#die as in german the. reference to that german magazine that had a cover. with the queen
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DIE QUEEN
#turnaboutart#deltarune#die as in german the. reference to that german magazine that had a cover. with the queen#drew these in aggie io. i was just testing the whole thing. these were fun#the default ink brush feels really nice
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KAORU PERSONAL INTERVIEW SPECIAL HEADBANG VOL.27 TRANSLATION 2/2
The ideal figure that the guitarist who leads the band as a leader got while struggling, and the reason for his unstoppable pursuit.
“Without ‘BLUE BLOOD’ I wouldn’t really be who I am now”
“After all, I’ve always liked dark and hopeless stuff, that kind of things”
“I’m the type of person who wants to be affected by cd jackets and lyrics”
"Sometimes I can do it. A song with a very pop and bright atmosphere"
Notes before reading: This is the second part of the personal interview of Kaoru from the magazine Headbang Vol.27 released on 18th August 2020. The interview is 11 pages long and this part covers the last 5 pages.
As Toshiya and Die’s interviews, 2nd part is focused on his roots as a guitarist.
You can get the magazine at Amazon Japan or CDJapan.
Read Toshiya’s interview here
Read Die’s interview here
Feel free to correct me if you spot any mistake or any confusing.
Links or credits to this post when the content is reposted or captured in other SNS is appreciated :)
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Text by: Yohsuke Hayakawa
(First part here)
“Without “BLUE BLOOD” I wouldn’t really be who I am now”
-Then, the topic of the talk changes from here. I would like to ask you about the story behind the 20 albums that you selected regardless of era or reasons but, you chose 10 albums from Japan and 10 foreign albums.
K: Is that true? (laughs). It's a coincidence, but it was very difficult to narrow down when it came to choose again. So, I chose mainly the ones I listened to a lot before I started the band and when I started doing it. They are just albums that influenced me.
-I have the impression that Japanese music was a kids who read WeROCK’s thing.
K: Hahaha. Yes (laughs).
-First of all…. COLOR's mini album "FOOLS! GET LUCKY !!" (1989) is also included. I have to ask about why you picked this one.
K: Well, I really love it (laughs). Even though it was "X in the east, COLOR in the west"*, I was really into it, so I went to see their live performance. I like their punkish songs and they have many fast songs. At that time, if a song wasn’t fast, it was a “no” for me. I also liked ROSE ROSE.
*(This makes reference to X Japan being from the Kanto region (East) and COLOR being from Kansai (West) as both band emerged around the same time.)
-Then D'ERLANGER. DIR EN GREY participated in D'ERLANGER's tribute (announced in 2017 ‘D'ERLANGER TRIBUTE ALBUM ~ Stairway to Heaven~ "). Was the album "LA VIE EN ROSE" (1989) a shock for you?
K: That’s right, “LA VIE EN ROSE” too but also CIPHER (G) himself. Well, I think it was at ”BURNN! JAPAN”, CIPHER appeared in a solo photo on one page in colour.
-Oh, it’s a shot in which you can see him standing with a flashy Les Paul guitar. It was before kyo (D’ERLANGER vocalist) became a member.
K: That’s right. I though “What on earth is this person?” After that, they were releasing a CD ("LA VIE EN ROSE") , so I made a I made a reservation right away.
-Also, a band you can't miss from those times is DEAD END. It never gets old because it’s respected across generations.
K: I chose "Shambara" (1988), well, it's a masterpiece. Just listening to the opening song "EMBRYO BURNING" made me sick. When I first started listening to metal music, I was a bit reluctant but with DEAD END, the melody that MORRIE sung got me very quickly, I got into them without any resistance. I didn’t have the impression that DEAD END was so-called “metal”. Since I started playing in bands, I was overwhelmed by the seriousness of YOU’s guitar technique.
- Next is ZI: KILL is "ROCKET" (1993). Initially, the dark positive punk style was strong but with that last album, their musicality expanded dramatically and there are even piano jazz songs.
K: It’s an album that feels like something has been reached. I got into ZI:KILL since the early albums and after making their major debut, I got the impression that their albums got milder. However, when I listened to "ROCKET", it seemed like an insanely cool album. I still listen to it.
-Including a horn in their arrangements was ground-breaking.
K: Yes, at first I hated it! But somehow, I didn’t care about it at all. Still, TUSK (Vo) lyrics and the songs were addictive. It made a deep impression on me, that’s why I read ZI:KILL lyrics carefully as well.
-Do you care about the lyrics when it comes to Japanese artists?
K: I check the booklets properly. After all, the lyrics reach my ears at the point in which the words make you feel something.
- And, needless to say, you also chose X's "BLUE BLOOD" (1989). At the Vol. 20 of this magazine, you chose it as a “metal album that changed your life”. So, as expected, if you choose an album from X japan, would be this one?
K: Without this album, I wouldn't really be who I am now.
-You were influenced by everything, both the music and the guitar play….is that so?
K: The guitar too, right? Well, it’s not at that level anymore.
-Ah, that’s not the level (laughs)
K: I was just listening to it earnestly and thinking “amazing!”, it just something that I like, there is no particular reason (laughs).
“Western music (I listened to) was also greatly influenced by HIDE. That’s why everything it’s related to HIDE (laughs)”
- On the other hand, Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi and Cocco are also included.
K: I've always liked Nagabuchi. Like "Tonbo" (1988), there was a tv drama about that.
*(”Tonbo” (Dragonfly) was also a tv drama in which Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi played a member of a yakuza gang who is trapped in a violent existence.)
- Oh, after that was "Shabontama" (1991).
K: I also like the movie "Orgel" (1989), I was really into Nagabuchi at that time. The "Showa" (1989) album I chose this time is the album that got me hooked. The masterpiece "Gekiai" which is my favourite song was recorded around that time.
-You liked Nagabuchi’s drama series.
K: Yes, they are rather dark series. I don’t know much about the brighter/cheerful ones.
-The ones like "Family Game" (1983)?
K: That's right. Those are not the ones that I prefer. After all, I’ve always liked dark and hopeless stuff, that kind of things.
-(Laughs) However, the radical portrayal of Nagabuchi’s drama shocked your heart as a young boy. Probably such a drama couldn’t be made in this era.
K: Yes, you can’t. There isn’t even a rebroadcast of these ones.
-Certainly. Also, I remember that Cocco was around in the scene at the same time than HIDE (g).
K: Yes. When I listened to her album, it didn’t feel like I was listening to a Japanese cd. I felt like it was a western heavy band, so I got into it with that kind of image.
-I feel that foreign music, the alternative vibe is overall stronger, but do you like that?
K: After all, HIDE’s influence in foreign music (I listened to) is huge. At that time, I was buying various magazines and looking for some more, I checked the names that appeared in HIDE’s articles and I’ve been listening to the ones I liked all the time.
- I have the impression that HIDE had a great influence on you listening to bands like Jane's Addiction at that time. What about Vanessa Paradis and Japan ( English new wave band)?
K: That was also due to the influence of HIDE. That’s why almost everything is related to HIDE (laughs). Also, this album of hers (released in 1992, “Vanessa Paradis”) was produced by Lenny Kravitz, who liked to go to her lives. She's still good, but I especially like her early days, I'm attracted to that voice.
“I’m the type of person who wants to be affected by cd jackets and lyrics”
- So that's it. The only work related to HIDE that you chose was with X Japan but, what about his solo works?
K: Well, of course I like his solo, but in my case, I like HIDE in X Japan the most.
-Other than that, I can tell that you like strong sounds, heavy riffs and industrial.
K: That’s right. As I was always seeking fierce things, I came to like strong riffs such as Pantera and Ministry.
-What about the so-called European German metal?
K: Especially at that time, it wasn’t my cup of tea (laughs)
- Then, some of the foreign music you chose…. "Psalm 69: The Way To Succeed And The Way To Suck Eggs" (1992) by Ministry. This album was already mentioned in this magazine before as an important metal album for you.
K: At that time, there was a foreign-related CD shop called WAVE at Umeda Loft in Osaka. I think that I found it there and listened to it. I was like “what the hell?”, so I bought it right away. I listened to it at home again. That night I went to a acquaintance’s house and I said “Listen to this!”, and I forced him to listen (laughs).
-I can tell your excitement (laughs)
K: Then I listened to all the other albums. Above all, I like this one the most.
-And you also mentioned Nine Inch Nails.
K: The first thing I heard from them was a single or something. At that time, I thought, "Wow, that's amazing," but when I listened to the songs on that album, I felt like I was listening to something I had never heard before. It's dark, but it sounds very aggressive. But it’s not like european music dark feeling.At that time, I wasn't sure if they were a band or not (laughs).
-You wondered if it was a one-person band.
K: That’s right. I was like “Is the same person doing everything?”, “Is he playing drums too?”. Everything was a mystery. Information was not available as soon as it does now, so I was wondering “Who is this person?”. I also wondered if the cd jacket had something to grasp, like it was a cd jacket that I didn’t really understand. Like the logo. It was all mysterious and addictive. I myself am the type who wants to be influenced/affected by cd jackets and lyrics, so I look at every corner. Everything up to the back of the wrapping. Then, when I looked at the back, I thought, "Isn't there anything attached?" (Laughs).
-(Laughs)There are many things that are totally attractive, including elaborate art books.
K: Yes. Especially for Nine Inch Nails, I went looking for some place that sell T-shirts of them.
"Sometimes I can do it. A song with a very pop and bright atmosphere"
-Among these works, isn't there any in particular that has an easy-to-understand influence on the songs that you make with DIR EN GREY?
K: Well, I don't know that
.
- Some of the works you chose this time have a strong melody…. For example, on a 2017 tour focused in “MACABRE" (2000), you played “Taijou no ao” for the first time in a while. I mentioned in this magazine before that "If you change the arrangement of a song to your current style, you can still play it ", but is there a desire to make a song with that kind of melody now?
K: I don’t have a particular desire to do it. I think that it feels like something from that time, it’s an image that doesn’t make me feel excited now.
-By the way, do you usually listen to music with melodies like that?
K: I do, I do. Rather, I’ve been listening to pop music all the time lately. I am not listening noisy bands at all.
-Noisy ones (laughs).
K: Hahaha.
-However, it's a little hard to think that you are going to make songs like that.
K: Yeah, it doesn't happen very often sometimes, but there are times when I can do it. A song with a very pop and bright atmosphere. So, when I tried to start to work on songs, one turns out like “this is what I have done”. But maybe then I think that it’s a little different from what I do with DIR EN GREY, so I have to mess with it, fix it or just store it.
- Eh! Do you make that kind of songs? I would like to hear a song like that from you now. That’s why the melody of “Taijou no Ao” that I mentioned as an example is not only pop but also suffocating. Faintly scented lyrics. I wonder if that it’s your true self.
K: That's right.The first thing that influenced me was the New Wave*. Pet Shop Boys and so, I liked that kinds of thing. That’s why there is a bit of that “kind of atmosphere” sometimes. It's not just pop.
*(New wave is a broad music genre that encompasses numerous pop-oriented styles from the late 1970s and the 1980s)
-There is also a sorrowful side.
K: So, if I had to pick one, Europe is better in that than America. Well, when it comes to the songs I make, I’d like to make them more interesting, but I don’t feel like doing something that is off the point/wrong.
-I have to ask you about the melody part now.
K: If you have any concerns, I will answer them…
- What if there is something clear for you like, “this song has this kind of image”?
K: After that, Kyo has several ways to sing so I will combine them in my own way and propose new melodies. Like “I think in this way would be cool”.
-Oh, that’s how you do it. In any case, now I'm looking forward to the day when I can listen to a new song again. Will the album be completed in 2021?
K: That's right.
-By the way, Kaoru-san's hard disk has already material for the new album….
K: Well, there's something for the album……there is, but it’s still not the whole thing at all (laughs).
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So, @that-house 's short story got me in a mood to write something!
I had an idea for like a WW1 trench warfare kinda setting with a steampunk twist.
Tw: gore, war, guns, death, sadness.
I got a bit carried away, so it's on the longer side.
I hope you enjoy!
It was a cool autumn day on the front. The sky was clear and a cool breeze whirled through the trenches. It was a perfect day for a nice stroll through the park. A day to go apple picking, storytelling by the campfire, or just sit cozy by the fire with a hot cup of tea reading a book. A perfect autumn day. Maybe I could go for a bike ride, or-
An explosion forced me out of my daydream.
Oh yeah. I thought. I'm in hell.
No, there would be no pleasant strolls or bike rides here. In fact, there wouldn't be fun of any kind. Not here, where the men are packed so tightly together, you could barely move an arm without hitting someone. Not here where the din of gunfire, the crackle of Tesla Weapons, and the boom of artillery were ever present. Not here, where bodies fell and rotted in between the men still struggling to survive. Worms and rats and other animals picking apart the dead flesh. Not here where men charged fruitlessly into the enemy defenses, dying in an instant. Not here where British tanks made their way across No Man's Land, firing high explosive shells at any crowd they saw, escorted by airships dropping bombs that hit both friend and foe alike. Not here where German walkers stomped over the dirt and whatever poor chap was under them. Not here, where the screams of the dying pierced your eardrums and stuck in your mind like nothing you've ever experienced before.
No, there was no fun here. There was not even the hint of a smile on the men, huddled together, fighting a war for people they haven't met, for reasons unbeknownst to them.
No, there was only the horror of war.
A sharp smack hit me in the back of the head.
"Wake up dumbass! The Germans could attack at any second!"
That was Jack. A huge, red haired man who looked like your stereotypical lumberjack. His name fit and he knew it. Anyone who made reference to that fact would be getting very acquainted with the business end of a bayonet. Despite his anger issues, he was a good soldier who followed orders even before they had been given.
"Hey leave the kid alone! He's only trying to escape this madness. Besides, who would attack on a day like this? Have a picnic, maybe, but not attack."
That was Vincent, a posh man who had been ripped from his family estate to fight in the war. He loves to brag about how rich his family was and how nice of a life he had before. Not that it would matter now as we were all part of the poverty of the trenches.
"But we have to be ready for if they do!" Shouted Jack, "Our commander said there was an intercepted message that said-"
"Yeah, yeah. There's an imminent attack on this position at 0800 hours!" Vincent interrupted, mockingly. "That was just an excuse to get us up earlier. Look, Junior doesn't even have his gun loaded. He knows there won't be anything."
I glance down at my gun, the bolt still open, waiting for a stripper clip. I line one up, push the bullets down into the magazine, and close the bolt. Ready to fire.
The moment I do that, a shout can be heard making it's way down the line. The Germans are coming.
"What was that about no German attack Vincent, you piece of-" Jack stops. "Do you smell that?" He asks after a moment.
I do smell it. Ozone. Present over the stench of rotting bodies. Ozone.
Suddenly, an electric crackling sound can be heard all around. A Tesla Weapon is about to fire on us.
"Tesla Weapon! Take cover!" I scream and dive beneath the trench. But I'm a moment too late.
