“They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.” – For the Fallen, a poem by Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)
Flag (1954-55) by artist Jasper Johns, from Museum of Modern Art, New York City. In 1951, Johns was drafted into the army and spent two years in service during the Korean War at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and in Sendai, Japan. The forty-eight stars and red-and-white stripes depicted here picture an American flag from the year this work was made (Alaska and Hawaii had not yet become part of the union). Medium: Encaustic (using pigments mixed with hot wax that are burned in as an inlay), oil, and collage on fabric mounted on plywood, three panels. Dimensions: 42 1/4 x 60 5/8″ (107.3 x 153.8 cm) [Picture Credit: moma.org]
The extended 40-mile parade of Russian armored vehicles, tanks and towed artillery headed from the north on a path toward Kyiv has both alarmed and befuddled watchers of this expanding war. It’s not just its sheer size. It’s also because that for days, it has not appreciably been moving.
U.S. officials attribute the apparent stall in part to logistical failures on the Russian side, including as a result of food and fuel shortages, that have slowed Moscow’s advance through various parts of the country. They have also credited Ukrainian efforts to attack selected parts of the convoy with contributing to its slowdown. Still, officials warn that the Russians could regroup at any moment and continue to press forward.
-Reported by the Washington Post
..the convoy’s progress — or lack thereof — continues to capture popular fascination, thanks to a steady stream of satellite images and video recorded and disseminated by Maxar Technologies, a space technology and intelligence company, says the Washington Post. (Looking at the map, it sure looks like the convoy made its way through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Some areas in there still contain dangerous amounts of radiation).
Russian attacks on nuclear sites could destabilize Ukraine’s energy supply
Russian forces attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on March 3 and are now reportedly pushing toward the South Ukraine nuclear power plant. These are Ukraine’s two largest nuclear power plants, together responsible for one-third of Ukraine’s electricity generation.
Ukraine has a total of four nuclear power plants consisting of 15 reactors that generate roughly 50 percent of the country’s electricity. After nuclear power, coal is the largest source of electricity generated in the country. Many of Ukraine’s coal-fired power plants lie in the Donbas region, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.
-From the New York Times, as reported by Lazaro Gamio and Eleanor Lutz
About half a million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began last week, according to the United Nations refugee agency. About half of them crossed Ukraine’s western border to Poland. Others have gone to Hungary, Moldova, Romania and Slovakia. Ukraine enacted martial law at the beginning of the conflict that requires men ages 18 to 60 to remain in the country.
-Reported by the New York Times
It’s heart-breaking to see the footage on TV of families getting into the trains and buses to leave Ukraine – the mothers and their children, that is. The men have to go to war. Is this just the start? Ukraine has some 44 million people. Thousands of citizens from African countries, many of them medical and science students at Ukrainian universities, are still trapped in places around the country, and some 15,000 citizens from India, reports the New York Times.
Columnist David Ignatius writes in the Washington Post, in an opinion piece called ‘Putin’s assault on Ukraine will shape a new world order’: Now that Russian troops have surged into Ukraine, how does Putin plan to extricate himself? It’s likely that he hopes to keep Russian ground troops out of Kyiv and other big cities, instead using Spetsnaz special forces and FSB operatives to neutralize these targets. He will probably seek to install a puppet government. But here’s where U.S. officials believe Putin’s planning breaks down.
Map of tracking the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, from The New York Times on Thursday.
What Putin doesn’t appear to realize, with his vision of Russian-Ukrainian oneness, is that his bullying has deeply alienated Ukrainians. I saw that anti-Putin sentiment when I visited Kyiv in late January, and it’s undoubtedly even stronger now that Russian tanks are on the streets and jets are in the sky. Putin obviously believed his own rhetoric that Ukraine wasn’t a real country. That level of self-absorption so often leads to mistakes.
With his unprovoked invasion, Putin has shattered the international legal rules established after World War II, along with the European order that followed the Cold War. That old architecture was getting shaky, and it was destined to be replaced eventually.
The Ukraine assault, pitting a messianic Russian autocrat against the wishes of every other major nation, perhaps including China, will determine the shape of the new order to come. If Putin loses his battle to subjugate Ukraine, the new order will have a solid and promising foundation. If Putin wins, the new era will be very dangerous indeed.
Putin’s war on Ukraine has started.
Where will it end?
The Brandenburg Gate is illuminated in Ukrainian national colors, in Berlin, Germany February 23, 2022. [Photo by REUTERS/Michele Tantussi]Cartoon by Swiss cartoonist Patrick Chappatte.
Gravure of George Washington on the front of the one dollar banknote.
