elections matter

snapmap

Whilst not a panopticon of what the situation on the ground is for an unfolding crisis, like the protests spreading across America, telling only the narrative of a set of witnesses that use a certain platform and are choosing to share their experiences—and a fleeting (by design) glance at that—this tool, via Maps Mania, is certainly a fascinating and informed one that provides important perspective and more or less live-views as new rallies form and take to the streets.
One can also drift away from the hot-spots, turmoil and revolt to get a real-time video dispatch from virtually any point on the map.

xtrmntr

Exactly twenty years ago on this day, the Scottish band Primal Scream released their titular album in the United Kingdom, as NPR reports, with lyrics and themes that seemed a bit overblown at the time but in hindsight seem eerily prescient to the inheritors of the dystopia that they raged against.
Though in those millennial salad days it would be hard to appreciate the trend despite similarly concordant portrayals across the arts and entertainment spectrum, their predictions of epidemics, endless wars, economic asymmetry, surveillance states and the preponderance of propaganda were ignored at our peril. Find more musical retrospectives with National Public Radio at the link above.

don’t you remember the fifth of november

Enshrined the following year as a commemoration of thanksgiving for the failure of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the House of Lords and reinstate a Catholic monarchy and exported to America as Election Day, the once rabidly puritanical celebration and partisan scapegoating (previously) has evolved into a festival recognising the role of the subversive underdog and donning the mask of Guy Fawkes, the chief co-conspirator has become a symbol of protest and rebellion for any number of causes.
The preamble for the parliamentary act set forth that “many malignant and devilish Papists, Jesuits and Seminary Priests, much envying and fear, conspired most horribly, when the King’s most excellent Majesty, the Queen, the Prince, and he Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, should have been assembled in the Upper House of Parliament upon the Fifth Day of November in the Year of our Lord One thousand six hundred and five, suddenly to have blown up the said whole House with Gunpowder: An Invention so inhuman, barbarous and cruel, as the like was never before heard of.” Though no penalties were prescribed or meted out for failure to participate, the associated legislation directs church ministers to hold a special service on this anniversary and read the text to the parishioners. This requirement was annulled with the repealing of the Act in 1859, a decade after the Universalis Ecclesiæ was issued by the Vatican, restoring episcopal hierarchy in the country and recognising the legitimacy of the royal family. Though like Guy Fawkes Day the parade and associated events (Operation Vendetta) has transcended its founders’ and organisers’ original mission: at first meant to protest the secrecy and censorship of the Church of Scientology, marchers now rally for social justice.

wende ohne wenn und aber

On this day in East Berlin’s Alexanderplatz (previously) in 1989, up to a million demonstrators peaceably assembled for the largest rally registered and tolerated by the authorities.
Riding on the momentum of the Montagsdemos and shocked by the police violence committed against those who had demonstrated during the celebrations of the DDR’s fortieth anniversary a month beforehand, members of East Berlin’s theatre industry sought and were surprisingly granted permission to organise the event—hoping that official sanction would refuse the potential for injury.
The party was also invited to send speakers to address the crowd and deliver a defence for the status quo, the aims were to bring about democratic reforms in East Germany and enforce those provisions in the constitution that enshrined freedom of speech and assembly in theory but were lacking in practise and nothing so grand as opening the border or reuniting the divided nation. Party officers withered before the jeering masses. Parade marshals were dispatched to work the throngs with bright yellow sashes calling for “Keine Gewalt”—No Violence—and attendees were encouraged to bring signs, whose slogans included Bürgerrechte nicht nur auf Papier (Civil rights not only on paper) and Change – No Ifs, Ands or Buts.

greta grotesk regular

Inspired by her now iconic signature hand-lettered protest placards, an up and coming foundry, we learn via Kottke, has issued a free typeface based on the script of climate champion Greta Thunberg (previously), suitable for making one’s own posters. In typography, a grotesque refers to the family of serif fonts with irregular qualities that were particularly favoured by sign-painters for their ability to stand out.

