Chiharu Shiota: Crossroads

Juan Guaidó posts a video of himself flanked by armed forces claiming he is ‘starting the final phase of Operation Liberty’

“Today it is clear to us that the Armed Forces are with the people and not with the dictator,” Guaidó told the crowd. “We know that all Venezuelans are in favor of change and the Constitution“

Ming Smith: Masque

'Biodegradable' plastic bags survive three years in soil and sea

After three years the “biodegradable” bags that had been buried in the soil and the sea were able to carry shopping. The compostable bag was present in the soil 27 months after being buried, but when tested with shopping was unable to hold any weight without tearing.

El Anatsui: Earth-Moon Connexions

Nusrat Jahan Rafi was doused with kerosene and set on fire at her school in Bangladesh

Many girls and young women in Bangladesh choose to keep their experiences of sexual harassment or abuse secret for fear of being shamed by society or their families. What made Nusrat Jahan different is that she didn't just speak out - she went to the police with the help of her family on the day the alleged abuse happened.

"Civil disobedience is necessary to create attention to the ongoing climate and ecological crisis"

“It is impossible to exaggerate the awesome nature of the challenge we face: to determine, within the next few years, whether organised human society can survive in anything like its present form,” he said. “The activists of Extinction Rebellion are leading the way in confronting this immense challenge, with courage and integrity, an achievement of historic significance that must be amplified with urgency.”

Europe Needs a Global Strategy

Europe’s leaders must recognize that China is rapidly building an alternative political system in which a single party digitally controls the masses. 

The dreadful Notre Dame Fire in Paris on Monday 15th April at 5.50pm local time, was predicted by Nostradamus

A quatrain written 500 years ago by the French astrologer anticipated it

‘The wicked April moon’

‘April is the cruellest month.’ The opening line (although it’s worth remembering that ‘April is the cruellest month’ is not the full line) of T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land is often quoted, especially every time that spring month comes around again. But three years before the publication of Eliot’s poem, a woman named Helen Hope Mirrlees was writing a poem, simply titled Paris: A Poem, which strikingly anticipates many elements of The Waste Land, including the focus on April not as a month of hope and rebirth, but as a time of cruelty and wickedness. 

H.D.’s oeuvre spans five decades of the 20th century, 1911-1961

She is known primarily as a poet, but she also wrote novels, memoirs, and essays and did a number of translations from the Greek. Her work is consistently innovative and experimental, both reflecting and contributing to the avant-garde milieu that dominated the arts in London and Paris until the end of World War II. 

Dead Souls

“Don’t Be Evil”

A Look Back Through Pictures at the Once-Forgotten Young Women of the Bauhaus

Collusion, cut-outs and covert ops; the dangerous ambiguities on which intelligence agencies thrive

Both Barr’s letter and Mueller’s indictments make clear Russian intelligence services aimed to disrupt the 2016 election. Those intelligence operations against our democratic institutions, which persist, operate in similar ways to the aforementioned covert action. They are designed to support and advance Russia’s foreign-policy agenda while hiding the hand of the Russian government.

By approving Articles 11 and 13

the EU Parliament not only rubber stamped bad legislation, but also ignored the voices of millions of its own concerned constituents. The EU Parliament has sided with lobbyists, and ignored the needs of creators and Internet users. This Directive only further entrenches the largest platforms like Facebook and YouTube – the only ones with the resources to actually comply to these dramatic regulations. The ramifications of this decision will be felt for years to come.

Norway’s giant oil fund dives into renewables

“These actions by the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund are noticed and contribute to reducing the cost for renewables, whilst accelerating the global shift away from coal.”

1959 / 2019 - 60 Years of Resistance

A Show of More Than 130 Women Artists From California Is Bringing a Once Sidelined Group Into the Spotlight

The Jokhang fire six months on

Despite the seemingly clear evidence of the fire, the events of that evening quickly became contested, with a range of competing claims over the location of the fire and its effects on the Jokhang. Information about the incident was quickly suppressed by the Chinese authorities and has been restricted ever since, apparently in the hope that the official narrative would be adopted: that there was a fire, but it was quickly contained and that no lasting harm was caused to the site or any of the historical and cultural artefacts within.  In practice, the secrecy around the fire and its aftermath has served to sow further doubt.