A thunderclap and a blinding light shake the ground. For a moment, the men in the line seem connected by a blue light, and then, nothing. The entire line of men slumped to the ground, their bodies riddled with burn marks. Their eyes filled with blood.
For a few moments I was in shock. Jumping away had saved me and I was the only-
I choked back tears. No! I can't be the only one! I thought. And began checking the pulses of my former comrades.
Dead. All of them.
I was the only survivor.
I curled up into a ball, cradling the bodies of Jack and Vincent, my friends.
The Germans swept through the trench. Stabbing every single body to make sure they were dead. Stifled screams came from those who weren't as the enemy soldiers quickly executed them.
I heard boots approaching my position. This is it. This is how I die. The German stabbed the body next to me and then went over to me. We locked eyes.
"Zey are dead?" He asked, pointing at the bodies of my friends.
I nodded, unsure of what to do. Tears still streaming down my face.
The German Soldier nodded back solemnly and looked around. He took his bayonet, reared back, and struck!
Stabbing the dirt beside me.
He shouted something in German and walked away.
A cool breeze blew through the trenches, reminding me of my daydream.
It was still a perfect autumn day.
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Interview with Makoto Yukimura, the Mangaka behind Vinland Saga
REALQ: What kind of child were you?
Yukimura: I was a laid back kid, who took a very, very long time to come to a decision. I'd be late to dinner because I was thinking about something or other. Once, while I was alternately touching the right and left eyes of a snail, I became aware that night had fallen. I wondered why my group of friends were always in such a hurry. I would focus on something and lose the ability to tell if time was passing quickly or slowly.
REALQ: When did you first encounter manga?
Yukimura: I was five-years-old and the manga was Akira Toriyama's Dr. Slump. I remember thinking the cover art was cool. When I was little, I used to think that the cover art and the story inside were drawn by different people. [Laughs]
But I watched the Dr. Slump anime before I read the manga. Later, someone told me that there was a manga that the anime was based on and I found the weekly magazine where it was serialized.
In the beginning, I was dubious. I didn't see why there needed to be both a manga and an anime. Like, why do the same thing twice? How-ever, after I saw them both it made sense because each had its own idiosyncracies.
REALQ: Did your parents say anything to you about reading manga?
Yukimura: No, they never said anything. They came from a generation who said reading manga made you an idiot, but they didn't say any-thing. They didn't say anything when I told them at 16 that I wanted to draw manga, either.
REALQ: Was there anything that your parents, siblings, or people around you would say to you often?
Yukimura: There certainly must have been various things, but I don't remember because I was probably concentrating on something else at the time and didn't hear them. However, one thing I do remember is being told to watch out for cars. Like, at the very least, try not to die. [Laughs]
Nevertheless, I really did get into a traffic accident. Once, on my way to the park to play with my friends, I ran out into the street and got hit on the side by a sedan. I rolled over the top of the car—the hood, wind-shield, top, rear window, then the trunk. Strangely, I wasn't seriously injured and played in the park afterwards.
Actually, there was also another incident.
My sister and I were riding together in a car. It was just the two of us and as we were going down a hill, a car suddenly appeared and we hit its side. I was sitting in the backseat and was launched forward like a catapult. My sister was so surprised she called out, "Mako, you're flying!" Strangely, I wasn't injured that time either, and we decided not to tell our mother. [Laughs]
REALQ: Did your way of thinking change after the accident?
Yukimura: I think that if it did change, I wasn't conscious of it. Despite being a near-death experience, it was a miracle I wasn't injured. My mother getting angry at me afterward was more frightening. [Laughs]
In terms of my "way of thinking," I'm a little different. Like something in me is lacking. It's often the case that for some reason I don't fully comprehend a conversation even if I'm really trying to concentrate on what the other person is saying. What's the reason? If I'm honest about it, it's because I'll start thinking about something else, even if it's just for a moment.
REALQ: Did you also have trouble paying attention during class at school?
Yukimura: Yeah. Especially classes that didn't interest me. I continued to have this problem in high school, where I'd often be sitting in class and before I realized it, the bell would ring. However, my notebook would have stuff drawn in it...manga.
REALQ: Didn't teachers or friends say anything?
Yukimura: In high school, I didn't have much of a social life, so nobody said anything. I went to reasonably academic schools [REALQ Editor's note: Yukimura graduated from Chuo University and Suginami High School] and my peers studied quite hard. The feeling that I was so different from most of the people around me had a big effect on me. I didn't fit in. I lived in my own world.
REALQ: Did student life give you anxiety?
Yukimura: Anxiety was the only thing I really felt. In a way, isn't school a microcosm for society? Despite it being a microcosm, there's this feeling of being left behind. That made me really anxious and sad. But as a result of suffering in this way, I realized that society existed out-side of this microcosm—a kind of society that I had never experienced inside the microcosm of school.
REALQ :What lead you to have this epiphany?
Yukimura: It occurred to me out of the blue one day when I was feeling totally devastated. I was 16. One autumn day after school I thought to myself, "I'll finish high school because if I don't, it will make my parents sad. But participating in a society reflected in this kind of microcosm will be impossible." It was just like that moment when a cup is filled to the brim with water and suddenly the surface tension breaks and it overflows.
However, thinking this made me feel better. Until that point, the "ruler" for determining success since the first year of high school had been getting good grades, getting into a good college, and then finding a job with a good company. This ruler contained within it a system of values for how one should live their life. When I decided that this was not the ruler I wanted to use to measure my own life, things became a lot easier for me. I used to get burnt out worrying so much about getting decent enough grades that would allow me to get into university. Like, "please let me just graduate!" Realizing that there was another way to live was a lifesaver.
Of course, I think it made my parents nervous. In that era, there was still a deeply rooted notion that one's academic background was im-portant and working for a good company made you a good person. Back then, this was like saying, "Your child is the type of kid who won't find their way in the world."
It was like throwing away the most important ruler and replacing it with a new ruler that was a little bent and covered with indecipherable markings. [Laughs]
REALQ: Was there anyone from your high school days who had an influence on you?
Yukimura: A teacher who taught classical literature. He was apparently a teacher with quite bizarre interpretations of the material. More than anything else, what left the greatest impression on me was when he used class time to talk about how wonderful Michael Ende was [REALQ Editor's note: a German writer of children's fiction]. He introduced me to The Never Ending Story. Once I knew about Michael Ende, he became an influence on me.
It was the first book I knew of in which someone wrote a book because he had a sense of obligation and a goal in relation to society and the world. I thought that someone who wrote a book because he felt that it was something he had to do was a rather beautiful thing to wish for.
REALQ: Next up... Yukimura discusses the connection between himself and Thorfinn Karlsefni, the protagonist of his Vinland Saga. Is there anything that makes you hesitate when you draw your manuscripts?
Yukimura: For characters, it's probably the hands. Hands take time to do well. The strength of a character's grip on a sword, for example. Male and female hands are hard to differentiate, too. Hands are the most expressive part of a character, after the face.
I've heard that you can tell a person's personality from their hands, so I always look at them. [Laughs]
You can fake a facial expression, but your hands will show how hard you work or how hard you don't.
If you show the character's life in their hands, you'll get a good result.
REALQ: When did you start paying attention to how you drew hands?
Yukimura: Since I was young. But I still find it difficult now. When I look at the work of other manga artists, sometimes the faces are well drawn, but the hands are not. To put it bluntly, if I were to choose among artists, I would choose them by how they draw their hands.
REALQ: Is there anyone whose work you reference?
Yukimura: I'm especially influenced by artists with high amounts of realism. When it comes to hands, it's gotta be Katsuhiro Otomo.
It's not just his hands, though. It's everything. [Laughs]
Also, the young, up-and-coming artists are all quite good. Their hands are pretty, but you can see the structure clearly as well.
REALQ: Any thoughts on these hands? [While looking at Sigurd's hands in the manuscript]
Yukimura: Yes. These hands are drawn fairly well. In Sigurd's case, de-spite the muscularity, his hands are not rough. That's because he has his underlings do the tough work. In Thorfinn's case, he has many small cuts, and there is more cracked and peeling skin.
REALQ: Are there any scenes in Vinland Saga strongly influenced by your own experience?
Yukimura: When Thorfinn is on his knees, apologizing. [Laughs]
The part where he says, "Please. I won't ask you to forgive me, but allow me to live a bit longer." I've been drawing manga for 20 years. There's always a shadow of guilt that hangs over me. I'm sorry for being so selfish. So, I feel I have to, at the very least, draw something that readers will love... I'm nothing without that.
Thorfinn is a young viking from medieval Europe. Since his teens, he's pillaged, fought in wars, and done many other terrible things. His feelings change as he grows, and he starts to feel guilt for his past actions. The ghosts of those he killed appears in his dreams, and he is ravaged by nightmares.
I am only here today because of the care of those around me. I am truly thankful. If anything about Thorfinn comes from my experiences, it has to be this.
In his current state, the protagonist has no right to convict anyone else. No matter what kind of scoundrel he meets, Thorfinn always feels that he has done something worse in the past. I think it's good this way.
REALQ: Did you know from the beginning that Thorfinn would become the way he did?
Yukimura: Yeah. The story began with the premise that the protagonist is fated to have done many terrible things. He goes from being the oppressor to being the oppressed, and in doing so, he learns many things and becomes an adult. He then departs, saying, "I will go to a new land beyond the sea and build a peaceful country." That is an escape from the values that dominated European society. They do not feel that it is bad to wage war and plunder other countries. And, although their opponents are human beings, they believe they have the right to make the weak into slaves and kill them if they need be. In the society of that time, such things were seen as good things. Thorfinn experiences—and hates—both. But he is powerless to change the system... So he decides to leave. There will be terrible bloodshed if he decides to change the world. So he leaves it to Canute. Because Canute has the power and the shorter path. "I am different," he says. "I will live in a different way."
When I put it into words, it seems like a lot of what I think is reflected in my work. [Laughs]
REALQ: From your childhood experiences and your writing process, I get the feeling you are a perfectionist who doesn't com-promise when it comes to goals or ideals. Do the people around you feel the same way?
Yukimura: I think I am a perfectionist. In the past, my seniors and teachers would say, "If 100 points is amazing work and 0 points is nothing, it's easy to get to 80 points. However, each point beyond that is incredibly difficult. Past 90, it's so rough that you'll start spitting blood. And nobody gets to 100."
I don't know if, by absolute standards, my work is at 80 points. But, for my own standards, I care a lot about each of those 1 or 2 points beyond 80. I care so much that others see the changes I make and say, "He pushed back the deadline for this? What's changed?" [Laughs]
I've even rewritten an entire manuscript before.
REALQ: Is it really rough when you have to throw out a whole manuscript?
Yukimura: It's sad that to know the work won't produce results, but the worst possible thing for me is to feel regret afterwards. If I can choose to suffer for a brief moment as I draw, then I'll do it. The regrets afterward stay around much longer...
REALQ: Are you happy about the reactions of your overseas readers?
Yukimura: Yeah. It's encouraging to know they like my work. Especially when I heard some of them were reading Vinland Saga side-by-side with a dictionary. I forgot which language they were translating from and into, though. [Laughs]
REALQ: Let me change the subject: Advice from adults to children... Do you think it's important to emphasize the importance of having dreams? Should we tell kids to have dreams and tell them their dreams will come true?
Yukimura: I used to think dreams were just desires. However, I was a good-for-nothing back then, so I think I was being resentful. [Laughs] At the very least, I don't think doing whatever you want to do is a beautiful thing. That's just you doing what you want to do. The truly beautiful things are helping others, volunteering, things like that... Finding a home for a stray dog, or doing things that no other person wants to do—that's beautiful.
This includes me, but to do what you want to do is simply selfishness. I received my role in society, but I couldn't carry it out. I wasn't a modest enough person for that. I said such things because I thought I would do what I wanted to do no matter what other people said to me.
It's the same for everyone, I think. Those who do what they want and succeed are simply the ones who ended up with a place in society. It's a miracle. After all, what some people want is to carry out meaningless terrorism... But it's the same thing. Both are "dreams."
REALQ: If you could give an hour of advice to your younger self, what would you say?
Yukimura: I'd say, reflexively, to be 3 times as careful of oncoming traffic. [Laughs]
More seriously, I'd say, "You're worried that you're inferior to others. But don't worry." I'd tell myself that there isn't only one ruler to mea-sure yourself by. "Humans come in all sorts," I'd say. "There's not a single number line that we all stand on."
Text by Shuta Miura
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Iron maidens are one of the most notorious torture devices out there. But are they real?
The answer is no — and yes. The widespread medieval use of iron maidens is an 18th-century myth, bolstered by perceptions of the Middle Ages as an uncivilized era. But the idea of iron-maiden-like devices has been around for thousands of years, even if evidence for their actual use is shaky.
The iron maiden has been described as a human-sized box festooned with interior spikes. The hapless torture victim would be forced inside and the door would shut, driving the spikes into the body. The spikes were supposedly short and positioned so that the victim wouldn't die quickly, but would bleed out over time. Creepy, right? [Medieval Torture's 10 Biggest Myths]
And basically fictional. The first historical reference to the iron maiden came long after the Middle Ages, in the late 1700s. German philosopher Johann Philipp Siebenkees wrote about the alleged execution of a coin-forger in 1515 by an iron maiden in the city of Nuremberg. Around that time, iron maidens started popping up in museums around Europe and the United States. These included the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg, probably the most famous, which was built in the early 1800s and destroyed in an Allied bombing in 1944.
Siebenkees wasn't the first to dream up a terrible box full of nails as a torture device, though. "The City of God," a Latin book of Christian philosophy written in the fifth century A.D., tells a tale of torture of the Roman general Marcus Atilius Regulus, who was locked in a nail-studded box. Marcus didn't die of being impaled, though; he was forced to stay awake lest the nails pierce his skin, and eventually died of sleep deprivation.
Greek historian Polybius, who lived around 100 B.C., spread a related story. Polybius claimed that the Spartan tyrant Nabis constructed a mechanical likeness of his wife Apega. When a citizen refused to pay his taxes, Nabis would have the faux wife wheeled out.
"When the man offered her his hand, he made the woman rise from her chair and taking her in his arms drew her gradually to his bosom," Polybius wrote. "Both her arms and hands as well as her breasts were covered with iron nails … so that when Nabis rested his hands on her back and then by means of certain springs drew his victim towards her … he made the man thus embraced say anything and everything. Indeed by this means he killed a considerable number of those who denied him money."
It's difficult to tell if any of this is true — ancient historians have a way of exaggerating —but the idea of iron-maiden-like devices clearly did not originate with the Middle Ages. The period has been rather unfairly associated with other elaborate torture devices, too, said Peter Konieczny, the editor of the magazine Medieval Warfare, who recently wrote about the myths of medieval torture at medievalists.net. The Pear of Anguish, a sort of speculum supposedly inserted into orifices and painfully winched open? No record of use in the Middle Ages. It might have been a sock-stretcher. How about the rack? There are some records of use during the Middle Ages, but the device (which supposedly would rip its victims joints apart) was conceived of in the days of Alexander the Great.
