the Shanghai journal China Critic, the alleged Imperial Japanese strategic plan supposedly authored by Baron Tanaka Giichi in 1927 for Emperor Hirohito was summarised with the postulates that: 

  • In order to take over the world, one must take over Asia 
  • In order to take over Asia, one must take over China 
  • In order to take over China, one must take over Manchuria and Mongolia 
  • Success in conquering China will cause the rest of Eastern Asia and Oceania to surrender 

Despite occasional citation in some Chinese school textbooks to this day, most scholarship now regards the memorial (Tanaka Jลsลbun, ็”ฐไธญไธŠๅฅๆ–‡) as inauthentic but a potent anti-Japanese piece of propaganda forged by either the Communist Party or Kuomintang nationalists to forward their own ends but the prevailing consensus during the 1930s and 1940s was that the document was genuine and reflected ambitions of the Imperial government, equated to Hitler’s Mein Kampf by the West, conflated with real war time slogans like Hakkล ichiu (ๅ…ซ็ด˜ไธ€ๅฎ‡, “eight crown cords, one roof”—or roughly, “All the world under one roof,” understood as a manifest destiny to unify the eight corners of the planet rather than the sanctioned translation of universal brotherhood) and the plot (the sequential steps often projected out to the conquest of Siberia and the Soviet Union—the Soviets also suspected to have fabricated and leaked the plan to instigate conflicts in that theatre to advance their own interests, establishment of bases in the Pacific and the take over of the United States) of several American propaganda films, like Frank Capra’s War Department commissioned Know Your Enemy: Japan and the 1945 James Cagney dramatisation Blood on the Sun exploited the purported document (no original was ever sourced) as a MacGuffin. Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard, elaborating the conspiracy as the “Tenyaka Memorial” an international effort for global domination devolved to a network of pharmaceutical companies, psychiatrists and banks, believed himself to be personally targeted and cited that persecution as one of the principle drivers of the church and its operations.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the remixes of DJ Earworm (with synchronoptica), early home entertainment, assorted links worth revisiting plus The Love Boat

seven years ago: voting in Germany

eight years ago: commemorative Agatha Christie stamps, early Neuralink trials plus pigeon-texting

nine years ago: more links to enjoy plus emissions scandals

ten years ago: cash is king plus delivery by drone

Thursday 19 September 2024

blue line, red line (11. 855)

In a statement delivered amid the sonic booms of Israeli fighter jets conducting mock air raids in the skies over Beirut and actual strikes on the southern border, Hizbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah addressed for the first time publicly the coordinated denotations of booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies Tuesday and Wednesday that killed three dozen supposed operatives and seriously maimed thousands as low-tech communication devices exploded in orchestra after receiving the trigger signal at the same time. Israeli intelligence manufactured and distributed the rigged handheld pagers through a series of Taiwanese and Hungarian shell companies beginning in 2022 once it surmised that Hizbollah were avoiding cell phones for fear that their messages could be intercepted, and whilst this surprise simultaneous assault is arguably more targeted and discriminating than the bloodshed in Gaza, the injuries sustained happened in public, in the markets and in traffic and not on individuals actively carrying out the business of the organisation, in violation of the on prohibition on landmines and similar traps, causing mass panic and overwhelming Lebanon’s and Syria’s emergency care infrastructure. Potentially six thousand of people could have been killed all at once in this unprecedent attack. Nasrallah called the sabotage an act of war, vowing to keep fighting until aggression in Palestine ends. Though not acting during the immediate chaos, Israel is committing to this “new phase” of the war in order to return settlers to the north of the country on the countries’ disputed border region and the occupied Golan Heights.

Thursday 12 September 2024

coup d’etat (11. 837)

Bringing an end to the House of Solomon that ruled since 1270, members of the Ethiopian army and police, a junta backed by the USSR, who would go on to govern the country as the Derg (แ‹ฐแˆญแŒ, the Provisional Military Administrative Council) deposed Emperor Haile Selassie on this day in 1974. The emperor was imprisoned by the Marxist-Leninist group upset with his failure to deliver on promised land-reform measures in the semi-feudal state that left many subsistence farmers destitute and effectively indentured to landlords, perpetuating famine and forced relocation of thousands, eventually nationalising all property and abolishing the empire but not before proclaiming crown prince, in exile, Asfaw Wossen Tafari, as king (significantly not emperor, Negusa Nagast, king of kings) who wisely declined and avoided the imprisonment and execution that awaited other members of the court and royal family as well as government ministers and the emperor himself under treacherous circumstances not revealed until after the people’s revolution overthrew the military regime. His death and later ceremonial reinterment was not accepted by adherents of the Rastafarian movement who regard Haile Selassie as god incarnate and hope of deliverance from colonial powers for Africa’s diaspora.