Seven EU Countries Labeled ‘Tax Havens’ in Parliament Report

The MEPs found that seven of the EU’s 28 member states — Belgium, Cyprus, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta and The Netherlands — “display traits of a tax haven and facilitate aggressive tax planning.”

Following increased pressure by the Finnish Government for Portugal to ratify the revised treaty between the two countries, on April 30, 2018 the Finnish Parliament voted in favor of denouncing the Portugal-Finland tax treaty signed on April 27, 1970 (the Old Treaty). As a result the Old Treaty will be terminated effective as of January 1, 2019, in accordance with article 30.º of that treaty. If Portugal does not ratify the revised treaty by December 1, 2018, Finnish domestic legislation will apply, and private sector pensions sourced in Finland and paid to Portuguese residents will be subject to tax in Finland from January 1, 2019.

Dutch bank stocks, Austria's Raiffeisen fall on money laundering report

Shares in two Dutch banks and Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) fell on Tuesday after media reports about a money laundering network alleged to have channeled billions of euros from Russia.

The Troika Laundromat

Portuguese judge wants to sue who criticized his decisions

Neto de Moura made public with controversial arguments. The mind-set was exposed to a man who had attacked his wife with a nail because she was unfaithful. "The adultery of a woman is a very grave attack on the honor and dignity of the husband" and there are, as the judge stated, societies "in which the adulterous wife is stoned to death." For Neto de Moura, the aggression in question was not serious enough in this judgment, because "in the Bible we can read that the adulteress should be punished with death."

In an Effort to Fight Money Laundering, the EU Parliament Wants to Scrap the Freeport System Beloved by Billionaire Art Collectors

The revelations laid bare more than 300 secret tax deals that Luxembourg had struck with global businesses, including Disney, Skype, GlaxoSmithKline, Koch Industries and Black & Decker. In several cases, the deals — known as “tax rulings” — allowed firms to pay less than 1 percent tax in Luxembourg

The European Commission has opened an investigation into one of the 546 secret Luxembourg tax deals exposed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ Lux Leaks project almost five years ago.

In March, Juncker dismissed the claims about Le Freeport, saying there was “no evidence showing that free zones in the EU are systematically used to commit fraud.” The final report from TAX3 notes that the committee “deeply regrets” the lack of progress on major initiatives that have not been finalized due to “the lack of genuine political will.”

Year 2146

Zuckerberg’s new privacy essay shows why Facebook needs to be broken up

Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand what privacy means—he can’t be trusted to define it for the rest of us.

How the Mafias Came to Slovakia

The slain Slovak journalist was investigating the Calabrian and his connections to then-Prime Minister Fico when he was killed.

Kuciak found that a young female assistant of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico had once co-owned a business with Vadalà — and that the Italian had allegedly scammed the European Union out of 120,000 euros in agricultural subsidies.


Fico has ties to organized criminal groups Kuciak was investigating; Krajmer was inexplicably present at the murder scene shortly after the bodies were found; Fico, Krajmer and Kočner were connected to one another in various ways

Lithuania Detains 26, Including Top Judges, for Corruption

Lithuanian authorities detained on Wednesday 26 people, including judges and lawyers, in a large-scale anti-corruption probe of the judiciary. The suspects are accused of large-scale bribery, trading in influence and abuse of powers.

Imagine

being snatched from the street or even your home. You are loaded into a police car and driven to an unknown location. Your friends, colleagues and family don’t know where you are. Nor do you. It is like you have disappeared from the face of the earth.

Jean Guillou (18 April 1930 – 26 January 2019)

Governments are concerned that cryptocurrencies can undermine anti-money-laundering and sanctions-enforcement regimes

Drug trafficking organizations operating as far apart as Colombia and China, and even blacklisted nations such as North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran, have made headlines for their clandestine crypto maneuvers.