Torture did happen in the Middle Ages, Konieczny told Live Science. It was sometimes used to extract confessions of guilt before an execution, on the justification that confessing sin before death would save the person's soul from an eternity in Hell.
"There was an idea in the Middle Ages that you were really honest when you were under a lot of punishment, under a lot of strain," Konieczny said. "That the truth comes out when it starts to hurt."
But torture wasn't usually all that elaborate.
"The more common torture was to just kind of bind people up with rope," Konieczny said.
But myths about over-engineered pain and punishment still resonate. In 2013, for example, local journalism site Patch reported that a history of torture exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Man had sent attendance at the museum up 60 percent over the previous year, helping pull the institution out of a financial hole.
Most of the myths about medieval torture arose in the 1700s and 1800s, when people were motivated to see the people of the past as more brutal than those of the modern-day, Konieczny said. "You get that idea that people were much more savage in the Middle Ages, because they want to see themselves as less savage," he said. "It's so much easier to pick on people who have been dead for 500 years."
Exaggeration tends to build on itself over time, Konieczny said, leading to 18th-century myths that persist as fact today. These myths aren't restricted to torture; a May 2016 article in the Public Medievalist argues that the flail, the stereotypical ball-and-chain weapon, wasn't really a staple of the medieval battlefield at all. Many museum examples are from later eras, and the only evidence of the flail in manuscripts comes from illustrations of fantastical battles; they don't show up, for example, in armory catalogues from the era.
A similar sort of exaggeration has occurred over the Siege of Baghdad in 1258, Konieczny said. By the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, it was common to hear that millions had died when the Mongols took the city. Contemporary sources, however, refer to tens of thousands dead, not millions.
"Then, about 20 years later, you get this letter where one Mongol leader is writing, boasting how he captured Baghdad and killed 200,000 people," Konieczny said. Fifty years later, histories start talking about 800,000 deaths, and then, over the next couple centuries, the numbers rise to a million or more.
Speaking of Iraq, that country provides a sad footnote to the iron maiden myth. In 2003, Time Magazine reported the discovery of a real iron maiden at the Iraqi National Olympic committee compound in Baghdad. Saddam Hussein's son, Uday Hussein, was once the head of the committee and the country's soccer federation, and athletes reported that he would humiliate, beat and torture underperformers. Time reported that the iron maiden in Baghdad was "worn from use," and an AP video shows the device, but it's unclear whether there are any eyewitness accounts of the iron maiden being used.
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It Seems Like Nothing Changes
Paul Cussen
August 2018
In the last two weeks of Anglo-Welsh composer Philip Heseltine’s year long stay in Ireland, he writes ten songs which are published under the pseudonym Peter Warlock. These are considered to be among his finest work.
An t-Óglách, with the tagline ‘The Official Organ of the Irish Volunteer', often described as a successor to the Irish Volunteer, is published. It is published twice a month initially and successfully manages to remain in circulation despite numerous raids and having to operate in secret to avoid complete closure. Michael Collins, Adjutant General and Director of Organisation, is a regular contributor to the magazine.
Charlie Hurley is arrested on a charge of unlawful assembly and imprisoned in Cork Gaol. When arrested he is found to have in his possession documents relating to military installations in the Beara peninsula and a plan for destroying the police barracks in Castletownbere. On release from Cork Gaol he is rearrested, court-martialled and sentenced to five years' penal servitude at Maryborough (Portlaoise) Gaol.
John Hawkes from off-Barrack Street lodges an unsuccessful appeal with the local War Pensions Committee in Cork city, noting that he had been ‘awarded a pension of 8d. a day for 18 months final [sic] & his period expired some time ago. He states that if he could obtain a pair of spectacles, he would be employed at once as a watchmaker. He has no home and no money and will have to go to the workhouse if his appeal fails.’ Hawkes had previously served in the Royal Munster Fusiliers in France but had been discharged in April 1915, according to his mother, ‘because he got a bad cold in the trenches’ and had been declared ‘unfit for further duty’. Doctors at a hospital in Boulogne had determined that Hawkes suffered from a ‘mental deficiency’ .
Acting Major Thomas Marshal Llewellyn Fuge is mentioned in Despatches. He is mentioned in ‘Long Shadows by de Banks: the history of Cork County Cricket Club’ by Colm Murphy as a useful fast medium bowler who played for Ireland.
Stephen O’Callaghan of 39 Bandon Road completes four years on active duty with the Worcestershire Regiment and the Royal Munster Fusiliers, a recipient of the British Army Service Medal and the Victory Medal.
HMS Flying Fox takes over kite balloons and the operations are attached to the deployment of the American battleships Utah, Nevada and Oklahoma. The three battleships operate from Berehaven from August to October to protect Allied convoys from attack by the German battlecruisers.
August 1 – The first fully combined air, sea, and land military operation in history is launched as RN Fairey Campania seaplanes from HMS Nairana join Allied forces to drive Red Army forces from the mouth of the Northern Dvina river in Russia.
The French Tenth Army launch an attack and penetrate five miles into German territory in the Second Battle of the Marne.
British troops enter Vladivostok.
August 2 – Captain Georgi Chaplin stages a coup against the local Soviet government of Arkhangelsk.
Japan announces that it is deploying troops to Siberia.
The first general strike in Canada occurs in a one-day protest at the murder of Albert “Ginger” Goodwin.
August 4 – ‘Gaelic Sunday’, approximately 100,000 Gaels take part in an act of defiance against the British administration by refusing to apply for licenses to play Gaelic Games.
Noel Willman, actor and theatre director, is born in Derry.
There is a full muster of the members of the companies of the Third West Cork Brigade for the funeral of Lieutenant William Hurley (Kilbrittain Company) in Clogagh.
The Norwegian barque Remonstrant is sunk in the Atlantic Ocean 280 nautical miles (520 km) west of the Fastnet Rock. Her crew survive.
Adolf Hitler is awarded an Iron Cross first class on recommendation of his Jewish superior Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann.
August 5 – Five Zeppelins attempt to bomb London however most of the bombs fall into the North Sea due to heavy cloud cover and L20 is shot down killing all the crew.
August 7 – Florrie Burke is born. He goes on to play for Cork United, Cork Athletic, Evergreen United, Ireland and the League of Ireland XI (d. 1995).
August 8 – The first organised meeting of the I.T.G.W.U. in Mallow is held this evening in the old Town-Hall.
Battle of Amiens where Canadian and Australian troops begin a string of almost continuous victories, the 'Hundred Days Offensive', with an 8-mile push through the German front lines, the Canadians and Australians capture 12,000 German soldiers, while the British take 13,000 and the French capture another 3,000 prisoners (more enemy troops were captured in the six days from August 6 to August 12 than in the previous nine months combined). German General Erich Ludendorff later calls this the "black day of the German Army". Historian Charles Messenger refers to this date as the “day we won the war”.
August 10 – General Frederick Poole, the British commander in Archangel, is told to help the White Russians.
August 16 – Battle of Lake Baikal is fought by the Czechoslovak legion against the Red Army. Red army forces take Arkhangelsk.
August 17 – Moisei Uritsky, the Petrograd head of the Cheka, is assassinated.
Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon meet for the last time, in London, and spend what Sassoon later describes as "the whole of a hot cloudless afternoon together”.
British troops attack Baku, Azerbaijan
August 21 – The Second Battle of the Somme begins.
Corporal Thomas Hargroves, Royal Irish Regiment, 2nd Batallion, dies in action. He had come from Laois to serve in the Prison Service in Cork and enlisted for military service in early 1916. He first saw action securing positions in Dublin in 1916. His unit landed in France in August 1916. He is listed on the Vis-En-Artois Memorial, (and on a memorial which disappeared from St. Peter’s Church between 2002 and 2006).
August 22 – Sergeant John Hallinon is killed in action in the Somme. He was born around 1883 in Ballincollig and was working as a bank messenger in London. His wife, Emily, unaware of the condition of life in the trenches wrote to ask for her husband's ring, wristwatch and pipes. They had one child, William.
August 23 – Creation of the Bessarabian Peasants' Party.
August 25 – Composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist Leonard Bernstein is born in Lawrence, Massachusetts (d. 1990).
70 year old fisherman William Whelton dies in Courtmacsharry after mistakenly consuming poison (unlike poisonings in the UK a century later there is no suspicion of Russian involvement!)
August 27 – Denis O'Doherty, Irish Guards is killed in action aged 28. His brother Felix O'Doherty had started the Fianna and Volunteers in Blarney and became Captain 'B' (Blarney) Company, 6th Battalion, Cork Brigade, I.R.A.
The Battle of Ambos Nogales occurs when U.S. Army forces skirmish against Mexican Carrancistas and two supposed German advisors at Nogales, Arizona, in the only battle of WWI fought on United States soil. Over 130 people die, the majority are Mexican citizens.
August 29 – Science historian and cryptanalyst John Herival is born in Belfast (d. 2011).
Bob Conklin dies of gunshot wounds, sustained at the Battle of Arras. Due to the delay of mail from the Front, his family still continue to receive letters from Bob after learning of his death: “Give my love to all and don’t worry on my account”; “Well, my news is finished, so I’ll ring off. I will write mother in a few days. Love to all. Bob.”
August 30 – Czechoslovakia forms independent republic.
London Policemen go on strike after the dismissal of PC Tommy Thiel (centre in the photograph) for union membership. The strikers demand union recognition and a wage increase. Within a few hours 6,000 men throughout London are out, with more joining all the time; even the Special Branch is affected.
Vladimir Lenin is shot and wounded by Fanny Kaplan in Moscow.
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Jason Dean (Heathers): INTJ
Dominant Introverted Intuition [Ni]: JD has a singular vision, which he spends the majority of his time trying to make a reality. He believes that the only place for people who come from different cliques can truly get along is in Heaven, and strongly feels that killing the entire school is the only way to achieve this. To him, this way of seeing society is an indisputable, universal truth, and it is his primary motivation. JD has a rich understanding of symbolism and metaphor. “Moby Dick is dunked. The white whale drank some bad plankton and splashed through a coffee table, and now it’s your turn to take the helm.” When writing Heather Chandler’s suicide note, Veronica argues that Heather would never use a word like “myriad,” especially because she missed that one on a vocabulary exam, but JD argues that gives them more of a reason to use the word, referring to it as a “badge for her failures at school.” He could have called them anything, but instead chooses to refer to the “tranquilizer” bullets as “ich luge” bullets, which translates to “I’m lying” in German. Everything he does has meaning and significance. He gives Heather Duke the red scrunchie because it’s symbolic. Heather Chandler wore it, so it is a symbol of strength and power. He might as well be handing her a crown. When JD explains his master plan to what he thinks is Veronica’s corpse, he tells her exactly how he believes the world will receive the mass suicide at Westerburg High. It will “infect a generation!” It’ll be a “Woodstock for the ’80s!” JD knows exactly what he needs to do to carry out his schemes. When it looks as though Heather Chandler won’t drink the “hangover cure,” JD remarks that he knew it would be “too intense for her,” which gets her to take the cup. He even finds “homosexual artifacts” to plant at the scene in order to support and strengthen the narrative he’s created. When Heather Duke gives him her copy of Moby Dick, he immediately begins underlining meaningful passages in order to stage her suicide. He blackmails her because he knows her weakness. She needs to be popular, and so, he digs up photos that could ruin her reputation and uses them as leverage to get her to take Heather Chandler’s place. JD has strong hunches about things and people. He fully believes something unless it’s proven to him that he is incorrect, in which case he will revise his approach. He is certain that Veronica will be back after she breaks up with him, but when she makes it clear that it’s over, he decides that he needs to kill her. Immediately after their encounter in the hallway, JD goes straight to Veronica’s parents to warn them that she might try to commit suicide, laying in the groundwork for his plan to murder her.
Auxiliary Extroverted Thinking [Te]: When it comes to plans, JD has it covered. He’s methodical and focused on getting the job done and implementing his vision. JD is extremely intelligent and knows what he must do in order to accomplish his goals. He’s the one who comes up with the idea to make Heather’s death look like a suicide. He fully intends to kill Kurt and Ram, but he knows that Veronica would never agree to that, so he invents an entire fictional plan to get her to go through with it. When Veronica asks why she would need to write a suicide note for them if they’re not actually killing them, he explains an entire fake plan to her. We’ll shoot them with the “ich luge” bullets, they’ll look like they’e dead, when really they’re just unconscious. They’ll stage it to look as though they shot each other, and when they come to, the entire school will know what they did, and they’ll be a joke. The note, as JD points out, is the punchline. Although he cares for Veronica, he sees her as a part of his plans and uses her to his advantage, and he has no qualms about killing her once he realizes he can no longer control her. When he loses Veronica, he turns to Heather Duke, using her to do his bidding instead. Through her, he gets his fellow classmates to unwittingly agree to mass suicide by creating a petition, which Heather goes around the school getting everyone to sign.
Tertiary Introverted Feeling [Fi]: It’s not right that the popular kids pick on everyone else, and they need to be taught a lesson and pay for their crimes. However, JD takes his punishments to the extreme. He wants justice for those who have been wronged, but he’s extremely unhealthy, and his sentences don’t necessarily fit the crimes. His values and sense of right and wrong are entirely internally based, and he genuinely believes what he is doing is justified. In his mind, Heather was a bitch and she deserved to die. Kurt and Ram had nothing going for them and the world wouldn’t suffer without them. Different social types will only be able to live in harmony in the afterlife! JD genuinely believes that offing her classmates is what Veronica wants deep down, and accuses her of not being able to face those ugly feelings she has. He insists that she wanted Kurt and Ram dead. It is likely that he has repressed his feelings from his mother’s suicide, as well as what he went through moving from state to state and school to school, and saw his actions as the only way to deal with the pain he felt. When he is struggling with Veronica in the boiler room as he attempts to blow up the school, he indicates that part of the reason he has done everything he’s done is because he doesn’t feel loved. While he loves Veronica in his own way, he believes that she must die once he accepts that she won’t come back to him (Ni-Fi). He had completely unreasonable expectations of Veronica, but when she could no longer be coerced and opposed his belief system, he couldn’t stand it. When he insists that their way is the way, she responds that it’s not her way. Because he was so certain of his convictions, he genuinely doesn’t understand why Veronica doesn’t acknowledge that and return to him. ” I don’t get it! I mean, you were wrong! I was right. Strength, damn it! Come on, come back!”
