podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/straight-white-american-jesus/id1441649707
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Polish authorities have reportedly arrested four people in connection to an alleged plot to conceal incendiary devices in airfreight shipments. According
— Read on www.aircargonews.net/policy/air-cargo-security/four-arrests-over-air-cargo-incendiary-plot/ -
Democracy and war: Politics and Identity in a time of global threats : Amazon.sg: Books
— Read on www.amazon.sg/Democracy-war-Politics-Identity-threats/dp/3423264268 -
Two years later, Mr. Ghalib created another stir when he and other socially conservative Muslims banned the L.G.B.T.Q. Pride flag from publicly owned flagpoles, alarming liberals who said the move was discriminatory and harmful to the city’s welcoming reputation.
Their fears only heightened last month, after Mr. Ghalib endorsed Donald J. Trump, who as president had ushered in what is known as the Muslim ban, blocking immigrants from seven majority-Muslim nations, including Mr. Ghalib’s home country. Adding to the tensions was a visit by Mr. Trump, who hoped the mayor’s support could peel off a meaningful number of Muslim voters in Michigan, a swing state.
Explaining his support, Mr. Ghalib pointed to a distaste for liberal social views, anger at President Biden’s support of Israel and a belief that Mr. Trump will end the conflict in the Middle East. -
NEWS AND LIFE NOTES
SATURDAY 26, 2024
Podcast: BBC Newshour 10/26/24
Israel
- Reporter from the Economist:
- We still don’t know the exact path the Israeli planes took to get to their targets in Iran.
- Saudia Arabia and the UAE have condemned the attack.
- The route is probably through Syria and Iraq. The Israelis struck targets in both Syria and Iraq.
- There are Iran backed groups in both countries. The air defense sites were struck, and this may have been to clear the route only.
- There would have been voices in Israeli encouraging a larger attack arguing “this is our chance.”
- This is not the end. It is a sequence of attacks. We might see more ambitious attacks in the future.
- A former Israeli MP, former diplomat comments: Ruth Landa (Benny Ganz’s party).
- Iran has been attacking Israel for years. Trucks of armaments are going through Iraq to Syria to prepare another front against Israel.
- No, this is not the end of it. There is an “obsession” to destroy Israel. “This is just the first step.” “Iran will just not stop.”
Georgia Vote
- The Georgia Dream Party is pro-Russia. They have been ruling.
- Rehan Demitri correspondent:
- Young voters are supporting Georgia’s future as part of the EU. They fear the Dream Party will stay in power.
Cuba
- Severe power outages. Schools and universities are shut until next week.
- Will Grant reports:
- The island’s electrical grid went down.
- There are criticisms about the government building hotels and not investing in the infrastructure.
- Government officials are blaming it on the US embargo (note: which Biden left in place after Trump reinstated it.)
- The COVID pandemic coincided with a “sharp economic downturn” in Cuba.
Nelson Mandala: “To be angry and bitter is like drinking poison and expecting your enemy to die.”
Donald Trump called for bringing back the death penalty. He took out an ad in the New York Times at the time of the Central Park Five case.
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ART NOTES
MUNCH: THE SCREAM, 1893
Edwardmunch.org
As Leonardo da Vinci evoked a Renaissance ideal of serenity and self-control, Munch defined how we see our own age – wracked with anxiety and uncertainty.
Essentially The Scream is autobiographical, an expressionistic construction based on Munch’s actual experience of a scream piercing through nature while on a walk, after his two companions, seen in the background, had left him.
Fitting the fact that the sound must have been heard at a time when his mind was in an abnormal state, Munch renders it in a style which if pushed to extremes can destroy human integrity.
….the flowing curves of art nouveau represent a subjective linear fusion (note: ?) imposed upon nature, whereby the multiplicity of particulars is unified into a totality of organic suggestion with feminine overtones (Note: ?).
…man is part of nature, and absorption into such a totality liquidates the individual.
Beginning at this time Munch included art nouveau elements in many pictures but usually only in a limited or modified way. Here, however, in depicting his own morbid experience, he has let go, and allowed the foreground figure to become distorted by the subjectivized flow of nature; the scream could be interpreted as expressing the agony of the obliteration of human personality by this unifying force. (Note: I’m not sure about the “unifying force.”)