Presidents’ Day, officially Washington’s Birthday, is a holiday in the United States, celebrated on the third Monday of February. Its intent is to honor all persons who served in the office of president of the United States. (Tomorrow the 22nd, is Washington’s actual birthday*).
I would exclude some presidents—especially one recent one— from this honor.
Then again, Washington himself was a slave owner, and mistreated them. ‘Too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station and reputation’ said fellow Founding Father John Adams, of George Washington’s eight years as the nation’s first commander-in-chief.
That sounds awfully familiar.
*It’s actually vastly more complicated than just saying it’s the 22nd.
England was still using the Julian calendar in 1731 when Washington was born.
Then, when England (and its colonies) switched to the Gregorian calendar in Sept. 1752, the date Sep 2, 1752 (Julian) was followed by Sept 14, 1752 (Gregorian). There were 11 ‘lost days’.
Another thing: when England and its colonies switched, they also moved New Year’s Day from late March to Jan. 1 (except for Scotland, which was already using Jan. 1 for the new year).
So the calendar year 1751 (with Julian dates) was only about nine months long, going from March 25 to Dec. 31. This meant that anyone born between Jan. 1 and March 25 (Julian) had to start using a different birthday (Gregorian) and a different birth year (Gregorian), or continue using an ‘inaccurate’ birthday and birth year — even though the number of days they had spent on planet Earth was unchanged.
So depending on which calendar you are using for Washington’s birthday, he was born on both Feb. 11, 1731 (Julian) and on Feb 22, 1732 (Gregorian). They are the exact same day.
It’s Martin Luther King Day, the day when Republican politicians trumpet their hypocrisy on Twitter. They would have us believe they support civil rights and voting rights for all Americans. (They do not).
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr (born Jan 15, 1929; assassinated Apr. 4, 1968). [Artwork is from a blog page on Levi Strauss & Co.’s web site, called ‘Reflecting on the Significance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day’].
A year later, some 800 rioters and insurrectionists have been indicted for the events at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Some have been tried, found guilty, and have started to serve lengthy jail terms. The Mobster-in-Chief is still the de facto leader of his party, though (the Republican Party National Committee Chair said that he is the leader, in August).
History will not forget, though — whether the disgraced, defeated former President pays a price or not.
Front page of the New York Times from a year ago: ‘Trump incites mob’ and ‘It’s part of his legacy’. Further down on the page “Americans at the Gates: The Trump Era’s Inevitable Denouement”. Looking back now, was it a denouement? (Denouement= the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved).
The 97 points of the Glasgow Climate Pact (COP26) make heavy reading for a Sunday night, but I glanced through it. Man a.. and China and Russia did not even attend the conference.
The United States is at least serious again to make an effort, but as George Monbiot writes for The Guardian, it’s too late for incremental changes, and we need a critical minority to commit to the cause.
It works like this: ”There’s an aspect of human nature that is simultaneously terrible and hopeful: most people side with the status quo, whatever it may be. A critical threshold is reached when a certain proportion of the population change their views. Other people sense that the wind has changed, and tack around to catch it. There are plenty of tipping points in recent history: the remarkably swift reduction in smoking; the rapid shift, in nations such as the UK and Ireland, away from homophobia; the #MeToo movement, which, in a matter of weeks, greatly reduced the social tolerance of sexual abuse and everyday sexism. But where does the tipping point lie? Researchers whose work was published in Science in 2018 discovered that a critical threshold was passed when the size of a committed minority reached roughly 25% of the population. At this point, social conventions suddenly flip. Between 72% and 100% of the people in the experiments swung round, destroying apparently stable social norms. As the paper notes, a large body of work suggests that “the power of small groups comes not from their authority or wealth, but from their commitment to the cause”.
As far as the hard numbers go, here is a to-the-point summary written by Adam Taylor and Harry Taylor in the Washington Post: Where (temperature change) are we at now? A Washington Post analysis of multiple data sets has found that Earth has already warmed more than 1 degree Celsius on average over the past century. Some places may already have seen rises of 2 °C.
Where are we headed? In their latest report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that under the current scenario, the world would likely hit the 1.5 °C threshold by 2040. Under the most optimistic scenario presented in the report, global temperatures would reach 1.5 °C by the middle of the century and then drop back down as emissions were cut further, potentially avoiding some of the worst outcomes. Under the worst scenario envisaged by the IPCC, the best estimate was that the world will likely see a rise of 4.4 °C by the end of the century — with an extreme impact on life on Earth.