Inferior Extroverted Sensing [Se]: Everything JD does is in service of his ultimate vision. He doesn’t spend any time living in the moment because he’s always thinking about what he’s going to do next. For JD, everything needs to have a deeper significance and he assigns meaning to everything. Many of his actions stem from a desire to create a sort of symbolic resonance and rarely takes things for what they appear to be on the surface. At times, JD can become impulsive, violent, and physical. He shoots Kurt and Ram with blanks in the school cafeteria because “The extremely always seems to make an impression.” JD uses what he notices in his external environment to help him form his plans. When he and Veronica are trying to decide what to do after killing Heather, he spots a magazine in her bedroom that says “The Fall of the American Teen” on it, with a copy of the Cliffs Notes for The Bell Jar on top of it. After noticing these things, he decides to stage the murder to look like a suicide. He decides to set a bomb off in the school after watching a video of a building his dad blew up. JD pays attention to his surroundings and uses his observations in his schemes – he reminds Veronica that Kurt is left-handed, so she knows where to place the gun. When JD knocks Veronica out in the boiler room as tries to thwart his plans, he doesn’t restrain her. He leaves her where she is and continues to go about his business, which ultimately leads to his downfall.
Enneagram: 5w4 4w5 8w9 Sx/Sp
Quotes:
JD: The extreme always seems to make an impression.
JD: Well, everybody’s life has got static. Is your life perfect?
JD: Heather Chandler is one bitch that deserves to die.
Veronica Sawyer: Killing her won’t solve anything. I say we just grow up, be adults, and die. But before that, I’d like to see Heather Chandler puke her guts out.
JD: What are we gonna tell the cops? Fuck it if she can’t take a joke, Sarge?
Veronica Sawyer: Oh, the cops. I can’t believe this is my life. Oh my god. I’m gonna have to send my SAT scores to San Quentin instead of Stanford.
JD: All right, just a little freaked here. At least you got what you wanted, you know?
Veronica Sawyer: Got what I wanted? It is one thing to want somebody out of your life. It is another thing to serve them a wakeup cup full of liquid drainer.
[JD sees a magazine with “The Fall of the American Teen” on the cover and a copy of the Cliff’s Notes for The Bell Jar.]
JD: All right, we did a murder. Now that’s a crime. But if this were like a suicide thing, you know?
Veronica Sawyer: Like a suicide thing?
JD: Yeah. I mean, you can do Heather’s handwriting as well as your own, right? Right?
Veronica Sawyer: You might think what I’ve done is shocking.
JD: Um, to me, though, suicide is the natural answer to the myriad of problems life has given me.
Veronica Sawyer: That’s good, but Heather would never use the word myriad.
JD: This is the last thing she’ll ever write, she’s gonna wanna cash in on as many 50-cent words as possible.
Veronica Sawyer: Yeah, but she missed myriad on the vocab test two weeks ago.
JD: That only proves my point more. The word is a badge for her failures at school.
Veronica Sawyer: Oh. Ok, you’re probably right. People think just because you’re beautiful ad popular life is easy and fun. No one understood, I had feelings too.
JD: I die knowing no one knew the real me.
Veronica Sawyer: That’s good. Have you done this before?
JD: What is this shit?
Veronica Sawyer: Doing a favor for Heather. Double date. I tried to tell you at the funeral, but you rode off.
JD: Another fucking Heather. I’m sorry, I’m just feeling a little superior tonight. Seven schools in seven states and the only thing different is my locker combination. Our love is God. Let’s go get a slushie.
Veronica Sawyer: I don’t get the point of me writing a suicide note when we’re just going to be shooting them with blanks.
JD: Well we’re not going to be using blanks this time.
Veronica Sawyer: You can’t be serious.
JD: I am.
Veronica Sawyer: Listen, my Bonnie and Clyde days are over.
JD: Wait a second, wait a second. Do you take German?
Veronica Sawyer: French.
JD: All right. These are ich luge bullets. My grandfather snared a shitload of them back in WWII. They’re like tranquilizers. Only they break the surface of the skin enough to cause a little blood, but no real damage.
Veronica Sawyer: So it looks like the person’s been shot and killed and really they’re just lying there unconscious and bleeding?
JD: Right. See, we shoot Kurt and Ram, make it look like they shot each other, and by the time they regain consciousness they’ll be the laughingstock of the whole school. The note’s the punchline. How’d that turn out?
JD: Let’s take a look at some of the homosexual artifacts I dug up to plant at the scene. All right, I’ve got an issue of Stud Puppy.
Veronica Sawyer: That’s great.
JD: A candy dish. Joan Crawford postcard. Let’s see, some mascara. All right, now here’s the one perfecto thing I picked up – mineral water.
Veronica Sawyer: Oh, come on. A lot of people drink mineral water. It’s come a long way.
JD: Yeah, but this is Ohio. I mean, if you don’t have a brewski in your hand, you might as well be wearing a dress.
Veronica Sawyer: Oh, you’re so smart.
Veronica Sawyer: Kurt doesn’t look too good.
JD: Just remember he’s left-handed.
JD: Look, you believed it because you wanted to believe it. Your true feelings were too gross and icky for you to face.
JD: Football season is over, Veronica. Kurt and Ram had nothing to offer this school but date rapes and AIDS jokes.
Veronica Sawyer: That thing this afternoon. I’m so angry! It was chaos, fucking chaos.
JD: What are you talking about, huh? I mean, today was great! Chaos is great! Chaos is what killed the dinosaurs, darling. Face it, our way is the way! We scare people into not being assholes!
Veronica Sawyer: Our way is not our way!
JD: Oh yeah, tell that to the judge, all right? Tell it to Kurt Kelly! ‘Oh, God, Veronica!’
Veronica Sawyer: I’m telling it to you! God, you can be so immature!
Heather Duke: Me and Martha Dumptruck? Where did you get this?
JD: I just had the nicest little chat with Miss Dumptruck. Got along famously. It’s kinda scary how everyone’s got a little story to tell. Do you wanna see the canoeing shots?
Heather Duke: What is this, blackmail?… I’ll give you a week’s lunch money.
JD: I don’t want your money. I want your strength. I mean, Westerburg does not need mushy togetherness, it needs a strong leader. Heather Chandler was that leader, but-
Heather Duke: But she couldn’t handle it.
JD: I think you can. Moby Dick is dunked. The white whale drank some bad plankton and splashed through a coffee table, and now it’s your turn to take the helm.
Heather Duke: What about the photographs?
JD: Oh, don’t worry. I’ll ask you to do me a favor, and it’ll be one you’ll enjoy. Then you’ll get the negatives and everything back then. But in the meantime, strength. Here’s a little gift. [He hands her the red scrunchie]
Veronica Sawyer: I was thinking more along the lines of slitting Heather Duke’s wrists open, making it look like a suicide.
JD: Heh, now you’re talking. I could be up for that. I’ve already started underlining meaningful passages in her copy of Moby Dick, if you know what I mean.
Veronica Sawyer: I knew you’d be back, Veronica. I knew it. I was positive, I was sure.
Veronica Sawyer: It’s over, JD. Over. Grow up!
JD: I don’t get it! I mean, you were wrong! I was right. Strength, damn it! Come on, come back!
Mrs. Sawyer: Your friend Jason Dean stopped by. He seemed very concerned about you. He said that he thought you might try to kill yourself.
Mr. Sawyer: You have been depressed lately. Oh, he left this for you.
[He hands Veronica an envelope. She takes out a piece of paper that says ‘Recognize the handwriting?’ in her own handwriting.]
Veronica Sawyer: Oh my God.
Mrs. Sawyer: He said that we should keep you away from sharp objects, closed garage doors, chemical substances, prescription drugs.
JD: I can’t believe you did it! I was teasing. I loved you! Sure, I was coming up here to kill ya. First I was going to try and get you back with my amazing petition. It’s a shame you can’t see what our fellow students really signed. All right, listen. ‘We students of Westerburg High will die. Today. Our burning bodies will be the ultimate protest to a society that degrades is. Fuck you all.’ It’s not very subtle, but neither’s blowing up a whole school, now is it? Talk about your suicide pacts, eh? When our school blows up tomorrow, it’s going to be the kind of thing to infect a generation. A Woodstock for the 80s! Damn it, Veronica. We coulda toasted marshmallows together.
JD: You think just because you started this thing, you can end it?
Veronica Sawyer: I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you, I swear to God. How do I turn off the goddamn bomb, asshole?
[JD flips Veronica the middle finger; she shoots it off]
Veronica Sawyer: It’s all over, JD. Help me stop it.
JD: You want to clean the slate as much as I do. All right, so maybe I am killing everyone in the school, because nobody loves me! Let’s face it, all right! The only place different social types can genuinely get along with each other is in heaven.
Veronica Sawyer: Which button do I press to turn it off?
JD: Try the red one, all right? [Veronica looks at the bomb; all of the buttons are red] Seriously, people are going to look at the ashes of Westerburg and say there is a school that self-destructed, not because society didn’t care, but because the school was society! That’s pretty deep, huh?
Veronica Sawyer: Which red button?
JD: Press the middle one to turn it off it that’s what you really want.
Veronica Sawyer: You know what I want, babe?
JD: What? [He lunges towards her and she shoots him.]
Veronica Sawyer: Cool guys like you out of my life.
JD: Color me impressed. You, uh. You really fucked me up bad, Veronica. You, um, you got power. Power I didn’t think you had. The slate is clean. Pretend I did blow up the school. All the schools. Now that you’re dead, what are you gonna do with your life?
Jason Dean (Heathers): INTJ was originally published on MBTI Zone
#5w4 4w5 8w9#Heathers#Jason Dean#JD#Sx/Sp#INTJ#Type 5#enneagram 5#mbti#mbti types#mbti personality types#fictionalcharactermbti#fictionmbti#enneagram#enneatypes#enneagram type#movie mbti
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INTERVIEW cncrt abstraction x made of CONCRETE
made of CONCRETE celebrates its second anniversary. The techno label based in Dresden and Berlin celebrates this with club nights across Europe and a special release (MOC013 - Rebar - Hansaprohlis).
The label called our attention because it connects very explicitly to Brutalist aesthetics. We talked to the founders Andreas Pionty & fumée grise, together a.k.a. Rebar, about the relation of techno and Brutalism.
We translated the interview to English. German below.
Tour dates left: 1st april, wiesbaden, kreativfabrik || 14th april, berlin, salon zur wilden renate
cncrt abstraction: These days you are celebrating the second anniversary of your label “made of CONCRETE”. A good opportunity to look back?
Rebar: Yes, an anniversary like this is always a good opportunity to look back, but also to look ahead. We are happy with what we have achieved so far. And we are seeing a positive development with both our releases and events. We hope, we can still say the same when we look back next time. ;)
cncrt abstraction: You have recently told Faze Magazin, that you don’t quite remember how you came up with the name for your label “made of concrete”. Still, your use of concepts and aesthetics of architecture is striking: in your artwork, in the name “Rebar” you use as DJ team (a substance necessary for reinforcing concrete) and the titles of your releases “Hansaviertel” and “Prohlis”. This is not just a coincidence, is it?
Rebar: It is true that we don’t remember how we came up with that name. But that doesn’t mean the relation to architecture is a coincidence. Before the label existed we frequently discussed the impact and relation of space and music. Therefore we wanted a name which communicated this relation in our projects. Besides the general interest of both of us, it does help to include expert knowledge, because half of us participated in architecture seminars while at university and his girlfriend is an architect.
Of course we are not the first to express this kind of relation in their name but we are probably unique in being this consequent. Also, it’s great that our artists pick up the topic (and we’re not even pushing them). So we had releases with the name “Portland”, “Hansaviertel” and “Prohlis”. And we have a “Batch Plant” series and soon we will release an EP by Myles Sergé called “Walking Through Concrete”.
cncrt abstraction: What is the relationship between techno or house music and architecture – and to which specific forms and movements of architecture? What are the connecting points, aesthetically?
Rebar: Basically one can say that music can’t be separated from architecture, especially not from the space that architecture creates. You can see that in perfection in the concert halls of the philharmonics around the world. Techno and house music don’t have the same requirements as a space for an orchestra in terms of structure, but if the space isn’t “right” then the music just won’t work. This is even more the case for techno than for house. House music works in different places through the mood the music transports, even though there probably are differences in quality. For techno to have the right effect you ideally need a space that could be located inside an empty factory. While that sounds like a cliche the music simply has the best effect there.
Techno is often called machine music. This alone illustrates why factories fit particularly well. Essentially the factory hall is the visual counterpart of techno music and its lifestyle. The premises of a factory are cold, rough and the working processes going on in there are not comprehensible from outside. But in the end it results in a consistent product. It’s similar with a techno party in such spaces. A lot of different parts come together but in the end it is a consistent party.
cncrt abstraction: What is your special connection to Brutalism, to concrete and cement? In which sense are your tracks and sets musically made of concrete?
Rebar: Industrial buildings form the visual counterpart to the music we release. It doesn’t always need to be Brutalism but it is true we focus on concrete. A limitation on Brutalism would have been too restricted for the music we cover, since we also release dubby sounds or tracks which don’t quite fit into the genres. With the collection of images in our artworks we try refer to the specific artist or a specific track. Therefore the ideas behind the designs are always “concrete”.
We think the ambiguity of the word “concrete” also fits very well with regard to the music, the releases and our sets. On the one hand our music often has a certain coldness which matches the aforementioned characteristics of concrete buildings. On the other hand behind the releases and sets there are concrete ideas of our artists who are free to realize their vision. Therefore the name is represented holistically. ||
http://made-of-concrete.com/
www.soundcloud.com/made-of-concrete
German version:
INTERVIEW cncrt abstraction x made of CONCRETE
made of CONCRETE feiert gerade den zweiten Geburtstag. Das in Dresden und Berlin ansässige Techno-Label feiert diesen Anlass mit Club-Nächten in Europa und einem special release (MOC013 - Rebar - Hansaprohlis EP).
Aufmerksam wurden wir auf das Label, weil es sehr explizit an brutalistische Ästhetik anknüpft. Zu dem Verhältnis von Techno und Brutalismus haben wir den beiden Labelgründern Andreas Pionty & fumée grise, zusammen a.k.a. Rebar, einige Fragen gestellt.
cncrt abstraction: Ihr feiert gerade das zweijährige Bestehen eures Labels “made of CONCRETE”. Eine gute Gelegenheit Zwischenbilanz zu ziehen?
Rebar: Im Grunde ja, so ein Geburtstag ist immer ein guter Moment für einen Rückblick, als auch ein Blick nach vorn. Bisher sind wir mit dem Erreichten zufrieden. Seit Beginn sehen wir eine für uns positive Entwicklung bei unseren Veröffentlichungen oder auch Veranstaltungen. Wir hoffen, dass wir das bei dem nächsten Rückblick auch so sagen können. ;)
cncrt abstraction: Ihr habt dem Faze Magazin neulich verraten, dass ihr gar nicht mehr recht wisst, wie ihr zu eurem Label-Namen “made of CONCRETE” gekommen seid. Dennoch lehnt ihr euch auffällig an Begriffe und Ästhetik aus der Architektur an: in eurem Artwork und auch in eurem DJ-Namen “Rebar” (einem für die Verstärkung von Beton wichtigen Stoff) und den Titeln eurer neuen Releases “Hansaviertel” und “Prohlis”. Das ist doch nicht bloß Zufall, oder?