friedliche revolution

Beginning with securing the right to hold regional open elections—with opposition candidates competing against the state party in May of 1989 and the later assemblies referred to as Montagsdemos ahead of celebrations of the country’s fortieth anniversary jubilee amid heavy crackdowns on people attempting to flee the regime, the Peaceful Revolution of East Germany showed itself as unstoppable force on 18 October 1989 when deputy and chairman of the State Council Egon Krenz, heeding the people’s will, conspired with other like-minded members of the Politbüro (with the blessings of the Soviet Union) to oppose and overthrow the long-running leadership of Erich Honecker.
It is always difficult to discern decisive moments but it seems that before this coup, the revolt could have failed.  Staunchly opposed to any reforms and the talk of glasnost and in power since 1971 (his wife Margot being the Minister of National Education all that time as well), the Chairman believed that the only way for Communism to survive the scourges of the West was to take a hard line approach, like Cuba and North Korea and was granted sanctuary in Moscow—at least until protector Mikhail Gorbachev ceded powers to Boris Yeltsin on Christmas Day in 1991. Wanting to be rid of this political liability and stateless person, Yeltsin remitted Honecker to a now united Germany—Krenz helping to oversee the transition—to stand trial. Terminally ill, the court threw the case out (not without massive protests) and eventually allowed Honecker to resettle and join his family in Santiago, Chile.

if you’re not at the table, then you’re on the menu

First exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum as a temporary installation on this day in 1980 before its 2007 return as a permanent acquisition, The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago is esteemed as the first modern, epic feminist artwork, depicting a symbolic history through elaborate and personalised placesettings around a triangular table for thirty-nine legendary and historical female figures.
Each wing accommodates thirteen banquette guests with different epochs of civilization dining together, including Boadicea, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hildegarde of Bingen and Mary Wollstonecraft. The table itself rests on a dais called the Heritage Floor composed of floor tiling inscribed with nine-hundred ninety-nine names of woman whom contributed towards the advancement of equal rights with one man made an honourary member, misgendered by oversight, the classical Greek sculptor Kresilas. The fact that that footnote outshines all the other names shows that there’s quite some distance left to cover to earn a place at the table.

good liars

A duo of satirists who got their start during the Occupy Wall Street have placed some guerilla advertising on the trains of New York City’s subways target Trump, his hatchet men and propagandists, eliciting some much needed comic relief amidst the terror of the times.
One prank banner invites those in need of legal counsel to call Crazy Rudy with a hotline number that’s been flooded with positive responses including many whom chose to extend the premise. As uncomfortably close to the truth as these advertisements are, the comedians are careful to note their activism through the humour and that the ridiculous is deserving of ridicule, lest it become normalized.

gdp or where art irritates life

Provocative artist Banksy (previously here, here, here, here and here) has opened a boutique storefront in Croydon offering—via a parallel online store, a line of his signature works on capitalism, environmental exploitation, dystopian dragnet surveillance, immigration and foreign-relations.
While also a chance to put the artist’s greatest hits on display for members of the window-shopping public to inspect, Banksy’s admitted ulterior motive comes after consultation with his attorney to seek relief from a greeting card company’s appropriation of his art.
Because Banksy did not formerly produce his own merchandise (maybe this is where all the tote bags come from), another party willing to commercially champion his creations can legally claim a trademark.  Hopefully, by actively asserting ownership, Banksy’s can reclaim his own work. Despite this goal, the artist’s invitation stands: “I still encourage anyone to copy, borrow, steal and amend my art for amusement, academic research or activism. I just don’t want them to get sole custody of my name.” More to explore at the links above.

gb 12982-2004

Adopted this day in 1949 and first flown by the People's Liberation Army over Tiananmen Square three days later, the national flag of China charged with five golden stars representing unity among the social classes had its construction details presented the following during the first plenary session of the People's Political Consultative Conference.
The design by economist Zeng Liansong (*1971 - †1999) was selected by Zhou Enlai (though choosing to edit out the hammer and sickle in the large star in the canton, the upper-most hoist quarter of flags) out of some three thousand entrants. The published instructions, then distributed across the country, are filed under a mandatory standard Guobiao (国标, GB), similar to (and conforming with in most cases) ISO or DIN.

