Located at number 19 Camp Street in the former Gold Rush town of Daylesford, the former St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church offers wonderful views as it looks down from the high side of the road, across the township, now known for its natural mineral springs and day spas.

 

Built in 1903 under the benefaction of Jessie Leggatt, who laid the foundation stone on the 9th of December that year, St Andrew’s is not unlike the Castlemaine Presbyterian Church in Lyttleton Street. Built of red brick with sandstone detailing, St Andrew’s has been built in a Picturesque Gothic style with adaptations of both Florentine and Pauduan Gothic. It features a splendid slate roof, and has been built in a symmetrical style, with two hexagonal towers to either side of the enclosed loggia entrance. The taller of the towers on the left hand side serves also as the church’s belfry and has a crenellated parapet and a copper covered spire. The gable over the front doors is pierced with a traceried window with two mullions in early English decorated style. The small gables of the transepts are pierced with single mullioned windows of the same period. The interior is filled with magnificent original features including stained glass windows, ceiling roses, cathedral ceilings, lovely old floorboards and an extremely rare church organ.

 

In the intervening years since 1903, Daylesford has gone through many changes, going from a town populated by citizens seeking to make their fortunes in gold, to those come to seek rest and relaxation in this now resort town in central Victoria. With parish numbers dwindling, the Presbyterian Church has seen fit to close the doors of St Andrew’s, opting for a smaller and less formal presence in the town’s community centre. At the time of photographing, St Andrew’s is up for sale, and has had council approval for the construction of apartments and town houses in the rear of the property and the adaptation of the church itself into a single or multiple dwellings. With an asking price just short of one million dollars, to date there has been very little interest in the property, and so St Andrew’s falls slowly, but surely into decay as neglect sinks in. The grass grows high around its bluestone foundations; graffiti denigrates Jessie Leggatt’s memorial plaque in the entranceway; the painted archway above the gates rots, save for the faded letters that spell out St Andrew’s in weathered greyish white flecks, and the old weatherboard Sunday School sags into the briars. A large holly tree, planted when the church was first built still sits at the side, waiting, like the church, for a new lease of life like other former churches in the area.

 

Located at number 19 Camp Street in the former Gold Rush town of Daylesford, the former St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church offers wonderful views as it looks down from the high side of the road, across the township, now known for its natural mineral springs and day spas.

 

Built in 1903 under the benefaction of Jessie Leggatt, who laid the foundation stone on the 9th of December that year, St Andrew’s is not unlike the Castlemaine Presbyterian Church in Lyttleton Street. Built of red brick with sandstone detailing, St Andrew’s has been built in a Picturesque Gothic style with adaptations of both Florentine and Pauduan Gothic. It features a splendid slate roof, and has been built in a symmetrical style, with two hexagonal towers to either side of the enclosed loggia entrance. The taller of the towers on the left hand side serves also as the church’s belfry and has a crenellated parapet and a copper covered spire. The gable over the front doors is pierced with a traceried window with two mullions in early English decorated style. The small gables of the transepts are pierced with single mullioned windows of the same period. The interior is filled with magnificent original features including stained glass windows, ceiling roses, cathedral ceilings, lovely old floorboards and an extremely rare church organ.

 

In the intervening years since 1903, Daylesford has gone through many changes, going from a town populated by citizens seeking to make their fortunes in gold, to those come to seek rest and relaxation in this now resort town in central Victoria. With parish numbers dwindling, the Presbyterian Church has seen fit to close the doors of St Andrew’s, opting for a smaller and less formal presence in the town’s community centre. At the time of photographing, St Andrew’s is up for sale, and has had council approval for the construction of apartments and town houses in the rear of the property and the adaptation of the church itself into a single or multiple dwellings. With an asking price just short of one million dollars, to date there has been very little interest in the property, and so St Andrew’s falls slowly, but surely into decay as neglect sinks in. The grass grows high around its bluestone foundations; graffiti denigrates Jessie Leggatt’s memorial plaque in the entranceway; the painted archway above the gates rots, save for the faded letters that spell out St Andrew’s in weathered greyish white flecks, and the old weatherboard Sunday School sags into the briars. A large holly tree, planted when the church was first built still sits at the side, waiting, like the church, for a new lease of life like other former churches in the area.

 

Steve Lorillere | Saint-Tropez Photo | Twitter | facebook

Capture in France (Dépt. Nièvre) on 2013 VII 30

Lg. 8 mm

---

Det.: H. Dumas (Identification confirmed by Juuso Paappanen)

---

By using the attached photos, we can happen at the same determination.

 

The Genus Atanycolus contains 10 European species.

The description of A. lateropus (Thomson 1892) is untraceable. Taxapad does not know it, the quotation by FE is doubtful

 

Thus let us see the 9 species which stay.

Main differences between our capture and the 8 species which follow :

* A. denigrator (L. 1758) : Head mainly or entirely black

... p.179/180 in ia800303.us.archive.org/19/items/keystoinsectsofe34bykh/k...

* A. fulviceps (Kriech. 1898) : Thorax ventrally yellow-reddish

... p.246-247 in ia800206.us.archive.org/35/items/entomologischena241898be...

* A. genalis (Thomson 1892) : Head mainly or entirely black

... p.179 in ia800303.us.archive.org/19/items/keystoinsectsofe34bykh/k...

* A. neessi (Marshall 1901) : Head mainly or entirely black

... p.179 in ia800303.us.archive.org/19/items/keystoinsectsofe34bykh/k...

* A. petiolaris (Thomson 1892) : Tergite 1 black

... p.117-118 in ia902606.us.archive.org/14/items/speciesdeshymn52andr/spe...

* A. sculpturatus (Thomson 1892) [sub-species of A. ivanovi] : Head mainly or entirely black

... p.178 in ia800303.us.archive.org/19/items/keystoinsectsofe34bykh/k...

* A. tunetensis Marshall 1901 : Tergite 3 sculptured with 2 Carinae

... p.372 in ia600201.us.archive.org/2/items/bulletindumusumn05musu/bu...

* A. wagneri Fahringer 1925 : In particular, the Thorax is not black

... footnotes p.99-100 in www.zobodat.at/pdf/ANNA_38_0098-0106.pdf

 

The 9th species A. initiator corresponds well to the description given p. 179 in ia800303.us.archive.org/19/items/keystoinsectsofe34bykh/k... , in particular the Head is mainly red

 

of Where the Determination

History of the Vienna State Opera

132 years house on the Ring

(you can see pictures by clicking on the link at the end of page!)

State Opera (K.K. Court Opera) 1901

About three and a half centuries, until the early Baroque period, the tradition of Viennese opera goes back. Emperor Franz Joseph I decreed in December 1857 to tear down the old city walls and fortifications around the city center of Vienna and to lay out a wide boulevard with new buildings for culture and politics, the ring road.

The two Court Theatres (a speech and a musical theater) should find a new place on the ring. For the Imperial and Royal Court Opera House was chosen a prominent place in the immediate area of ​​the former Kärntnertortheatre. This by the public that much loved opera theater was demolished in 1709 due to its confinement .

State Opera (K.K. Court Opera) 1903

The new opera house was built by the Viennese architect August Sicardsburg, who designed the basic plan, and Eduard van der Null, who designed the interior decoration. But other eminent artists had been involved: just think of Moritz von Schwind, who painted the frescoes in the foyer and the famous "Magic Flute", cycle of frescoes in the loggia. The two architects did not experience the opening of "their" opera house any more. The sensitive van der Null committed suicide since the Wiener (Viennes people) denigrated the new house as lacking in style, his friend Sicardsburg succumbed a little later to a stroke.

1869 - 1955

On 25 May 1869 the House was with Mozart's DON JUAN in the presence of Emperor Franz Joseph, the highest building owner, and Empress Elisabeth opened.

However, with the artistic charisma under the first directors Franz von Dingelstedt, Johann Herbeck, Franz Jauner and Wilhelm Jahn grew the popularity of the building. A first highlight experienced the Vienna Opera under the director Gustav Mahler, renewing the outdated performance system from scratch, strengthening precision and ensemble spirit and also using significant visual artists (including Alfred Roller) for the shaping of the new stage aesthetic.

In the ten-year-period of his Directorate (1897-1907) continued Gustav Mahler, this very day, in the concert halls of the world as the most important member of a Symphony Orchestra at the turn of the 20th century omnipresent, the intensive fostering of Wagner, Mozart's operas and Beethoven's Fidelio were redesigned, the with Richard Strauss initiated connection to Verdi was held upright. Austrian composers were promoted (Hugo Wolf), the Court Opera was opened to European modernism.

Image: Emperor Franz Joseph I and Emperor Wilhelm II during a gala performance at the Vienna Court Opera in 1900 resulting from the "Book of the Emperor", edited by Max Herzig.

Technique: Lithography

from www.aeiou.at

In addition to the classics of the Italian repertoire were and are especially Mozart, Wagner and Richard Strauss (himself 1919-1924 director of the House), the musical protection gods of the Vienna State Opera.

staatsoper_81.jpg (28138 bytes)

The modern also always had its place: the twenties and thirties witnessed the Vienna premieres of Krenek's Jonny spielt auf, Cardillac Hindemith, Korngold MIRACLE OF Héliane and Berg's Wozzeck (under President Clemens Krauss). This tradition was interrupted with the seizure of power by the National Socialists, yes, after the devastating bomb hits, on 12 March 1945 the house on the ring largely devastating, the care of the art form itself was doubtful.

The Viennese, who had preserved a lively cultural life during the war, were deeply shocked to see the symbol of the Austrian musical life in ruins.

But the spirit of the opera was not destroyed. On 1 May 1945 "State Opera Volksoper" was opened with a brilliant performance of Mozart's THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO, on 6 October 1945 was followed by the re-opening of the hastily restored Theater an der Wien with Beethoven's Fidelio. Thus there were two venues for the next ten years, while the actual main building was rebuilt at great expense.

staatsoper_84.jpg (14707 bytes)

Visitors flock to the opera. Reopening on 5th November, 1955.

Image from © www.staatsvertrag.at / bildarchiv austria / ÖGZ / Hilscher

As early as 24 May 1945 the State Secretary of Public Works, Julius Raab, had announced the reconstruction of the Vienna State Opera, which should be placed in the hands of the Austrian architects Erich Boltenstern and Otto Prossinger. Only the main façade, the grand staircase and the Schwindfoyer (evanescence foyer) had been spared from the bombs - with a new auditorium and modernized technology, the Vienna State Opera was brilliant with Beethoven's Fidelio under Karl Böhm on 5 November 1955 reopened. The opening ceremonies were broadcasted from Austrian television and in the whole world at the same time as a sign of life of the resurrected 2nd Republic understood.

staatsoper_83.jpg (33866 bytes)

State ceremony to the reopening on 5 November 1955. On the far right under the box of the Federal President a television camera of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation is visible which broadcasted the event. Image from © www.staatsvertrag.at / ÖGZ / Cermak

1955 to 1992

The dictum that the Vienna State Opera survives every director, is attributed to Egon Seefehlner which himself for many years run the businessses of the house. And yet marked he and the thirty-one other directors of the Vienna State Opera since 1869, great musicians or musical administrators, in their own way the profile of this world-famous institution:

staatsoper_82.jpg (13379 bytes)

Performance for the reopening of the Vienna State Opera on 5 November, 1955.

Image from © www.staatsvertrag.at / bildarchiv austria / ÖGZ / Hilscher

After the Second World War there were first the conductors directors Karl Böhm and Herbert von Karajan - the latter insisted on the title "Artistic Director" and opened the Ensemble house to the international singer market, had the opera rehearsed in original language and oriented his plans to "co-productions" with foreign opera houses, however, which were only realized after his term.

It followed as directors Egon Hilbert, Heinrich Reif-Gintl, Rudolf Gamsjäger and the mentioned Egon Seefehlner, who was appointed for a second time at the top of the house after the departure of his successor in office Lorin Maazel. Claus Helmut Drese (State Opera director from 1986 to 1991) stood with Claudio Abbado an internationally renowned music director by his side. At the beginning of the 90s the forrmer star baritone Eberhard Waechter, at that time director of the Volksoper (People's Opera), charged with the direction. Only seven months have been granted to him as a director.

The era Ioan Holender (1992 to 2010)

After Waechter's tragic death in March 1992 took over general secretary Ioan Holender, a former singer (baritone) and owner of a singer Agency, the office to continue the tradition of perhaps the most important opera institution in the world over the millennium to 2010.

His play plan design relies besides an extremely wide repertoire with the columns Mozart, Wagner, Verdi and Strauss mainly on premieres. Mention may be made of Bellini's I Puritani (1993 /94), Massenet Hérodiade (1994 /95), Verdi's Jerusalem and Britten's PETER GRIMES (1995 /96), Verdi's Stiffelio and Enescu OEDIPE (1996 /97), Rossini's GUILLAUME TELL and Lehár's operetta THE MERRY WIDOW (1998/99) and Schoenberg's THE JAKOBSLEITER, Hiller's PETER PAN, Donizetti's ROBERTO DEVEREUX, Britten's Billy Budd, Verdi's Nabucco (2000/ 01), Bellini's LA SONNAMBULA, Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, Janácek's Jenufa (2001/02), Verdi's SIMON BOCCANEGRA, Krenek's Jonny spielt auf, Donizetti's La Favorite, Hiller's PINOCCHIO, Wagner's TRISTAN UND ISOLDE (2002/ 03), Verdi's FALSTAFF, Wagner's FLYING DUTCHMAN and PARSIFAL, Strauss's Daphne (2003/ 04) and the world premiere of the original French version of Verdi's DON CARLOS (2003/ 04). A particular success of the recent past, the rediscovery of Fromental Halévy's La Juive Grand (1999 ) must be considered. Two premières concerned 1995 Adriana Hölszky's THE WALLS (co-production with the Vienna Festival at the Theater an der Wien ) and Alfred Schnittke's Gesualdo. On 15 June 2002 also THE GIANT OF STONE FIELD (Music: Peter Turrini: Friedrich Cerha libretto) premiered with great success, another commissioned work of the Vienna State Opera.

State Opera - © Oliver Thomann - FOTOLIA

Image : Vienna State Opera

In recent years it came up, in each case on 18 May, the anniversary of the death of Gustav Mahler, to concerts of the Vienna Philharmonic at the Vienna State Opera. These were under the direction of Seiji Ozawa (who since the 2002 /03 season the Vienna State Opera director Holender as music director of the house stands to the side) (1995), Carlo Maria Giulini (1996), Riccardo Muti (1997), Lorin Maazel (1998), Zubin Mehta (1999), Giuseppe Sinopoli (2000 ), Riccardo Muti (2001) and again Seiji Ozawa (2004).

Furthermore, was on 16 June, 2002 for the first time by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Seiji Ozawa) a CONCERT FOR AUSTRIA organized. More CONCERTS FOR AUSTRIA followed on 26 October 2003 (Zubin Mehta) and 26 October 2004 (under Valery Gergiev).

At the Theater an der Wien Mozart's Così fan tutte experienced a triumphant new production conducted by Riccardo Muti. This Mozart cycle under Muti continued with DON GIOVANNI and 2001 LE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO, 1999.

more...

Directors since 1869

Franz von Dingelstedt 07/01/1867 - 18/12/1870

Opening 5/25/1869

Johann von Herbeck 12/19/1870 - 30/04/1875

Franz von Jauner 01/05/1875 - 18/06/1880

Director College:

Karl Mayerhofer, Gustav Walter and

Emil Scaria 19.06.1880 - 31.12.1880

Wilhelm Jahn 01.01.1881 - 10.14.1897

Gustav Mahler 10/15/1897 - 31/12/1907

Felix Weingartner 01.01.1908 - 28.02.1911

Hans Gregor 01.03.1911 - 14.11.1918

Franz Schalk 15.11.1918 - 08.15.1919

Richard Strauss/Franz Schalk 16/08/1919 - 31/10/1924

Franz Schalk 1/11/1924 - 8/31/1929

Clemens Krauss 01/09/1929 - 15/12/1934

Felix Weingartner, 01.01.1935 - 08.31.1936

Erwin Kerber 09/01/1936 - 08/31/1940

Henry K. Strohm 09.01.1940 - 19.04.1941

Walter Thomas 02.01.1941 - 19.04.1941

Ernst August Schneider 04/20/1941 - 02/28/1943

Karl Böhm 03.01.1943 - 30.04.1945

Alfred Jerger,

State Opera in the Volksoper 01.05.1945 - 14.06.1945

Franz Salmhofer,

State Opera in the Theater an der Wien, 18.06.1945 - 31.08.1955

Karl Böhm 01.09.1954 - 31.08.1956

Herbert von Karajan 01.09.1956 - 31.03.1962

Herbert von Karajan/Walter Erich Schäfer 01.04.1962 - 08.06.1963

Herbert von Karajan/Egon Hilbert 09.06.1963 - 31.08.1964

Egon Hilbert 01.09.1964 - 18.01.1968

Heinrich Reif- Gintl 19.01.1968 - 31.08.1972

Rudolf Gamsjager 01.09.1972 - 31.08.1976

Egon Seefehlner 01.09.1976 - 31.08.1982

Lorin Maazel 01.09.1982 - 31.08.1984

Egon Seefehlner 01.09.1984 - 31.08.1986

Dr. Claus Helmut Drese 01.09.1986 - 31.08.1991

Eberhard Waechter 01.09.1991 - 29.03.1992

Ioan Holender 01.04.1992 - 31.08.2010

Dominique Meyer since 01/09/2010

 

Opera world premieres

Abbreviations:

Od = the Odeon

Ron = Ronacher

TW = the Theater an der Wien

 

1875 10:03. Goldmark The Queen of Sheba

1877 04:10. Brüller Der Landfriede

1880 26.05. Riedel The Accolade

15.12. Brüller Bianca

1883 04.01. Leschetitzky The first fold

21.02. Bachrich Muzzedin

1884 26.03. Bachrich Heini of Styria

1886 30.03. Hellmesberger jun. Fata Morgana

4:10 . Hager Marffa

19.11. Goldmark Merlin

1887 03:04. Harold pepper

1889 27.03. Fox The Bride King

4:10. Smareglia The vassal of Szigeth

1891 19:02. Mader Refugees

1892 01.01. J. Strauss Ritter Pasman

16.02. Massenet Werther

19.11. Bulk Signor Formica

1894 20.01. Heuberger Miriam

1896 21.03. Goldmark The Cricket on the Hearth

1899 17:01. The Goldmark prisoners of war

1900 22:01. Zemlinsky It was once

1902 28.02. Forster The dot mon

1904 18:02. Wolf The Corregidor

1908 02.01. Goldmark The Winter's Tale

1910 12:04. The musician Bittner

18.05. Goldmark Götz von Berlichingen

1911 09:11. Bittner The mountain lake

1912 16.03. Oberleithner Aphrodite

1913 15.03. Schreker The game works and the Princess

1914 01.04. Schmidt Notre Dame

1916 04:10. R. Strauss Ariadne auf Naxos (Vienna version)

1917 23.11. Zaiszek-Blankenau Ferdinand and Luise

1919 10.10. R. Strauss Die Frau ohne Schatten

1920 13.05. Weingartner Champion Andrea/The Village School

1921 09.04. The Bittner Kohlhaymerin

1924 20.09. Beethoven/R. Strauss The Ruins of Athens

1925 24.02. Kienzl Sanctissimum

27.03. Frank The image of the Madonna

1931 20.06. Wellesz The Bacchae

1932 10:11. Heger The beggar Nameless

1934 20.01. Lehár Giuditta

08.12. Bittner The violet

1935 26.12. Salmhofer lady in dream

1937 06.02. Wenzl - Traun rock the atonement

17.04. Frank The strange woman

18.11. Weinberger Wallenstein

1938 09.03. Salmhofer Ivan Tarasenko

1939 02:02. Will King ballad

1941 04:04. Wagner Régeny Johanna Balk

1956 17.06. Martin The Storm

1971 23.05. The visit of an old lady

1976 17.12. A Love and Intrigue

1989 25.11. The blind Furrer (OD)

1990 06:12. Krenek last dance at St. Stephen's (Ron)

1995 20.05. Hölszky The walls (TW)

26.05. Schnittke Gesualdo

2002 15.06. Cerha Der Riese vom Steinfeld

2007 15:04 Naske The Omama in the apple tree

2010 28.02. Reimann Medea

2010 10:05. Eröd dots and Anton

www.wien-vienna.at/index.php?ID=484

 

Steve Lorillere | Saint-Tropez Photo | Twitter | facebook

Colonial Williamsburg is the historic district of the independent city of Williamsburg, Virginia. Colonial Williamsburg consists of many of the buildings that formed the original colonial capital of Williamsburg in James City County from 1699 to 1780 with all traces of later buildings removed.