Rebar: Dass wir nicht mehr genau wissen, wie wir auf den Namen gekommen sind, stimmt tatsächlich. Daraus resultiert aber nicht, dass der Architekturbezug Zufall ist, so haben wir uns, bevor es das Label gab, regelmäßig über die Wirkung von Raum und Musik unterhalten. Deshalb war für uns klar, dass wir einen Namen brauchen, der dies bei unseren Projekten auch vermittelt. Neben dem allgemeinen Interesse von uns beiden, hilft es auch, gewisses Fachwissen einfließen zu lassen, nicht zuletzt da eine Hälfte von uns während des Studiums öfter Architekturseminare besucht hat und die Freundin Architektin ist.
Klar, wir sind jetzt nicht die Ersten, die diese Art von Verbindung in ihrem Namen ausdrücken, aber in dieser Konsequenz gibt es wahrscheinlich nicht viele andere neben uns. Schön ist auch, dass unsere Artists regelmäßig das Thema aufgreifen (und wir zwingen sie nicht mal dazu). So gab es bei uns auch schon Veröffentlichungen mit den Namen „Portland“, „Hansaviertel“, „Prohlis“. Außerdem gibt es auch unsere „Batch Plant“ Serie und demnächst kommt eine EP von Myles Sergé mit den Namen „Walking Through Concrete“.
cncrt abstraction: Was macht das Verhältnis von Techno oder House zu Architektur aus – und zu welchen Formen bzw. Strömungen von Architektur? Worin bestehen die ästhetischen Anknüpfungspunkte?
Rebar: Grundsätzlich kann man sagen, dass sich Musik und Architektur, allem voran der Raum, den die Architektur schafft, kaum voneinander lösen lassen. In höchster Vollendung sieht man das in den Philharmoniesälen dieser Welt. Techno und House haben vom Aufbau sicher nicht die selben Anforderungen wie ein Orchesterraum, aber ist der Raum nicht „richtig“, funktioniert die Musik weniger gut bis nicht. Im Technobereich ist dies unserer Meinung nach sogar noch entscheidender als bei House. House funktioniert durch die Grundstimmung der Musik an den verschiedensten Orten, auch wenn es da sicher ebenso qualitative Unterschiede gibt. Damit Techno richtig wirken kann, benötigt man im Idealfall einen Raum, welcher sich in einer leeren alten Fabrik befinden könnte. Auch wenn das sehr nach einem Klischee klingt, wirkt die Musik dort am Ende doch am besten.
Techno wird ja oft auch Maschinenmusik genannt, dies allein zeigt, warum gerade Fabriken besonders gut passen. Im Grunde ist die Fabrikhalle das visuelle Gegenstück zur Technomusik und dem entsprechenden Lifestyle. Die Räumlichkeiten einer Fabrik sind oft kalt, rough und die Arbeitsprozesse, die darin ablaufen, kann man, wenn man sie von außen betrachtet, nicht nachvollziehen. Am Ende kommt dann aber ein stimmiges Produkt heraus. Ähnliches trifft auf eine Technoparty in solchen Räumlichkeiten zu, bei denen alle einzelnen Komponenten zusammenkommen und am Ende ein stimmige Veranstaltung entsteht.
cncrt abstraction: Und inwiefern gibt es bei euch eine besondere Verbindung zum Brutalismus, zu Beton und Zement? Inwiefern sind eure Tracks und Sets auch musikalisch made of concrete?
Rebar: Industriell wirkende Gebäude bilden für uns das visuelle Gegenstück zu der Musik, die wir veröffentlichen. Das muss auch nicht immer Brutalismus sein, aber ein Fokus auf Beton ist auf jeden Fall gegeben. Eine Beschränkung auf Brutalismus wäre für die Vielfältigkeit, welche wir musikalisch abdecken, auch zu einengend, da wir auch mal einen dubby Sound veröffentlichen oder Tracks, die etwas zwischen den Genres stehen. Mit der daraus resultierenden Bildauswahl versuchen wir, in unseren Artworks immer auf die oder den Künstler_in bzw. einen Titel vom jeweiligen Release anzuspielen, deshalb sind die Ideen hinter unseren designs immer „concrete“.
Auch bezogen auf die Musik, sei es bei den Releases oder den Sets, finden wir die Doppeldeutigkeit des Wortes „concrete“ für uns sehr passend. Zum einen hat unsere Musik oft eine gewisse Kälte, die gut zu den zuvor beschriebenen Eigenschaften der Betongebäude passt. Abgesehen davon stehen hinter den Veröffentlichungen und Sets konkrete Ideen unserer Artists, bei denen wir ihnen auch die Freiheit geben möchten, ihre Vision entsprechend umzusetzen. Somit spiegelt sich der Name ganzheitlich bei uns wieder. ||
http://made-of-concrete.com/
www.soundcloud.com/made-of-concrete
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Auschwitz and The New York Times, 75 Years Later
Our weekly issue of Life Magazine, dated May 7, 1945, arrived on my ninth birthday. Its cover photo showed three solemn men, one with his wounded wrist in a sling, with the caption “The German People” who, Life explained, “know the bitterness of defeat.” I already knew about World War II. Nearly four years earlier my father, engaged in our annual December ritual of setting up my Lionel electric trains, was repeatedly interrupted by radio broadcasts. I could not imagine why anything was more important than my trains. It was December 7, 1941.
Even in Forest Hills (Queens), life changed. Occasional night-time blackouts were scary. My public school had a victory garden to provide food, we kindergarten pupils were told, for starving European victims of the Nazi conquest. My father, too old for the draft, became a proud volunteer fireman. He also sold war bonds to his fellow costume jewelry friends, enabling me to win the school prize as the best salesboy. My picture appeared in the local newspaper.
At a gathering in Philadelphia to visit my beloved grandmother and her sisters, all refugees from Odessa decades earlier, news had arrived that my mother’s brother, my favorite uncle, would be drafted. The women began to scream and sob as if he had been captured by the Czar’s army. A year later I met my cousin Billy, in full dress in his marine uniform, at his parents’ home in New Jersey. Within a year he was killed in the battle of Tarawa.
On May 7, 1945 I turned the pages of Life past pictures of celebrating American soldiers to a full-page photo of a boy walking along a path through tall trees, passing scores of dead bodies, some clothed, others not. The next five pages, with photos of emaciated survivors in the Nazi death camp of Gardelegn, were terrifying. There were men with legs as thin as sticks and faces twisted in horror. The head and arm of a dead prisoner was squeezed under the wooden door where he had tried to escape. Worst of all was a full-page photo from the Nordhausen camp, where the emaciated dead bodies of 3,000 slave laborers, lying in rows, were viewed by American soldiers.
But far and away the most enduring war photo for me was of a young boy my age emerging with other children and their parents from an underground bunker in the Warsaw Ghetto. The boy, carrying a thin bag over his shoulder, wore knee-high socks, shorts, a jacket and a cap. With Nazi soldiers guarding the procession, his arms were raised in surrender. His face showed the terror he surely felt. “The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw,” reported Nazi commander Jurgen Stroop proudly, “is no more.” The 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where the boy might have been taken to die along with a million other Jews, will be observed in Jerusalem, and at the death camp, on January 27th.
Perhaps The New York Times, which buried the Holocaust in its inside pages when it even deigned to mention that unprecedented horror, will finally acknowledge its evasion of what happened at Auschwitz. Publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, a proud American Reform Jew, had fiercely opposed singling out Jews as victims of Nazi annihilation. Jews who were deported to death camps were identified in his newspaper as “persons,” not Jews. Its first published account of the Nazi extermination plan, duly identified as “probably the greatest mass slaughter in history,” appeared on an inside page at the bottom of a column of unrelated stories.
It got worse. In the summer of 1942 the Times cited a report by Szmul Zygielbojm of the Polish National Council documenting the slaughter of 700,000 Jews: “children in orphanages, old persons in almshouses, the sick in hospitals and women were slain in the streets.” For months, Germans had been “methodically proceeding with their campaign to exterminate all Jews.” But the Times front page that day featured articles about tennis shoes and canned fruit. Auschwitz horrors never received front-page attention.
The Times described the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in brief inside page stories. Its first account, nearly three weeks after the revolt began, was four paragraphs long. Its solitary editorial about the uprising referred to 400,000 “persons” who were deported to Treblinka. There was no indication that those “persons” were Jews. As Sulzberger explained to a friend, “We chose to think of Jews as human beings instead of any particular religious group.” Only once in four years was the fate of Jews mentioned on the front page or the subject of a lead editorial. Their horrific plight never qualified for the daily Times ranking of important events.
The Times can never erase its inexcusable dereliction of journalistic responsibility. How will it cover the upcoming memorial observances in Auschwitz and Jerusalem marking 75 years since its liberation? Will it atone for evading the murder of six million Jews who were deemed too inconsequential for notice in its pages.
Jerold S. Auerbach is the author of Print to Fit: The New YorkTimes, Zionism and Israel 1896-2016, chosen by Ruth Wisse and Martin Kramer for Mosaic as a Best Book in 2019
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FEVER B (USA) will support MASKED INTRUDER (USA) & THE HAWAIIANS (D) on 20/07 at Molotow, Hamburg - presented by WILDWAX SHOWS!!!
https://www.facebook.com/events/1076872735831765/
Präsentiert von Ox, Livegigs.de, SLAM Magazine und Wild Wax Shows
Straight outa Rikers. Straight outa Cook County, straight outa that prison in Louisiana that everyone says is horrible, but I can’t be bothered to Google, it’s MASKED INTRUDER, four melodious felons in ski masks with rap sheets, matching converse and some of the catchiest tunes this side of Johnny Cash, Live in Folsom Prison, and they’re coming at you with their second full length, the semi eponymously titled M.I., scheduled to break out on Fat Wreck Chords on May 27, 2014.!
Some say they hail from Wisconsin, some say their accents on stage betray a New Jersey heritage and some people think they’re just Chixdiggit in disguise, but one thing’s for sure, Blue and the gang have been crafting some of the sweetest pop-punk gems about breaking and entering, stalking, and muggings that you’ve ever heard. Not many grown men in ski masks can claim to be the very favorite band of Fat Mike’s daughter, for example (not many men in ski masks should be around children at all) but that’s what makes Masked Intruder so special. They’re more than a gimmick. They’ve got chops. They’re weird, kinda arty, fairly goofy, vaguely dumb, relentlessly smart and they appeal to pretty much everyone, from their fellow hardened criminals to little girls and everyone in between.!
Now, they’re back on the lam in support of M.I., featuring thirteen tracks of broken hearts, broken promises and breaking and entering. Recorded by Matt Alison at Atlas Studios in Chicago (Alkaline Trio, Lawrence Arms, Menzingers), M.I. boasts the Intruders at their toe tapping, jewelry stealing best. I mean, if there’s a better title for a love song than Don’t Run Away, I sure as hell haven’t heard it.!
In support of M.I., and in order to stay a step ahead of their parole officers, the Intruder duders are hitting the road nonstop, traversing the globe, from Europe to Australia to the US of A, with bands like the Dwarves, Face To Face and more, bringing their heart-stealing songs to the people, all while merch dude, stage security and exquisitely mustached lawman Officer Bradford makes sure that hearts are the only things Masked Intruder steals. Officer Bradford may not wear a smile during a Masked Intruder show, but everyone else in the house sure is, and you can bet your ass that whether live or on record, the boys in Masked Intruder are sure to have you singing along and looking for your wallet. Oh, that prison in Louisiana is called Angola. Score one for memory. Take that, Google.
The Hawaiians are back!!! Nach einem musikalischen Beitrag zur amerikanischen TV-Serie Hawaii Five-0 im Jahr 2017 sind die Westerkappelner Surf-Punks endlich mit der neuen Single "Four-Headed Shark Attack" (Kamikaze Records) am Start. Drei Akkorde, die primitiven Gitarren der Ramones und ganz viel 50's Rock n' Roll sind nach wie vor die Rezeptur des hawaiianischen Party Cocktails, der am 20. Juli auch im Vorprogramm von MASKED INTRUDER konsumiert werden darf.
FEVER B (USA)
Brian Hermosillo a.k.a. Fever B has been a part of the underground San Francisco music scene since the 90s. The world famous Purple Onion and Chameleon bar were his home away from home for awhile as a member first of the Retardos and then the Fevers. Since the Retardos were Superteem label mates with The Donnas who labeled themselves “Donna A.”, “Donna R.” etc... on their records he decided when the Fevers got their record deal with Tina Lucchesi’s Lipstick Records,as a tribute to old label mates,to label his band on the 45 sleeve in the same way and so he became “Fever B”. Brian moved to Minneapolis a few years later to escape the dot com invasion and save the Fevers who’s drummer had quit to move to Los Angeles by working with a drummer friend who lived in Minnesota. The Fevers recorded two Lps for the German label Alien Snatch there in MLPS with the new drummer and toured Europe. Brian came back to Europe with his Minnesota band Skipper(Chocolate Covered Records) playing mostly in Italy a few years after that version of the Fevers had also ended. Brian moved back to California and the Fevers soon returned to Europe with the original lineup(Fever G,Fever K,and Fever B)a few years after Skipper. He also flew to The Netherlands for an extended weekend to record a 45 as The Sweet Faces in Utrecht with local indie pop legend Michel Van Der Woude on drums sandwiched between those two Fevers tours somewhere. One weekend in Saint Paul,Mn. in between all this excitement, Brian got snowed in. A wall of snow blocked the doors and windows and trapped him in his apartment! Of course he could dig his way out or call somebody -but he didn’t. He had beer,cold pizza, drums and guitars, and an 8-track reel to reel set up in the living room so he decided to stay inside and make a one man band style recording. He recorded five songs. A Burger records tour featuring their own band Thee Makeout Party came through town soon after. They are long time friends of Brian’s and came to visit his apartment and see his home studio. He gave them a cassette of his recordings just for fun and never thinking it would be released. They listened on their way back to California and decided it should be released on vinyl. It was an honor since Burger had mostly done cassette only releases at the time . Some folks in Milwaukee who were fans of the Fevers began calling Brian “Fever B!” at some point -which was by now an obscure reference- when he came to their town and whenever they came to Minneapolis and the name stuck with him. So he decided to call his solo release on Burger Records “Fever B”. The record was more successful than Brian imagined it could be. 90s mainstream power pop star Matthew Sweet even recently covered the song This Sea Is My Life from the EP! Crazy. The original version of the Fevers still plays every now and then. Brian plays most regularly with Fever B and the Sea. A band he put together to play songs from the Burger 12” and other songs he has written over the years including lots of new ones he’s hoping to record with his band the Sea. They play around the Bay Area including a recent show at 924 Gilman Street in Berkeley. The Sea is Lyndsey Hawkinson(Hondettes/Sweet Haughts ) on drums ,and a life long friend Tim Tsuda(sometimes member of Colossal Yes) on bass.
