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Caricatures about the Putin-Trump duo
May. 13th, 2025 07:35 am
(Chris Riddell / The Observer)
(Nicola Jennings / The Guardian)
(Peter Brookes / The Times)
(Christian Adams / The Telegraph)
(Emad Hajjaj Cartoons)
Original of the post: https://archivist.substack.com/p/caricatures-about-the-putin-trump
(good little-known or forgotten thrillers)
The pic has an undeservedly low rating at IMDB (5.1), but I enjoyed it and want to write a couple of paragraphs after re-watching it.
The film’s key figure is an irascible old man who once fought in Vietnam and now lives alone in a small town. The movie begins with a nasty episode highlighting his short temper. Then we see him on a hospital bed, stricken by a heart attack. His son and teenage granddaughter (the son’s daughter) come from afar to take care care of him. We quickly learn that all is not well between the three of them and has never been; this is manifested, inter alia, in the fact that the son and the granddaughter while visiting stay in a motel rather than in the patriarch’s house.
Soon it becomes clear that the old man either needs to go to a nursing home or, if he is to stay in his house, should have someone permanently by his side. At this very moment, as if by the stroke of a magic wand, a young nurse materializes at the front door – she was sent by the hospital to check on the patient. Before long, she agrees to become a live-in caregiver for the old man. The son leaves, the granddaughter stays for a while in a motel and… Yes, this is the story of an Evil Nurse. No, she doesn’t have plans for her ward’s beautiful spacious house – her motives are non-pecuniary and related to the man’s days in Vietnam. The nurse’s maliciousness is established early on but her motives become clear only late in the film, so the lack of clarity as to what drives her is one of the emotional hooks of the thriller. Events of the present alternate with the harrowing war scenes from the past, and at the end all pieces of the puzze come together… well, almost, because I still remained confused about one aspect of the Vietnam backstory, but the general picture is clear. 
A remarkable feature of this movie is that it is steeped in moral ambiguity and emotional ambivalence. A person who certifiably did some terrible things in the past is repeatedly presented on screen as at least deserving of a modicum of our sympathy and compassion. And the victim of a horrendous crime is shown as having lost all humanity in a search for vengeance, so much so that it is difficult to sympathize with this person’s horrible plight. You rarely see such complexity in thrillers. The lead actor Gene Jones is great, and the others are good.
A couple of years after “Dementia” its director Mike Testin rolled out a sequel, “Dementia: Part II”. According to the teaser at imdb.com, “when an ex-con takes a job as a handyman for an unstable elderly woman to avoid a parole violation, it becomes a choice he may regret.” Unfortunatel, this movie is nowhere to be found. Maybe some day…
Postwar Europe as a community of values and ideals is dying. It is failing and falling because of two things: the slaughter in Gaza and RusFed’s war against Ukraine. European politicians en masse, but first of all the British and German ones, are complicit in the slaughter Israel has committed in Gaza. As for Ukraine, the half-hearted military support extended by Western European powers, coupled with these powers’ long-standing efforts to accommodate Putin prior to 2022, spell out more disasters ahead because Putin can be stopped only with steely determination, not with half-heartedness.
The European political elites have long been turning a blind eye on Israel’s crimes – some willingly, others simply because they found it easier to go with the flow – but nowadays this complicity is simply impossible to ignore.
All of the above does not imply that there was ever a “golden age” of European peace and democracy – no, there wasn’t, and a stockpile of political crimes and sins had accumulated over the course of many years. Speaking about the past, I cannot but mention the participation of many European countries in the invasion of Iraq. Not only was the war criminal (although Saddam was a stinking despot) but it also had very low approval ratings among European populace, so the European elites who chose to join the USA-led coalition were breaching the democratic principles which they presumably must uphold.
And yet, despite all the bad things, there was hope and the feeling that bad things could be set right. Not any more. A dirty colonial war outside Europe in which Europe is directly complicit, both as an arms provider and a stifler of the anti-war dissent (Germany and UK are arguably the worst culprits) + a war inside Europe, the first post-WWII state-on-state war not flowing out of a civil war, in which Europe cannot muster the courage to defeat the aggressor: these are two critical events which, I’m afraid, are going to finish off postwar Europe as we know it and to usher in far darker times.
Copy of the post: https://archivist.substack.com/p/postwar-europe-is-dying
P.S. This is just sketchy thoughts; as I re-read the text after posting it, I think that I should have mentioned Europe’s complicity in the “concomitant” crimes: Israel’s occupation of, and destruction wrought in, Lebanon and Syria. So I’m correcting myself.