 

Colonial Williamsburg is an example of a living history museum, an open-air assemblage of buildings populated with historical reenactors whose job it is to explain and demonstrate aspects of daily life in the past. The reenactors (or interpreters) work, dress, and talk as they would have in colonial times. While there are many living history museums (such as Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts or Castell Henllys in the UK), Colonial Williamsburg is unusual for having been constructed from a living town whose inhabitants and post-Colonial-era buildings were removed. Unlike other living history museums, however, anyone can walk through the historic district of Williamsburg free of charge at any hour of the day. Charges apply only to those visitors who wish to enter the historic buildings to see arts and crafts demonstrations during daylight hours, or attend scheduled outdoor performances such as the Revolutionary City programs.

 

Early in the 20th century, the restoration and recreation of Colonial Williamsburg, one of the largest historic restorations ever undertaken, was championed by the Reverend Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who wanted to celebrate the patriots and the early history of the United States.

 

Some of the missing Colonial structures were recreated on their original sites during the 1930s. Many other structures were restored to the best estimates of how they would have looked during the eighteenth century. Most buildings are open for tourists to look through.

 

A main source of tourism to Williamsburg, Virginia and the surrounding area, Williamsburg is meant to be an interpretation of a Colonial American city with exhibits including dozens of authentic or accurately-recreated colonial houses, American Revolutionary War history exhibits, and the town jail, which includes an authentic stocks and pillory display. Other notable structures include the large Capitol and the Governor's Palace, each carefully recreated and landscaped as closely as possible to original 18th century specifications. Dependency structures and animals help complete the ambiance.

 

Colonial Williamsburg is owned and operated as a living museum by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the non-profit entity endowed by the Rockefeller family. Although it is not directly affiliated with the nearby Colonial National Historical Park, the nearby Colonial Parkway and attractions at Jamestown and Yorktown presented by state and federal entities are complementary adjuncts to the restored area of the colonial city. With Colonial Williamsburg as its centerpiece, the Historic Triangle of Virginia is a much visited tourist destination. However, attendance at Colonial Williamsburg peaked in 1985 at 1.1 million, and has been in decline ever since.[2]

 

Ada Louise Huxtable, noted architecture critic, wrote in 1965: "Williamsburg is an extraordinary, conscientious and expensive exercise in historical playacting in which real and imitation treasures and modern copies are carelessly confused in everyone's mind. Partly because it is so well done, the end effect has been to devalue authenticity and denigrate the genuine heritage of less picturesque periods to which an era and a people gave life."[1]

 

A more nuanced interpretation may be that of University of Virginia Professor of Architectural History Richard Guy Wilson, who notes that Colonial Williamsburg is a superb example of an American suburb of the 1930s, with its inauthentically tree-lined streets of Colonial Revival houses and segregated commerce.

 

*Wikipedia

Located at number 19 Camp Street in the former Gold Rush town of Daylesford, the former St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church offers wonderful views as it looks down from the high side of the road, across the township, now known for its natural mineral springs and day spas.

 

Built in 1903 under the benefaction of Jessie Leggatt, who laid the foundation stone on the 9th of December that year, St Andrew’s is not unlike the Castlemaine Presbyterian Church in Lyttleton Street. Built of red brick with sandstone detailing, St Andrew’s has been built in a Picturesque Gothic style with adaptations of both Florentine and Pauduan Gothic. It features a splendid slate roof, and has been built in a symmetrical style, with two hexagonal towers to either side of the enclosed loggia entrance. The taller of the towers on the left hand side serves also as the church’s belfry and has a crenellated parapet and a copper covered spire. The gable over the front doors is pierced with a traceried window with two mullions in early English decorated style. The small gables of the transepts are pierced with single mullioned windows of the same period. The interior is filled with magnificent original features including stained glass windows, ceiling roses, cathedral ceilings, lovely old floorboards and an extremely rare church organ.

 

In the intervening years since 1903, Daylesford has gone through many changes, going from a town populated by citizens seeking to make their fortunes in gold, to those come to seek rest and relaxation in this now resort town in central Victoria. With parish numbers dwindling, the Presbyterian Church has seen fit to close the doors of St Andrew’s, opting for a smaller and less formal presence in the town’s community centre. At the time of photographing, St Andrew’s is up for sale, and has had council approval for the construction of apartments and town houses in the rear of the property and the adaptation of the church itself into a single or multiple dwellings. With an asking price just short of one million dollars, to date there has been very little interest in the property, and so St Andrew’s falls slowly, but surely into decay as neglect sinks in. The grass grows high around its bluestone foundations; graffiti denigrates Jessie Leggatt’s memorial plaque in the entranceway; the painted archway above the gates rots, save for the faded letters that spell out St Andrew’s in weathered greyish white flecks, and the old weatherboard Sunday School sags into the briars. A large holly tree, planted when the church was first built still sits at the side, waiting, like the church, for a new lease of life like other former churches in the area.

 

Maker: Carl Dammann

Born: Germany

Active: Germany

Medium: albumen prints

Size: 14 1/2 x 11 in

Location:

 

Object No. 2022.112

Shelf: B-38

 

Publication: DAMMANN, CARL. 1819-1874, AND FREDERICK W. Ethnological Photographic Gallery of the Various Races of Mankind. London: Trubner & Co., [1875].

 

Other Collections:

 

Provenance: pumpkin park photos

Rank: 224

 

Notes: Carl Dammann was a photographer from Mecklenburg, who settled in Hamburg to practice his craft. In 1870 he was asked by the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (Society of Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory of Berlin) to photograph the African and Arab crewmen who had arrived in the port of Hamburg with a fleet from Zanzibar. He extended this study with photographs of members of a Japanese acrobatic troupe. The society then collected additional ethnographic photos from members around the world, and sent them to Dammann to select and gather into an album for publication. Carl Dammann died before he could see publication of the work in its original form in German, but his brother Frederick completed it and Anthropologisch-ethnologisches Album in Photographien, was published in 1874, the year of Carl's death. It contained 642 albumen photographs on 50 mounts, but one year later a smaller version was published in London with 167 photographs. Many of the images in the smaller version were new to the edition. The captions are highly subjective, and show a prejudicial European bias: "There is but little to remind us of the Mongolian type in the countenances of the Hindoos, which are often remarkable for a symmetrical beauty that only wants a more intellectual expression to render them extremely striking." Despite the racial denigration contained in the text, the work offers a remarkable glimpse at faces of people from all corners of the globe during a bygone era.

 

To view our archive organized by themes and subjects, visit: OUR COLLECTIONS

 

For information about reproducing this image, visit: THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY ARCHIVE

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for those who has the vision to recognize it as such.

 

www.LizLieu.com

U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Ambassador Marc Grossman traveled to Pakistan September 14-15. Ambassador Grossman met with President Zardari, Prime Minister Ashraf, Foreign Minister Khar, Foreign Secretary Jilani, Chief of Army Staff Kayani, Members of Parliament, and other government officials.

 

During his engagements, Ambassador Grossman said that the United States believes that its relationship with Pakistan should be enduring, strategic, and clearly defined. The United States and Pakistan should work together to identify shared interests and act on them jointly, for the benefit of both nations and the region.

 

The United States is committed to building on recent achievements, such as the reopening of the NATO supply lines and the meeting of the Safe Passage Working Group held in Islamabad on September 5. The United States looks forward to welcoming Foreign Minister Khar to Washington and President Zardari to New York for the UN General Assembly, and looks forward to several bilateral working groups this fall.

 

Ambassador Grossman noted that each of these engagements is an opportunity to continue to identify shared interests and to discuss concrete actions the United States and Pakistan can take together on our broad agenda. The United States is committed to continuing work on shared counterterrorism objectives; to increasing market access and economic opportunity for Pakistan; and to supporting civilian democracy and civil society. Ambassador Grossman raised the case of Dr. Shakil Afridi. Finally, it is important that the United States and Pakistan cooperate closely to ensure that Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the region are more secure, stable, and prosperous.

 

Ambassador Grossman emphasized that while none of those are simple tasks, and will require vision, cooperation, and hard work, the United States is committed to its relationship with Pakistan, to continued engagement, and to building on joint successes.

 

Ambassador Grossman also addressed the video circulating on the internet that has led to protests in a number of countries. Ambassador Grossman stated very clearly, as Secretary Clinton did, “that the United States Government had absolutely nothing to do with this video. We absolutely reject its content and message. America’s commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. And as you know, we are home to people of all religions, many of whom came to this country seeking the right to exercise their own religion, including, of course, millions of Muslims. And we have the greatest respect for people of faith.” “This video is disgusting and reprehensible. It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose: to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage.” But as Secretary Clinton has also said, “there is no justification, none at all, for responding to this video with violence. The United States condemns the violence that has resulted in the strongest terms, and greatly appreciates that many Muslims in the United States and around the world have spoken out on this issue.”

 

In difficult times like these, the United States relies on its partnership with the Government and people of Pakistan to ensure that divisive actions by individuals do not harm the safety of Pakistanis and Americans alike.

 

Finally, Ambassador Grossman offered his condolences for the victims of the tragic fires in Karachi and Lahore this week and expressed appreciation for the condolences offered by the Government of Pakistan for the loss of U.S. diplomats in Libya.

Yesterday I was admonished on my own photostream by one of my contacts for the obsessive nature of my comments, titles, asides, which make it clear that I support Barack Obama in his race for the Presidency. This little dust-up, which irritated me, got me to thinking about what is and what is not appropriate to post-up here, and what is and what is not appropriate to say about the images that I put up here.

Obviously, the wild political statements that I make about these photographs are not literally true about the photographs. I do not know the people in these photographs---many of them, most of them, or perhaps all of them are dead---and they may well have been rock-ribbed Republicans who would never have dreamed of voting for Barack Obama if they had been given the chance.

Certainly I do not mean to mock, demean, or denigrate the people in these photographs---I figure that the Flickites who come over here will know my views are mine alone, and bear no real relation to the photos.

Is it wrong of me to make my political views known on Flickr? That's my next question. Is Flickr just somewhere to put up pretty pictures so we all can gather round and ooh and ahh and say, "Isn't life grand?"

Flickr to me is a much more private space than my front yard. Some people, perhaps because they're apolitical, perhaps because they don't want to offend the neighbors, choose not to put up political signs in their yards. Me, I'd have twenty-five out there if I could get them.

So if I'd put a sign out in my yard, I certainly am going to put a metaphorical sign up on Flickr. This is like coming into my house---I'm not going to hide The New Republic from you because you might think I was a liberal. I am a liberal. There you go, I said it, I am a liberal.

To complicate matters, however, I do have my conservative tendencies. One of my greatest disappointments about the Bush era is that I thought, along with all the things I didn't like about him (back in 2000), that at least I was going to get a fiscal conservative, someone who at least would continue Bill Clinton's balanced budgets (oh, I forgot, Bill Clinton actually had us drawing down the deficit at the end of his term). Instead, of course, after eight years of Bush we find ourselves at the bottom of a Grand Canyon of debt---we had a spendthrift Republican president and a spendthrift Democratic congress.

I want Barack Obama to win not because I agree with him, point-by-point, on everything he says. I want him to win because I think, on balance, that he will do a better job (actually, a much better job) leading our country than John McCain. Any President will do some things I disagree with. No President will be perfect. Any President will make compromises that are more or less disagreeable. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, for Christ'ssake. What could be more un-American than that?

I have a friend up in Greensboro named John Fisher. Actually, I guess I'd say that John is my best friend, though I only see him once a month or so, and, for various reasons, we don't communicate much by phone or email.

I first worked for John back in the 70's. He owned a Servicemaster franchise, and I cleaned carpets and furniture for him. He was the best boss I ever had. He never got flustered, he never was unreasonable, but he let you know exactly what he thought and what he wanted done. If we broke something or messed something up, like some woman's Tiffany lamp that came over with her ancestors on the Mayflower, he could go out and talk to the client and make it right. I got really close to John and his family---sometimes I would stay for dinner after work, and he and Hazel even let me babysit their kids.

The only fly in the ointment was that John was a staunch Republican. He comes from a conservative religious North Carolina background and, well, it was just natural for him to have a conservative outlook. If he had gone to Duke I could have understood it better, but he went to Carolina, so I'm not sure where he went wrong.

Anyway, when Ronald Reagan came along, I couldn't take it anymore. My guy was down (Jimmy Carter) and getting kicked, and then when Mondale came along, and Reagan was already getting senile, my guy got kicked some more. John was gleeful in his ascendancy, and I was seething.

And to my shame, I let our friendship wither. And I let it stay that way for a long time.

And then finally, a few years ago, I reestablished contact with John, and for the past three or four years, we've been great friends again.

John is still the same old John. He was a dedicated supporter of Bush Two, and nowadays, he's a defender of Sarah Palin. She has more executive experience than Barack Obama, and thus is more qualified to be president, he says. I think there's a grain of partisan bias in his rhetoric, but my point is, he has his viewpoint, I have my viewpoint, and we're still friends. At times our talks get serious, and John will make a point or ask a question that forces me to challenge my own assumptions.

Our verbal sparring is pretty much non-stop, but it doesn't get in the way of our recognition of our common humanity.

So here's the bottom line: the Election is coming up, and my guy is on top. Barring the Invasion of the Pod People (think Cindy McCain), my guy is going to win. You got your licks in when your Guy was winning, and now, for a few days, I'm going to get my licks in. If you've got some comeback or rejoinder, if you want to wade into the fray, if you want to engage in some friendly Verbal Sparring, have at it. But this is my frontyard, and if I want to put up a sign that advertises my beliefs, I have that right.

After November 4th, when the caca hits the windmill and my guy has to actually begin to govern, we can get back to normal. For now, however, this rooster intends to crow.

One other thing---this is of course the reason that you should vote for Barack Obama, even if you don't agree with him about anything. He has a positive take on the future, and John McCain doesn't. Say what you will about Ronald Reagan---beyond his politics, he had that attitude of "It's Morning In America," and Americans responded to that, and they were turned off by Jimmy Carter's "malaise."

We have a helluva job ahead of us, righting this ship, and we're going to need all the positive we can get. Vote for Obama.

 

www.globaltimes.cn/page/202212/1281909.shtml

 

US has made its Africa strategy a Gordian knot: Global Times editorial

 

The second US-Africa Leaders Summit kicked off on Tuesday in Washington and will last for three days. The US-based Foreign Policy magazine reported that "Team Biden wants to court African nations without talking about Beijing." But this was broken on the first day. At a panel discussion with several African leaders, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said China was expanding its footprint in Africa "on a daily basis" through its growing economic influence, which will "destabilize" the continent.

 

African countries have been wearied of US' various remarks aiming to sow discord. This time, coming all the way to the US, the leaders of 49 countries and the African Union are not to have dinner at the White House, not to be lectured by Americans, nor to hear Americans bad-mouthing China. As a matter of fact, they have clearly shown their reluctance and aversion towards the pressure piled on them to take sides, and ask the US to respect them.

 

The day ahead of the summit, the US pledged to provide $55 billion to Africa over the course of the next three years in economic, health and security support for Africa. Then, the US announced an expansion of its cooperation and capabilities in outer space to include some African countries. It is reported that during the summit, President Joe Biden will declare US support for the African Union's admission to the G20. These are of course good things. Now that the US has made so many promises, it should focus on fulfilling it.

 

China is willing to see more countries, including the US, offer sincere help to Africa, as the saying goes, "the more the better." African countries also are eager to seek strong support and assistance to deal with the food crisis, financial crisis, and fiscal crisis in the post-pandemic era. In this regard, there are many things the US can, needs and should do. But what's concerning is if the US will play the "lip service" trick once again.

 

The first US-Africa Leaders Summit was held eight years ago during the Obama administration. The two summits were separated by not only eight years, but also a US president who insulted African countries as "shithole," which has become a historical witness of US' capriciousness and disrespect for Africa.

 

The Power Africa initiative, which was proposed during the Obama administration, has only completed about 25 percent of the total. Now that the Biden administration wants to regain the trust of Africa, it must first repay these debts.