-John Denery of the Hi-Fives saw Fever B and The Sea at a club in San Francisco recently and said they sounded like the great garage pop side of K Records with a guitar hero twist!
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As the World Cup winds down and the summit nears, Trump is playing Putin's game
http://bit.ly/2zxikM1
Russian-government backed show Comedy Club's Trump and Putin impersonators RUTube
It seems incredible that White House aides would schedule the first U.S.-Russia summit of the Donald Trump Presidency for the day after the World Cup final soccer match in Moscow, given the assiduous attention to detail that has, historically, governed every meeting between the two superpowers.
One-nil, Vladimir Putin. And the game hasn’t even begun.
Amid constant pop culture chatter of an illicit Putin-Trump “bromance,” coupled with an FBI investigation into possible collusion between Russian operatives and members of the Trump 2016 Presidential campaign, the timing of the event appears to be just another sign Trump’s people don’t care if they make Putin look good. Or they don’t understand the various ways they do.
As a historian of Russia specializing in Kremlin media strategy, I see confirmation of a Putin public relations victory in headlines around the world. The summit is taking place just as the World Cup has, to quote one German news magazine, “shown Russia in a new light.” For the past month, Moscow has been able to advertise itself as more international, not to mention more welcoming of foreigners, than Washington.
Above all, the summit with Trump has created an opportunity for Putin – even as he refers to the U.S. president with ostensible respect as a “good, tough entrepreneur” – to widen a growing divide between the U.S. and Europe.
Russian facelift?
The announcement that French President Emmanuel Macron would be meeting with Putin at the World Cup Final only underscores how western European countries are reevaluating their relationships with Russia.
Germany and France in particular have long warned of Kremlin-sponsored efforts to destabilize Europe and undermine liberal democracy. But over the past year, they’ve also grown increasingly upset about what they claim have been U.S. attempts to use sanctions against Russia to promote U.S. economic interests at the expense of European companies.
Trump only added to the growing hostility when he kicked off a week in Europe by insulting Germany over a Russian pipeline deal and demanding NATO members start paying their own way.
Putin, meanwhile, is parading his country as a place of polite hospitality, long tarred by unjust prejudice. Kremlin outlets fault irresponsible and “hysterical” U.S. journalists for blackening Russia’s reputation, but Putin, meeting with soccer stars on July 6, credited World Cup fans for helping to set the record straight. Their comments of surprise and praise on social media, he noted, had “helped tear down numerous negative stereotypes.”
“I’m sure that the overwhelming majority of people who visited here will leave with the best feelings … and will come again many times,” he proclaimed.
Such positive soundbites can obscure darker realities of how power works in Russia, including the censorship that boosts Putin’s prestige. For example, one sports commentator who jokingly mentioned the name of dissident Alexei Navalny while on air suddenly disappeared from further World Cup coverage.
Nevertheless, global footage of cheering crowds across Russia have, for weeks, have posed a stark contrast to pictures shared around the world and in Russia of U.S. immigration authorities separating children from parents at the Mexican border.
More than America First
The looming summit allows Putin to highlight this ostensible contrast between his presidency and that of Trump’s.
Russia’s state-controlled media, once a champion of the U.S. leader, now tends to damn him with faint praise, holding up Putin as a counterexample of stability and strength.
“Comedy Club,” a popular show on one of Russia’s several government-funded television channels, features sardonic skits between Trump and Putin impersonators in which the Trump figure is always at the mercy of the wily Russian. The U.S. leader cowers when the Putin actor jokes he owns a jet plane “that can fly to America in a single second.” The faux Trump then orders all the Mexicans in the U.S. to be sent to a city he mistakenly believes Putin might bomb.
A recent photo in newspaper Rossiiskaia Gazeta of a 2016 Putin and Trump billboard. Rossiiskaia Gazeta
The official press, in reporting on the summit, appears more respectful. The newspaper Rossiiskaia Gazeta is recycling triumphant images of the two leaders side-by-side that first emerged after Trump’s presidential win and which proclaim – in both Russian and English – “Let’s make the world great again – together!”
These images present Putin and Trump as powerful equals, the only men necessary to shape a new and improved global order, in which other nations would seem to play only an auxiliary role. But they also show Putin as more farsighted than Trump, calling attention to the narrowness of the latter’s “Make America Great Again” election slogan.
Speaking to Europe
These purported contrasts between the two leaders are meant to resonate with Europeans, horrified at Trump’s apparent disregard for international cooperation.
In an English-language editorial, the German news magazine Der Spiegel warned that the NATO summit, held just before the Trump-Putin meeting, could end in a disastrous “Trumper Tantrum.”
Trump’s recent decision to levy tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the European Union as part of an ostensibly China-focused trade war has also enraged Western allies – to the benefit of the Kremlin.
“Trade War: Is Trump driving Europe into Russia’s Arms?” ran a June headline in the German newspaper Die Welt.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently urged NATO to refocus on the danger of Russian aggression toward member states in eastern Europe.
But she also met with Putin in Sochi in May to discuss ways of improving economic ties.
Putin at the time greeted Merkel with a bouquet of roses. Trump, in contrast, arrived in Brussels only to berate the German Chancellor, implying that Merkel – not he – was under Putin’s thumb.
“It’s very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia when we are supposed to be guarding against Russia,” he proclaimed.
The German Foreign Minister responded with scorn, tweeting, “We are no captives, neither of Russia nor of the United States.”
With such friends, who needs enemies?
At the same time, Trump has avoided any critique of Putin and even predicted that his one-on-one with the leader “could be the easiest” of his week-long tour.
Such apparent double standards help keep the Putin-Trump illicit “bromance” story alive. Yet Trump seems blithely willing to dismiss any negative media coverage as “fake news.” His off-the-cuff comments praising the Russian leader play into conspiracy theories at home, while offering Russians innumerable chances to showcase U.S. stories accusing Trump, rightly or wrongly, of incompetence and wrongdoing.
This way, the Russian press can highlight Trump’s weakness, even while seeming to rise to his defense.
One example: RT coverage of a video posted on the New York Times website, portraying Trump and Putin as lovers, which the Kremlin-funded outlet indignantly condemned as homophobic. Similarly, it ridiculed a July cover story in New York Magazine entitled “Prump Tutin” claiming that Trump has been a Russian agent since 1987.
In such a setting, Russia wins. If the summit ends in failure, the Kremlin can blame U.S. Russophobia and focus on cultivating closer European ties. If it ends in agreement, Putin emerges as triumphant statesman.
Meanwhile, any deals Trump might try to make – even in regard to Syria and Iran – can be cast by his critics as capitulating to a tyrant he has too long failed to condemn.
Putin has only to stand back and – in World Cup parlance – wait to take advantage of a perfect “scoring” opportunity.
Cynthia Hooper does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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New Post has been published on Irene North
New Post has been published on http://www.irenenorth.com/writings/2017/12/my-2017-reading-list/
My 2017 reading list
Every year, I make a list of the things I read – books, long articles, graphic novels – and share them. Hopefully, you will find something interesting to read here and expand your mind.
To make it easier in case you don’t like one type of reading, I created sections for each type of reading and then listed in the order I read them.
BOOKS
The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care by T.R. Reid
Does a wealthy country have an ethical obligation to provide access to health care for everybody? Do we want to live in a society that lets tens of thousands of our neighbors die each year, and hundreds of thousands face financial ruin, because they can’t afford medical care when they’re sick? This, of course, is the “first question” that Professor William Hsiao asks whenever he reviews a country’s health care system. And on this question, too, every developed country except the United States has reached the same conclusion: Everybody should have access to medical care.
– Pg. 242
Though the question comes near the end of the book, it is researched throughout. Reid looks at the different models used around the world – Bismark, Beveridge, National Health Insurance, Out-of-pocket. If you want to understand health care, you should read this. You will learn there are very good, working models around the world that the United States could use or adapt so everyone has access to care.
Quiet by Susan Cain
There’s a reason this book is a best seller. It provides new insights into introverts and can also be beneficial to extroverts to learn about and understand their friends, family, and coworkers.
Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War by James Risen
Most of what Risen writes about was not new to me. I had read the stories in other books, newspapers and magazines. By, if you want to know what goes on in Washington, D.C., you need to read this book. It covers everything the United States government has done wrong since 9/11 and shines a light on the many abuses of power of the American government under the cloak of “providing security” and making American safer.
Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Browder
One of the best books I read this year. I could hardly wait to get home from work each day to continue reading the book.
There are two stories here. First is Sergei Magnitsky’s life and death and second is the corruption and murder in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Browder recounts his journey to becoming the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005. When his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was murdered in prison for uncovering hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud by officials in the Russian government, Browder became vocal about human rights abuses in the country.
Actually, I’m surprised Browder made it out alive.
America’s First Great Eclipse: How scientists, tourists, and the Rocky Mountain eclipse of 1878 changed Astronomy forever by Steve Ruskin
I interviewed Ruskin before the solar eclipse that passed through Nebraska on Aug. 21, 2017.
As easy read that can be accomplished in a day or two, the book discusses the solar eclipse of 1878, including emerging technologies that allowed scientists to better view the sun as well as citizen scientists helping out and the sheer joy surrounding the event.
It’s only $8.99. Pick up a copy and lose yourself in the joy of a total solar eclipse.
Planck: Driven by vision, Broken by War by Brandon R. Brown
Max Planck is considered the father of quantum theory. He was good friends with Albert Einstein. And he was German. Planck stayed in Germany after World War II broke out. He spent his life fighting the fact that he did not think as his government did, but was compelled to remain in the country.
I get a lot of book recommendations from the science and history subreddits on Reddit. This one was highly recommended. However, I found myself slogging through the book, feeling like I had to finish it because I bought it. It was a chore that needed to be done.
There is no doubt. Planck is an influential scientist and more should be known of him. If you’re a fan of Planck, this will probably be a fun and interesting read. It just didn’t do anything for me.
They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War by DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook
I think I read too much because a lot of these stories I already knew.
The book covers a part of Civil War history that isn’t covered nearly enough – that of the women who fought in the war. Hundreds of women fought in the war by disguising themselves as men. The book explores their reasons for enlisting, and staying, as well as their combat experiences and what their fellow soldiers thought of them.
Each of the women in the book could have biographies of their own. Some probably would, if they had been men.
A well-researched book on a topic not many people know about.
Paper Tiger: An Old Sportswriter’s Reminiscences of People, Newspapers, War, and Work by Stanley Woodward
https://www.amazon.com/Paper-Tiger-Sportswriters-Reminiscences-Newspapers/dp/0803259611
I really enjoyed this book. I’m not a big fan of sportswriting and I don’t read much of it today, but this book is so much more than that. Woodward is considered one of, if not the, best sports editor to have ever held the position in America. Throughout the book, he discusses the problems within a newspaper, many of which still plague the industry today.
One day, toward the end of my vacation in 1955, I received a letter from Mr. Welsh, my managing editor. He said that I was a wonderful operator but that my salary was too high for the News and therefore I was fired. I can’t say I was terribly distressed, for I wanted to get North not only because I hated the South but also because I was afraid one of my girls might marry a Floridian. God knows enough of them were hanging around the house.
– Pg. 261
It doesn’t make any difference to me what happens to the newspaper business; that is, it doesn’t make any difference to me economically. But I can’t bear the thought of a general newspaper collapse. For I still believe what Nick Skerrett told me when I was a cub reporter – “The American newspaper is the greatest institution in the world.”
– Pg. 286
Woe is I by Patricia T. O’Conner
Need to brush up on your grammar? Check out this book. I’m still probably never going to get the “that vs. which” thing right. But that’s why I have a copy editor.
Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis
https://www.amazon.com/Walking-Wind-Movement-John-Lewis/dp/1476797714/
Senator John Lewis recalls his life and journey to Washington, D.C. It is an important story about the Civil Rights Movement and one everyone should read.
“There is an old African proverb: ‘When you pray, move your fee.’ As a nation, if we cre for the Beloved Community, we must move out feet, our hands, our hearts, our resources to build and not to tear down, to reconcile and not to divide, to love and not to hate, to heal and not to kill. In the final analysis, we are one people, one family, one house – the American house, the American family.”
– Pg. 503
Extract from a Diary of Rear-Admiral by Sir George Cockburn
https://archive.org/details/extractfromadia00cockgoog
Another recommendation from Reddit.
The full title is a mouthful: Excerpt from Extract From a Diary of Rear-Admiral Sir George Cockburn: With Particular Reference to Gen. Napoleon Buonaparte, on Passage From England to St. Helena, in 1815, on Board H. M. S. Northumberland, Bearing the Rear-Admiral’s Flag.
This manuscript was found in Cockburn’s own handwriting among his other writings. It was published due to its intrinsic value to history about the late career of a soldier.
Cockburn was there when the White House was burned and was chosen to escort Napoleon to Saint Helena for exile. Though Cockburn would later die at Saint Helena, this is his journal of the voyage there.
Minatare Memories: A Historical Account of the Tabor-Minatare Community of Western Nebraska by the Minatare Historical Committee.
A history of Minatare, Nebraska. I came across some ladies documenting the history of Minatare. They planned to write a book when they were finished, charging only what it cost to have it printed. I wrote an article about them. Then, I wrote another when the book came out. U.S. News and World Report picked up my story. I didn’t plan on it, but I’m on page 139.
After printing, the ladies noticed a few typos and they received even more information than what they had. I know how that feels.
Black Hills Doc 1892-1945 by C.W. Hargens, M.D., Edited, by D.M. Hargens-Hallsted.
This is the story of an instrumental figure in the history of Hot Springs, South Dakota. D.M. Hargens-Hallsted, or as I know her, Dorothy Waldren, brings her grandfather’s story to life.
This is a great and easy read to learn about how life was along the frontier. It tells the story of Dr. Hargens from his early life in the Missouri Valley teaching to becoming a doctor to settling in Hot Springs where he helped transform the city.
Tales in the book include his thoughts on how women should be treated and the “discipline” men received when women were bullied, a run in with Calamity Jane and enforcing the use of masks in public during the Influenza epidemic of 1918.
A novel feature of Kidney Park was a contribution box, urging patrons to drop a coin in order that good works might be carried on. The box was attended daily by the Chief of Police; we overlooked no possible source of contributions, even to having the night cop sit on a chair observing the late night comings and goings from certain establishments, a report culminating in an early morning call for a donation or perhaps an invitation to leave town on the next train.
– Pg. 141
These dances by the Indians, with shuffling feet and synchronous movements and the songs in a plaintive monotone, brought to the sympathetic viewer visions of a western scene never to be forgotten but later to be tarnished by the restrictions and degradation of reservation life.
– Pg. 144
The Battle of Wounded Knee had occurred on the Pine ridge Agency in December of 1890 and was a massacre of Indians by the Seventh Cavalry. The Indians’ presence there was attributed to the Custer massacre, the current Messiah craze among the Sioux and the mistreatment of Big foot’s band by the whites. The Indian warriors wore “ghost shirts” which they had been told would magically protect them against the bullets of the white man. Victims of this fallacy were buried in their shirts except for a few shirts taken as souvenirs by those handling the bodies.