codex

On this day in 1789, the US Congress approved twelve articles of amendments to the Constitution addressing guarantees of personal liberties and rights. Articles three through twelve became the Bill of Rights, ratified by member states. The second article was eventually ratified in 1992 as the Twenty-Seventh Amendment.
The Congressional Apportionment Amendment (originally titled Article the First) is still pending and proffers a mathematical formula for setting the number of representatives in the lower house by population, one per every thirty thousand citizens. Congress had generally followed this convention by statue up until 1911 when the number of districts (though not their boundaries) were set at 435, with six additional non-voting members, American Samoa at-large, the District of Columbia at-large, Guam at-large, Puerto Rico at-large, the US Virgin Islands at-large, and the Northern Mariana Islands at-large, who mostly caucus with the Democratic party. A seat for the Cherokee Nation has also been established but has never been filled. The Philippines and Cuba also sent resident commissioners to Congress—also with no voting rights but well before the present scheme was established in the early 1970s, the exclusion based on the fact that these colonies accorded no citizenship rights and therefore retained the right secede from the Union, unlike the incorporated lands

boreal

Though not totally out of the woods (like the paradox that holds one can only wander half way into the forest because after that point, one is on the way out), Swiss researchers bring the encouraging news that planting a trillion trees could reduce carbon dioxide levels by fully two-thirds, sequestering the green-houses gases that man has been flagrantly pumping into the atmosphere for the past quarter of a century.
That last third will be tough to eliminate but together with continuing emission reductions, dietary changes and advancing technology, the task at hand no longer seems as hopeless—the boost from the trees, according to new models, far greater than expected. Not only would the massive greening of the planet be logistically tenable and a bargain too great to pass up—at around thirty cents per sapling, it would cost all of three-hundred billion dollars—and despite the considerable space that this many extra trees would need to grow, continental America plus China, surveyors have found room at the borders and verges and in derelict land without taking any places used for growing crops and urban spaces—though more trees would dot pasture lands and be to the benefit of grazing livestock. Everyone can take part and aside from the intrinsic and aesthetic value of trees (helping to stop erosion, drought, flooding and preserve biodiversity), it’s moreover an intervention that is not predicated on convincing the nay-sayers and science-deniers otherwise.

then and now

I regret not encountering this sooner—plus anything I might have done to make International Talk like a Pirate Day more significant than taking a moment to acknowledge the hard and ongoing struggles of women to achieve political parity with Suffrage Day, which is observed on 19 September to mark the passage of the Electoral Bill in 1893 granting women franchise.
Women were not eligible to stand for Parliament until 1919 but saw significant advances in the meantime and during the ensuing decades. To commemorate this one-hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary, female members of the nation’s legislature plus the prime minister (New Zealand’s third woman to hold the position) plus her infant daughter posed to recreate a photograph from 1905 to illustrate how democracies can evolve and be a force of enlightenment. Seeing the juxtaposition made me happy and relieved to know that there are still places and constituencies that value and cherish progress and diversity.

calling on, in transit

Having closed down operations once the countries were admitted into the European Union, Radio Free Europe is restarting programming in Romania and Bulgaria due to a sharp increase in the incidence of false reporting in efforts to combat the spread of disinformation.
During the Hungarian Revolt of 1956, Radio Free Europe was accused of stoking revolution by promising that American help was imminent, which was counter to US foreign policy at the time and no intervention was forthcoming—resulting in a major overhaul on how the organisation was administered, geared to protect journalists’ independence and not to promote an agenda. When the country was a Soviet satellite, Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu regarded the station a serious threat and provocateur and waged a campaign of counter-programming with Operation Ether, which included discrediting and assassinating reporters. Though activities have been significantly curtailed since the end of the Cold War, the Prague-based broadcaster maintains some seventeen local bureaus and is present in over twenty-five countries, including Russia (Radio Liberty was the name of the station dedicated to broadcasting to the USSR until the stations merged in 1976), in jurisdictions which the organisation assesses are not fully matured in regards to the unfettered flow of information.

a family affair

Our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari, reports that this day—among many other things—the proclamation in 1917 from King George V to change the family surname from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor in order to distance the royal family from a rather serious internecine spat amongst the extended family.
Also on this day in the following year, George’s cousin Nicholas and his family were assassinated by Bolshevik revolutionaries in Yerkaterinburg, the Romanovs having been deposed during the October Revolution and sent into internal exile. This day in 1945 also marks the start of the two week Potsdam conference, convened by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Harry Truman, coming together to decide on the administration of defeated Nazi Germany and post-war order.