 

The US has made its Africa strategy a Gordian knot. It has set its goal to prevent China's development in the African continent instead of helping African countries cope with development difficulties, which fundamentally goes against the wishes of African countries and damages their interests. In other words, the US wants to let African countries pry away the bricks of the projects built with China's aid, by only painting a few pieces of cake.

 

In the past, the US regarded the African continent as a problem that it disliked and needed to be solved, but now it regards Africa as a pawn in the major power competition. It never really regards Africa as a cooperative partner of equality, mutual benefit and mutual respect. Not only African countries have been keenly aware of this, but the international community also sees it clearly.

 

The African people still have fresh memories of the proxy wars waged by the US and the Soviet Union in Africa during the Cold War, making them deeply guard against big power competition. With the world becoming more multipolarized, they are even more opposed to and resistant to be regarded as a pawn in the strategy of major countries.

 

The US Strategy toward Sub-Saharan Africa released in August mentioned China three times, all of which described China in a negative context, arousing extensive dissatisfaction in Africa. A well-known South African scholar bluntly pointed out that this strategy is "thoroughly unremarkable strategy that came across as the latest in a long list of paternalistic lectures the US and the broader West have given Africa on how to run its affairs." And it seems that Washington "has not read the African mood very well."

 

African countries hope to build good relationship with the US, but they don't want to achieve it at the cost of China-Africa development and cooperation. China is Africa's largest trading partner, with trade volume reaching $254 billion in 2021, which is four times that of US-Africa trade. China is also one of the countries with the largest investment to Africa, bringing millions of job opportunities to the continent. Hospitals, highways, airports, stadiums which are built with Chinese aid are all over Africa. The US can be like China and do more practical things for African people. If the US-Africa Leaders Summit can be held around this theme, it will be welcome by everybody.

  

www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/biden-aims-to-inject-new-ene...

 

Biden Aims to Inject New Energy Into US Relations With African Nations

 

WASHINGTON — President Biden sought to revitalize America’s listless relationship with Africa on Wednesday, promising a grab bag of economic initiatives to make up for a predecessor who had denigrated the continent and catch up with strategic competitors like China that have expanded their influence.

 

Assembling most of Africa’s leaders in Washington for the first time since 2014, Mr. Biden vowed to invest what aides calculated will be $55 billion on the continent over the next three years while supporting its ambitions for greater global leadership and bolstering efforts to transform it into a more prosperous, healthier and technologically advanced region.

 

“The United States is all in on Africa’s future,” Mr. Biden declared in an address to the delegations of 49 nations attending the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. Adapting a line he often uses to pitch domestic priorities, the president added, “Together, we want to build a future of opportunity where no one, no one, is left behind.”

 

The three-day gathering may go a long way toward emphasizing American support for Africa, with concrete pledges on issues of great importance. At the same time, it did not include a sweeping, inspirational initiative like President George W. Bush’s PEPFAR program to combat AIDS or President Barack Obama’s Power Africa drive to electrify tens of millions of homes. Unclear was whether Mr. Biden’s less splashy commitments would have an effect that would be noticed and positively shape perceptions of America.

 

The United States is widely seen as lagging behind China in cultivating Africa, a geopolitical contest that in recent years has expanded to include powers like Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated food shortages in Africa while Covid-19 has disrupted supply chains, multiplying challenges in a region with no shortage of them to begin with.

 

American influence in Africa dwindled under Mr. Biden’s predecessor, Donald J. Trump, who paid little attention to the continent except to deride some of its 54 nations with an expletive and to complain that after immigrants from Nigeria saw the United States, they would never “go back to their huts.” Mr. Trump spoke of Africa as if the entire continent were a single country, and once confused the name of an African nation.

 

Without mentioning any of that history, Mr. Biden sought to demonstrate affection for the region, celebrating the visiting African leaders and their spouses at a gala dinner at the White House featuring Gladys Knight on Wednesday night and honoring Morocco’s success as the first African nation to make the final four in the World Cup.

 

“I know you’re saying to yourselves, ‘Make it short, Biden, there’s a semifinal game coming up,’” he joked as he opened his speech just 13 minutes before game time. (Morocco fell to France, 2-0.)

 

At the dinner in the White House East Room, Mr. Biden raised the more painful history of slavery. “We remember the stolen men and women and children who were brought to our shores in chains, subjected to unimaginable cruelty — my nation’s original sin was that period,” he said. Their descendants, he added, “have helped build this country and propel it to higher heights, leading the charge, blazing new trails and forging a better future for everyone in America.”

 

In the course of his interactions with African leaders, the president unveiled a series of initiatives, including an agreement meant to encourage the formation of a continentwide free-trade zone that has stalled over the last few years. He vowed to help African countries do more to transition to clean energy and plug into the digital economy, a contrast to China, which has focused much of its investment in Africa on building roads, bridges, airports and other physical infrastructure.

 

Mr. Biden said in his keynote address that the goal was not to “create political obligation or foster dependence” but to “spur shared success,” a phrase he said characterized his approach. “Because when Africa succeeds, the United States succeeds,” he said. “Quite frankly, the whole world succeeds as well.”

 

The Biden administration has sought to deflect the perception that its efforts this week were aimed at competing with China, which has surpassed the United States in trade and economic cooperation with Africa.

 

But the emphasis put on Africa was an implicit recognition that the United States has little choice but to commit to the continent, which is projected to account for one in four people by 2050 and is rich in the resources needed to combat climate change and transition to clean energy, like vast forests and rare minerals used to power electric vehicles.

 

Mr. Biden’s challenge was to convince the African leaders that he was serious about wanting to trade with them. Many were openly skeptical. At a side event in Washington hours before Mr. Biden spoke, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda shrugged when asked if anything had come out of the inaugural U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit hosted by Mr. Obama in 2014.

 

“Well, at least we had a good meeting,” he replied, drawing laughter from the crowd.

 

Mr. Biden planned to return to the summit at the Washington Convention Center on Thursday for a session on the African Union’s strategic vision for the continent. Vice President Kamala Harris will host a working lunch, and Mr. Biden will close the gathering with a discussion of food security.

 

The Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine provided Mr. Biden with an entry point for his pitch to Africa’s leaders, reminding them that the United States delivered 231 million vaccines to 49 African countries.

 

Yet the war in Ukraine also underscored the scale of American priorities. A mistake by Mr. Biden in his speech underscored the context. He described a digital economy initiative for Africa as a $350 billion investment, when in fact it will be $350 million, as noted in the official White House transcript correcting the president’s error. By contrast, the Biden administration and Congress have committed $66 billion to the war in Ukraine and the White House has just asked Congress for another $37.7 billion.

 

Some analysts wondered whether the roster of projects ticked off by the president and his aides this week would be more effective than a single broad initiative like those introduced by Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama.

 

“When I hear a laundry list, a long list of investments, that’s just showing what the U.S. is doing,” said Aubrey Hruby of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council. “But I don’t know if that sinks in very well. Whereas with Power Africa it was simpler, perhaps more memorable. It drew on the power of the podium.”

 

“The key,” she added, “will be what people remember one month from now. Or one year from now. What becomes real.”

 

The digital economy project includes a partnership with Microsoft and programs to train African entrepreneurs to write code. “American big tech recognizes that the demographic future of this world is African,” Ms. Hruby said. “A million Africans turn 18 every month. This is the future.”

 

As ever in this week’s summit, China was the unspoken factor. When Mr. Biden announced $800 million in new contracts for Cisco Systems and a smaller company named Cybastion “to protect African countries from cyberthreats,” it offered a counterpoint to the dominance of Huawei, the Chinese technology firm whose cellphones and computers systems are ubiquitous across Africa, stoking fears that Beijing could use them for cyberespionage.

 

The Biden administration this week announced its support for an initiative to use minerals mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo to make batteries for electric vehicles in factories in neighboring Zambia. That deal meets the African goal of keeping supply chains for one of the world’s hottest new businesses on the continent.

 

It also meets an American strategic objective, countering worries in Washington that China is obtaining a stranglehold on rare minerals in countries like Congo.

 

The administration also signed a memorandum of understanding to support the African Continental Free Trade Area, which was started in 2019 and promises to unlock the enormous economic potential of a continent of 1.3 billion people and a total market of $3.4 trillion by easing trade barriers between individual countries.

 

Africa’s mostly colonial-era borders are further heightened by protectionist policies, poor transport links and other measures that hinder trade. The free-trade area could increase intra-Africa trade by up to one-quarter, or $70 billion, by 2040, helping to lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty, according to the United Nations and the World Bank. But implementation has been slow, and experts say that assistance from the United States and other foreign powers is needed to bolster its chances of success.

 

Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, said the current administration has been working hard to restore ties to Africa over the nearly two years since Mr. Trump left office.

 

“Look, any time an administration chooses not to put as much energy or emphasis into a place, it obviously has some ramifications,” he told reporters this week. But “we believe that we are not coming into this summit from a standing start. We’re coming into this summit with a head of steam around a set of issues that this summit, I think, is going to kick into a higher gear.”

"I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'." - Bob Newhart

 

Maren Morris - O2 Ritz Manchester 20th November 2017

Maxwell Graf, Stephen Venkman, PJ Trenton. Bit of a lark in Rowan Derryth's PLURK quickly denigrated thanks to moi. The lads were very kind and obliged me setting up and taking this candid snap.

  

democracystreet.blogspot.com/search?q=Karousos

 

democracystreet.blogspot.com/2009/07/noboro-fujishima-dir...

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpjSUhHgBOI

 

Up at 5.30 for a day in London; cycle to Digbeth for a coach to Victoria (£9.40 return, and my folding bike in its bag accepted as luggage) then a District Line Underground to Kew, with a packed lunch from Lin.

 

The British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands, including Corfu, was headed by thirteen governors or rather a 'Commissioner' changed to 'Lord High Commissioners' - Sir James Campbell in 1814; half a century and twelve commissioners later, Sir Henry Storks, and overseeing the transition to union - enosis, Ένωσις - in 1864 with the Hellenic monarchy, the Greek Count Dimitrios Nikolaou Karousos. The formal and informal writings, official reports, petitions, newspaper extracts, copies of letters sent and received (those in French, Greek and Italian translated into English) along with marginal comments are bound in heavy volumes bearing the impress of the Colonial Office can be studied in the Reading Room of The National Archives at Kew, which I visited for the first time yesterday, in pursuit of unsatisfied curiosity about what Robert Holland and Diana Markides call The Abandonment of the Ionian Protectorate 1859-1864 in their fascinating history - The British and the Hellenes.

I'm also on a long delayed errand following the letter I got from Thanassis Spingos and Kostas Apergis in Ano Korakiana in December 2007:

 

Dear Simon. It is said that before the Union of the Ionian Islands with Greece (1864), inhabitants of Ano Korakiana signed a 'paper' asking the British Government to keep the islands under Britain...We have been looking for this paper for years at the Greek archives without result. We wonder if you can help us by searching this paper in British archives (Parliament, Colonies archives, Foreign Office etc). We are sure that one of the names that signed the paper is Panos, Panayiotis or Panagiotis Metallinos (Μετταλινος). He was the 'leader'. A similar paper has been signed by inhabitants of Kinopiastes (another village in Corfu) and one village in Zakynthos island...

 

When I see Kostas or Thannassis I feel embarrassed at my delay. I think I've feared not finding the document they asked me about - through lack of diligence; through not being able to read the language in which it may be couched. After five hours hefting requested books from the locker allocated me in the Reading Room to my allocated desk I'd had a fascinating dip into original sources, gaining confidence as I went along, especially as all documents in Greek or Italian have an English translation attached. Only some of the handwriting is hard to follow.

I'd arrived as an ingénue. The staff at the National Archives are pros - bright, unpatronising. The place teems with people who know their way - veteran researchers - and others, like me, there for the first time.

First step was leaving my folding bicycle and bag in a cloakroom chained 'keep your key...put your laptop and pencils - no pens - in a transparent plastic bag.' Then came the daily briefing for newbies on how to get started - 20 minutes helpful guidance; then to 'The Learning Zone', a few yards away on the same floor where a bank of helpers, screens on-line to the archives, gave hints on catalogue searching. To see Ionian Protectorate documents I'd need a reader's card. That involved five minutes being photographed and showing ID - driving licence and a utility bill.

I haven't done original text research for so long, it was like going back to school without the trepidation. Finally I strolled through a polite security check, swiped my new card and came to the Reading Room where I asked for the documents suggested by Eleni Calligas, the young scholar who knows her way around these sources as well as anyone, an expert in Ionian politics and Hellenic nationalism:

 

I would suggest that the best place to look is the High Commissioner's Correspondence at the Colonial Office archive of the Protection, housed in the Public Record Office, now re-named National Archives but still held at the Kew. I would look at the last couple of years, from 1862 onwards - probably starting from CO136/177 to /184. If such a petition does exist and is signed by inhabitants of the village, it would be interesting to identify the local figure of importance, as the initiative probably emanated from there.

 

I found no petition from Ano Korakiana nor any of the senior names of the village - Savvanis, Vradis, Mandilas, Ionas, Markos, Metallinos, Laskaris, Kaloudis, Linosporis, Reggis, Balatsinos, Kendarchos or Kefallonitis - nor from Kinopiastes - about 6 miles south of Corfu Town - nor, indeed, from any village on the island.

This does not really surprise me. I understand from Kostas and Thannassis that the two villages on Corfu, and another whose name I don't know on Zakinthos, were opposed to enosis, and even today, of the island's eighteen bands, the philharmonic orchestras of Korakiana and Kinopiastes do not play at the celebrations of Unification Day held in Corfu each 21 May.

It's possible the petition, if it was a petition on paper rather than a representation delivered orally to Sir Henry, has disappeared from the record, or was never allowed to appear on it. Given the profile of enthusiasm displayed for enosis and the denigration of pro-English sentiments reported by Sir Henry Stork, it's possible that opposition was expressed a lot more privately than support.

I shall search the Storks files again, and look also at Foreign Office files, but it may be that I need to go back to the extraordinary tenure of the High Commissioner's Palace, William Gladstone, over seven weeks between the 24 November 1858 and the 19 February 1859. Perhaps it was during those weeks, before enosis seemed quite so foregone a conclusion, that the elders of Ano Korakiana and others delivered petitions against the ending of the Protectorate.

Such opinions may be unrealistic; they are still expressed, thus Harry Tsoukalas, a business man on the island, planning to stand in the 2009 EU elections in a week: "These things are anathema to say but the truth is that unification with Greece was the darkest day in our history. It was a huge mistake that we have regretted ever since." In Chapter two of their book, Holland and Markides, report Gladstone visiting Athens as part of his Ionian mission. While there he sounded out Ionian and Greek politician on the idea of unification:

This analysis stressed 'a divided sentiment' in Greek thinking on the matter, so that union was 'feared as well as desired'.The desire sprang from a natural inclination to cohabit with fellow Hellenes; the fear from the prospect of incorporating a branch of their race whose competitive abilities and education were so finely honed. In sum, the Greeks of the kingdom were fearful that union would turn out to be 'an annexation of Greece to the Islands, not of the Island's to Greece. (p.32)

In a letter to the Duke of Newcastle, Colonial Office Minister, dated 23.12.1862, received in London, Sir Henry Storks includes a translation of an unsigned note in Greek found in Corfu Town:

 

May the curses of St Spixidion(?)* light on him, who cries long live union with Greece.

  

*Almost certainly St.Spyridon, the island's protective patron saint.

117/365

 

“The logic of displaying one’s inner qualities through outward appearance was based on a distinction between being a woman and being feminine, according to the sociologist Beverley Skeggs.

 

‘Woman’ was considered a biological category, but femininity was a ‘process’ by which women became specific kinds of women.

 

‘Appearance became a signifier of conduct; to look was to be,’ Skeggs wrote in 2001.

 

Conformity to the feminine ideal was measured by how well (or how poorly) women could use the tools of the fashion and beauty industries.

 

Naturally, this meant femininity was inaccessible to those who didn’t have the money or time to be active consumers.

 

This is why, even today, the denigration of working-class women and women of colour often centres on their perceived failure to embody feminine beauty.” ―Michael Lovelock

 

aeon.co/essays/whats-behind-the-urge-to-uncover-an-authen...

Phoolan Devi. The Bandit Queen of India (1963-2001) is a fascinating woman who became a bandit and outlaw after an abusive childhood and suffering repeated abuse throughout her adult life. She is a fighter and a real Robin Hood character, brought up in a lower caste family, Phoolan Devi went on to rob the rich upper castes and give the money to the poor and needy.

 

After a family argument that resulted in her being knocked out with a brick, Phoolan Devi was classed as 'troublemaker' and married off to an older man who lived several hundred miles away from her family home. The man was in his 30's and Phoolan Devi was 11. She referred to her husband as a man of 'very bad character'. He repeatedly raped and mistreated her and when he was finished he returned her back to her family for having 'failed to fulfil her wifely duties'. A wife 'leaving' her husband was/is a serious taboo in India and Phoolan was marked as a social outcast.

 

In 1979, Phoolan was reported to the police by her cousin for stealing small items from his house, during her three days in prison she was beaten and raped by the authorities. It was around this time that she started to develop a deep hatred for men who abused and denigrated women. When released from prison she was shunned even more from society.

 

Later that year a gang of bandits (dacoits) abducted Phoolan. The gang leader wanted to rape her, but the second in command stopped him and eventually killed the leader for his attempts to rape Phoolan. He became gang leader himself and married Phoolan who joined the gang of bandits.

 

The gang ransacked the village where Phoolan's ex-husband and abuser lived, Phoolan took her revenge and stabbed him to death, dragging his body out onto the streets with a note around his neck warning other men who marry young girls.

 

Phoolan became trained in shooting and fighting. The gang she was part of ransacked high-caste villages, kidnapping upper caste landowners for ransom, the proceeds were shared out to the poor. After every crime Phoolan would visit a Durga temple and thank the goddess for her protection.

 

Some time later, two old gang members arrived- outraged by the murder of the old gang leader, they took revenge killing Phoolan's husband and subjecting her to numerous beatings, she was again raped by several men. After three weeks of abuse she managed to escape.

 

17 months after her escape Phoolan returned to take her revenge. On 14th February 1981 Phoolan and her gang marched into town dressed as police officers. It is said that the two men who had raped Phoolan and murdered her husband were lined up along with all the upper caste villagers and shot. 22 people were killed.

