alþing considered

On this day in 1949, a peaceful march and rally in the Austurvöllur public square before the national parliament building in Reykjavík to protest against the country’s accession to NATO, the Western alliance and re-militarising of Iceland (see previously) unwelcome by many, turned violent after prominent members of the Socialist Party (Sameiningarflokkur alþýðu) claimed they were being held hostage, pulled with the rest of the country unwillingly into the Cold War. Protests continued after police dispersed the main crowd with tear gas—the first time such methods were used in Iceland—and the police never again had to resort to such measures until the 2009 Pots and Pans Revolution stemming from the financial crisis, and the people of Iceland have had an ambivalent relationship with sending forces since.

i have no idea what a burner phone is

Despite taking slight issue with the headline—as one wouldn’t round down the gap in the Nixon tapes down to a quarter-of-an-hour rather than citing the full eighteen-and-a-half minutes, the reporting on the on the omissions of the presidential daily diary (PDD) and call log is revealing that an nearly eight hour block of time is missing from Trump’s activities on 6 January 2021, the date of the attack on the US Capitol, is a devastating indictment and highly incriminating, especially for those communications that have been verified to have taken place, despite not being reflected in the archives. The committee investigating the insurrection, suspecting a cover-up, are looking for witness testimony in order to fill in the gap as the violence was unfolding. This news comes at the same time as a federal judge rules that Trump—on the advice of his legal counsel—committed felonies on several counts in his scheme to overturn the election, opening up the possibility to subpoena more documents and communication between the Trump administration and legal team, overriding the protections of attorney-client privilege, another favoured shield to invoke by those with something to hide.

vilnius group

Constituted in May 2000, member countries Slovenia, Slovakia (having already undergone its Velvet Divorce in 1993, the date falls on the anniversary of the 1990 compromise that ended the so called Hyphen War, Pomlčková vojna, started in 1989 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union on what to call themselves and how to share a territory with two identities) Romania, North Macedonia, Lithuania (its capital the namesake), Latvia, Estonia, Croatia, Bulgaria and Albania to lobby as a group for NATO inclusion, all aspirants acceded to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation on this day in 2004 with the exception of Albania, Croatia and North Macedonia (under the Adriatic Charter) joining in 2009 and 2020. The former association closely maps with the composition of the Visegrád Group, another former pooled campaign for European Union membership and presently a regional economic cooperative.

for my military knowledge, though i’m plucky and adventury has only been brought down to the beginning of the century

Caveats against drawing parallels respected, we quite enjoyed this lyrical military assessment of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at a month on, which not only highlights how the aggressor is doing a reverse of what they did to Napoleon—as expounded by history and Tolstoy, but as one commentator finds, the rank inexperience and hubris of the Gilbert and Sullivan character (see previously). Here’s a couple of stanzas for an excerpt:

I am the very model of a Russian Major General

My standing in the battlefield is growing quite untenable

My forces, though equipped and given orders unequivocal

Did not expect the fight to be remotely this reciprocal

I used to have a tank brigade but now I have lost several

My fresh assaults are faltering with battle plans extemporal

I can’t recover vehicles but farmers in a tractor can

It’s all becoming rather reminiscent of Afghanistan

sozialer mord

Via Super Punch, we learn about a phrase and its applications coined by Friedrich Engels—one whom one doesn’t hear much about without the more well-known and charismatic Karl Marx—in his 1845 study The Conditions of the Working-Class in England, social murder, to describe the dominance of the aristocracy and consequences for the proletariat whose exploitation and negligence causes premature death for many in the under-class. Whilst originally directed towards Manchester and the regard that the South held for the North in Britain, the term has popular parlance from austerity measures, climate change and its first victims, to inequalities brought to the fore by the pandemic and the most vulnerable among us.  Often over looked and excused, Engels writes, “[S]ince the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.”

i too sing america

While members of the GOP in the US Senate viciously berated Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson with contrived slights and pretend outrage (these childish, cruel and acutely embarrassing spectacles and tantrums have been nearly enough to make me give up about the prospect of reform and justice in the US altogether—at least to the point of refraining from comment or noting consequence) Senator Cory Booker (Democrat representing the state of New Jersey) turned to poetry for the solace and perspective that only verse can provide on the second day of Jackson’s confirmation hearings with Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again,” citing the second to last stanza of the 1935 poem (which was incidentally also candidate’s John Kerry’s campaign slogan for his 2004 presidential run):

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

The continual parenthetical aside through the piece rings as a promise, undelivered, unrealised progressively more hollow and irredeemable, and almost as dead at the time of writing as it can seem today—nearly but not entirely.  We don’t have the luxury of giving up.

rolling stock

Retelling the story of the “Little Engine that Could” with love-interest and with due inspirational credit given to Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, the Andrew Lloyd Weber and Richard Stilgoe musical spectacle with all principals and dancers portraying locomotives on roller skates had its debut on the West End in the Apollo Victoria Theatre. Following a year-long run on Broadway, the show came to the industrial city of Bochum in 1988, and hosted in a custom-built theatre (designed like a skating rink) has become the most attended musical in Germany, still running and seen by over seventeen million. Much more, including the original cast recording of the musical numbers and various performance highlights at the link above.

see something, spray something

 

My workplace located in the extended concrete canvas of The Meeting of the Styles (previously) international street artist collective and noticing some of the murals being given a new layer, I took a stroll around Mainz-Kastel through the train depot and some unwalkable places to document some of the expansive graffiti, especially noting those that referenced the district’s Roman connections and the neo-Classical redoubt / reduit bridgehead fortress that’s just across the tracks on the bank of the Rhein from the station.  We’ll see if we’re host to a whole new gallery of works soon.