6x6

epa epa eeeeepaaaaaahhhhhh: Scott Pruitt falls on his sword finally but the US Environmental Protection Agency Chief in-waiting is an even bigger corporate shill

there are nicer ways to do it but the nice always fail: the power of protest music

a broken chain lies at her feet as she walks forward: Therese Patricia Okoumou scales the Statue of Liberty in the name of her fellow immigrants

angry baby: London’s mayor approves the display of a blimp over the Houses of Parliament during Trump’s visit to the capital

phantom islands: an atlas of maritime artefacts, via Things Magazine

mud larking: a massive curation of seven hundred thousand articles recovered from a single canal in Amsterdam, via Waxy 

journée des tuiles

The causes of the French Revolution are myriad and included financial hardship exacerbated by debts incurred in the proxy war that the country had just finished waging with England via the matter of the United States of America’s push for independence but one important juncture that may have precipitated protests and unrest across the kingdom occurred on this date back in 1788 in the south-eastern city of Grenoble.
Despite poor harvests, taxes were collected a-pace with additional ones levied, and the regional appellate courts (called Parlements) that had jurisdiction over tax regimes were suspended. Referred to as the Day of the Tiles for rioters resorting to showering soldiers with roof shingles, merchants closed their shops up early on Saturday morning, market day, when they saw groups of rioters gather who proceeded to seize local officials as they attempted to flee the city and took control of the cathedral. In response, the royal navy was sent into quell the protests but matters quickly escalated. The riots subsided after four days and led to the reinstatement of the court’s authority and the right to refuse payments on levies not approved by that body, but problems with France and the relation of the monarchy to the people was fraught with systemic irreconcilable complications and the revolution fomented the following year.

alwato

Via one of the usual suspects, we find ourselves acquainted with the life’s work of nineteenth century American abolitionist and futurist Stephen Pearl Andrews, an early advocate for a living-wage who proposed that workers receive man-hour credits in exchange for their labour—based on difficulty or repugnance of their job—rather than a salary based on how much the employer thought he could exploit the employee—with his outline and synopsis of Universology and Alwato (1871).
Similar to the idea of consilience popularised by biologist and educator E. O. Wilson, Universology’s aim was the revelation of the unity of all scientific disciplines and how everything knowable emanating from an unbroken chain of events, traceable back to the beginning of time. In as much as Andrews was a champion for workers’ rights, he was also an anarchist and rejected the interference of the church and state in human affair and established a short-lived utopian colony in New York City called the Unity Home, regulated by the idea of the Pantarchy—as opposed to the patriarchy, being one the first Americans exposed to the writings of Karl Marx whilst regrouping in England having been chased out of Texas for his anti-slavery sympathies. Though Andrews’ fundamental ideas many have been repackaged and resold with new distribution rights in various different context, it seems no one appreciated much the philosophic language Andrews found necessary to construct to disburden words the weight of past associations and etymology, called Alwato, Universal Speech—not that Interlingua, Esperanto and others didn’t have the formation of an ideal society as their raison d’être, it’s just who ever heard of such a language. Learn more by visiting the links up top.

lieber wütend als traurig

Dangerous Minds features the unaired made-for-television screenplay by Ulrike Meinhof that went into production in February of 1970, just before the journalist turned towards a campaign of terror.
Incorporating previous research and reporting assignments on the state of child- and adolescent aid organisations and juvenile detention and custody homes, borstals (Jugend-fürsorge means care for youth but to have “Sorge für” is to agonise about something) in West Germany, Bambule (referring to prisoners rioting behind bars by banging and drumming any items at hand that will make a loud noise—but in French, bamboula has become a kind of slur and shouldn’t be used) was fictionalised account of troubled, institutionalised teens and was filmed in its entirety but never broadcast due to prison-break of Rote Armee Faktion (previously) leader Andreas Baader from facilities in West Berlin on 14 May of that year. Having covered Baader’s protests against the Vietnam War in Frankfurt prior to his incarceration, Meinhof had previously met the charismatic figure’s acquaintance and was convinced to take part in his escape by advocating for his transfer to lower-security research centre under the guise of collaborating on an ethnographic work on the psyche of protest. When the planned peaceful operation turned violent (there were supposed to be no guns) and a by-stander was shot and injured, Meinhof decided to join with Baader and both became fugitives. Read more about Meinhof and the movement as well as watch an English subtitled version of Bambule at the link up top.