 

A massive police manhunt failed to locate Phoolan Devi. She was glorified in the Indian media and called The Bandit Queen. Dolls of Phoolan Devi dressed as the Hindu goddess Durga were sold in market towns in Uttar Pradesh.

 

Two years after the massacre police had still not captured Phoolan Devi. She, herself, was in poor health and most of her gang were dead. In February 1983 she agreed to surrender to the authorities with a list of conditions. She spent 11 years in jail whilst waiting for a trail date. She was released on parole in 1994; the government of Uttar Pradesh withdrew all charges against her.

 

​Phoolan Devi worked in Indian politics until her murder in 2001, the gang members responsible have still not been tried and charged for the crime.

 

phoolan devi

 

revolutionary women

 

Why is this PG guy special ?

 

I've been thinking about this idea and by re-phrasing your question, "Why are certain people special?". I think you can make this a more general case than just one person working in a narrow field. But I'll confine my observations to the technology world and software world specifically.

 

So why are certain people special?

 

Maybe it has the same reason that in the past "what made them so un-popular". [0] The intellectual curiosity, ability to see change to "what is possible" instead of what is common practice. Seems harmless doesn't it? But a core mindset of questioning current practice and suggesting a new possibility instead of blind acceptance is threatening and outright dangerous talk to followers. I've observed that in certain types of decision making there are "leaders" and "followers". I'm pretty sure there is a good reason for it. From birth to the time you are old enough to go out into the world you generally accept what you are told is "the right way" to do things. This works for routine decisions like cleaning your teeth, twice every day to avoid decay. For a fair percentage of the population, doing what you are taught, told or pressured to do is pretty much the norm. Don't question why? Follow the standard procedures, get the job done. We need this type of thinking and obedience so we don't fall into chaos. Life is complicated enough without having to make hundreds of non-trivial decisions every week. What about other non-trivial decisions?

 

- Leaders, followers: Sometimes you have take lead in order to change. There are some that recognise you can improve a process by changing it. Then make those changes, Going against the norm, bucking the system. Continuing change in the face of criticism. You can see this clearly in Art. Whole art movements can be turned upside down by one group or individual artists exhibiting paintings. Science & technology is fundamentally driven by change and what is new. Old ideas are swept aside and new industries created when the fundamental understanding of a new idea is made public through experiments, papers and media. Usually by individuals, never whole teams.

 

- Communication: The ability to get an idea across is probably a good idea. So anyone who write, speak and argue rhetoric is a good bet. The Internet has really expanded this ability to communicate. Before the Internet, you had to read great ideas filtered through the whims of Journalists in your local newspapers. If you where lucky (or if the writer was lucky) you might read their ideas in Journals or trade magazines.

 

- Makers: Building your own tools is another. I don't what it is about having to make your own tools. Maybe it's the "dog-food" syndrome. Something inside makers that compels them to think up new ways to do things. Making you own stuff also keeps you humble. If you build your own things, you have a greater understanding of what you think and talk about. Less prone to the fancy talk of speculation. [1]

 

- Scepticism, cynicism: Take an idea, problem or situation, as is. Critical questioning the validity instead of trying to take the cheap route of downplaying a good ideas with cynicism. Instead propose a viable alternative. There is a fine line between scepticism and cynicism. The former if taken on the chin allows you to improve. The later as a means to destroy and denigrate.

 

- Generosity or meanness: When was the last time Bill Gates wrote about business, software or gave something away for free? I hear Steve Jobs hasn't got the time so he employs a "blog double" to write on his behalf. [2] In a gift culture, the generosity of the written word, software or ideas displays a "special quality". Show don't tell. Show through speech, the written word, software. These things are free but rich to consume.

 

- Smashing the 'status quo': In technology, there is more reward in making new things instead of re-hashing the old. New ideas and movements in technology are periodic. They come and go. So being able to not only question the "status quo" but smash it open is a bonus. This is the most dangerous quality. It's easy to follow. It's much harder to put you time, effort and reputation on the line.

 

Some people in the tech-world who have these "special qualities". To some degree or another I'd include Phil Greenspun, Joel Spolsky, Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, Brewster Kahle. There are probably others that I don't know about. But these are the qualities I'd look for.

 

Of all the qualities I observe, I think smashing the "status-quo" is the most admirable. There is something "deliciously subversive" in not answering to a "boss". In not having to work at the yolk of another's Company. To work on your own ideas, in your time. Instead of someone else's half baked ones at times they set. Then try to profit from them. To question the very nature of what is considered "traditional work".

 

That idea alone makes Paul Graham special.

 

Reference

 

[0] paulgraham.com/nerds.html

 

[1] Take for instance the amount of blogs on google appengine. Most are speculating and not talking about the problems building applications.

 

[2] fakesteve.blogspot.com/

  

<<< start

Cycling down the Kingstanding Road, Birmingham city centre in the distance. This road is an example of an older idea of suburban development. A dual carriageway which with several others heading out of the city on the main compass points carries mainly buses and - in the central reservation - trams. Well spaced houses with large gardens once backed on to countryside between radial roads which head out of the city like a spider's legs joining outlying villages to create local shopping centres usually with the third public transport element, railway stations - also linked to buses and trams. How did this seemingly sensible concept of suburban development turn into what is now denigrated as urban sprawl?

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_sprawl

 

The concept of radial ribbon development foundered with the growth of car ownership. Cars, being more versatile at going door to door, could access places between the radials more efficiently than buses, trams or trains. As a result the countryside between the radials became ripe for housing development, leaving the houses on the original radial carriageway with a noisy motorised frontage and no more countryside behind as new-build filled all the spaces between the legs of the 'spider'. The acceleration of this process has been referred to as 'garden grabbing', as householders seeking profit start to sell off even their garden for further house building.

 

In the process the sense of place associated with the railway stations in what had once been detached villages disappeared as all merged into the general suburban sprawl that prompted a series of Town and Country Planning laws which included the idea of a 'green belt' around cities to inhibit building on what remained of their surrounding countryside.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_and_country_planning_in_the_Un...

 

This process has been well documented by Peter Newman and Jeffery Kenworthy in their book 'Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence'. In her book "The Life and Death of Great American Cities" written in the 1960s Jane Jacobs embraced complexity as a goal in itself. "How" she asked "can cities generate enough mixture among uses, enough diversity throughout enough of their territories, to sustain their own civilisation?" For Newman and Kenworthy the key idea is "sustainability" - "one of the most diversely applied concepts among academics and professionals discussing the future" that "has cut across all disciplines and professions and has developed many complexities." The car enters Newman and Kenworthy's consideration as a technology of widening individual choice, so what paradoxical consequence has meant that its proliferation has blighted what it might have been expected to nurture?

 

books.google.co.uk/books?id=pjatbiavDZYC&printsec=fro...

 

Newman and Kenworthy argue that the car, unlike public transport, offered people who could afford it freedom to live anywhere in a city and get quickly to any other part of it. It appeared to remove the need to plan land-use. Anything could be built just about anywhere with drivers determining their own routes to and from home to work, shops, schools and entertainment. In the "car-city" - which Newman & Kenworthy distinguish from the "pedestrian" and the "transit" city - it is possible to develop in any direction and not just along rivers, tramlines or railways. Dispersed low density housing becomes accessible and popular. Town planners can separate residential from industrial zones accelerating decentralisation. In spaces teeming with DIY transport connections, developers needed only to provide power and water and car owners would embrace responsibility for deciding for themselves how to move between the services they felt they needed. Public and commercial buildings no longer needed to cluster together as a product of the convergence of private and public investment in a particular place. Public transport constricted by timetables and fixed routes became a second class mode of travel. Such freedom as it might have offered was limited even further by its growing subordination - economic and infrastructural - to the needs of road circulation. The problems appeared slowly as governments built and planned urban environments in which car reliance was a desired norm and car ownership the focus of popular aspiration and expectation.

 

The realisation that this alliance of car travel and government action in support of road traffic circulation might lead to less freedom and massive costs to business has been a long time coming. Where the car city has been taken to extremes as in Newman and Kenworthy's intellectual territory - America and Australia - there is growing awareness that driving people off streets, creating boundaries round or overrunning large acreages within towns of those places - parks, squares, promenades, pavements - which had served as milieus for human interaction, is a recipe for urban blight. To achieve sustainability a wedge of new economic logic is being driven between the car and its enduring connection with wealth, prosperity and the good life.

 

The car especially once it ceased to be an indulgence of the rich, always represented a fine balance between liberation and dependency. Today, the choices promised by cars are linked with increasing transparency to those they take away. Everyone knows about exhaust emissions and most drivers, outside of advertisements, experience worsening road conditions. There is growing despondency among those who would like to use their cars less. They realise alternatives won't work unless people switch in large numbers to other ways of getting around. But the public space needed to take to the streets to walk or cycle and take trains and buses is not available. Many see public space as hazardous for themselves, and perilous for their children. Those with a choice are reluctant to enter it except to take the few paces between car, home, school and shopping centre. Deprivations long imposed on people without cars apply, with increasing force, to people with them. New technology may reduce vehicle emissions, but it cannot recover the enormous interaction space that has been taken out of circulation by road traffic. Yet before that lost social space can become available for people outside cars, a legal and moral space has still to be reclaimed.

 

This is why the idea of sustainability is slowly turning into a value. It is the big idea that government and business needs, which legitimates regulation and induces compliance. It offers space for the entrepreneurs of the future, exciting third world urban planners who want to leap a stage in the longer industrial revolutions of richer nations. It is an idea around which people are ready to form alliances that go beyond their own interests; a concept which "did not come so much from academic discussion as from a global political process." Newman and Kenworthy speak of their book being "many years in preparation", a book that is a "combination of text book and life story" deriving from work with city government's and voluntary groups around the world attempting to address a major global and local issue of how people "can simultaneously reduce their impact on earth while improving their quality of life".

 

This books aims to show how a city's use of land determines and is determined by its dominant forms of transport. Its authors describe in rich detail how policies aimed at creating sustainable relationships between humans and their environment necessarily revolve around a city's land-use-transport formula.

 

More on carfree cities at: www.carfree.com/

More on automobile-dependency: www.worldchanging.com/archives/010821.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_dependency

Colonial Williamsburg is the historic district of the independent city of Williamsburg, Virginia. Colonial Williamsburg consists of many of the buildings that formed the original colonial capital of Williamsburg in James City County from 1699 to 1780 with all traces of later buildings removed.

 

Colonial Williamsburg is an example of a living history museum, an open-air assemblage of buildings populated with historical reenactors whose job it is to explain and demonstrate aspects of daily life in the past. The reenactors (or interpreters) work, dress, and talk as they would have in colonial times. While there are many living history museums (such as Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts or Castell Henllys in the UK), Colonial Williamsburg is unusual for having been constructed from a living town whose inhabitants and post-Colonial-era buildings were removed. Unlike other living history museums, however, anyone can walk through the historic district of Williamsburg free of charge at any hour of the day. Charges apply only to those visitors who wish to enter the historic buildings to see arts and crafts demonstrations during daylight hours, or attend scheduled outdoor performances such as the Revolutionary City programs.

 

Early in the 20th century, the restoration and recreation of Colonial Williamsburg, one of the largest historic restorations ever undertaken, was championed by the Reverend Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who wanted to celebrate the patriots and the early history of the United States.

 

Some of the missing Colonial structures were recreated on their original sites during the 1930s. Many other structures were restored to the best estimates of how they would have looked during the eighteenth century. Most buildings are open for tourists to look through.

 

A main source of tourism to Williamsburg, Virginia and the surrounding area, Williamsburg is meant to be an interpretation of a Colonial American city with exhibits including dozens of authentic or accurately-recreated colonial houses, American Revolutionary War history exhibits, and the town jail, which includes an authentic stocks and pillory display. Other notable structures include the large Capitol and the Governor's Palace, each carefully recreated and landscaped as closely as possible to original 18th century specifications. Dependency structures and animals help complete the ambiance.

 

Colonial Williamsburg is owned and operated as a living museum by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the non-profit entity endowed by the Rockefeller family. Although it is not directly affiliated with the nearby Colonial National Historical Park, the nearby Colonial Parkway and attractions at Jamestown and Yorktown presented by state and federal entities are complementary adjuncts to the restored area of the colonial city. With Colonial Williamsburg as its centerpiece, the Historic Triangle of Virginia is a much visited tourist destination. However, attendance at Colonial Williamsburg peaked in 1985 at 1.1 million, and has been in decline ever since.[2]

 

Ada Louise Huxtable, noted architecture critic, wrote in 1965: "Williamsburg is an extraordinary, conscientious and expensive exercise in historical playacting in which real and imitation treasures and modern copies are carelessly confused in everyone's mind. Partly because it is so well done, the end effect has been to devalue authenticity and denigrate the genuine heritage of less picturesque periods to which an era and a people gave life."[1]

 

A more nuanced interpretation may be that of University of Virginia Professor of Architectural History Richard Guy Wilson, who notes that Colonial Williamsburg is a superb example of an American suburb of the 1930s, with its inauthentically tree-lined streets of Colonial Revival houses and segregated commerce.

 

*Wikipedia

Located at number 19 Camp Street in the former Gold Rush town of Daylesford, the former St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church offers wonderful views as it looks down from the high side of the road, across the township, now known for its natural mineral springs and day spas.

 

Built in 1903 under the benefaction of Jessie Leggatt, who laid the foundation stone on the 9th of December that year, St Andrew’s is not unlike the Castlemaine Presbyterian Church in Lyttleton Street. Built of red brick with sandstone detailing, St Andrew’s has been built in a Picturesque Gothic style with adaptations of both Florentine and Pauduan Gothic. It features a splendid slate roof, and has been built in a symmetrical style, with two hexagonal towers to either side of the enclosed loggia entrance. The taller of the towers on the left hand side serves also as the church’s belfry and has a crenellated parapet and a copper covered spire. The gable over the front doors is pierced with a traceried window with two mullions in early English decorated style. The small gables of the transepts are pierced with single mullioned windows of the same period. The interior is filled with magnificent original features including stained glass windows, ceiling roses, cathedral ceilings, lovely old floorboards and an extremely rare church organ.

 

In the intervening years since 1903, Daylesford has gone through many changes, going from a town populated by citizens seeking to make their fortunes in gold, to those come to seek rest and relaxation in this now resort town in central Victoria. With parish numbers dwindling, the Presbyterian Church has seen fit to close the doors of St Andrew’s, opting for a smaller and less formal presence in the town’s community centre. At the time of photographing, St Andrew’s is up for sale, and has had council approval for the construction of apartments and town houses in the rear of the property and the adaptation of the church itself into a single or multiple dwellings. With an asking price just short of one million dollars, to date there has been very little interest in the property, and so St Andrew’s falls slowly, but surely into decay as neglect sinks in. The grass grows high around its bluestone foundations; graffiti denigrates Jessie Leggatt’s memorial plaque in the entranceway; the painted archway above the gates rots, save for the faded letters that spell out St Andrew’s in weathered greyish white flecks, and the old weatherboard Sunday School sags into the briars. A large holly tree, planted when the church was first built still sits at the side, waiting, like the church, for a new lease of life like other former churches in the area.

 

bad-mouth someone

drag someone through the mud

to defame someone

to denigrate

 

literally: to hang dogs on someone

Located at number 19 Camp Street in the former Gold Rush town of Daylesford, the former St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church offers wonderful views as it looks down from the high side of the road, across the township, now known for its natural mineral springs and day spas.

 

Built in 1903 under the benefaction of Jessie Leggatt, who laid the foundation stone on the 9th of December that year, St Andrew’s is not unlike the Castlemaine Presbyterian Church in Lyttleton Street. Built of red brick with sandstone detailing, St Andrew’s has been built in a Picturesque Gothic style with adaptations of both Florentine and Pauduan Gothic. It features a splendid slate roof, and has been built in a symmetrical style, with two hexagonal towers to either side of the enclosed loggia entrance. The taller of the towers on the left hand side serves also as the church’s belfry and has a crenellated parapet and a copper covered spire. The gable over the front doors is pierced with a traceried window with two mullions in early English decorated style. The small gables of the transepts are pierced with single mullioned windows of the same period. The interior is filled with magnificent original features including stained glass windows, ceiling roses, cathedral ceilings, lovely old floorboards and an extremely rare church organ.

 

In the intervening years since 1903, Daylesford has gone through many changes, going from a town populated by citizens seeking to make their fortunes in gold, to those come to seek rest and relaxation in this now resort town in central Victoria. With parish numbers dwindling, the Presbyterian Church has seen fit to close the doors of St Andrew’s, opting for a smaller and less formal presence in the town’s community centre. At the time of photographing, St Andrew’s is up for sale, and has had council approval for the construction of apartments and town houses in the rear of the property and the adaptation of the church itself into a single or multiple dwellings. With an asking price just short of one million dollars, to date there has been very little interest in the property, and so St Andrew’s falls slowly, but surely into decay as neglect sinks in. The grass grows high around its bluestone foundations; graffiti denigrates Jessie Leggatt’s memorial plaque in the entranceway; the painted archway above the gates rots, save for the faded letters that spell out St Andrew’s in weathered greyish white flecks, and the old weatherboard Sunday School sags into the briars. A large holly tree, planted when the church was first built still sits at the side, waiting, like the church, for a new lease of life like other former churches in the area.

 

Located at number 19 Camp Street in the former Gold Rush town of Daylesford, the former St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church offers wonderful views as it looks down from the high side of the road, across the township, now known for its natural mineral springs and day spas.

 

Built in 1903 under the benefaction of Jessie Leggatt, who laid the foundation stone on the 9th of December that year, St Andrew’s is not unlike the Castlemaine Presbyterian Church in Lyttleton Street. Built of red brick with sandstone detailing, St Andrew’s has been built in a Picturesque Gothic style with adaptations of both Florentine and Pauduan Gothic. It features a splendid slate roof, and has been built in a symmetrical style, with two hexagonal towers to either side of the enclosed loggia entrance. The taller of the towers on the left hand side serves also as the church’s belfry and has a crenellated parapet and a copper covered spire. The gable over the front doors is pierced with a traceried window with two mullions in early English decorated style. The small gables of the transepts are pierced with single mullioned windows of the same period. The interior is filled with magnificent original features including stained glass windows, ceiling roses, cathedral ceilings, lovely old floorboards and an extremely rare church organ.