– Pg. 146
I have always admired the Indians use of his environment; the religious and moral convictions which abhorred waste of any part of the animals he hunted, particularly the buffalo; his early use of the horse, his reverence of the Black Hills as an abode of the ruling spirits of his people. Any white man who claims superiority to the Indian because the Indian was defeated by an advanced armament is deluded. White men in no way, mentally, morally or physically are superior to the Indian. We defeated them only because of the “advantages” of a more developed science.-
– Pg. 188
The Indian believed profoundly in silence, the sign of perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of the body, mind and spirit. The man who preserves his silence ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence, not a ripple on the shining surface of the pool, not a leaf stirring on the tree, that man, in the mind of the unlettered safe, is in the ideal attitude and conduct of life.
– Pg. 188
This is a fascinating read. If you’d like a copy, the best way would be to call Dobby’s Frontier Town and they can put you in touch with Dorothy. Alternatively, you can pay way too much for it on Amazon.
This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm by Ted Genoways
Genoways follows Rick Hammond and his family from harvest to harvest where they raise cattle and crops on Hammond’s wife’s fifth-generation homestead in York County, Nebraska.
The book goes back and forth between the struggles of the Hammond family and the future of family farming to the history which got us here.
As the family fights to keep their operation afloat, they must deal with a myriad of issues, including the Keystone XL pipeline and the ever-increasing demands of security precautions put into place from DuPont Pioneer for the transportation and planting of seed to the ultimate harvest.
Far from an isolated refuge beyond the reach of global events, the family farm is increasingly at the crossroads of emerging technologies and international detente.
If there’s one thing I learned from this book, it’s that I don’t ever want to be a farmer. If you know nothing about corn, soybeans, and modern farming in Nebraska, this is the book you want to read. Genoways weaves the Hammonds story into complex issues without ever making the reader feel overwhelmed with information.
When I finish reading a book, I usually pass it on to others. I’m keeping this one and recommending you all go get your own copy.
Longer readings
The Things by Peter Watts
Have you seen the movie “The Thing” and wondered what the thing was thinking? Now you can read what it thought of us.
I Just Wanted To Survive by Tisha Thompson and Andy Lockett
A college football player thought he and a friend were going to meet up with two women. Instead, they were abducted and tortured for 40 hours — all because of a teammate.
How American Lost Its Mind
The nation’s current post-truth moment is the ultimate expression of mind-sets that have made America exceptional throughout its history.
This article was adapted from Kurt Andersen’s book Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire—A 500-Year History.
The First White President
The foundation of Donald Trump’s presidency is the negation of Barack Obama’s legacy. The essay was drawn from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book, We Were Eight Years in Power.
Interview with Edward Snowden by Martin Knobbe and Jörg Schindler
In an interview, whistleblower Edward Snowden discusses his life in Russia, the power of the intelligence apparatuses and how he will continue his battle against all-encompassing surveillance by governments.
Jesus as Whippersnapper: John 2:15 and Prophetic Violence by Hector Avalos, Professor of Religious Studies, Iowa State University
This essay challenges a pacifistic interpretation of John 2:15. In particular, it addresses the linguistic, historical and literary arguments of N. Clayton Croy, who argued that Jesus should not be portrayed as committing any act of violence in John 2:15. More recently, Andy Alexis-Baker concludes that Jesus did not even strike any animals with a whip, which was made of materials too soft to injure anyone or any animal. A violent portrait of Jesus is consistent with the Deuteronomistic view of divine anger and prophetic zeal that may have influenced the portrait the Johannine Jesus. Otherwise, the temple episode in John exemplifies another case where some streams of Christian scholarship seem reluctant to characterize Jesus’ behavior as unjustifiably violent.
The Danger of President Pence by Jane Mayer
Trump’s critics yearn for his exit. But Mike Pence, the corporate right’s inside man, poses his own risks.
How the Elderly Lose Their Rights by Rachel Aviv
Guardians can sell the assets and control the lives of senior citizens without their consent—and reap a profit from it.
A Generation in Japan Faces a Lonely Death by Norimitsu Onishi
The New York Times examines the growing problem of forgotten senior citizens in Japan. The story follows two apartment residents who eat lunch together in a retirement community in the suburbs of Tokyo. They have outlived nearly all their blood relatives and are simply ignored or forgotten by the rest.
Who Gets to Live in Fremont, Nebraska? by Henry Grabar
A new Costco plant could save the town—by bringing hundreds of immigrants to the only place in America that passed a law to keep them out.
This massive Twitter thread about the 2016 election and True Pundit is a pro-Trump fake news site that began publishing on June 9, 2016 by Seth Abramson
“It’s time to tell the biggest untold story of the 2016 election: how a cadre of pro-Trump FBI agents and intel officers—some active, some retired—conspired to swing the election to Trump. The story involves Flynn, Prince, Giuliani, and others. Hope you’ll read and share.”
Is This Genocide? by Nicholas Kristof
Survivors describe Myanmar soldiers killing men, raping women and burning babies in a Rohingya village.
From the article:
“Ethnic cleansing” and even “genocide” are antiseptic and abstract terms. What they mean in the flesh is a soldier grabbing a crying baby girl named Suhaifa by the leg and flinging her into a bonfire. Or troops locking a 15-year-old girl in a hut and setting it on fire.
The children who survive are left haunted: Noor Kalima, age 10, struggles in class in a makeshift refugee camp. Her mind drifts to her memory of seeing her father and little brother shot dead, her baby sister’s and infant brother’s throats cut, the machete coming down on her own head, her hut burning around her … and it’s difficult to focus on multiplication tables.
“Sometimes I can’t concentrate on my class,” Noor explained. “I want to throw up.”
An honest, dark, and moving piece about what is happening to the Rohingya and whether it should be considered genocide. Yeah, it’s genocide. Go read the article anyway. It tells of the brutality the Rohingya have suffered and the indifference the world and those in Burma seem to have about them.
Burmese politician Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize and the defacto leader in Burma[http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41139319], continues to defend the army. She has called reports of sexual assault by soldiers as “fake rape” and, essentially, believes there is an “iceberg of misinformation” about the Rohingya.
It is a graphic and harrowing account of what the Rohingya have been forced to live through. If only we would listen, and take action.
A journey through a land of extreme poverty: welcome to America by Ed Pilkington
The UN’s Philip Alston is an expert on deprivation – and he wants to know why 41m Americans are living in poverty. The Guardian joined him on a special two-week mission into the dark heart of the world’s richest nation.
Alston’s journey takes him into the “dark side of the American Dream,” where the richest country in the world is also the host to abject poverty.
The two men carry on for block after block after block of tatty tents and improvised tarpaulin shelters. Men and women are gathered outside the structures, squatting or sleeping, some in groups, most alone like extras in a low-budget dystopian movie.
We come to an intersection, which is when General Dogon stops and presents his guest with the choice. He points straight ahead to the end of the street, where the glistening skyscrapers of downtown LA rise up in a promise of divine riches.
Heaven.
Then he turns to the right, revealing the “black power” tattoo on his neck, and leads our gaze back into Skid Row bang in the center of LA’s downtown. That way lies 50 blocks of concentrated human humiliation. A nightmare in plain view, in the city of dreams.
Alston turns right.
There are many great points in the article, including this:
The link between soil type and demographics was not coincidental. Cotton was found to thrive in this fertile land, and that in turn spawned a trade in slaves to pick the crop. Their descendants still live in the Black Belt, still mired in poverty among the worst in the union.
You can trace the history of America’s shame, from slave times to the present day, in a set of simple graphs. The first shows the cotton-friendly soil of the Black Belt, then the slave population, followed by modern black residence and today’s extreme poverty – they all occupy the exact same half-moon across Alabama.
As one gentleman in the article said, “The safety net? It has too many holes in it for me.” These are people who are in despair and America turns a blind eye to it, preferring to believe people cause themselves to be in these situations when that is far from reality.
Where Wind Farms Meet Coal Country, There’s Enduring Faith in Trump by Clifford Krauss
Hoping for more unfettered production of coal, oil and gas even as it erects wind farms, a Wyoming county sees the president as a key to job security.
The Making of an American Nazi by Luke O’Brien
How did Andrew Anglin go from being an antiracist vegan to the alt-right’s most vicious troll and propagandist—and how might he be stopped?
This is a really long read, but a good one and a damned fine piece of journalism. This is why I have a subscription to The Atlantic.
On December 16, 2016, Tanya Gersh answered her phone and heard gunshots. Startled, she hung up. Gersh, a real-estate agent who lives in Whitefish, Montana, assumed it was a prank call. But the phone rang again. More gunshots. Again, she hung up. Another call. This time, she heard a man’s voice: “This is how we can keep the Holocaust alive,” he said. “We can bury you without touching you.”
When Gersh put down the phone, her hands were shaking. She was one of only about 100 Jews in Whitefish and the surrounding Flathead Valley, and she knew there were white nationalists and “sovereign citizens” in the area. But Gersh had lived in Whitefish for more than 20 years, since just after college, and had always considered the scenic ski town an idyllic place. She didn’t even have a key to her house—she’d never felt the need to lock her door. Now that sense of security was about to be shattered.
There are also these unsettling things in the article:
In the summer of 2015, another great white savior—himself a troll—appeared to Anglin, this time gliding down a golden escalator in Manhattan in front of a crowd of paid extras.
Anglin immediately put all his resources toward willing a Trump presidency into reality. He churned out cheerleader posts and deployed his trolls on behalf of Trump, directing several of his nastiest attacks at Jewish journalists who were critical of the candidate or his associates.
His absentee ballot arrived in Ohio from Krasnodar, a city in southwest Russia near the Black Sea, according to Franklin County records.
Anglin worshipped Putin, and seemed like exactly the type of online agitator Russia might use to sow chaos during the U.S. election.
Also from Whitefish: Ryan Zinke, Richard Spencer and Whitefish Energy, the two-employee company who were originally given the no-bid contract to restore power to Puerto Rico. I suspect we will hear more about Whitefish in 2018.
O’Brien also did an NPR interview about the article and his findings.
Graphic Novels
No Girls Allowed: Tales of Daring Women Dressed as Men for Love, Freedom and Adventure By Susan Hughes
https://www.amazon.com/No-Girls-Allowed-Dressed-Adventure/dp/1554531780
This is a great little graphic novel geared toward children under twelve. Within its pages, you’ll discover women throughout history have had important roles, including viking, pharaoh and general in the Kahn’s army.
It also covers topics, such as women disguising themselves as men and why they needed to do so. Most the these women risk it all, including their lives to pursue their dreams.
A User’s Guide to Neglectful Parenting by Guy Delisle
A delightful little read. Hilarious. I say this is how you should raise kids.
The Dark North – Volume 1
The illustrated prose-art book consists of five new stories by some of Scandinavia’s premier illustrators and concept artists. Everything was well done visually and the stories were compelling. The art is what is on display here and it does not disappoint.
This is not your typical graphic novel, and it isn’t trying to be. The artists are trying something new and, for the most part, it works.
The Forever War by Joe Haldemann (Author), and Marvano (Illustrator)
Released in Belgium in 1988, the science fiction graphic novel by Marvano is closely based on the novel of the same name by Joe Halderman, who provide the dialogue. It was originally published in Dutch and later translated into several languages, including English.
The Forever War tells the story of William Mandella, an elite soldier fighting for Earth in an interstellar war, which lasted for centuries. He is one of a handful who eventually survives the entire war. Mandella eventually settles on a planet with other veterans called, “Middle Finger.”
The Forever War focuses on many themes, including the dehumanizing effects of war and the changes in society as the soldiers continue to fight.
Like Halderman’s book, the graphic novel touches on themes from the Vietnam war, such as the treatment of the enemy and propaganda.
The original was released in three volumes, but has since been incorporated into one. The art is part of the story and often enhances what is taking place. In almost every place, the art is intertwined with the story and it feels as if each pane is meant to be with the text.
The only drawback is that in a graphic novel based on a book, there will, necessarily, be cuts. If one reads the book, they will learn more about why only people with IQs above 150 were drafted, why military-approved drugs were allowed, and more about how partners were sexually assigned.
The relationship between William and Marygay is also diminished, but I didn’t feel it took too much away from the graphic novel. It may be because I have read the book so I went in with some notion of the story.
All in all, it’s a good graphic novel that I recommend, even if you’re not a graphic novel kind of person.
That’s it for 2017. I’ve already got 20 books stacked up on my desk for 2018. Happy reading and I hope you find a gem or two in my list.
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THE UNITED STATES TODAY may seem oblivious to the relentless global military activity carried out in its name, but, as Ken Burns’s recent documentary on the Vietnam War reminds us, that wasn’t always the case. Half a century ago, you would have had a hard time finding Americans unaware of our foreign wars and a very easy time finding people who objected to them — vociferously. Fifty years further back, President Woodrow Wilson’s call for the first large-scale dispatch of American troops abroad also provoked serious opposition — and preoccupied the lives of four of the five principals of Jeremy McCarter’s new book, Young Radicals. At the time, as McCarter points out, the United States had only the 17th largest army in the world, whereas now, a century of foreign interventions later, the American military budget is larger than that of the next eight or 10 runner-up nations combined.
McCarter starts his story on January 1, 1912, Walter Lippmann’s first day as executive secretary to George Lunn, the newly elected Socialist Party mayor of Schenectady, New York. The 22-year-old Lippmann has arrived with great expectations: he came recommended by Socialist Party founder and leader Morris Hillquit; the philosopher William James had once dropped by his dorm room to praise an article he wrote for a campus publication positing a brighter socialist-oriented future; in short, he was, according to McCarter, “the boy wonder of socialism.” Lippmann promptly produced a glowing account of the new Lunn administration for The Masses, the New York City socialist monthly started the previous year. But by the beginning of May (page seven of the book), he was out, now characterizing the Schenectady venture as “timid benevolence” and concluding that, while “[r]eform under the fire of radicalism is an educative thing[,] reform pretending to be radicalism is deadening.” By the next year, Lippmann, now “souring on socialism in all its forms,” had joined the staff of another new magazine, the New Republic, which its publisher called “radical without being socialistic.” It would rapidly become a leading voice for war preparedness, and Lippmann himself would soon take a job with the War Department (as the Defense Department was more appropriately called at the time), mobilizing for the war effort, his days as a radical effectively at an end — almost.
Lippmann knew John Reed at Harvard College when he was an officer in the Intercollegiate Socialist Society and Reed was a cheerleader and student actor. Their political trajectories subsequently crossed, with Reed first drawing public notice for his sympathetic, on-the-spot coverage of Pancho Villa’s Mexican revolutionary forces in 1913. Lippmann, who published his first book that same year, would have the more prominent career, being viewed as one of the nation’s most influential journalists for much of the next six decades. But it is Reed whose considerably shorter story seems to have retained the greater cachet as an embodiment of the zeitgeist: Warren Beatty played him in the 1981 Oscar-winning movie Reds.