Human activity has warmed the climate by 1 °C (or maybe a little more) over the last century. Experts think it is here at then end of 2021, out of reach to limit further warming by the end of the century to 1.5 °C. These simulations show that even if humanity arrives at the year 2100 with warming limited to 2 °C, there will be places (the poles) that will see temperature rises of some 10 °C, with very dramatic and catastrophic impacts on Earth’s climate. [Infographic from the Washington Post]
World War I commendation plaque awarded to wounded soldiers. Lady Columbia in front of the flag places a sword on shoulder of a kneeling soldier. Copies of this plaque were awarded to wounded and killed World War I soldiers. [Original is in the National Museum of American Jewish Military History, Washington DC, United States. Picture from Google Arts & Culture]
Above is the plaque awarded to Sgt. Andrew Segal.
At the top it reads “COLUMBIA GIVES TO HER SON THE ACCOLADE ON THE NEW CHIVALRY OF HUMANITY”.
The inscription below reads “Andrew N. Segal Sgt. Co. G 316th Inf. SERVED WITH HONOR IN THE WORLD WAR AND WAS WOUNDED IN ACTION”, with President Woodrow Wilson’s signature.
From CNN Style: Made up of 9,090 pieces, the replica model divides into three sections to reveal the interior of the ill-fated vessel, including the first-class grand staircase, which sprawls over six decks, as well as a Jacobean-style dining saloon and the engine room. The LEGO ship is a 1:200 scale model and also includes a recreation of the ship’s bridge, promenade deck and swimming pool. “At the time of its launch the Titanic was the pinnacle of nautical engineering, the largest moving vehicle ever created. It has been an incredible journey to recreate this iconic vessel from LEGO bricks, using blueprints created over a century ago,” Mike Psiaki, design master at the LEGO Group, said in a statement Thursday. “Designing the LEGO Titanic with such a focus on immense detail and scale, but also accuracy, has allowed us to create one of the most challenging building experiences to date,” he added. The set won’t come cheap though: Available for pre-order from November 1 and general sale from November 8, the ship will retail at $629.99.
On Saturday, both President Bush and President Biden acknowledged that what has happened in the years since, has only challenged the notion that Americans prized coming together over choosing to grow hostile to one another’s differences.
– Katie Rogers reporting for the New York Times
Lower Manhattan in New York City, seen from the Staten Island Ferry. The main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan is called One World Trade Center (formerly Freedom Tower). It opened on Nov. 3, 2014. [Picture by Todd Heisler/The New York Times]
It’s official: America’s 20 year-long war in Afghanistan is over.
The last cargo plane from the United States armed forces had left at midnight Kabul time on Monday night. Someone on flightradar24.com noted that the United States military has ceased to provide air traffic control functions at Kabul Airport, and that the entirety of Afghan airspace is now without air traffic control.
‘Afghanistan has once more completed a cycle that has repeatedly defined the past 40 years of violence and upheaval: For the fifth time since the Soviet invasion in 1979, one order has collapsed and another has risen. What has followed each of those times has been a descent into vengeance, score-settling and, eventually, another cycle of disorder and war’, writes Thomas Gibbons-Neff for the New York Times.
Aug 30, 2021 U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, the last service member to board the last airplane out of Hamid Karzai International Airport. There were no civilians on this flight. The C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane’s handle is MOOSE94, and it was wheels-up one minute before midnight local time, on Aug 30. (So technically there were still 24 hours left before the Aug 31 midnight deadline). [Hand-out photo from U.S. Central Command, via Getty]Aug 15, 2021: Then there was this flight, crammed with some 640 Afghan evacuees, leaving Kabul airport for Doha, Qatar. The surge of anxious people had boarded the airplane, and the crew decided to just take off, even though the plane was not nearly designed to provide proper seating for nearly as many passengers. [Hand-out photo from U.S. Air Force]
Summer is dwindling, and so are the flowers to be found on my neighborhood walk. Still, I got these two beautiful dahlias tonight.
Centuries ago, dahlia tubers were grown as food crops by the Aztecs. This use of the plant largely died out after the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519-21). The dahlia was declared the national flower of Mexico in 1963.
Kandahar, in particular, is a huge prize for the Taliban. It is the economic hub of southern Afghanistan, and it was the birthplace of the insurgency in the 1990s, serving as the militants’ capital for part of their five-year rule. By seizing the city, the Taliban can effectively proclaim a return to power, if not complete control.
– By Christina Goldbaum, Sharif Hassan and Fahim Abed writing in the New York Times
Lester Holt spent 10 minutes on NBC’s Nightly News on the Taliban’s unsettling takeover of Afghanistan.
Retired US Army general David H. Petraeus and Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan in 2010 & 2011, said on the radio today, that pulling out is a mistake, and that US forces need to go back in. It’s too late for that. Twenty years of effort and tens of billions of dollars of aid, to train an Afghan army, succumbed to the local corruption and internal strife there. The Biden* Administration has made it clear that the US troops are leaving, no matter what.
