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thisobscuredesireforbeauty

Alfred Eisenstaedt: Communist Party Offices, New York, 1937. Source

nao-san-no-kagoshima-love

旅行人山荘森の散歩道

2016年12月8日霧島紅葉状況🍁

bmashina

“German soldiers during operation “North wind”. Alsace and Lorraine, France. January 1945

author LotharZhou

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Anatoly Garanin, Air-defense forces searchlights illuminating the sky over Moscow, June 1941.

catman5674

Yesterday I attended a talk by Sir Tony Brenton, British ambassador to Russia from 2004-2008. It was refreshing to hear about Russia from someone who worked close the action in Moscow and had a deep knowledge of Russia, there was no sensationalism. He said that Russia and Western Europe had been the closest they’ve been to reconciling their historical differences, but resentment from the badly handled transition to capitalism and the rapid expansion of NATO had created a sense of fear and mistrust.

He also emphasised the big role of Putin and his personality as a strong leader and ex-KGB officer. He claimed that Putin was one of the most well briefed leaders he’d met, second only to Margaret Thatcher, citing one experience he had when Putin met Gordon Brown to discuss the restriction of gas. Apparently Putin essentially lectured Brown on British gas policy, and upon leaving the meeting told Brown that he was “sorry” to hear about the Labour Party’s loss of a by-election a day earlier.

#Russia #Putin

softwaring

The mining town of Chiatura, Georgia, surrounded by steep cliffs, is criss-crossed by a network of aging Soviet-era aerial tramways that are still in use today. In the early 20th century, after the U.S.S.R. annexed Georgia, Soviet authorities were intent on extracting the vast manganese deposits beneath Chiatura. In the 1950s, planners began work on what locals call the “Kanatnaya Doroga,” or “rope road,” that still connects almost every corner of the town. Today, while some of the cars have rusted away, 17 of the aging tramways remain in service. Amos Chapple

your-instructions-from-moscow

Tokyo, Japan – Communist student w. blood running down his face fr. a clubbing fr. policemen behind him as he is hustled fr. the fray by Communist student aid team which helps the wounded evade arrest during anti-American May Day protest riot. Michael Rougier, 2 May 1952

andyaderintotrellicktower

Trellick Tower. Andy Aderinto

considermycat

Finished #reading Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now?, by Ian Dunt.

“You lost! Get over it!” cry the Brexiteers. This book by Dunt shows what “getting over it” involves in practice, as he takes the reader through the steps required to achieve Brexit while avoiding the disaster that would be crashing out with no negotiated settlement, two years after invoking Article 50: a disaster that Dunt describes vividly in his opening chapter.

Dunt sets out methodically both the scale of the task - negotiating trade deals with the EU and the rest of the world while keeping the UK in one piece and avoiding crashing the economy - and his belief that the UK government has so far shown itself to be far from adequate to the task, far even from comprehending the magnitude of the task (to take just one example: the UK’s meat industry is entirely dependent on EU27 nationals to carry out veterinary examinations at abattoirs, and there won’t be time to train UK-born replacements).

To make matters worse, the debate around Brexit has so far been marked by a “new and unsettling form of nationalist hysteria” in which “obstacles start to look like conspiracies and those who point to them start to resemble traitors.” In the face of this, Dunt’s appeal is for “nuance and sober reflection”:

Ultimately, it is British values which will help get the country through this difficult new period: calm debate, instinctive scepticism, practical judgement and moderation. We appear to have lost sight of these values. The sooner we reaffirm our commitment to them, the better off we will be.

He isn’t entirely negative about the UK’s position. As he observes, while the UK does not hold “a winning deck of cards,” it is not entirely without leverage in its negotiations with the EU:

Britain remains a strong economic and military power. With canny negotiation, some goodwill, sufficient resources and a sensible timetable, it could secure a decent deal to exit the European Union.

The problem is that we lack any of those things at present, with many Brexiters preferring to gloat about how “the EU needs us more than we need them,” creating a standoff which Dunt compares to:

two men in a room threatening to shoot themselves, except the EU’s gun is pointing at its foot and Britain’s gun is pointing at its head. If it comes down to brinkmanship, the EU still holds the stronger hand, even if both partners suffer.

In short, an excellent guide to what lies ahead of us between now and 2019.

One criticism: the Kindle edition is poorly formatted, with no contents page or chapter markers, and some wayward fonts. It would be good to see this corrected in a future update, as it makes the book harder to navigate, especially as a reference once you’ve read it through.