Earlier in 1913, Reed had worked in support of 25,000 mostly immigrant silk industry laborers, who organized with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in a strike for better wages and working conditions in Paterson, New Jersey. When the New York press refused to report on the strike, hampering the union’s ability to take their story to a larger regional working class audience, someone came up with the idea of ferrying 1,000 laborers across the Hudson River to Madison Square Garden to tell the story themselves. Crossing the river in the other direction to check out the scene, Reed was arrested at the picket line and thrown in jail for four days; he subsequently assisted with the Madison Square Garden event. (Lippmann also helped, while grousing, McCarter tells us, about Reed’s “inordinate desire to be arrested.”) In addition to the speeches, the event featured an Italian folk song backed by a German chorus, IWW chants adapted to college football tunes, and the entire crowd of 15,000 rising to their feet for a finale of the “Internationale.” All in all, it was perhaps the greatest show the American labor movement ever produced.
Three years later, Reed joined a group of bohemian friends hoping to develop a new type of American theater in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Among their number was Eugene O’Neill, who would go on to become the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize, but who at that point had never had a play actually performed. In 1917, Reed and wife Louise Bryant, a writer, activist, and feminist of some note, went off to cover the Russian Revolution, an experience Reed described in Ten Days That Shook the World (1919), one of the best and most influential firsthand accounts of a social revolution ever written. Reed and Bryant both, it should be added, were far from being “objective” observers or “disinterested” journalists. McCarter tells us that Reed had been obsessed with Russia ever since his mentor, renowned muckraker journalist Lincoln Steffens, “told him the new world was being born there.” In January 1918, Reed addressed the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets, and not long after, Leon Trotsky appointed him the Soviet consul in New York. Even though the appointment didn’t work out, he came to be regarded as the “foremost American communist in the world,” sitting on the Executive Committee of the Communist International before resigning in frustration at the Russians’ heavy-handed role in the organization.
In late 1920, after Reed had died in Moscow of typhus five days short of his 33rd birthday, the American journalist and author Max Eastman delivered the eulogy at his funeral. The service was held in New York, but Reed’s body stayed in Moscow, one of three Americans whose remains are interred at the Kremlin wall. The editor-in-chief of The Masses, Eastman once referred to Reed as the publication’s “jail editor.” McCarter describes the New Republic as a “prematurely middle-aged magazine,” but no one ever said anything like that about The Masses. Based in Greenwich Village, the publication was, according to a manifesto co-authored by Eastman and Reed, “a revolutionary and not a reform magazine; a magazine with a sense of humor and no respect for the respectable.” But while The Masses may have been “conspicuously merry,” its politics were never frivolous. When The Masses accused the Associated Press of suppressing news about West Virginia mines and miners, Eastman was indicted for libel, along with cartoonist Art Young. Those charges were eventually dropped, but more would soon follow.
In many ways, this was a more genteel era than our own (Eastman once actually discussed the war with President Wilson), yet it is also true that, in some respects, the government’s repression of war opponents surpassed anything the 1960s antiwar movement encountered. The Masses would soon find itself running afoul of the newly passed Espionage Act, which allowed the Postmaster General to bar from the mail publications deemed to hamper the war effort. A ban was soon issued on all of the major socialist publications, starting with The Masses. Eastman, McCarter writes, “marvel[ed] that the American government has suppressed the socialist press more quickly and completely than the Germans did.” And that wasn’t the half of it: Socialist Party offices were raided by the authorities and vandalized by vigilantes, IWW members were arrested, peace marches were broken up. Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, who had won six percent of the 1912 vote, had to conduct his 1920 campaign from the Atlanta Penitentiary, where his opposition to the war had landed him with a 10-year sentence under the Espionage Act.
With the Bernie Sanders campaign having brought the ideals of socialism some of their most positive public exposure in decades, Young Radicals suggests that a reconsideration may be in order as to the root cause of the “public relations” problems socialism has experienced during the past century. As McCarter shows, even before the Bolshevik Revolution and the birth and degeneration of Russian Communism (events generally considered decisive in souring many Americans on socialism), the jingoistic pro-war right was already pushing the idea that there was something “un-American” about the movement. After all, the American Socialist Party had actually stuck to the Socialist International’s antiwar principles and opposed the nation’s war effort, unlike the socialist parties in most of the other belligerent nations (the Russians being a notable exception).
Eastman himself subsequently moved hard left during the 1920s, embracing the Twenty-one Conditions for membership in the new Communist International that were rejected by many of the United States’s most prominent socialists, including Debs and Hillquit. Later he would tack to the right, regarding his prior positions as “half-fanatical glassy-mindedness” and dismissing socialism as “a dangerous fairy tale.” By 1955, he was serving on the editorial board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s conservative publication, National Review. His life was often held up as a caution to the 1960s New Leftists, purportedly illustrating the foolishness of their youthful radicalism.
Eastman, who lived to be 86, was in 1918 the only one of this book’s five central characters not to be affected by the worldwide influenza outbreak that killed more people than the war had itself. One of the epidemic’s casualties was Randolph Bourne, the first of the book’s characters to die, at age 32. Bourne’s personal life was dominated by his physical condition: a childhood illness had stunted his growth and twisted his spine, leaving him hunch-backed and short. A college classmate who heard him play the piano marveled at “how beautifully this strange misshapen gnome could make a piano sing and talk.” McCarter reports that, after publishing Bourne’s first essay and inviting him to a club lunch, the editor of The Atlantic cancelled “shortly after Bourne arrived, as he couldn’t bear to be seen with one so deformed.” (The reader’s inevitable curiosity as to his appearance is frustrated by the book’s lack of illustrations.)
The last years of Bourne’s political life were dominated by the war. After the New Republic declared that it was the intellectuals who had brought the nation into the conflict, and that this was to their credit, Bourne wrote that “[o]nly in a world where irony was dead could an intellectual class enter war at the head of such illiberal cohorts in the avowed cause of world liberalism.” Like a lot of Bourne’s writing, this essay would stand up equally well 50 years later as an indictment of the Kennedy Era’s “best and brightest” who did so much to bring us the disaster in Vietnam. American critic Lewis Mumford considered Bourne “perhaps the only writer who gauged” the “virulence of the animus” set loose by the world war “at its full worth.” As McCarter writes, “Bourne had predicted that leaders stupid enough to start a world war would be too stupid to end it.” It is not hard for contemporary readers to see that judgment as a critique of the state of affairs once called the global War on Terror but now known as everyday reality.
Alice Paul, the one female among McCarter’s five youthful radicals, was also the only one for whom the war always remained a secondary concern. Nothing would divert her attention from the suffrage issue until women actually had won the right to vote. Raised amid progressive ideas in a Quaker family and educated in them at Swarthmore, Paul found her life’s calling at age 22 when she saw crusading suffragette Christabel Pankhurst in action in Great Britain. Quickly enrolled in the movement led by Christabel’s mother Emmeline, Paul was arrested numerous times for disruption of public events. Suffragette strategy was to seek political prisoner status and then engage in hunger strikes; during her last prison stay, Paul was force-fed 55 times.
After this experience, which harmed her health permanently, Paul returned to the United States to recuperate and apply herself further to the cause. She made her mark nationally by helping to mount a march of 8,000 suffragists along Pennsylvania Avenue the day before Woodrow Wilson’s 1913 inauguration. After a congressional resolution was deemed necessary to secure the route, a half million people came to witness the colorful parade, whose way had to be cleared by the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts national guards, the local police having failed to do so. Paul herself soon met with Wilson, taking the new president aback by asking if he did “not understand that the Administration has no right to legislate for currency, tariff, and any other reform without first getting the consent of women to these reforms.”
Four years later, when Russian diplomats from the short-lived Kerensky government arrived at the White House for a meeting on the war effort, two suffragettes unfurled a banner declaring that “America is not a democracy” because “[t]wenty million American women are denied the right to vote.” After suffragists had stood outside the White House for over a year, Wilson endorsed legislation to expand the franchise, which passed the House in early 1918 and the Senate the following year, becoming the 19th Amendment to the Constitution when the requisite number of state legislatures endorsed it in 1920. Of all of McCarter’s subjects, Paul was unquestionably the most successful in achieving her goals, yet he believes that her “absolute single-mindedness” also led her to “evil” compromises with Southern white supremacists who feared that “enfranchising women will create more pressure to enfranchise black people.” In one editorial, Paul even claimed that the “enfranchising of all women will increase the relative power of the white race in a most remarkable way.”
Paul — and the National Woman’s Party she headed — continued the struggle by introducing the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, which finally passed both houses of Congress in 1972 (though it stalled in the state legislatures). When Paul died in 1977 at the age of 92, she was the last of the book’s survivors. Eastman, whose rightward turn had led him to an editorial post at Reader’s Digest (according to McCarter, “the squarest and least radical magazine in America”) had died in 1969. Lippmann, 85 when he departed the planet in 1974, turned out to have one last spark of radicalism left in him. When most establishment liberals lined up behind the “domino theory” that brought us the Vietnam War, Lippmann refused to join in. Lyndon Johnson never forgave him, but Life magazine called him “the embodiment of meaningful opposition.”
With the rise of Donald Trump causing many Americans to scrutinize our politics and history more rigorously than they might otherwise have done, in an earnest search for alternatives to the status quo, McCarter has given us a well-written and compelling introduction to the lives of five young radicals who embarked upon a similar journey of resistance one century ago.
¤
Tom Gallagher is a writer and activist living in San Francisco. He is the author of Sub: My Years Underground in America’s School (2015) and The Primary Route: How the 99 Percent Takes on the Military Industrial Complex (2016).
The post Reform Under the Fire of Radicalism appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.
from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2ysS3IW
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German satirical magazine Titanic has again caused controversy, referring to Austria’s incoming Chancellor Sebastian Kurz as “Baby Hitler” while picturing him alongside the car crash that led to the death of former Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader Jorg Haider. The picture of Kurz next to the deadly car crash is the latest cover of the magazine and has the caption, “Austria on Crash-Kurz: Baby-Hitler gets his driver’s license!” Ösis auf 180: TITANIC schaltet einen Gang höher. Die Novemberausgabe ab sofort am Kiosk! pic.twitter.com/z7D0z1ow3Q — TITANIC (@titanic) October 27, 2017 The magazine released a preview of the cover on Twitter, writing, “TITANIC turns a gear higher”. One Twitter user commented on the post saying, “Belittling of national socialism? Hope it delivers something that drives you to ruin.” On the website of Austria’s largest newspaper Kronen Zeitung the comments were even more critical of the magazine. “Satire should be funny but that is not funny but tasteless. I’m not a Kurz-fan, but to publish something like that is really the bottom of the barrel and has nothing to do with satire,” one user wrote. “Again, there seem to be no consequences?” another wrote in reference to the previous time the magazine had called Kurz “Baby Hitler” and put
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By: Mae Mou
#1 Dominant Culture & Stereotyping (Sofia Gutierrez)
Dominant culture is a culture that is the most powerful, widespread, or influential within a social or political entity in which multiple cultures are present. In a society refers to the established language, religion, values, rituals, and social customs. I chose this particular post about dominant culture because it shamelessly depicts the dominant power men have over women in this German advertisement. The boldness of the male lifting up her dress with his finger is what caught my eye and I just had to choose this picture as an example to discuss the topic. In the advertisement, it is obvious that the woman in the ad is willingly opening up her legs for this man suited up in formal attire, almost indicating the message that he had a right, the power to objectify her. The way he is dressed is also a symbol of power and the way he looks at her too displays a dominant culture that women are expected to do whatever a man desires and just because he is demanding it, she has to give it to him. In my oppositional reading as a consumer to this ad, even though I understand the intended meaning and dominant code, it does not mean I will accept the ad’s code due to my own background knowledge and believes.
#2 Graphic Design (Dalal Alrashed)
Graphic Design is the art or skill of combining text and pictures in advertisements, magazines, or books to convey specific visual messages to a targeted audience. I chose Dalal Alrashed’s “Black Swan” book cover as an example to discuss the subject because the design elements from his example really stood out to me. From the book covers elements of design to its principle of design and composition. You could tell the graphic designer was able to connect the relationship between the three perfectly. The use of space and color really catches the reader’s eye. The design itself is shaped like a swan with very bold black and red colors including subtle gray fading off as swan feathers. The swans eye looks intense and the only other parts of the swan that's red is its mouth and its sharp neck. I felt a dark vibe as I personally looked at this design and it made me wonder what this book could possibly be about. I believe that is essentially every graphic designer’s goal, is to make their design as effective as possible in terms of how well their product can communicate with their consumers and make them pay attention to the visual messages.
#3 Cartoons (Jamontae Hickman)
A cartoon is a simple drawing showing the features of its subjects in a humorously exaggerated way. Cartoons can also be satirical, especially the ones involving politics. Cartoonists also use caricature, humorous allusions and visual puns to make social, cultural and political statements. I picked this editorial cartoon of Donald Trump because I love the exaggerated caricature illustrated in this cartoon done in a way where its intension is meant to be insulting yet humorous at the same time. It shows the irony of Trump being a walking contradiction how he comes off as if he is so knowledgable and always knows what he's talking about on the surface yet most of his facts have a reputation to be false and ignorant. The term “Wikileaks” on the computer screen he is looking at probably serves as a symbol to represent that ignorance and the secretary supposedly backing him up saying “he's getting his intelligence briefing” is just to illustrate the front Trump likes to put up in front of the American people.
#4 Visual Persuasion (LUIS ZUNIGA)
Most Visual Persuasion can be found in advertising, TV and movies, propaganda, and documentaries. Visual persuasion is the use of visuals to send effective persuasive messages usually most popular in the forms of propaganda and advertisements. I picked this ad because it contained strong ethos and made me feel some type of way about society. The ability for this photograph to bring out a type of emotion out of me is why this is my favorite example for visual persuasion. It has the ability to effectively get you to think about issues outside of your world and become more aware of your surroundings. Such as famine in many poor areas of the third world. This black and white photograph portrays the brutal truth of youth famine. The quote, “die yearly as a result of hunger” brings out the desired behavior for donors and activists to want to take action to help just by actively receiving the message this photograph is sending out to its audiences.
#5 Information Graphics (Sarah Mason)
Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly. They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system's ability to see patterns and trends. I picked this infographic as an example to discuss because its cool octopus like shape caught my eye and drew my attention. This info graphic shows how a human baby is formed in 9 months using calm and cool colors. Not only that, the graph is showing each trimester of the formation process by using lines and circles to make out the shape of a human baby with the intention to condense narrative information into concise, easily comprehensible visual compositions. This is the alternative way to processing detailed information. Because of info graphics we can now take in lots more information in a very short span of time. It is easily comprehensible compared to reading a bunch of words that can often lead to misinterpretation.
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