Antarctic model raises prospect of unstoppable ice collapse

Before the last ice age began 130,000–115,000 years ago, for instance, sea levels were 6–9 metres higher than today — yet atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels were about 30% lower. And 3 million years ago, when CO2 levels roughly equalled today’s, the oceans may have been 10–30 metres higher.

EU warns Romania over corruption amnesty

EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker on Friday (11 January) warned the Romanian government not to press ahead with a planned law that would grant amnesty for corruption offences, undermining such EU "essentials", such as rule of law.

Europe’s Copyright Rules Will Stifle Free Expression

Even if you think the internet’s main function is to serve up entertainment and news, these rules are still a bad idea. But the internet is more than that: it’s our new global nervous system. These rules will affect education, civic and political engagement, family life, employment, and a thousand other fields of human endeavor. To pass them would be an act of gross regulatory malpractice in a parliament charged with the orderly governance of more than 508,000,000 people.

CPJ's 2018 Global Impunity Index spotlights countries where journalists are slain and their killers go free

Impunity is entrenched in 14 nations, according to CPJ's 2018 Global Impunity Index, which ranks states with the worst records of prosecuting the killers of journalists.

There were 251 journalists jailed for doing their jobs as of Dec. 1, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in an annual study. For the third consecutive year, more than half are in Turkey, China and Egypt, where authorities have accused reporters of anti-governmental activities. 

[The total does not take into account journalists who have disappeared or are being held by non-state actors. The CPJ said there are dozens of reporters missing or kidnapped in the Middle East and North Africa, including several held by Houthi rebels in Yemen.]

Murdered in Europe: Daphne Galizia (Malta), Kuciak and Kusnirova (Slovakia), Viktoria Marinova (Bulgaria).

Life in Deep Earth Totals 15 to 23 Billion Tonnes of Carbon—Hundreds of Times More than Humans

Barely living “zombie” bacteria and other forms of life constitute an immense amount of carbon deep within Earth’s subsurface—245 to 385 times greater than the carbon mass of all humans on the surface, according to scientists nearing the end of a 10-year international collaboration to reveal Earth’s innermost secrets.

“Depravity toward one is a sure sign of willingness to do much more harm”

whenever people feel stripped of freedom and opportunity, they instinctively challenge their government in order to reclaim control over their lives. “And if a government doesn’t value human life,” she said, “then they will do something to their people that the whole world will have to pay attention to.”

[The secret of Saudi is that they rely almost entirely on our governments -- to sell them weapons, buy their oil, and give them legitimacy. But the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi -- and the tragic death of Amal, a starving 7-year-old Yemeni girl whose picture appeared in the New York Times -- have those same governments wavering in their devoted support.]

We’re Asleep to Technology’s March & That’s Dangerous

the big tech companies are cornering the market that is humanity.

Google has been working on a top secret project that will aid China’s oppression in Tibet

Named ‘Dragonfly’, the search engine will comply with Beijing’s notoriously repressive censorship regime. It will restrict or completely block searches for “human rights”, “democracy”, “Dalai Lama” and “Tibet”. 

"A very particular kind of people, with expensive perfumes and makeup, looking really expensive and unapproachable"

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided

to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2018 to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.

Allison Zuckerman: Jilted Lover

Warm ice in Mount Everest’s glaciers makes them more sensitive to climate change

Often when the topic of glaciers and climate change is discussed, focus shifts to those in Greenland and Antarctica. But there are glaciers elsewhere too, such as in the Himalayas, which play a vital part in supplying water to people who live downstream. Now, our research has found that these glaciers may react more sensitively to predicted future climate change than previously thought, which could lead to them melting at a faster rate.

Aide to Mohammed bin Salman 'supervised torture of female prisoner'

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said last month at least three of the activists -- most of whom had agitated for the right to drive and an end to a male guardianship system -- were tortured. 