Saturday 7 September 2024

10⁶⁰⁰ (11. 819)

Via Things Magazine (lots more to explore there), we get the chance to revisit the electromechanical rotor cipher machine, the advanced HX-63 developed by a private Swiss firm, which would prove difficult to crack even by contemporary standards and in 1952 was exponentially more secure than the CIA’s top model. Over the course of a decade, only about a dozen of the units were manufactured and though most clientele remained anonymous, the French defence ministry was one known buyer and a defence contractor found the device in a Cold War communications bunker and restored it to working order. The potential of those above undisclosed purchasers to be forces not aligned with Western interests caused the intelligence agency to intervene and not only eventually stop their sales but also to enter into a partnership with the company to produce a model with a backdoor so the CIA could decrypt any transmission. More from IEEE Spectrum at the link above including a video demonstration of the restored, uncompromised model and more on how the technology works to encode messages.

synchronoptica

one year ago: INTERPOL (1923)—with synchronoptica—plus divination through cheese

seven years ago: an appreciation of composer Edvard Grieg,  a meditation on the dacha plus cabmen’s shelters

eight years ago: restoring the Houses of Parliament, the debut of Star Trek, a Buddha-inspired knitted cap plus the debut of Voyager

nine years ago: a partially submerged art installation in the Thames is a statement on climate change

ten years ago: window displays, NATO talks on the Russian invasion of Ukraine plus a visit to Bad Vilbel

Friday 6 September 2024

d-minus (11. 818)

Beginning on this day in 1962 and concluding at the month’s end just weeks before the Cuba Missile Crisis, Exercise Spade Fork was part of a US federal emergency preparedness plan to mobilise and reconstitute the government in the aftermath of a nuclear attack (see previously). In this scenario, run parallel to the military exercise codenamed High Heels II, America was hit first with a pre-emptive, decapitation strike targeting the presidential retreat and childhood home of Jacqueline Bouvier, Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island. Comprised of a force of seventeen hundred civil servants, an “Executive Reserve” received specialised training to maintain command and control and manage resources. Subsequent strategic doctrine, however, has superseded such a sequence of events, since taking out another power’s leadership is prone to failure and backfire as the easiest contingency to prepare for and without the central authorities in place, belligerents lose the ability to negotiate and put the decision to retaliate in the hands of rogue elements. Midway into the drill, plans were modified in order to provide cover for the mobilisation of army units to deploy to Mississippi in order to enforce the ruling of desegregation of public schools when the governor refused to honour the court order to integrate the state university.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a banger from The Jam (with synchronoptica), Keith Haring’s computer art plus a musical number about medication from Ginette Garcin

seven years ago: assorted links worth revisiting

eight years ago: Powers of Ten, The Great Fire of 1666, colonising Venus, discarded shopping lists plus a tree house in Stuttgart

nine years ago: more links to enjoy, a more accurate tree census, Aloha attire plus an antonym for omnipresent

ten years ago: the life of Caesar, the new temperance laws plus common misconceptions

Tuesday 3 September 2024

petrolgrad (11. 813)

On his first visit to a signatory member of the International Criminal Court since the issuing of a warrant for his arrest in 2022 for war crimes—specifically the forced deportation of Ukrainian children to be raised by Russian families—Vladimir Putin is flagrantly testing the limits of the infra-national judicial body’s jurisdiction by his welcome in Ulaanbaatar. Although there is no framework to enforce compliance, state parties like Mongolia are expected to uphold the court’s pre-trial rulings and detain those summoned. Kyiv is urging compliance as well as several protests organised locally. Putin’s presence is for among other things to promote the building of a new pipeline to China, called the Power of Siberia 2, to make up for lost sales to Europe following the boycott of Russian oil.

