Locals, in Cheltenham just three kilometers from the GCHQ campus, believe that guerrilla graffiti
artist Banksy may have been behind this mural of authorities wiring tapping this phone booth. Area residents are delighted and the artwork has become a big tourist attraction.
Tuesday 15 April 2014
call box
Monday 14 April 2014
kleinstaaterei
With the level of public will or involvement remaining unclear and the source of dissent an elusive factor—strange to consider in the first place that regions are careening towards the right to assert their independence with only the ultimate goal being to align themselves with another power in sight, the cities of Ukraine, though under the microscope and garnering much attention, do tend to be overlooked, imagined out of context, scale or compartmentalised. Much is being said about psyche and exceptionalism, the economic importance of the industrial eastern part of the country, the need for stability and security thereof with also quite a bit of name-calling, like the US styling of counter insurgency efforts by the government in Kyiv as anti-terror operations or pledges to shore up debts, but there is little in terms, I think, in terms of profiles for these metropolitan cities, which have their own character and history.
catagories: ๐ท๐บ, ๐, ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ท๓ ฌ๓ ณ๓ ฟ, ๐ฑ, ๐ง , foreign policy, revolution
Sunday 13 April 2014
legend
catagories: lifestyle, networking and blogging, travel
dii consentes
catagories: ๐, networking and blogging
Saturday 12 April 2014
timeliness, objectivity, narrative
We all would instantly recognize the iconic and candid images of photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt, and know them just by a caption of a few words, limning in the rest—but before Kottke shared this spontaneously happy picture, I did not realise who it was on the other side of the shutter, much less appreciate that the litany of celebrated pictures were courtesy of the same individual. Eisenstaedt had a definite excelling talent for finding himself in the right place at the right time, as well for framing a subject, and captured such unforgettable subjects for Life magazine as the couple kissing in Times Square for Victory over Japan Day, Albert Einstein, Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Goebbels at the League of Nations (as we know them) and the ice-skating waiters of St. Moritz.
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.