P.P.S. ai_sur is banned for extreme rudeness
(no subject)
May. 5th, 2025 09:31 am(a couple of thoughts about the article)
(“Is It Happening Here?”: the article’s URL is https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/05/05/is-the-us-becoming-an-autocracy)
I think the article very aptly describes how citizens adapt to democratic backsliding – one step at a time, but I see some problems with the author’s own interpretations of democracy and the backsliding.
1) In an article half of which is about the current democratic backsliding in the U.S., it’s very strange to see only a scant mention of the gagging of pro-Palestine protestors.
2) The backsliding is represented largely as battles of Bad Great Men (Trump, Orban…). Too much emphasis on individuals. And where is an analysis of the parliamentary systems, their drawbacks, their shortcomings? Isn’t parliamentarism, that is a system of collective governance, the backbone of democracy? Isn’t it the area where answers about the backsliding should be sought in the first place?
“George W. Bush stretched Presidential powers well beyond their previous limits; Barack Obama expanded them even further.” Well, neither Bush or Obama instituted a junta - it was the Congress who voted for the relevant decisions. And so it was in Hungary as well. Fidesz parliamentarians voted for the authoritarian laws without Orban keeping a gun at their heads.
I really wish the author would have spoken with Fidesz MEPs old enough to have taken part in Hungary’s transition to democracy in the late 1980 – early 1990s: what happened to them, how and why their views on good governance changed. It would be interesting to grill Orban himself on the issue, but I guess he’s out of reach for The New Yorker reporters:)). Still, any Hungarian national politician with a similar biography would do.
3) Too little emphasis, in my view, is placed on the precedents for Trump’s policies. To be fair, one mention is made: “some parts of Trump’s program are escalations of preexisting trends, not fundamental discontinuities. The corruption, the xenophobic nationalism, the ambient threat of decentralized violence—these may be more glaring now, but, whether we like to admit it or not, they have been present throughout American history.” But this scant mention is not sufficient in an analytical article about the democratic backsliding in the U.S., at least not for a reader with a slightly better-than-average knowledge of the United States’ political history.
4) Very weirdly, the case of LA Times pulling its Presidential endorsement is cited as “a sign of trouble” with the American democracy in the mass media field, although this is not the impression one gets from an explanatory article about the incident https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-10-25/latimes-no-presidential-endorsement-decison-resignations published by the newspaper itself. Whether the endorsement of Harris was withheld because of her refusal to condemn the slaughter in Gaza (as the LA Times’s owner’s daughter claimed) or the owner was wary of exacerbating the divisions in society, as he himself argued (while denying that his decision had anything to do with the Gaza issue), either explanation can be hardly viewed as a sign of “democratic backsliding”. The owner’s proposal to “draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation” is hardly an undemocratic one.
To sum it up: from the author of an article about the present democratic backsliding in the U.S. I would expect more bravery (since the Palestine issue is a critical sign of the backsliding) and much more emphasis on the issue of parliamentarism.
Copy of the post at Substack: https://archivist.substack.com/p/the-new-yorkers-article-comparing?sort=newДа, такое вот странное название фильм получил в российском прокате, но как бы то ни было… Итак, в основе сценария - реальные события: покушение чехословацких подпольщиков на Гейдриха - нацистского губернатора оккупированной Чехословакии. Дерзкое и удачное покушение спровоцировало страшную месть. Если вдруг кто не знает историю покушения и последовавших событий, то википедия вам в помощь.
Первые минут сорок двухчасового фильма, а это примерно треть экранного времени, посвящены биографии Гейдриха, причём с упором на его личную жизнь, а именно отношения с женой Линой (моя любимая Розамунд Пайк). Как они познакомились, сблизились, преодолевали ухабы в отношениях и т.д. «Гейдриховская» часть фильма не посвящена исключительно лишь семейной истории, но личная жизнь занимает в ней очень видное место.
Особенно запоминается эпизод нацистского шествия, который примечателен слиянием семейного и политического, изображением счастливых, довольных Гейдриха и Лины, которые бодро вышагивают со своим первенцем. Лина берёт на руки сына, чтобы тот мог получше рассмотреть выставленный на балконе фотопортрет любимца нации: “You know who Hitler is? That's him, see that man in the picture? That's our leader? And he's just been named the Chancellor of Germany. Do you know what that means? It means that he'll be able to save our country. That's why mommy and daddy are so happy today.” Я специально вырезала эту сцену из фильма – см. клип в посте на сабстаке (https://archivist.substack.com/p/the-man-with-the-iron-heart-2017).
Преодолев примерно треть пути, киноповествование делает резкий поворот, и фокус перемещается на историю подготовки и исполнения дерзкого покушения, на подпольщиков, а Гейдрих с женой отходят даже не на второй, а на какой-то четвёртый план, и такая диспозиция длится уже до конца фильма.