 

In the intervening years since 1903, Daylesford has gone through many changes, going from a town populated by citizens seeking to make their fortunes in gold, to those come to seek rest and relaxation in this now resort town in central Victoria. With parish numbers dwindling, the Presbyterian Church has seen fit to close the doors of St Andrew’s, opting for a smaller and less formal presence in the town’s community centre. At the time of photographing, St Andrew’s is up for sale, and has had council approval for the construction of apartments and town houses in the rear of the property and the adaptation of the church itself into a single or multiple dwellings. With an asking price just short of one million dollars, to date there has been very little interest in the property, and so St Andrew’s falls slowly, but surely into decay as neglect sinks in. The grass grows high around its bluestone foundations; graffiti denigrates Jessie Leggatt’s memorial plaque in the entranceway; the painted archway above the gates rots, save for the faded letters that spell out St Andrew’s in weathered greyish white flecks, and the old weatherboard Sunday School sags into the briars. A large holly tree, planted when the church was first built still sits at the side, waiting, like the church, for a new lease of life like other former churches in the area.

 

Sort of a homage to Richard Prince - probably most famous for taking shots of Marlboro ads/billboards containing photos of cowboys in picturesque vistas. I think one of them may still hold the record for highest price ever paid for a photograph at auction. They're nice shots of someone else's shot recontextualized, or maybe decontextualized. I never really understood why his cowboys were so significant. Something about commenting on the American Myth of the Wild West and the Frontier or some "inside art baseball" stuff like that. Not to denigrate his work, just never pinned my needles at a gut level (I like his Hollywood Nurses a lot better).

 

Maybe a hundred and fifty years later the frontier has collapsed into something smaller and personal. Maybe it's push up bras and diet shakes and Viagra. I don't know.

 

And maybe this owes more to Dali's paranoid critical perspective anyway in the sense that I can see him taking the original shot and rotating it and seeing how the satin sheet can be wrapping a nonexistent head, the legs can turn into arms, panties into a bra, etc.

 

I blew the tones though. Oh well.

 

H&M billboard, 21st&Chestnut (? above the PhillyCarShare lot), rotated

Former diplomat KM Shehabuddin, who showed much courage to leave Pakistan’s side during the 1971 Bangladesh War, passed away of old-age on April 15, 2015.

Disrespect and apathy and ingratitude have somehow become part of life in Bangladesh. You only need to take a look at how people have responded to the news of the death last month of K.M. Shehabuddin. The former diplomat, revered for his courage in turning his back on Pakistan and its foreign service in early April 1971, was the subject of a commemorative discussion organised by the Liberation War Museum last Saturday. That was all, apart from a few tributes to him in some newspapers. No one else has remembered him or his sheer act of patriotism.

 

At the Liberation War Museum discussion, not a single serving officer of the Foreign Office was in attendance. Foreign Minister A.H. Mahmood Ali, away from the country on an official visit abroad, did not think it necessary to call a condolence meeting at the Foreign Office after Shehabuddin’s death. Ali and Shehabuddin joined the Pakistan Foreign Service in 1966. Both defected in favour of Bangladesh in April 1971. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ali served as high commissioner to Britain and Shehabuddin was ambassador to the United States. And yet Ali felt no necessity of a collective paying of tributes to Shehabuddin at the Foreign Office.

 

But why blame the Foreign Office only? None of our ubiquitous television channels has ever felt the need for programmes on those illustrious sons of the soil who, having served the country with distinction, pass into the Great Beyond. Nearly every television discussion, or talk shows as they are known, focuses on politics. Nothing else matters. It is almost always the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party which is the subject matter. There are hardly any programmes on new books or on authors. Nothing of international significance is projected in the electronic media. Yes, there are all the music programmes, with anchors who clearly have no clue to the background of the artists or the songs they have on offer. You do not have Syed Abdul Hadi everywhere.

 

So we are not really surprised that the Foreign Office did not have the time or the intention to mourn one of its own. You might now be tempted to ask: how many of its past luminaries does the Foreign Office remember? Hossain Ali, the man who made history in Calcutta in 1971, is buried in Canada. Have we ever asked ourselves why he became disillusioned with his country and showed not the slightest inclination of coming back home? And then there was the brave Iqbal Athar, the Pakistani diplomat who had no roots in Bangladesh and yet who decided in 1971 to reject his country and stand beside the struggling people of occupied Bangladesh. Bangabandhu’s government gave him Bangladesh’s citizenship and sent him out as ambassador. He died some years ago, but no one knows where his final posting was, where he died, and how. Chances are the Foreign Office will not be able to fill you in on the details.

 

Our governments have not had any worries or pangs of regret about their failure to acknowledge the services of our tried and tested diplomats. Khaleda Zia’s government dismissed the outspoken Mohiuddin Ahmed from the Foreign Service. That was a gross instance of political misbehaviour. But when Mohiuddin Ahmed, who was instrumental in developing public opinion in favour of the War of Liberation after walking out of the Pakistan High Commission in London in 1971, was reinstated in service in 1996 by the Sheikh Hasina government, the move did not amount to much. Ahmed was never made foreign secretary, was never given any ambassadorial position. He did not complain, he did not indulge in sycophancy. And he developed a new career in writing, endlessly reminding people of the ethos which went into the creation of Bangladesh and which continues to sustain it. Our secular governments have ignored Mohiuddin Ahmed’s contributions and expertise, to our undying shame.

 

And yet there are all those people who have felt little or no shame in having worked diligently for Pakistan, to the point of denigrating the Bengali struggle for freedom in 1971 and then going on to rise in Bangladesh’s diplomatic service. That has been the irony. At a time when Shehabuddin and Mahmood Ali were saying farewell to Pakistan, Reaz Rahman, serving at Pakistan’s Delhi mission, went to Islamabad to spend his annual leave. In the process, in newspaper interviews, he castigated the War of Liberation as the work of miscreants and collaborators. In independent Bangladesh, Khaleda Zia made him foreign secretary and subsequently minister of state for foreign affairs. That, of course, was natural for the Begum, given that her husband General Ziaur Rahman felt little compunction in catapulting Tabarak Hossain, the Bengali Pakistani diplomat who accompanied Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on a Yahya Khan-sponsored delegation to Beijing in November 1971, to the position of Bangladesh’s foreign secretary. Note the irony. But, then again, irony has played a huge part in the shaping of our post-Liberation history. Those who sat on the fences in 1971 and those who had a poor opinion of our armed struggle for liberty were to be the ones to take over the state eventually. Most of our heroic battlefield leaders have died. Those who came back from Pakistan have lived to old age.

 

When you think back on the nation’s diplomatic service, you cannot but be amazed at the brazen manner in which many of our diplomats have, once their services came to an end abroad, chosen to stay back in foreign land. Take a survey of the many former Bengali diplomats today settled in such places as America, the United Kingdom, and Australia. They never came back home, which makes you wonder whether they actually served their country in the way they should have. There are instances of press ministers, appointed from political considerations, staying back illegally in the countries they had been posted in, and then somehow coming by citizenship in those countries. You question the judgement, indeed the patriotism, of these individuals. At the same time, you have serious doubts about the wisdom of the government which dispatches such ambassadors and press ministers abroad.

 

Reflect now on those Bangladeshi diplomats who have kept on serving abroad, never returning to postings at home. What could be so special about them that they cannot be brought back home? And why must the rules pertaining to diplomats marrying foreigners while in service be changed only because a woman ambassador is intent on tying the knot with a man not of her country or race? There are other problems as well. The last two Bangladesh high commissioners in Delhi both decided, once their tenures came to an end, to stay back in India through linking up with international organisations there. That certainly does not convey a good image of the country, for it is a bad sign of how our diplomats are unhappy about going back home.

 

The country is not served when the ambassador to Vietnam pulls out all the stops in his quest for a freedom fighter’s certificate from the government only because he needs an extra year in service. Fifteen years ago, our ambassador then serving in Hanoi approached yours truly, wondering if a good word could be put to the Prime Minister about his desire to be taken away from an ‘unimportant’ country like Vietnam and sent instead to the West. In subsequent times, this important envoy in unimportant Vietnam retired from service and became foreign affairs advisor to the chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

 

One last point: you do the Foreign Service huge disservice when you pluck men who went into retirement from the diplomatic service years ago and send them off as ambassadors and high commissioners abroad once again. Such acts undermine the spirit of those diplomats in service who have in them the ability and the intellectual qualities necessary to speak for Bangladesh abroad. The pursuit of foreign policy is or ought to be a thoroughly professional affair. It is a task which may be not be done well by men and women who, having gone into superannuation, find themselves on the advisory boards of political parties or serve as ambassadors-at-large to heads of government.

 

That is all, for today. And tomorrow is another day.

 

mygoldenbengal.wordpress.com/2015/05/30/our-foreign-offic...

 

Located at number 19 Camp Street in the former Gold Rush town of Daylesford, the former St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church offers wonderful views as it looks down from the high side of the road, across the township, now known for its natural mineral springs and day spas.

 

Built in 1903 under the benefaction of Jessie Leggatt, who laid the foundation stone on the 9th of December that year, St Andrew’s is not unlike the Castlemaine Presbyterian Church in Lyttleton Street. Built of red brick with sandstone detailing, St Andrew’s has been built in a Picturesque Gothic style with adaptations of both Florentine and Pauduan Gothic. It features a splendid slate roof, and has been built in a symmetrical style, with two hexagonal towers to either side of the enclosed loggia entrance. The taller of the towers on the left hand side serves also as the church’s belfry and has a crenellated parapet and a copper covered spire. The gable over the front doors is pierced with a traceried window with two mullions in early English decorated style. The small gables of the transepts are pierced with single mullioned windows of the same period. The interior is filled with magnificent original features including stained glass windows, ceiling roses, cathedral ceilings, lovely old floorboards and an extremely rare church organ.

 

In the intervening years since 1903, Daylesford has gone through many changes, going from a town populated by citizens seeking to make their fortunes in gold, to those come to seek rest and relaxation in this now resort town in central Victoria. With parish numbers dwindling, the Presbyterian Church has seen fit to close the doors of St Andrew’s, opting for a smaller and less formal presence in the town’s community centre. At the time of photographing, St Andrew’s is up for sale, and has had council approval for the construction of apartments and town houses in the rear of the property and the adaptation of the church itself into a single or multiple dwellings. With an asking price just short of one million dollars, to date there has been very little interest in the property, and so St Andrew’s falls slowly, but surely into decay as neglect sinks in. The grass grows high around its bluestone foundations; graffiti denigrates Jessie Leggatt’s memorial plaque in the entranceway; the painted archway above the gates rots, save for the faded letters that spell out St Andrew’s in weathered greyish white flecks, and the old weatherboard Sunday School sags into the briars. A large holly tree, planted when the church was first built still sits at the side, waiting, like the church, for a new lease of life like other former churches in the area.

 

Portret Anny Wasówny - Portrait of Anna Wasa

 

Anna Wazówna (ur. 17 maja 1568 w Eskilstunie, zm. 26 lutego 1625 w Brodnicy) – szwedzka królewna, siostra króla Zygmunta III Wazy, starosta brodnicki i golubski.

 

Spis treści [ukryj]

1 Biografia

2 Śmierć, miejsce pochówku

3 Galeria

4 Przypisy

5 Linki zewnętrzne

6 Literatura uzupełniająca

Biografia[edytuj | edytuj kod]

Była najmłodszą córką Jana III Wazy i Katarzyny Jagiellonki, dorastającą w początkach swojego życia w Szwecji. Matka wychowywała ją w wierze katolickiej, ale Anna około roku 1580 przeszła na luteranizm. Uzyskała staranne wykształcenie, interesowała się zwłaszcza zielarstwem i ziołolecznictwem.

 

Od śmierci matki w 1583 była dla brata Zygmunta najbliższą osobą[1]. Kiedy został on obrany królem Polski, w 1587 roku przyjechała wraz z nim. Po dwóch latach, w 1589 wróciła do Szwecji ze względu na niechęć polskiego dworu, na którym uważano, że ma zbyt duży wpływ na króla. Ponownie przyjechała do Polski w 1592, a od 1598 została w niej na stałe. Była zdolniejsza od brata, który bardzo liczył się z jej zdaniem[2]. Ze względu na konflikty religijne nie mogła przebywać na królewskim dworze. W 1604 roku otrzymała starostwo w Brodnicy, a w 1611 w Golubiu, gdzie przebudowała dawny gotycki zamek na swoją rezydencję ozdabiając ją attyką. W ciągu swego pobytu w Polsce sprawowała mecenat nad wieloma artystami[1]. Interesowała ją religia i botanika, prowadziła korespondencję z uczonymi. Profesor Akademii Krakowskiej Szymon Syreniusz zadedykował jej pierwszy polski zielnik, który powstał w 1613 r. przy finansowym wsparciu Anny Wazówny[1].

 

Śmierć, miejsce pochówku[edytuj | edytuj kod]

Anna Wazówna zmarła w 1625 na zamku w Brodnicy i jako członkini rodziny królewskiej powinna spocząć w katedrze wawelskiej. Nie było to jednak możliwe z powodu papieskiego zakazu chowania protestantów na poświęconych katolickich cmentarzach. Jej ciało przez kilka lat przechowywano w jednym z pomieszczeń zamku w Brodnicy. Dopiero w 1636 roku jej bratanek król Polski Władysław IV Waza zdecydował o pochowaniu jej w pobliskim Toruniu, w specjalnie dobudowanym w 1626 w tym celu barokowym mauzoleum przy Koścele Najświętszej Marii Panny w Toruniu. Mauzoleum ma formę półkolistej apsydy, do której prowadzi barokowy portal, i mieści nagrobek w formie cokołu, na którym wspiera się otwarty sarkofag z umieszczoną na nim leżącą postacią królewny, wyrzeźbioną w alabastrze.

 

W latach 90. XX wieku w Toruniu naukowcy z toruńskiego uniwersytetu przeprowadzili prace konserwacyjne mauzoleum. Przy okazji ekshumowano i zbadano szczątki królewny. Potwierdzono autentyczność zachowanych pozostałości. W 1995 odbył się jej powtórny pogrzeb o charakterze ekumenicznym.

Anna Vasa of Sweden (also Anne, Polish: Anna Wazówna; 17 May 1568 – 26 February 1625) was a Polish and Swedish princess. She was the sister of the monarch of Poland, Sweden and Lithuania, Sigismund III Vasa, and the starosta of Brodnica and Golub.

 

Contents [hide]

1 Biography

1.1 Early life

1.2 During her brother's Swedish reign

2 Later life

3 Ancestry

4 Gallery

5 References

Biography[edit]

Early life[edit]

Anna was the youngest child of Duke John of Finland and Catherine Jagellonica, sister of Sigismund II Augustus of Poland. Her birth took place in Eskilstuna and was just after her family was released from captivity at Gripsholm, during which she had been conceived.

 

Her father ascended in 1569 to the throne of Sweden as John III. Like her brother Sigismund, Anna was raised a Catholic by her mother, and attended Catholic mass with her mother and brother with the consent of her father. In 1584, Anna converted to the Lutheran faith on her own initiative. According to tradition, the change in her conviction was made on the death bed of her mother in 1583: her mother, who feared Purgatory, was comforted by her Jesuit confessor, who assured her that purgatory did not exist, but was merely used to warn common and simple minded people. The queen raged and sent the Jesuit away, but this was to have made Anna feel distaste for the falseness of Catholicism. This is unconfirmed, but Anna did convert on her own initiative a year after her mothers death.

 

After the death of her mother, her maternal aunt queen Anna Jagiellon suggested that she be sent to Poland to be raised there, but was turned down by John III. She had her own court, supervised by her mothers former Mistress of the Robes, Karin Gyllenstierna. Several marriages were suggested. In 1577, there had been discussions to arrange the marriage between Anna and an Austrian archduke, either Matthias or Maximilian, but this became impossible after her conversion in 1584: when her Catholic aunt Princess Cecilia of Sweden suggested that she arrange a Catholic royal match for her in 1585, John III replied that Anna had converted to Lutheranism the year before.

 

In 1587, her brother Sigismund was elected King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania as Sigismund III. Her aunt Anna Jagiellon repeated her offer to have Anna with her in Poland, and this time, John III gave his consent for the sake of Sigismund: "So that the time now in the beginning would not be to long for your dear lord brother". Anna and Sigismund had a close relationship with each other. Anna left with Sigismund for Poland 12 September 1587 and was present at his coronation. During her stay at the Polish court, she attracted negative attention by celebrating Lutheran masses with her court.

 

In 1589, Anna accompanied Sigismund to their father in Swedish Estonia. She was present during the stormy councillor's meeting in Reval and was asked by Erik Sparre to intercede as mediator between her father and those Councillors he prosecuted, which she did. She followed her father back to Sweden, were she spent the following years.

 

In 1592, Anna returned to Poland to attend the wedding between her brother and Anna of Austria. She was disliked at the Polish court because of her religion and the influence she had over Sigismund, and was suspected for having supported her fathers plans to arrange a protestant marriage for Sigismund with Christina of Holstein-Gottorp. The Arch Bishop was so provoked by her Lutheran services that her threatened both Anna and Sigismund with excommunication. Her sister-in-law Anna of Austria, however, prevented any persecution of her. In July 1593, she carried her new niece Anna Maria at her baptismal. Cardinal Batori proposed a marriage for her with the Prince of Siebenbürgen.

 

Anna engaged herself to marry her father's first cousin, Count Gustav Brahe who was a general in Poland. She fell in love with him as a child - he was raised at the royal court. The couple later met at the house of Brahes sister, Ebba Sparre, meetings which was considered scandalous: it was said, that Brahe had plans to take the throne through a marriage with Anna. In 1589, Brahe came to Poland, and her brother Sigismund was not averse to the idea. Although it was not the most desirable marriage proposed to her, she declined all other suitors. However, time passed and nothing came of her intended marriage. A definite explanation of this has not been found in historical sources.

 

During her brother's Swedish reign[edit]

In 1592, her brother Sigismund succeeded also to the throne of Sweden at the death of their father. In September 1593, Anna returned to Sweden in the company of her brother King Sigismund and her sister-in-law Queen Anna. She was regarded with distrust by the Papal envoy Germanico Malaspina. During the scandalous riot between Catholics and Protestants during the burial service of her Polish musician Sowka in Riddarholmskyrkan in November 1593, her own priest Olaus Simonis participated on the protestant side. Anna herself visited Duke Charles in Uppsala in February 1594, and attended the anti-Catholic sermon of Ericus Schepperus. Sigismund had plans to make Anna his regent in Sweden during his stay in Poland. This plans, however, were opposed by their uncle Charles, Duke of Södermanland, who managed to have the Swedish council to appoint himself.