Tuesday 27 August 2024

lady death (11. 795)

Arriving in Washington, DC on this day in 1942 as a part of a tour of the US, Canada and the UK to encourage the Allies to open up a second front against Nazi Germany, at the invitation of Eleanor Roosevelt, Lyudmila Pavlichenko (ะ›ัŽะดะผะธะปะฐ ะœะธั…ะฐะนะปั–ะฒะฝะฐ ะŸะฐะฒะปะธั‡ะตะฝะบะพ) of Odesa became the first official Soviet guest in the White House. Credited with killing three-hundred nine Axis soldiers—likely an undercount as confirmed kills required a witness and included thirty-six enemy snipers—after being retired after a blow from shrapnel, Pavlichenko was reassigned as a trainer and propagandist for the Red Army. Not particularly fond of her new role as a diplomat, shy and quiet and only wanting to get on with beating the fascists, Pavlichenko complained that she was not taken seriously by the press, but her blunt responses to sexist questions were well received by the public. Calling on Chicago with the First Lady, citing her credentials, she chided, “Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?”

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Guinness World Records (with synchronoptica)

eight years ago: ghost malls plus duped by Brexit

nine years ago: assorted links worth revisiting plus the oracle of Delphi

ten years ago: work-life balance plus Austria hosts the Bilderberg conference

eleven years ago: social media and credit scores

Monday 26 August 2024

lone eagle (11. 794)

Famed aviator, conservationist, isolationist and anti-Semite Charles Augustus Lindbergh died (*1902) on this day in 1974. Although like his father, congressional representative of Minnesota’s sixth district who was one of the few lawmakers to oppose America’s entry into World War I, and many other members of the public who promoted a non-interventionalist stance prior to Pearl Harbour, Lindbergh never explicitly endorsed the Nazi regime though his overarching comments on race seemed to suggest otherwise, a platform won by his historic transatlantic crossing, and public adoration was immense not only for his skilled piloting and goodwill tours but also in promoting transport and air-mail, with the enterprise expanding significantly during the 1930s with more than a fifty-percent increase of individuals seeking licenses to fly and a virtual Renaissance virtuosity demonstrated by contributions to the advancement of medical sciences co-authoring a procedure that made organ transplants more viable and charting routes that still make up airline itineraries to this day. US president Ford eulogised him, “In later years, his life was darkened by tragedy,” referring to the kidnapping and murder of his infant son, “and coloured political controversy, but, in both public and private life, General Lindbergh always remained a brave and sincere patriot.” A couple of weeks before his death at his seaside home in Maui, Hawaii from lymphoma, Lindbergh reached out to his secret families, seven children from three different women in West Germany and asked the mothers not to reveal his identity, only known by the alias Careu Kent—either the alter-ego of Superman or picked in honour of the place in England where he and his wife retreated after the abduction of their child and media circus—from annual visits—which all three women complied with and was not discovered by his offspring until over a decade after his demise.

Saturday 24 August 2024

formosa strait (11. 790)

Triggering the first serious nuclear crisis of the Cold War with the US contemplating using its arsenal against the then unrecognised Communist government of the People’s Republic of China to protect the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek’s occupying Quemoy (Kimen, ้‡‘้–€, ‘Golden Gate) and Matsu (Lienchiang, ้€ฃๆฑŸ็ธฃ) islands in the Strait of Taiwan, only ten kilometres distant from the Chinese province of Fujan, a repelled amphibious invasion on this day in 1958 resulted in a continuous volley of shelling. A prominent subject of the televised Nixon-Kennedy debates, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff resolved to at minimum dispatch escorts for resupply missions, a nuclear response not within popular will (previously), volleys were exchanged until 1979 when as a prelude to the US normalising relations with China under a rather eccentric agreement that allowed bombing on alternating odd days and even days for restocking, with troops of both sides guaranteed safety from attack. The US quietly redeployed the extra warships in the region in December of that year and while there were occasion flairs in fighting turning deadly for China and Taiwan, the intermittent bombardments mostly consisted of an exchange of propaganda leafets.