Significantly, although it was Munch himself who underwent the experience depicted, the protagonist bears no resemblance to him or anyone else. The creature in the foreground has been depersonalized and crushed into sexlessness or, if anything, stamped with a trace of the femininity of the world that has come close to assimilating it. (Note: What? What is this about the femininity? It seems clearly male to me.)
Several facts indicate Munch was aware of the danger of art of this sort for a neurotic humanist like himself. He soon abandoned the style and rarely if ever again subjected a foreground figure to this kind of radical and systematic distortion.
At the top of another version of the subject (National Gallery, Oslo) he wrote: ‘Can only have been painted by a madman.’
He certainly had a horror of insanity, which had afflicted his sister Laura.
Within the picture, he has set up a defense, in the form of the plunging perspective of the roadway and its fence, which preserves a rational world of three dimensions, holding at bay the swell of art nouveau curves.
Safe in this rational world, the two men in the distance remain unequivocally masculine.
In the foreground unified nature has come close to crossing the fence, close enough to distort the form and personality of the protagonist. But the fence still protects it from total absorption into subjective madness.
Further Facts:
The Scream has been the target of several high-profile art thefts. In 1994, the version in the National Gallery was stolen. It was recovered several months later.
The 1895 pastel-on-board version of the painting was sold at Sotheby’s (in 2012) for a record US$120 million. The previous record for the most expensive work of art sold at auction had been held by Nude, Green Leaves and Bust by Picasso, which went for US$106.5 million in 2010. The highest price paid for art at an auction is still held (in figures accounting for inflation) by Portrait of Dr. Gachet by Vincent van Gogh, which sold for $82.5 million in 1990, or about $151 million 2012 dollars. There have been reports that The Card Players, by Paul Cezanne, sold privately for $250m in 2011.
See edwardmunch.org
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FRIDAY 25 OCTOBER 2024
MSNBC
Reports are that Israel has attacked “military targets” in Iran, near Tehran. This attach was publicly warned about. This is a retaliation for the October 1 attack of Israel. Biden wants to avoid a “new cycle of retaliation.” The US has moved personnel into Israel to respond to any retaliation by Iran.
(Note: This is such a strange phase of warfare, where states warn of attacks, launch specified target attacks, and call it even, or at least that is the hope.)
John Brennan, former CIA:
- Netanyahu has listened to the US and not attacked nuclear or civilian targets.
- The question is if there were a significant number of military casualties, which would provoke a response. (Note: Again, it is weird to be calculating the exact number of casualties which are acceptable and what is over that number. It’s like a game.)
Ayman Mohyeldin
- They are military targets, barracks, offices, weapons depot.
- Iran has said that they would respond to any attack.
- But, still it seems to depend on the targets. Infrastructure, nuclear and civilian would provoke an attack.
- Israel killed a military guy inside Iran, Iran gave heads up about response, signaled that they were through.
- Leader of Hezbollah killed, there was a response where missiles landed inside Israel.
- This is the third round of attacks. Each side thinks they are retaliating to the other side.
Ben Rhodes (former Obama Administration, note: good guy)
CNN (Anderson Cooper)
Amanpour
- (Note: No energy targets or oil targets, infrastructure. Iran would consider existential and respond.)
- “Everybody knew this was going to happen.”
- The direction of the planes? They might have to fly over several Arab countries.
- Iran has trying to keep Arab countries “neutral.”
- “There’s been a lot of telegraphing.”
- It is considered that the nuclear facilities couldn’t be attacked unless US participation was involved.
- This appears to be aircraft dropping bombs or missiles from the planes. This is a first.
- (Note: There are reported attacks in other countries. We don’t know if this is part of the Israeli attack.)
- This is about deterrence. Israel is the dominant military force. Iran cannot challenge Israel.
- Iran doesn’t want things to get out of control and expand to a wider conflict.
- The oil facilities are quite vulnerable. They could easily be attacked.
Welcome to life under Republicans – no regulations. E Coli outbreak from McDonalds and Costo recalls Salmon because of listeria. Want no controls on food? Vote Republican.