 

In 1594, Sigismund returned to Poland, while Anna remained in Sweden. Malaspina had convinced him to leave her behind because of her involvement in the religious riot in Riddarholmskyrkan and reminded him about the Arch Bishop's threat of excommunication. Anna was given an allowance with Stegeborg Castle as residence of her own court with the fiefs of Hammarkind, Björkekind, Östkind and Lösing härad. At Stegeborg, she cultivated her interests for herbal medicine. In 1595, Anna arranged for the love marriage between her maid of honour Sigrid Brahe and Johan Gyllenstierna against the consent of the couple's families. This became considered a great scandal, as Brahe was engaged to another by her family, and issued a feud which discredited her and placed her in conflict with Duke Charles, who refused to mediate: she finally managed to create a settlement between the families at the Söderköping Riksdag of 1595.

 

The Sparre Affair was to be the final break between Anna and Duke Charles. Count Erik Larsson Sparre was a staunch supporter of Sigismund, and Anna kept a coffin for him and Stegeborg, which Duke Charles confiscated. He further more had her correspondence with Sparre and countess Ebba Sparre opened. Since 1592, Sigismund negotiated about a marriage between Anna and Margrave John George of Brandenburg. The plans were almost finalized in 1596, but the political tension between Sweden and Poland, Sigismund and Duke Charles complicated them. In February 1598, Sigismund demanded that Charles allow for Anna to return to Poland. The official reason was that her wedding to Brandenburg was finally set to Easter that year. Charles attempted to prevent her departure by demanding an inventory of her Swedish property and the promise that it would be confiscated by the state should she die unmarried. Anna protested, advised Charles to cooperate with Sigismund and offered herself as a mediator. At the return of Sigismund to Sweden, Anna immediately joined him in the civil war that erupted between Sigismund and Charles. She was given the task to mediate, but because of Charles' lack of confidence in her, she was not able to achieve much. Duke Charles called Anna a poisoner and used that in denigration of Sigismund. After Sigismund's defeat at the Battle of Stångebro in 1598, she left Sweden to live with him in Poland.

 

Later life[edit]

After 1598, Anna spent the rest of her life in Poland, though she always referred to herself as a Princess of Sweden. Known as Anna of Svecia (Anna of Sweden), she was Protestant member of a Catholic royal family, and acted as a protector of the exiled protestant Swedish loyalists of Sigismund. Princess Anna maintained her good relationship and her influence upon Sigismund, and she functioned as his political adviser i the affairs of state, something which made her a controversial figure in Poland. She became a protector not only of the exiled Swedish protestants in Poland but also of Polish protestants, though it is no longer considered correct that she spoke for their behalf at the parliament of 1613.

 

During the captivity of Carl Gyllenhielm in Poland in 1610-1613, she gave him much attention. She was given the task to interrogate Gyllenhielm by Sigismund, who listened hidden by a curtain. Before Gyllenhielm, she accused Charles IX of having conspired to create a conflict between Sigismund and John III, something Gyllenhielm denied.

 

Anna remained unmarried. In 1602, duke Charles de Gonzaga-Nevers suggested a marriage to a French prince, which was never realized. The negotiations with Brandenburg was finally discontinued in 1609. The rumors that she had a love relationship with the exiled Swedish count Gustav Brahe, a supporter of Sigismund, have never been confirmed, but it was used by Charles IX, who feared her political influence and in a letter to Sigismund from 1607 referred to her as: "Your poisonous sister, the creator of all evil and born to the destruction of all lands and the Kingdom". Charles IX once feared that she would marry Czar Dmitrij of Russia, which was however a false rumor.

 

Sigismund made Anna starosta of Brodnica in 1605 and Golub in 1611. Both her fiefs were situated in Protestant East Prussia, which was then a Polish fief. She divided her time between her fief and the court of her brother. Anna's appanage was Strasburg (now Brodnica), a Royal Prussian district in Poland near the Baltic, where she lived in Golub and Strasburg. She became very respected because of her great learning. She was interested in literature, music, gardening and medicine. She was a specialist in medicinal herbs and kept her own apothecary. By the help of an Italian assistant, she made her own experiments in herbal medical knowledge. She financed the herbarium of Simon Syrenius.

 

Anna was buried at the Church of St. Mary in Toruń, Poland several years after her death, as a Pope had first forbidden the burial of a Protestant in a blessed graveyard in Catholic Poland. Only her nephew, king Władysław IV Vasa, got that decree reversed. He built a beautiful black Dębnik marble tomb monument with a white alabaster figure of his beloved aunt.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Several thousand of Muslim demonstrators gathered in Chater Garden for a rally to denounce an anti-Islam film made in the US.

They prayed while facing in the direction of Mecca, then listened to speeches and held up placards condemning the film, which denigrates the prophet Mohammed, and demanding that the American government take action against those who made it. The film has sparked protests, some violent, in more than 20 countries.

© Zoë Murdoch - All Rights Reserved! Use without permission is illegal!

 

Requiem For Fiction

 

~ Image No: 21.

 

Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

 

~ Henry Miller

 

View On Black

Ralliers in D.C. Work To Build Counterweight To Antiwar Movement

 

By V. Dion Haynes

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, March 16, 2008

 

Chanting such slogans as "surrender is not an option" and waving American flags, a few hundred people from across the country rallied and paraded in downtown Washington yesterday to support the war.

 

The demonstration was sponsored by Eagles UP!, an organization founded by veterans in the wake of a war protest about a year ago that drew thousands to Washington. Although small in number, the demonstrators said yesterday that they represent many others from their home towns who believe there needs to be a more vocal counterweight to the antiwar movement.

 

"We cannot be the silent majority again," Lawrence B. Hoffa of Mequon, Wis., a retired Marine who serves as Southeast coordinator of Eagles UP!, said at the rally on the grounds of the Washington Monument. "We've got to get more people here. We've got to get people motivated."

 

Debbie Lee, whose Navy SEAL son Marc Alan Lee was killed in Iraq in August 2006, urged the demonstrators to stand up against antiwar organizations such as Code Pink, which she asserted are "trying to destroy our military."

 

"I've used my voice to speak out for the troops," she said. "I understand the sacrifice they've made and how they've blessed this nation."

 

Demonstrators said they were motivated to rally by the bombing this month of a military recruiting station in New York's Times Square. Anger over an event in Silver Spring on Friday, during which several former soldiers and Marines sorrowfully described firing indiscriminately on apartment buildings filled with families in Iraq, also served as a rallying point.

 

"We're here to protest IVAW," the Iraq Veterans Against the War organization that sponsored Friday's event, David Russo, 47, of New York said in an interview. "We believe what all of them are saying is lies."

 

Russo, who has not served in the military, added that he and others recently held a rally in Times Square to show support for the military recruiters. "We brought them lunch, cake, ice cream and coffee," he said, adding that people in the station "loved us."

 

Harry Riley, a retired Army colonel who helped organize yesterday's event, which included a march down nearby streets, said he does not want the nation to repeat mistakes made in ending the Vietnam War.

 

"Our attitude is victory is the goal rather than surrender," Riley, of Crestview, Fla., said in an interview. Noting how some Vietnam War veterans were denigrated by war protesters upon their return to the United States, he added: "We want to make sure the same thing does not happen" to Iraq war veterans.

  

Located at number 19 Camp Street in the former Gold Rush town of Daylesford, the former St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church offers wonderful views as it looks down from the high side of the road, across the township, now known for its natural mineral springs and day spas.

 

Built in 1903 under the benefaction of Jessie Leggatt, who laid the foundation stone on the 9th of December that year, St Andrew’s is not unlike the Castlemaine Presbyterian Church in Lyttleton Street. Built of red brick with sandstone detailing, St Andrew’s has been built in a Picturesque Gothic style with adaptations of both Florentine and Pauduan Gothic. It features a splendid slate roof, and has been built in a symmetrical style, with two hexagonal towers to either side of the enclosed loggia entrance. The taller of the towers on the left hand side serves also as the church’s belfry and has a crenellated parapet and a copper covered spire. The gable over the front doors is pierced with a traceried window with two mullions in early English decorated style. The small gables of the transepts are pierced with single mullioned windows of the same period. The interior is filled with magnificent original features including stained glass windows, ceiling roses, cathedral ceilings, lovely old floorboards and an extremely rare church organ.

 

In the intervening years since 1903, Daylesford has gone through many changes, going from a town populated by citizens seeking to make their fortunes in gold, to those come to seek rest and relaxation in this now resort town in central Victoria. With parish numbers dwindling, the Presbyterian Church has seen fit to close the doors of St Andrew’s, opting for a smaller and less formal presence in the town’s community centre. At the time of photographing, St Andrew’s is up for sale, and has had council approval for the construction of apartments and town houses in the rear of the property and the adaptation of the church itself into a single or multiple dwellings. With an asking price just short of one million dollars, to date there has been very little interest in the property, and so St Andrew’s falls slowly, but surely into decay as neglect sinks in. The grass grows high around its bluestone foundations; graffiti denigrates Jessie Leggatt’s memorial plaque in the entranceway; the painted archway above the gates rots, save for the faded letters that spell out St Andrew’s in weathered greyish white flecks, and the old weatherboard Sunday School sags into the briars. A large holly tree, planted when the church was first built still sits at the side, waiting, like the church, for a new lease of life like other former churches in the area.

 

I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'.

 

Bob Newhart

 

cats are better than dogs for art photographs. dogs are just dogs, but cats are artful. why is that? not trying to denigrate dogs, just asking a question.

Located at number 19 Camp Street in the former Gold Rush town of Daylesford, the former St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church offers wonderful views as it looks down from the high side of the road, across the township, now known for its natural mineral springs and day spas.

 

Built in 1903 under the benefaction of Jessie Leggatt, who laid the foundation stone on the 9th of December that year, St Andrew’s is not unlike the Castlemaine Presbyterian Church in Lyttleton Street. Built of red brick with sandstone detailing, St Andrew’s has been built in a Picturesque Gothic style with adaptations of both Florentine and Pauduan Gothic. It features a splendid slate roof, and has been built in a symmetrical style, with two hexagonal towers to either side of the enclosed loggia entrance. The taller of the towers on the left hand side serves also as the church’s belfry and has a crenellated parapet and a copper covered spire. The gable over the front doors is pierced with a traceried window with two mullions in early English decorated style. The small gables of the transepts are pierced with single mullioned windows of the same period. The interior is filled with magnificent original features including stained glass windows, ceiling roses, cathedral ceilings, lovely old floorboards and an extremely rare church organ.

 

In the intervening years since 1903, Daylesford has gone through many changes, going from a town populated by citizens seeking to make their fortunes in gold, to those come to seek rest and relaxation in this now resort town in central Victoria. With parish numbers dwindling, the Presbyterian Church has seen fit to close the doors of St Andrew’s, opting for a smaller and less formal presence in the town’s community centre. At the time of photographing, St Andrew’s is up for sale, and has had council approval for the construction of apartments and town houses in the rear of the property and the adaptation of the church itself into a single or multiple dwellings. With an asking price just short of one million dollars, to date there has been very little interest in the property, and so St Andrew’s falls slowly, but surely into decay as neglect sinks in. The grass grows high around its bluestone foundations; graffiti denigrates Jessie Leggatt’s memorial plaque in the entranceway; the painted archway above the gates rots, save for the faded letters that spell out St Andrew’s in weathered greyish white flecks, and the old weatherboard Sunday School sags into the briars. A large holly tree, planted when the church was first built still sits at the side, waiting, like the church, for a new lease of life like other former churches in the area.

 

I treat glasses as my jewelry. They must match with rest of my attire which I wear in accordance to the weak and lowest interpretation of our Islamic faith. Like in case of my glasses which I hope be as high as 22 D minus, I hope to wear total veil, burqa or full niqab like milions of other our 'sistas' ,just now discriminated and denigrated by secularist extremists in the West and its neo-colonies. Thus, I wear weak lenses and "weak" hejab.

BABLYONIA. Alexander III, the Great. (336-323 BC). Silver decadrachm or 5 shekels (38.84 gm). , Taxla Mint, c. 327 BC. Alexander on Bucephalus right, lancing at a mahout and his master on Indian elephant right, both of whom look backward, the master grasping the end of Alexander's sarissa with his right hand, the mahout brandishing spear in raised right hand and holding two spares in left, Ξ in field above / Alexander standing left in military attire, holding thunderbolt in right hand and sarissa in left; to upper left, Nike flying right to crown him; AB monogram to lower left. Price, "Circulation at Babylon in 323 B.C.," Mnemata: Papers in Memory of Nancy M. Waggoner, p. 71, 13 (this coin). Price, "The Poros coinage of Alexander the Great, a symbol of concord and community," Studia Paolo Naster Oblata, p. 76, B/d (this coin). Mitchiner 21c (this coin, attributed to Taxila). Durr, SM 94 (May 1974), p. 36, 1. F.L. Holt, Alexander the Great and the Mystery of the Elephant Medallions, Appendix A, E/A10 (this coin).. Only ten Poros decadrachms recorded. A unique opportunity to obtain one of the rarest and most historically significant coins ever issued. Very fine. Ex Nelson Bunker Hunt Collection (Sotheby's, New York, 19-20 June 1991, lot 229); ex NFA V, 23-24 February 1978, lot 81; ex Leu 13, 29 April 1975, lot 130.

 

This decadrachm and the two tetradrachms following represent special issues of the local Babylonian coinage, which normally took the form of lion staters. The obverse type of the tetradrachm was traditionally interpreted as commemorating Alexander's defeat of the Indian king Poros at the battle of the Hydaspes. Pointing out that Alexander treated Poros with honor after the battle, Price argued that that he was unlikely to have denigrated his new ally on his coinage. The tetradrachms portray the Indian elephant and long bow, well attested elements of Poros' army, but again Price argued that both weapons were ineffective in the battle of the Hydaspes. Price concluded that the coins were issued in the course of Alexander's Indian campaigns, not afterward; that the tetradrachms portray Indian auxiliaries who accompanied Alexander after his alliance with Taxiles; and that the obverse of the decadrachm very likely portrays the defeat of Poros while he was still Alexander's enemy. Price emphasized that these coins could serve as symbols of Alexander's policy of "concord and community" vis-a-vis the conquered peoples of the east. This interpretation does not adequately explain why such propaganda should have employed Indian themes to impress a Babylonian or Elymaean audience, nor does it account for the production of the decadrachm, an unprecedented coin denomination in the region, and one that was almost always a presentation piece. It seems less strained to view these coins as part of the victory donative paid out to the army upon Alexander's return to Babylon, in this case to native auxiliaries. Price claimed that the specimens in the Iraq, 1973 hoard were too worn to have been struck in 325, but the typical poor striking of these coins makes it difficult to assess actual wear. A thorough review and critique of earlier scholarship is available in Holt's Alexander the Great and the Mystery of the Elephant Medallions. Holt offers an exhaustive analysis of the iconography of these issues; especially illuminating is his perception that the reverse type of the decadrachms, showing Alexander holding a thunderbolt, gives him credit for the monsoon that aided his army in the battle against Poros. Holt identifies the elephant decadrachms and tetradrachms as aristeia, awards for meritorious service on the battlefield. Like Price, he argues that these coins must have been produced in the course of Alexander's campaign (though after rather than before the battle of the Hydaspes); the poor striking technique and lack of metrological control are offered as evidence for their issue by a temporary or Indian mint. These deficiencies are also consistent with an origin at the satrapal workshop of Babylon. Founded by Mazaeus, this facility was distinct from Alexander's royal mint and specialized in the production of lion staters during Alexander's lifetime, see H. Nicolet-Pierre, "Argent et or frappes en Babylonie entre 331 et 311 ou de Mazdai a Seleucos," Travaux Le Rider, pp. 285-286. The lion staters of this workshop are often poorly struck and notoriously irregular in weight. Striking coins the size of decadrachms would have been a particular challenge for a mint with such rudimentary technical skills.

 

Gemini2, 144

Była najmłodszą córką Jana III Wazy i Katarzyny Jagiellonki wychowującą się w początkach swojego życia w Szwecji. Matka wychowywała ją w wierze katolickiej, ale Anna około roku 1580 przeszła na luteranizm. Uzyskała staranne wykształcenie, interesowała się zwłaszcza zielarstwem i ziołolecznictwem.

Od śmierci matki w 1583 była dla brata Zygmunta najbliższą osobą[1]. Kiedy został on obrany królem Polski, w 1587 roku przyjechała wraz z nim. Po dwóch latach, w 1589 wróciła do Szwecji ze względu na niechęć polskiego dworu, na którym uważano, że ma zbyt duży wpływ na króla. Ponownie przyjechała do Polski w 1592, a od 1598 została w niej na stałe. Była zdolniejsza od brata, który bardzo liczył się z jej zdaniem[2]. Ze względu na konflikty religijne nie mogła przebywać na królewskim dworze. W 1604 roku otrzymała starostwo w Brodnicy, a w 1611 w Golubiu, gdzie przebudowała dawny gotycki zamek na swoją rezydencję ozdabiając ją attyką. W ciągu swego pobytu w Polsce sprawowała mecenat nad wieloma artystami[1]. Interesowała ją tematyka religijna i botanika w związku z czym prowadziła korespondencję z uczonymi. Profesor Akademii Krakowskiej Szymon Syreniusz zadedykował jej pierwszy polski zielnik powstały w 1613 r., który powstał przy finansowym wsparciu Anny Wazówny[1].

Śmierć, miejsce pochówku[edytuj kod]

 

Anna Wazówna zmarła w 1625 na zamku w Brodnicy i z racji bycia członkiem rodziny królewskiej powinna spocząć w katedrze wawelskiej. Nie było to jednak możliwe z powodu papieskiego zakazu chowania protestantów na poświęconych katolickich cmentarzach. Jej ciało przez kilka lat przechowywano w jednym z pomieszczeń zamku w Brodnicy. Dopiero w 1636 roku jej bratanek król Polski Władysław IV Waza zdecydował o pochowaniu jej w pobliskim Toruniu, w specjalnie dobudowanym w 1626 na ten cel barokowym mauzoleum przy Kościele Najświętszej Marii Panny w Toruniu. Mauzoleum ma formę półkolistej apsydy, do której prowadzi barokowy portal, i mieści nagrobek w formie cokołu, na którym wspiera się otwarty sarkofag z umieszczoną na nim leżącą postacią królewny, wyrzeźbioną w alabastrze.