*Yes: Joe Biden is still the President of the United States. The delusional My Pillow guy had long touted today as ‘Reinstatement Day’ (which would see Trump put back in office).
Map by Encyclopedia Brittanica.Afghanistan is a mostly mountainous country (the Hindu Kush Himalayas) with 38 million people and 34 provinces. It is about as big as Texas. In the south is the Registan Desert. Afghanistan is the biggest producer of opium in the world. Most Afghans live in poverty and literacy rates in Afghanistan are among the lowest in the world, at 43%. The Taliban controls an estimated 65% of the territory, as of this week. [Map from FDD’s Long War Journal, figures from Aljazeera.com]
I thought it would never happen, but here we are: former president of South Africa Jacob Zuma (age 79), is actually in jail as of Wednesday night*.
It gives me hope that a former president of the United States of America, can be found guilty (it should not hard, to do that), and be sentenced to serve a long time in jail as well. Lock him up.
*15 months, for contempt of court. After all that he had done, Zuma deserves to go for 15 years.
Hundreds of Mr. Zuma’s supporters gathered on Sunday outside his compound, vowing to protect him from arrest. There were fears of violent confrontations between the police and the supporters, but that did not happen. [Picture by Shiraaz Mohamed/Associated Press]
NKANDLA, South Africa — Jacob Zuma, the former president of South Africa, was taken into custody on Wednesday to begin serving a 15-month prison sentence, capping a stunning downfall for a once-lauded freedom fighter who battled the apartheid regime alongside Nelson Mandela.
The Constitutional Court, the nation’s highest judicial body, ordered Mr. Zuma’s imprisonment last month after finding him guilty of contempt for failing to appear before a commission investigating corruption accusations that tainted his tenure as the nation’s leader from 2009 to 2018.
Under Mr. Zuma, who was forced to step down, the extent of crony corruption within the governing African National Congress Party became clear, turning a once heralded liberation movement into a vehicle of self-enrichment for many officials. The corruption led to the gutting of the nation’s tax agency, sweetheart business contracts and rivals gunned down in a scramble for wealth and power.
Mr. Zuma, 79, voluntarily surrendered on Wednesday, 40 minutes before a midnight deadline for the police to hand him over to prison officials. He was driven out of his compound in a long convoy of cars and taken to the Estcourt Correctional Center, the corrections department said. The arrest followed a week of tense brinkmanship in which the former president and his allies railed against the high court’s decision, suggesting, without evidence, that he was the victim of a conspiracy.
-John Eligon reporting for the New York Times
This Fourth of July, we are reminded that patriotism isn’t just about our loyalty to country – it’s about our loyalty to one another, to our communities, to those in need, whose names or stories we may never know, but to whom we are connected by compassion and by resilience.
-Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, referring to the collapse of the condominium tower in Surfside, Miami-Dade County. The remainder of the partially collapsed building has now been demolished.
Happy Independence Day to my fellow American citizens!
Here is the first American flag, the so-called Betsy Ross flag. Washington State would be the 42nd state to join the Union. It happened some 113 years after July 4, 1776: on Nov. 11, 1889. [Image from philacarta.com]
It’s Gay Pride weekend, but there will again be no Pride in downtown Seattle. (The organizers did not know at the outset of 2021 where Washington State and the city of Seattle would find itself come June, in the Covid-19 pandemic).
Honoring Pride Month at the White House on today, President Biden signed a law to designate the site of Pulse, a gay nightclub in Florida where a gunman killed 49 people and wounded dozens in 2016, as the National Pulse Memorial.
Pete Buttigieg, transportation secretary in the Biden administration, was the first openly gay cabinet secretary confirmed by the Senate, earlier this year.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, joined the Capital Pride parade in Washington on Saturday, June 12. (So how come Washington DC could have a parade, but Seattle could not get it together? I’m not sure why). [Photo credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images]
President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, effective on Jan. 1, 1863, declared that the enslaved in Confederate-controlled areas were free.
Texas was the last Confederate territory reached by the Union army. On June 19, 1865—Juneteenth—U.S. Army general Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to proclaim the war had ended and so had slavery (in the Confederate states).
Slavery was only ended in Kentucky and Delaware by the passing of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution in Dec. 1865. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.
This Thursday, President Biden signed the Juneteenth bill, creating a new federal holiday for June 19th, to commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S.
An 1864 illustration depicting crowds of people, recently freed from enslavement, that carry copies of the Emancipation Proclamation. [Hulton Archives/ Getty images]