Thursday 22 August 2024

18 usc § 953 (11. 785)

Although blunted somewhat by the clarification that the remarks were not based on original reporting but anecdotal information (just as likely to be true) that Trump has been in talks with Israeli leadership to discourage a ceasefire in Gaza prior to the election as he believed a truce—just like the US-Mexico bipartisan border security that was torpedoed in fear a solution would diminish a GOP grievance—once learned that both parties denied such conversations, these comments made amid the backdrop of protests outside of the Democratic National Convention are not only telling of the contender’s mindset but, if substantiated, in violation of federal law, namely the Logan Act, prohibiting correspondence of a private citizen with a foreign government in relation to any international dispute which could undermine the government’s position. Enacted in 1799, the law—and the only eponymous one I can think with its perpetrator  (see previously, see also)—came about in response to a diplomatic fiasco the year prior when John Adams sent a delegation to France during the Quasi-War (over America’s stiffing the French for loans that financed the revolutionary war against England) to negotiate a settled peace. Where these envoys had failed, Dr George Logan, a Quaker and state representative from Pennsylvania and member of the minority Democratic-Republican party (see previously here and here) whose platform and priorities were seen to run counter to the Federalist administration, achieved a settlement that avoided wider conflict. Trump is no George Logan. The Biden administration is working to end the violence and genocide, albeit not applying the right leverage. Subsequently made a senator for the state, Logan himself petitioned to have the act repealed but was unsuccessful and despite the association was appointed as a special emissary to Britain to stop the War of 1812 but that mission proved deficient.

Monday 19 August 2024

28. mordad coup d’รฉtat (11. 780)

Instigated by American and British petroleum interests in the region, the Iranian army overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh on this day in 1953 in favour of bolstering the monarchical rule of Shah Mohammad Rez Pahlavi, refusing to cooperate with the administration once an audit was requested of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company to make sure the UK corporation was adhering to the terms of it stewardship. Following threats to nationalise the producer’s assets, perceived increasing Communist influence and a worldwide embargo against Persian, Churchill and Eisenhower conspired to rid themselves of this uncooperative element. Under military leadership, the Shah was able to consolidate power and reign for the next twenty-six years, aligned with Western interests, until deposed during the 1979 Revolution (see previously here and here). In August 2013, the US government formally acknowledged the CIA’s role in regime change.

Sunday 18 August 2024

the question (11. 777)

Handling our Sunday matinee programming, Fancy Notion has selected an existential short from the animation studio of Halas & Batchelor (see previously) that ponders the meaning of life through our hopeful and introspective protagonist who finds confusion and frustration when consulting dogmatists in the fields of religion, politics, the humanities about life’s big questions but finally finds a solution with another fellow peripatetic. The venerable collaboration lasting from 1945 to 1986 was responsible for the instructional colour stop-motion feature Handling Ships for the Admiralty as a training aid for new navigators, a number of World War II productions intended to raise morale and encourage thrift, like Dustbin Parade to promote recycling and Filling the Gap about planting a victory garden as well as anti-fascist propaganda films. During the 1960s and 1970s, the duo created cartoon series for American television networks including Saturday morning staples like Popeye the Sailor, The Jackson 5ive, The Osmonds as well as the music video for Autobahn by Kraftwerk.


*    *    *    *    *

 synchronoptica

one year ago:  a prayer app (with synchronoptica) plus a pioneering mushroomer

seven years ago: a look into the far distance future, removing racist statues plus feeding an army

eight years ago: a century of Russian history in photographs, assorted links to revisit plus the making of Cabaret

nine years ago: more links to enjoy

ten years ago: subterranean warehouses, the body-politic of Rome plus German intelligence agencies eavesdropping

Thursday 15 August 2024

crossing the line (11. 768)

In contrast and correspondence with the previous post, also on this day the following year, in 1962, twenty-one year old US army private first class Joe Dresnok (์ œ์ž„์Šค ์กฐ์ƒˆํ”„ ๋“œ๋ ˆ์Šค๋…น), feeling hopeless, recovering from a recent divorce, and facing a court-martial for forging his commanding sergeant’s signature for passes to leave the army base at night, dashed across the minefield of the Demilitarised Zone into North Korean territory. The defector was apprehended instantly and taken to Pyongyang for interrogation, eventually resolved to settle there. Dresnok along with six other American service members taught English and participated in propaganda campaigns to entice more US soldiers at the border to join them. Praising Dear Leader and vowing to never return to the West, Dresnok became a celebrity, cast in several domestic films as an American villain—including a very popular 1978 mini-series called Nameless Heroes (along with fellow defector Charles Robert Jenkins as Dr Kelton, the fictional mastermind behind the peninsular conflict) in which he played the role of lieutenant colonel Arthur Cockstud, commander of a prisoner of war camp, with most North Koreans calling him “Arthur” after his character.  Dresnok died of a stroke in November 2016, confirmed by his sons the following year in an interview on state-run television.