W latach 90. XX wieku w Toruniu naukowcy z toruńskiego uniwersytetu przeprowadzili prace konserwacyjne mauzoleum. Przy okazji ekshumowano i zbadano szczątki królewny. Potwierdzono autentyczność zachowanych pozostałości. W 1995 odbył się jej powtórny pogrzeb o charakterze ekumenicznym.

 

Anna was the youngest child of Duke John of Finland and Catherine Jagellonica, sister of Sigismund II Augustus of Poland. Her birth took place in Eskilstuna and was just after her family was released from captivity at Gripsholm, during which she had been conceived.

Her father ascended in 1569 to the throne of Sweden. Although her mother had raised her in Catholicism, she converted to the Lutheran faith later in 1580s. In 1587, Her brother became King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. Anna went with her brother to Poland in 1587, but was sent back in 1589 because the Polish court greatly disliked her being a Lutheran and the influence she had over her brother. After this she lived in Sweden during the reign of her father.

Anna engaged herself to marry her father's first cousin, Count Gustav Brahe who was a general in Poland. She fell in love with him as a child - he was raised at the royal court. The couple later met at the house of Brahes sister, Ebba Sparre, meetings which was considered scandalous: it was said, that Brahe had plans to take the throne through a marriage with Anna. In 1589, Brahe came to Poland, and her brother Sigismund was not averse to the idea. Although it was not the most desirable marriage proposed to her, she declined all other suitors. However, time passed and nothing came of her intended marriage. A definite explanation of this has not been found in historical sources.

When Sigismund succeeded in Sweden in 1592, he planned to make Anna the Regent of that kingdom, while he was to reside in Poland. Instead, their uncle, Charles, Duke of Södermanland, got the Swedish council to appoint himself. Duke Charles, a fierce Protestant, however, called Anna a poisoner and used that in denigration of Sigismund. In 1595, she arranged for the wedding between her lady-in-waiting Sigrid Brahe and Johan Gyllenstierna against the consent of the couple's families: this became a considered a scandal, as Brahe was engaged to another man by her family. Anna was much disliked by her uncle, the regent and future king.

When her uncle took the throne in 1598, she left for Poland to live in her brother Sigismund III's, court, where she spent the rest of her life. She was known as Anna of Svecia (Anna of Sweden) and was a Protestant member of a Catholic royal family. She did, however, return to the Swedish court on several brief occasions, among them in 1618.

Anna remained unmarried. In 1596, she was engaged to marry George John, Margrave of Brandenburg; the dowry and the date was decided, but the wedding was canceled for political reasons before it had been completed.

She was her brother's political advisor and acted as protector for the exiled Swedish loyalists and Protestants. She had to leave the court in Poland, because she insisted on staying Lutheran, but as an income she received administration of Strasburg in Royal Prussia.

Anna's appanage was Strasburg (now Brodnica), a Royal Prussian district in Poland near the Baltic, where she lived in Golub and Strasburg in the 1620s. She became very respected because of her great learning. She was interested in literature, music, gardening and medicine. She was a specialist in medicinal herbs and kept her own apothecary. By the help of an Italian assistant, she made her own experiments in herbal medical knowledge.

She was buried at the Church of St.Mary in Toruń, Poland several years after her death, as a Pope had first forbidden the burial of a Protestant in a blessed graveyard in Catholic Poland. Only her nephew, king Władysław IV Vasa, got that decree reversed. He built a beautiful black Dębnik marble tomb monument with a white alabaster figure of his beloved aunt.

 

Located at number 19 Camp Street in the former Gold Rush town of Daylesford, the former St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church offers wonderful views as it looks down from the high side of the road, across the township, now known for its natural mineral springs and day spas.

 

Built in 1903 under the benefaction of Jessie Leggatt, who laid the foundation stone on the 9th of December that year, St Andrew’s is not unlike the Castlemaine Presbyterian Church in Lyttleton Street. Built of red brick with sandstone detailing, St Andrew’s has been built in a Picturesque Gothic style with adaptations of both Florentine and Pauduan Gothic. It features a splendid slate roof, and has been built in a symmetrical style, with two hexagonal towers to either side of the enclosed loggia entrance. The taller of the towers on the left hand side serves also as the church’s belfry and has a crenellated parapet and a copper covered spire. The gable over the front doors is pierced with a traceried window with two mullions in early English decorated style. The small gables of the transepts are pierced with single mullioned windows of the same period. The interior is filled with magnificent original features including stained glass windows, ceiling roses, cathedral ceilings, lovely old floorboards and an extremely rare church organ.

 

In the intervening years since 1903, Daylesford has gone through many changes, going from a town populated by citizens seeking to make their fortunes in gold, to those come to seek rest and relaxation in this now resort town in central Victoria. With parish numbers dwindling, the Presbyterian Church has seen fit to close the doors of St Andrew’s, opting for a smaller and less formal presence in the town’s community centre. At the time of photographing, St Andrew’s is up for sale, and has had council approval for the construction of apartments and town houses in the rear of the property and the adaptation of the church itself into a single or multiple dwellings. With an asking price just short of one million dollars, to date there has been very little interest in the property, and so St Andrew’s falls slowly, but surely into decay as neglect sinks in. The grass grows high around its bluestone foundations; graffiti denigrates Jessie Leggatt’s memorial plaque in the entranceway; the painted archway above the gates rots, save for the faded letters that spell out St Andrew’s in weathered greyish white flecks, and the old weatherboard Sunday School sags into the briars. A large holly tree, planted when the church was first built still sits at the side, waiting, like the church, for a new lease of life like other former churches in the area.

 

An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958, by the British magazine New Statesman to refer to its political and social agenda. Antiestablishmentarianism (or anti-establishmentarianism) is an expression for such a political philosophy.

 

In the UK anti-establishment figures and groups are seen as those who argue or act against the ruling class. Having an established church, in England, a British monarchy, an aristocracy, and an unelected upper house in Parliament made up in part by hereditary nobles, the UK has a clearly definable[citation needed] Establishment against which anti-establishment figures can be contrasted. In particular, satirical humour is commonly used to undermine the deference shown by the majority of the population towards those who govern them. Examples of British anti-establishment satire include much of the humour of Peter Cook and Ben Elton; novels such as Rumpole of the Bailey; magazines such as Private Eye; and television programmes like Spitting Image, That Was The Week That Was, and The Prisoner (see also the satire boom of the 1960s). Anti-establishment themes also can be seen in the novels of writers such as Will Self.

 

However, by operating through the arts and media, the line between politics and culture is blurred, so that pigeonholing figures such as Banksy as either anti-establishment or counter-culture figures can be difficult. The tabloid newspapers such as The Sun, are less subtle, and commonly report on the sex-lives of the Royals simply because it sells newspapers, but in the process have been described as having anti-establishment views that have weakened traditional institutions. On the other hand, as time passes, anti-establishment figures sometimes end up becoming part of the Establishment, as Mick Jagger, the Rolling Stones frontman, became a Knight in 2003, or when The Who frontman Roger Daltrey was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005 in recognition of both his music and his work for charity.

 

Anti-establishment in the United States began in the 1940s and continued through the 1950s.

 

Many World War II veterans, who had seen horrors and inhumanities, began to question every aspect of life, including its meaning. Urged to return to "normal lives" and plagued by post traumatic stress disorder (discussing it was "not manly"), in which many of them went on to found the outlaw motorcycle club Hells Angels. Some veterans, who founded the Beat Movement, were denigrated as Beatniks and accused of being "downbeat" on everything. Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote a Beat autobiography that cited his wartime service.

 

Citizens had also begun to question authority, especially after the Gary Powers U-2 Incident, wherein President Eisenhower repeatedly assured people the United States was not spying on Russia, then was caught in a blatant lie. This general dissatisfaction was popularized by Peggy Lee's laconic pop song "Is That All There Is?", but remained unspoken and unfocused. It was not until the Baby Boomers came along in huge numbers that protest became organized, who were named by the Beats as "little hipsters".

 

"Anti-establishment" became a buzzword of the tumultuous 1960s. Young people raised in comparative luxury saw many wrongs perpetuated by society and began to question "the Establishment". Contentious issues included the ongoing Vietnam War with no clear goal or end point, the constant military build-up and diversion of funds for the Cold War, perpetual widespread poverty being ignored, money-wasting boondoggles like pork barrel projects and the Space Race, festering race issues, a stultifying education system, repressive laws and harsh sentences for casual drug use, and a general malaise among the older generation. On the other side, "Middle America" often regarded questions as accusations, and saw the younger generation as spoiled, drugged-out, sex-crazed, unambitious slackers.

 

Anti-establishment debates were common because they touched on everyday aspects of life. Even innocent questions could escalate into angry diatribes. For example, "Why do we spend millions on a foreign war and a space program when our schools are falling apart?" would be answered with "We need to keep our military strong and ready to stop the Communists from taking over the world." As in any debate, there were valid and unsupported arguments on both sides. "Make love not war" invoked "America, love it or leave it."

 

As the 1960s simmered, the anti-Establishment adopted conventions in opposition to the Establishment. T-shirts and blue jeans became the uniform of the young because their parents wore collar shirts and slacks. Drug use, with its illegal panache, was favored over the legal consumption of alcohol. Promoting peace and love was the antidote to promulgating hatred and war. Living in genteel poverty was more "honest" than amassing a nest egg and a house in the suburbs. Rock 'n roll was played loudly over easy listening. Dodging the draft was passive resistance to traditional military service. Dancing was free-style, not learned in a ballroom. Over time, anti-establishment messages crept into popular culture: songs, fashion, movies, lifestyle choices, television.

 

The emphasis on freedom allowed previously hushed conversations about sex, politics, or religion to be openly discussed. A wave of radical liberation movements for minority groups came out of the 1960s, including second-wave feminism; Black Power, Red Power, and the Chicano Movement; and gay liberation. These movements differed from previous efforts to improve minority rights by their opposition to respectability politics and militant tone. Programs were put in place to deal with inequities: Equal Opportunity Employment, the Head Start Program, enforcement of the Civil Rights Act, busing, and others. But the widespread dissemination of new ideas also sparked a backlash and resurgence in conservative religions, new segregated private schools, anti-gay and anti-abortion legislation, and other reversals. Extremists[clarification needed] tended to be heard more because they made good copy for newspapers and television.[citation needed] In many ways, the angry debates of the 1960s led to modern right-wing talk radio and coalitions for "traditional family values".

 

As the 1960s passed, society had changed to the point that the definition of the Establishment had blurred, and the term "anti-establishment" seemed to fall out of use.

 

In recent years, with the rise of the populist right, the term anti-establishment has tended to refer to both left and right-wing movements expressing dissatisfaction with mainstream institutions. For those on the right, this can be fueled by feelings of alienation from major institutions such as the government, corporations, media, and education system, which are perceived as holding progressive social norms, an inversion of the meaning formerly associated with the term. This can be accounted for by a perceived cultural and institutional shift to the left by many on the right. According to Pew Research, Western European populist parties from both sides of the ideological spectrum tapped into anti-establishment sentiment in 2017, "from the Brexit referendum to national elections in Italy." Sarah Kendzior of QZ opines that "The term "anti-establishment" has lost all meaning," citing a campaign video from then candidate Donald Trump titled "Fighting the Establishment." The term anti-establishment has tended to refer to Right-wing populist movements, including nationalist movements and anti-lockdown protests, since Donald Trump and the global populist wave, starting as far back as 2015 and as recently as 2021.

"Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would

but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run

away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty,

painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every

moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such."Henry Miller

Steve Lorillere | Saint-Tropez Photo | Twitter | facebook

Colonial Williamsburg is the historic district of the independent city of Williamsburg, Virginia. Colonial Williamsburg consists of many of the buildings that formed the original colonial capital of Williamsburg in James City County from 1699 to 1780 with all traces of later buildings removed.

 

Colonial Williamsburg is an example of a living history museum, an open-air assemblage of buildings populated with historical reenactors whose job it is to explain and demonstrate aspects of daily life in the past. The reenactors (or interpreters) work, dress, and talk as they would have in colonial times. While there are many living history museums (such as Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts or Castell Henllys in the UK), Colonial Williamsburg is unusual for having been constructed from a living town whose inhabitants and post-Colonial-era buildings were removed. Unlike other living history museums, however, anyone can walk through the historic district of Williamsburg free of charge at any hour of the day. Charges apply only to those visitors who wish to enter the historic buildings to see arts and crafts demonstrations during daylight hours, or attend scheduled outdoor performances such as the Revolutionary City programs.

 

Early in the 20th century, the restoration and recreation of Colonial Williamsburg, one of the largest historic restorations ever undertaken, was championed by the Reverend Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who wanted to celebrate the patriots and the early history of the United States.

 

Some of the missing Colonial structures were recreated on their original sites during the 1930s. Many other structures were restored to the best estimates of how they would have looked during the eighteenth century. Most buildings are open for tourists to look through.

 

A main source of tourism to Williamsburg, Virginia and the surrounding area, Williamsburg is meant to be an interpretation of a Colonial American city with exhibits including dozens of authentic or accurately-recreated colonial houses, American Revolutionary War history exhibits, and the town jail, which includes an authentic stocks and pillory display. Other notable structures include the large Capitol and the Governor's Palace, each carefully recreated and landscaped as closely as possible to original 18th century specifications. Dependency structures and animals help complete the ambiance.

 

Colonial Williamsburg is owned and operated as a living museum by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the non-profit entity endowed by the Rockefeller family. Although it is not directly affiliated with the nearby Colonial National Historical Park, the nearby Colonial Parkway and attractions at Jamestown and Yorktown presented by state and federal entities are complementary adjuncts to the restored area of the colonial city. With Colonial Williamsburg as its centerpiece, the Historic Triangle of Virginia is a much visited tourist destination. However, attendance at Colonial Williamsburg peaked in 1985 at 1.1 million, and has been in decline ever since.[2]

 

Ada Louise Huxtable, noted architecture critic, wrote in 1965: "Williamsburg is an extraordinary, conscientious and expensive exercise in historical playacting in which real and imitation treasures and modern copies are carelessly confused in everyone's mind. Partly because it is so well done, the end effect has been to devalue authenticity and denigrate the genuine heritage of less picturesque periods to which an era and a people gave life."[1]

 

A more nuanced interpretation may be that of University of Virginia Professor of Architectural History Richard Guy Wilson, who notes that Colonial Williamsburg is a superb example of an American suburb of the 1930s, with its inauthentically tree-lined streets of Colonial Revival houses and segregated commerce.

 

*Wikipedia

Not a great day today - nothing terrible happened, just one of those days when you're glad to see your front door.

 

This sign marks a road closure on the bottom of Mill Lane which is my preferred route to work. It really reinforced to me just HOW much of a creature of habit I am.

 

Routine is important. Kids thrive on it. Armies survive on it. Even the most rebellious Bohemian is usually consistent in their denigration of routine. But this diversion really annoyed me. There must be half a dozen ways I could get to work, none of which would take me any longer. Many people would consider that my route isn't the best way to go anyway, but it's MY route! Having the disruption forced upon me is irritating. I was also at the dentists today. A clean up from the hygienist and a check up with the dentist - both absolutely fine. But having to take that hour out when I'm normally doing other things was irritating.

 

I think I'm just getting old before my time.

 

Sometimes change is good. When I think of the disruption Keith will get from the imminent arrival of his Grandchild, and the truly life changing alteration of routine that his daughter will experience, I realise that 'normal' is a very movable feast, and maybe that's no bad thing. :)

Japan: Street View and the Burakumin

 

Google Earth sparks racial row in Japan

 

対岸の肖像：日本人と部落民

 

The Internet, many would argue, has created the possibility for anyone to express their opinions freely without having to belong to a category of people with the “legitimacy to speak” (i.e. journalists, scholars, etc.). Recently, however, some have worried about an increase in the number of racist and denigrative comments against minorities spreading across the web.

 

In Japan, for example, the advent of Google's new Street View service [GSV], aside from arousing indignation among some and sparking debates over privacy issues among others, has also led some bloggers to discuss the relationship between areas photographed in GSV and the so-called hisabetsu buraku (被差別部落). The hisabetsu buraku are discriminated hamlets inhabited by people who, for many centuries and over many generations, have carried the burden of doing the “tainted jobs” (butchers, executioners etc.). These burakumin (部落民) [hamlet people] resemble the Dalits [the untouchables], the lowest caste in the south-east Asian Hindu system, both formally abolished under modern constitutional systems but continuing their existence through prejudice in the minds of many people.

 

The first to raise questions regarding the topic of Google Street View and discrimination was Manabu Kitaguchi [北口学] at Journalist-Net, a journalist, expert in human rights and president of the Japan Journalists Association for Human Rights (日本人権ジャーナリスト会):

 

米国でプライバシーと人権問題の議論が湧き上がったGoogleストリートビュのサービスは、欧州でのサービス開始を前に多くの人権NGOの反対によってストップが賭けられている。が、メディアや市民のなんの論議もなく日本ではサービスがスタートしてしまった。日本固有の差別問題に対する影響力、特に巨大掲示板で面白おかしく差別扇動の書き込みをする人達は、サービス開始直後から「ハイテク電子地名総鑑」というスレッドを立ち上げ、被差別地域の画像をどんどん書き込みしている。

   

delicious.com/tag/burakumin

 

Buraku Problem Q&A

 

books.google.co.jp.

 

Discrimination nowadays

 

delicious.com/changturtle/burakumin

 

部落学序説

 

Breaking the silence on burakumin

 

白山神社＝部落地帯なの？

 

oshiete1.goo.ne.jp/qa1453584.html

 

www.flickr.com/photos/24443965@N08/sets/

 

www.flickr.com/photos/24443965@N08/sets/72157606116199285/

 

www.flickr.com/photos/24443965@N08/2435205913/in/set-7215...

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin#Terminology

 

pyroll ancient photos

 

Burakumin

 

changturtle's blogspot

 

api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=235621...