Russian Weapons Maker To Build AI-Directed Guns

Russia’s willingness to embrace lethal autonomy stands in stark contrast to U.S. policy. In 2012, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter (later defense secretary) signed a directive forbidding the U.S. to allow any robot or machine to take lethal action without the supervision of a human operator.

The Russian repeatedly proposed a meeting between Trump and Putin, according to Mueller, and told Cohen the meeting “could have a ‘phenomenal’ impact ‘not only in political but in a business dimension as well’”, because there was “no bigger warranty in any project than consent of Putin”.

“What does the (m)Other want?”

The infant’s gradual formation of an ego as per the temporally elongated processes delineated in Lacan’s account of the mirror stage (see 2.2 above) is, in part, a response to this riddle (albeit in a broader sense, with the child constructing an ego-level identity informed by the perceived wants of Others in addition to the mother, such as the father).

Over 30 Journalists Murdered by Organized Crime Since 2017

“From Beijing to Moscow, from Tijuana to Bogotá, from Malta to Slovakia *, investigative journalists who shed light on the deals that involve organized crime unleash the wrath of gangsters, whose common feature is an aversion to any publicity unless they control it.”

* and Bulgaria

Global carbon emissions jump to all-time high in 2018

The rise is due to the growing number of cars on the roads and a renaissance of coal use and means the world remains on the track to catastrophic global warming. 

Run-off from this vast northern ice sheet – currently the biggest single source of meltwater adding to the volume of the world’s oceans – is 50% higher than pre-industrial levels and increasing exponentially as a result of manmade global warming

Ezra Pound's Cantos

Froula noted that the Cantos was "a verbal war against economic corruption, against literal wars, against materialism, against habits of mind that permit the perpetuation of political domination. It advocates economic reform as the basis of social and cultural reform, and it could not have held aloof from political reality."

Mythes

A year on, Catalonia's political prisoners go unnoticed by the rest of the world

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont remains in exile in Belgium. Another six pro-independence leaders remain in exile, including Clara Ponsati, former education minister in the Catalan government... Two activists and seven politicians remain in custody. 

Mary Beale: “Mary Wither of Andwell” (circa 1670)

Midori Takada (performance)

Midori Takada (rearshal)

Nine Variations On Alexandra Pirici's Parthenon Marbles

A New Illustrated Database for Women Artists Spans the 15th to 19th Centuries

Take, for example, Italian Renaissance painter Sofonisba Anguissola. During her day she was praised by Michelangelo, hired as court painter to Spanish king Phillip II, and admired by Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck. Anguissola made it, supporting herself entirely with her art. But today, awareness of her work is limited to an esoteric bunch of Renaissance enthusiasts; she definitely isn’t a household name.

How Christie’s So-Called ‘AI-Generated’ Art Sale Proves That Records Can Distort History

we’ve tacitly come to accept that market-leading gatekeepers are the sources that matter most in charting the history of the art market. And as the market becomes an increasingly powerful force in shaping public understanding, they also become (like it or not) the sources that matter most in charting the history of art itself.

Europe Should Protect Independent Media in Copyright Reform

Search engines provide a crucial tool for journalists, who rely on disparate sources of information to do their job. If search engines are required to pay licensing fees for every bit of text, some results will inevitably be removed when a certain publisher proves untraceable, links or outlets are not considered viable enough to contend with, or a publisher refuses to license their content for any reason. Less popular content – often the underlying details essential to proving a story – will be disproportionately affected.

Although Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) never considered herself an epic poet

it’s hard to think of a more apposite definition of her vast and varied oeuvre than the phrase with which Ezra Pound summed up his concept of the modernist epic (speaking, in his case, of The Cantos): “a poem containing history.” 

"Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future"

Born in Sweden in 1862 and descended from a distinguished clan of naval heroes and maritime cartographers, she trained formally as a painter at Stockholm’s official academy. 

af Klint kept her groundbreaking paintings largely private. She rarely exhibited them and, convinced the world was not yet ready to understand her work, stipulated that it not be shown for twenty years following her death.

Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov wins 2018 Sakharov Prize

The European Parliament's President Antonio Tajani announced the winner. The €50,000 prize was created in memory of the late exiled Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov.

‘The Ladies of the Baroque’

Sofonisba Anguissola (1532-1625), Fede Galizia (1578-1630), Giovanna Garzoni (1600-1670), as well as Orsola Maddalena Caccia (1596-1676), Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614), Virginia da Vezzo (1601-1638) and Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665): according to the mores of the times, all these women had to make do with portraiture and allegorical paintings featuring fruit and flowers. However, they were quick to flout these restrictions, using the themes that were forced on them as powerful instruments: they displayed remarkable freedom in the face of the strict gender rules.

“Gender-based violence” is a perverted and biased concept

US diplomats have been pushing for the rewriting of general assembly policy statements to remove what the administration argues is vague and politically correct language, 

[Convicted paedophile Karen White, who was born Stephen Wood, was undergoing gender reassignment, but had not undergone full surgery, when she was accused of repeatedly raping a woman in 2016.]

How Europe's taxpayers have been swindled of €55 billion

The vast so-called cum ex tax scandal which has rocked Germany in the past decade has already cost the country an estimated €30 billion. It was assumed that a change in the law in 2016 definitively outlawed such trades. But as a cross-border and undercover investigation now reveals, the trade is still flourishing and has targeted far more countries and has cost far more than was previously thought, affecting nearly all of the biggest economies in Europe.

Knock knock! Who’s there?

“Knock knock! Who’s there? More than half the Church!” several dozen Catholic women chanted outside the Vatican on Oct. 3, the first day of this year’s synod of bishops from around the world.

The squadron of ex-military men behind Bolsonaro's rise in Brazil

appalling levels of street crime and entrenched government graft have emboldened former military leaders to get involved in the electoral process. While some Brazilians are wary about what they see as encroachment by the military on sacred civilian space, others welcome the change.

Nearly 64,000 murders were registered last year, but less than 10 percent of homicide cases result in charges, according to government data.

African elephants could be extinct 'within a decade'

The Africa Elephant Summit, attended by delegates from around 20 countries including China – which is accused of fuelling the poaching trade – heard new figures from the International Union for Conservation of Nature that showed the African elephant population fell from 550,000 to 470,000 between 2006 and 2013.

The American conductor tells us (*) about an early career that’s seen her gravitate from playing under Bernard Haitink to taking over his dressing room

Late on a Friday night, just weeks after starting her new role as Assistant Conductor at Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Karina Canellakis

(*) www.limelightmagazine.com.au

EU: lack of freedom of speech

In the US, freedom of speech doesn't require it to be factual. That is the major difference between freedom of speech in the US and in several countries in Europe: if you say something that is offensive, it does not necessarily have to be true.

[Pick any conspiracy theory under the sun, and threads often lead back to Soros.]

U.S. to exit nuclear treaty

Washington believes Moscow is developing and has deployed a ground-launched system in breach of the INF treaty that could allow Moscow to launch a nuclear strike on Europe at short notice.

New type of noise found lurking in nanoscale devices

A new type of electronic noise has been discovered by a team of physicists and chemists in Israel and Canada. Dubbed “delta-T noise”, the effect occurs when two sides of a tiny electrical junction are at held at different temperatures.

EPA on U.N. Climate-Change Report: ‘What Report? Haven’t Heard of It’

A spokesperson from the New York headquarters of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told The Daily Beast that she was unaware of the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “What report?” she asked. “I haven’t heard of it.”

Danske Bank Scandal Whistleblower Allegedly Killed

In 2006, the first deputy chairman of the Russian Central Bank, Andrei Kozlov, attempted to tell authorities in Estonia about a money-laundering scheme that had been created in the Baltic financial system. Three months later he was dead, age 44, and the scheme would later be revealed as the US$200 billion Danske Bank scandal, according to the Daily Beast.

European politicians call for clampdown on tax trade trick

European politicians have called for action to tackle dividend stripping after Reuters and other media revealed how large banks were involved in trading schemes that cost taxpayers billions of euros.