 

The Burakumin

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritsury%c5%8d

 

Japanese castes under the ritsuryō

 

www.lisashea.com/japan/articles/rank.html

 

www.flickr.com/photos/pyroll/sets/72157601287684923/

 

www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss12/reber_old.shtml

 

Mount Asamu and Burakumin Museum in 1997 (youtube)

 

東京の被差別部落

 

BURAKU MIN

Buraku Problem Q&A

 

The Japanese Caste System

 

"Electronic Versions of Buraku Lists" Retrieved

 

www.geocities.com/gaijindo4dan/thesis/index.html

 

www.geocities.com/gaijindo4dan/index.html

 

del.icio.us/changturtle/buraku/

 

blhrri.org/

 

www.flickr.com/photos/10882638@N05/tags/ainu/

 

部落問題

 

www.flickr.com/photos/24443965@N08/2751761747/in/set-7215...

 

www.flickr.com/photos/24443965@N08/sets/

   

Castes

 

Main article :Japanese castes under the ritsuryō "Ritsuryō-sei" (律令制)

 

The population was divided in two castes, Ryōmin (良民) (furthermore divided into 4 subcastes[citation needed]) and Senmin (賤民) (divided into 5 subcastes), the latter being close to slaves. Citizens wore different colors according to their caste.

 

Burakumin are a social group which has long been discriminated against. The word burakumin means 'people of the hamlet', a 19th century word used instead of words such as eta ("outcaste") and hinin ("nonhuman"). Discrimination is not legal, but these people are often refused jobs and accommodation. The group's origins are not clear, but in the Edo period they took work nobody else wanted; executions, leather work, and day labor, for example. Today, burakumin struggle to escape from their plight, but experience a familiar cycle: they are hampered because poor living conditions and education prevent them from obtaining good employment and low income leads to the next generation repeating the cycle. The number of burakumin probably ranges between two and three million or about 2% of the population. Although sometimes referred to as outcastes in English, the term is inappropriate because Japanese society was never organized in a manner similar to the caste system in South Asia.

 

被差別部落住民は、長く差別された社会的グループです。語被差別部落住民は『村落の人々』を意味します。そして、19世紀の語が例えば語の代わりに使われます、 イータ（「アウトカースト」）、そして、 hinin（「人間でない」）。差別は合法的でありません、しかし、これらの人々は仕事と宿泊設備をしばしば拒否されます。グループの起源は明白でありません、しかし、エド期間には、彼らは仕事に求められている他の誰も持っていきませんでした;たとえば、処刑、革の仕事と日は働きます。今日、彼らのありさまから逃げるが、ありふれた物語を経験する被差別部落住民努力：貧しい生活状況と教育が彼らが良い仕事を得るのを防ぐので、彼らは妨げられます、そして、低い収入はサイクルを繰り返している次世代に至ります。多くの被差別部落住民は、多分人口の2と300万またはおよそ2%の間で変動するでしょう。時々アウトカーストと呼ばれるけれども、英語では、日本協会が南アジアでカースト制に類似した方法で決して組織されなかったので、語は不適当です。

 

部落問題（ぶらくもんだい）は、江戸時代エタとして賎民に区分されていた日本人に、身分差別の残影が集約されていたものを、法的、行政的解決方法における、ある集団に対する日本社会の中での差別と権益の確保のための事件を指す。

 

被日本人邊緣化的民族

 

Google古地圖標出賤民部落 犯了日本禁忌

 

在日本他們是穢民也稱穢多

 

他們的祖先從以前就從事皮革業或屠夫

 

介紹

 

本血脈起源於封建日本社會中的賤民階級：

 

部落民，傳統上這些人只能從事污穢不潔的工作，如屠宰牲畜、處理死屍等。

 

在明治維新（1871）後，人類部落民被承認跟一般人平等，擁有相同的權利，

 

即使如此他們依舊活在眾人歧視的眼光中。

 

這一類的我族形象，經常會導致這個邊緣團體退回到隔離區，

 

當他們必須與一般日本大眾接觸的時候，面對社會大眾，

 

他們會採取一種退縮方式的社會角色。

 

在這一類退縮的角色中潛藏了對社會大眾所造成的任何權威形式的不滿與仇視。

 

這一類的感覺，其實是一代又一代被人剝削壓迫的結果。

 

可以看得出來，這一群遊民人的孩子，的確攻擊性比較強，

 

這代表這群小孩真的實踐了，別人對他們的認定與想像　

 

從種族的觀點來看，日本遊民的祖宗與大部份的日本人相同。他們的祖先似乎從前

 

是從事於比較低層次的職業團體，做一些與出生，死亡，以及屠殺動物並且處理一

 

些與動物相關的產品，例如皮革等。

 

近幾世紀以來，軍冑階級及教士統治階級作為領導階級而發展出來對生死的敏感，

 

不僅是在日本，也在其他許多國家都可以看到這一類文明化的進展，

 

在日本這類文明化特別顯現在日本的神道教以及佛教的發展上，

 

而這些人因為以屠殺動物為職業，就開始被一種主流的價值觀所唾棄；

 

從十七世紀以後，他們逐漸嚴厲的被迫與日本大眾隔離開。

 

任何與這一群人的接觸，都會被認為沾污自己。

 

有一些這個團體的人，甚至要在和服的手臂處貼上一塊皮革，以便標示。

 

他們被絕對的禁止與日本大眾通婚。

 

日本德川幕府时代，从事屠宰业、皮革业等所谓贱业者和乞丐游民被视为贱民，前者被辱称秽多，后者被辱称非人。他们被排斥在士农工商四民等级之外，聚居在条件恶劣的官府指定区域，身分、职业世袭，严禁与平民通婚，形成特殊的社会集团——“部落”。部落民处于社会最底层，备遭歧视和压迫。1871年8月28 日，明治政府颁布太政官布告第 61号，宣布“废除秽多、非人等称呼，尔后其身分、职业均与平民同”（通称解放令）。但实际状况毫无改善。20世纪初，部落中上层人物提倡改良风俗，与部落外民众交往，开始形成部落运动。1922年3月3日，受社会主义思想影响的部落青年发起成立全国水平社，提出以部落民自己的行动争取彻底解放的纲领 。从此 ，部落运动发展为战斗的部落解放运动。第二次世界大战后，新宪法规定，“不因人种、性别、身分、门第等不同而受歧视”。但歧视部落民事件屡有发生，部落民的生活、就业 、教育与一般人之间仍有很大差距 。因此，部落解放运动重新兴起，1946 年2月19日成立部落解放全国委员会，1955年8 月改称部落解放同盟，发动了要求政府制定部落解放政策的群众斗争。 1969年6月，政府制定为期10年的《同和对策事业特别措施法》。1979年，该法延长 3年。

#Cyberbullying Tactic #Denigration Image – Free Public Domain Edu. #ChildSafety Graphic by Michael Nuccitelli, Psy.D. #iPredator NYC

  

It's time to take a stand in the great MySpace vs. Facebook wars of 2007. I will not denigrate MySpace here other than to say that they've brought the GeoCities aesthetic into the new millennium*, but I do want to say that Facebook is really a great site, and with the addition of modular applications may actually -- for the first time among social networking sites -- be verging on usefulness.

 

It's a natural integration with Flickr, and not just because there are applications that integrate the two sites. It's a relatively minimalist site with a focus on community, and seamless integration of RSS feeds. It's also the easiest way to get my blog, Flickr, and my new, I'm-not-telling-you-yet blog content all in one place. Try it for yourself.

 

As always, stalkers are welcome -- add me here

 

*is there anything more to say?

In Perušić July 2020.

 

Citizens of the small town of Perušić launch an appeal for support to keep their memorial to Anti-fascist fighters and the victims of fascism between 1936-1945. Sixteen volunteers from the town (pop 850) and the immediate countryside fought in Spain,

 

Support has come from around the world - Noam Chomsky in USA, French philosophers Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière, and amongst signatories from over 40 countries, "a taxi driver from London, a miner from England ..."

 

"In 1954, the municipality of Perušić built a memorial ossuary in the town’s park for 52 victims of fascism and partisans who died in action. The memorial was changed in 1980 with the construction of a larger monument, which included a bronze relief and a plaque. This addition was intended to honour the names of Spanish Civil War veterans, a larger number of partisans, and 401 victims of fascist repression in the region.

 

The inscription running along the base of the relief sculpture reads, ‘You gave your lives for our joy’

 

"Recent research has shown that at least sixteen local young men joined the international brigades in Spain during the civil war. Most of them had immigrated from Yugoslavia during the 1920s for political or economic reasons. Those immigrants joined the brigades through their adopted countries, particularly Canada, the United States, Belgium, and France. During the war, they fought with the XV International Brigade, also known as Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the Dimitrov Battalion, the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, the Jaroslav Dombrowski Battalion, among others. They saw action at Jarama, Madrid, Tortosa, and Brunete.

 

New, EU funded, development plans would see the memorial removed.. A children's playground is included in the redevelopment. In the UK we are reminded that our national memorial on London's South Bank sits alongside a children's playground ,,, the sounds of children playing, enhancing, not disrupting our speeches, songs and silences. Parents and children often pause to the read the inscriptions as they pass by.

 

The proposed removal of the memorial is seen as an erasure of history and "an undermining of democracy" The appeal also notes the tendency, in some quarters, for anti-fascism to be equated with nazism and fascism - something in a past that should be denigrated, or even "criminalised".

 

Echoing the image on the memorial’s relief sculpture, showing a man calling forward his comrades an international call has been made to keep the memorial in place. "With this call, we honour the memory of those who decided to risk their lives for a better future for us all.

 

Open letter from citizens of Perušić. The letter and the request for support [non monetary] can be read here: tinyurl.com/y3b65op6

 

Photomontage: Marshall Mateer

As former German chancellor suggested, taking Vladimir Putin's words seriously is "a sign of political wisdom" not weakness.

 

Indeed, Putin can't be that dumb to drop a nuclear bomb in its next door neighbor. That would have a devastating health effect on Russia as the nuclear dusts would kill many of his fellow citizens.

 

www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-s-putin-says-he-won-t...

 

Russia's Putin says he won't use nuclear weapons in Ukraine

 

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday denied having any intentions of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine but described the conflict there as part of alleged efforts by the West to secure its global domination, which he insisted are doomed to fail.

 

Speaking at a conference of international foreign policy experts, Putin said it's pointless for Russia to strike Ukraine with nuclear weapons.

 

“We see no need for that,” Putin said. “There is no point in that, neither political, nor military.”

 

Putin said an earlier warning of his readiness to use “all means available to protect Russia” didn’t amount to nuclear saber-rattling but was merely a response to Western statements about their possible use of nuclear weapons.

 

He particularly mentioned Liz Truss saying in August that she would be ready to use nuclear weapons if she became Britain's prime minister, a remark which he said worried the Kremlin.

 

“What were we supposed to think?” Putin said. “We saw that as a coordinated position, an attempt to blackmail us.”

 

In a long speech full of diatribes against the United States and its allies, Putin accused them of trying to dictate their terms to other nations in a “dangerous, bloody and dirty” domination game.

 

Putin, who sent his troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, has cast Western support for Ukraine as part of broad efforts by Washington and its allies to enforce its will upon others through a rules-based world order. He argued that the world has reached a turning point, when “the West is no longer able to dictate its will to humankind but still tries to do it, and the majority of nations no longer want to tolerate it.”

 

The Russian leader claimed that the Western policies will foment more chaos, adding that “he who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind.”

 

Putin claimed that “humankind now faces a choice: accumulate a load of problems that will inevitably crush us all or try to find solutions that may not be ideal but could work and could make the world more stable and secure.”

 

Without offering evidence, the Russian leader repeated Moscow’s unproven allegation that Ukraine was plotting a false flag attack involving a radioactive dirty bomb it would try to pin on Russia.

 

Ukraine has strongly rejected the claim, and its Western allies have dismissed it as “transparently false.” Ukraine argued Russia might be making the unfounded allegation to serve as a cover for its own possible plot to detonate a dirty bomb.

 

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters on Thursday that the U.S. has still not seen anything to indicate that Putin has decided to use a dirty bomb.

 

Putin said he personally ordered Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to call his foreign counterparts to tell them about the purported plot. He maintained that Russia knows the Ukrainian facilities working on the project.

 

He mocked the allegations by Ukraine and the West that Russia was firing on the territory of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine as “ravings.” Russian troops have occupied the plant, Europe's largest, since the early days of the conflict.

 

Putin also expressed bewilderment about Washington's policy on China, noting that tensions sparked by a recent visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi come amid the U.S.-Russian showdown over Ukraine.

 

“Why spoil relations with China at the same time?” Putin said. “It seems to defy logic and common sense. It looks like ravings.”

 

He hailed Russia's relations with China, but said he hadn't warned Chinese President Xi Jinping about his intention to send troops into Ukraine when he visited Beijing days before that to attend the 2022 Winter Olympics.

 

Asked about Washinton's threat to re-evaluate its relationship with Saudi Arabia over the Riyadh-led OPEC+ alliance's move to cut oil production, Putin argued that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was acting in his nation's interests and the need to stabilize global energy markets.

 

“They need to respect the crown prince and Saudi Arabia, and they will respond in kind,” Putin said. “And they will also respond in kind if they are spoken to in a boorish manner.”

 

The Russian leader said Russia isn’t the enemy of the West but will continue to oppose the purported diktat of Western neo-liberal elites, accusing them of trying to subdue Russia.

 

“Their goal is to make Russia more vulnerable and turn it into an instrument for fulfilling their geopolitical tasks, they have failed to achieve it and they will never succeed,” Putin said.

 

Putin reaffirmed his long-held claim that Russians and Ukrainians are part of a single people and again denigrated Ukraine as an “artificial state” that received historic Russian lands from Communist rulers during the Soviet times.

 

In that context, he acknowledged that the fighting in Ukraine effectively amounts to a civil war, although the Kremlin calls its actions in Ukraine a “special military operation.”

 

Putin said he thinks “all the time” about the casualties that Russia has suffered in Ukraine, but insisted that NATO’s refusal to rule out Ukraine’s prospective membership and Kyiv’s refusal to adhere to a peace deal for its separatist conflict in the country’s east has left Moscow no other choice.

 

He denied underestimating Ukraine’s ability to fight back and insisted that his “special military operation” has proceeded as planned.

 

Putin also acknowledged the challenges posed by Western sanctions, but argued that Russia has proven resilient to foreign pressure and has become more united.

 

John Kirby, a U.S. National Security Council spokesman, responded to Putin’s speech as it was underway.

 

“We don’t believe that Mr. Putin’s strategic goals have changed here. He doesn’t want Ukraine to exist as a sovereign, independent nation state," Kirby said.

  

www.reuters.com/world/putin-says-west-is-playing-dangerou...

 

Putin blasts West, says world faces most dangerous decade since WW2

 

▫️Putin: West is playing a dangerous game

▫️Putin: West will have to talk to Russia

▫️Putin accuses West of nuclear blackmail

▫️Says its dominance is coming to an end

 

LONDON, Oct 27 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the world faced the most dangerous decade since World War Two as Western elites scrambled to prevent the inevitable crumbling of the global dominance of the United States and its allies.

 

In one of his longest public appearances since he sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, Putin signalled he had no regrets about what he calls "a special operation" and accused the West of inciting the war and of playing a "dangerous, bloody and dirty" game that was sowing chaos across the world.

 

"The historical period of the West's undivided dominance over world affairs is coming to an end," Putin, Russia's paramount leader, told the Valdai Discussion Club during a session entitled "A Post-Hegemonic World: Justice and Security for Everyone".

 

"We are standing at a historical frontier: Ahead is probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and, at the same time, important decade since the end of World War Two."

 

The 70-year-old former KGB spy was more than an hour late to the meeting of Russia experts where he gave a typically scathing interpretation of what he portrayed as Western decadence and decline in the face of rising Asian powers such as China.

 

He appeared relaxed over more than three and a half hours as he was questioned about fears of nuclear war, his relations with President Xi Jinping, and about how he felt about Russian soldiers killed in the Ukraine war, which he cast "partly" as a civil war, a notion Kyiv rejects.

 

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the war, while the West has imposed the most severe sanctions in history on Russia, one of the world's biggest suppliers of natural resources.

 

'DIRTY BOMB'

The Russian leader blamed the West for stoking recent nuclear tensions, citing remarks by former British Prime Minister Liz Truss about her readiness to use London's nuclear deterrent if the circumstances demanded it.

 

He repeated an assertion that Ukraine could detonate a "dirty bomb" laced with radioactive material to frame Moscow - an allegation dismissed by Kyiv and the West as false and without evidence.

 

A suggestion by Kyiv that the Russian charge might mean Moscow plans to detonate such a device itself was false, he said.

 

"We don't need to do that. There would be no sense whatsoever in doing that," Putin said, adding that the Kremlin had responded to what it felt was nuclear blackmail by the West.

 

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has triggered the biggest confrontation with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in the depths of the Cold War when the Soviet Union and the United States came closest to nuclear war.

 

Asked about a potential nuclear escalation around Ukraine, Putin said the danger of nuclear weapons would exist as long as nuclear weapons existed.

 

But he said Russia's military doctrine was defensive and, asked about the Cuban Missile crisis, quipped that he had no desire to be in the place of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader who, along with John F. Kennedy, took the world to the brink of nuclear war before defusing the situation.

 

"No way. No, I can't imagine myself in the role of Khrushchev," Putin said.

 

'DIRTY GAME'

Putin quoted a 1978 Harvard lecture by Russian dissident and novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who launched a frontal assault on Western civilisation, decrying the hollow materialism and "the blindness of superiority" of the West.

 

"Power over the world is what the so-called West has put on the line in its game - but the game is dangerous, bloody and I would say dirty," said Putin. "The sower of the wind, as they say, will reap the storm."

 

"I have always believed and believe in common sense so I am convinced that sooner or later the new centres of the multipolar world order and the West will have to start an equal conversation about the future we share - and the earlier the better," Putin said.

 

He cast the conflict in Ukraine as a battle between the West and Russia for the fate of the second largest Eastern Slav country which he said had ended in tragedy for Kyiv.

 

Putin said he thought constantly of Russian casualties in Ukraine, but avoided getting into detail about what the West says are huge losses. But only Russia could guarantee the territorial integrity of Ukraine, he said.

 

Ultimately, Putin said, the West would have to talk to Russia and other major powers about the future of the world.