Часть кинокартины, посвящённая покушению, представляет собой вполне достойный, упругий партизанский триллер. Длящаяся примерно 80 минут, эта часть вполне могла бы быть самостоятельным кинопроизведением.
Итого в картине сосуществуют две истории, связанные друг с другом тематически, но не художественно: эскиз жизнеописания Гейдриха и его фрау – и рассказ о подпольщиках. Я рекомендую этот фильм к просмотру, но сожалею, что биографический скетч растворился в истории покушения. Моё особое сожаление вызывает тот факт, что кинематографическое жизнеописание видного гитлеровца имеет очень необычный, редкий фокус на его семейных, брачных отношениях. Я даже не могу припомнить другого фильма о Второй мировой, который был бы сосредоточен на истории Херра Высокопоставленного Нациста и Его Фрау. Нет, нацистские жёны появляются много где, но почти всегда – в виде пассивных фигур, в виде фона и иногда даже, я бы сказала, «обоев». Лина же в фильме – и то, как роль написана, и то, как она сыграна Розамундой, - активный, деятельный персонаж, во многом даже определяющий жизненную траекторию героя. Но заинтриговав меня необычным подходом, фильм вильнул и убежал в другом направлении.
Впрочем, всё равно – смотреть стОит.
Добавим любопытную биографическую подробность: пережив своего убитого мужа-мясника на много десятилетий, Лина получала военную пенсию, положенную вдове убитого генерала.
Добавим ещё: почти одновременно с обсуждаемым фильмом в прокат вышла другая кинокартина, посвящённая покушению на Гейдриха. Она называется “Anthropoid”. С названием этого фильма российские прокатчики, слава Б-гу, мудрить не стали, и российская прокатная версия так и называется: «Антропоид». Второй фильм получился очень сильным, он заслуживает отдельного разговора и я, может, ещё напишу про него.
Копия поста на сабстаке: https://archivist.substack.com/p/the-man-with-the-iron-heart-2017
Meanwhile in and around Israel
May. 4th, 2025 12:49 pm“IDF calls up tens of thousands of reservists ahead of expanded Gaza offensive - Soldiers to show up in coming week; ministers set to vote on army’s plans in Sunday cabinet meeting, after premier authorized them over weekend. …The reservists may not be sent to Gaza, but rather to other fronts — Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank — and swap out members of the standing army who will be deployed to the Strip.”
Am I the only one to see Israel as an octopus suffocating the region in its deadly grip?
“The IDF has said that calling up reservists was being carried out solely out of “practical and operational interests,” amid mounting letters signed by veterans calling for a hostage deal with Hamas, even if it comes at the cost of ending the war.” (https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-calls-up-tens-of-thousands-of-reservists-ahead-of-expanded-gaza-offensive/)
“Saudi Arabia told US to keep Israel normalisation off agenda for Trump's visit, sources say - After meeting with Marco Rubio, Saudi foreign minister told colleagues kingdom would not be 'tricked' into normalisation talks. …A second Arab official told MEE that Farhan left the meeting sensing a state of ineffectiveness at the US State Department.
Farhan told officials afterwards that Rubio and his department had been completely “sidelined” from decision-making by Trump.” (https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-arabia-told-us-keep-israel-normalisation-agenda-trumps-visit-sources-says)
On what censorship is and isn't
May. 4th, 2025 09:55 am“AG
@AGHamilton29
Two things that people online get consistently wrong now:
1) Criticism of bad speech is not censorship. It's also speech.
2) Supporting a legal right to say hateful stuff does not require defending the content of the bad speech or associating with the person who says it.”
“AG
@AGHamilton29
Two things that people online get consistently wrong now:
1) Criticism of bad speech is not censorship. It's also speech.
2) Supporting a legal right to say hateful stuff does not require defending the content of the bad speech or associating with the person who says it.” (https://x.com/AGHamilton29/status/1918734099037978859)
А вот поразительная история, за которой давно слежу. Существует такой российский боевой генерал Иван Попов, воевал в Украине, был хвалим патриотической общественностью за то, что остановил украинское контрнаступление в Запорожье. Затем Попов записал публичное голосовое сообщение с критикой армейских недостатков, после чего был обвинён в краже армейских денег, отправлен в СИЗО и лишён погон.
Якобы Попов присвоил десятки миллионов рублей, выделенные для строительства укреплений в Запорожской области. Я неоднократно читала посты зетников о том, что Попова любят и уважают солдаты, а арест – месть за критические высказывания. На суде «представитель властей Запорожской области подчеркнул, что в результате действий Попова, в том числе «благодаря выстроенным оборонительным рубежам», было отражено контрнаступление украинских сил» (https://rtvi.com/news/advokat-eks-generala-popova-raskryl-detali-ego-soderzhaniya-v-sizo/ прошу прощения за тошнотворную цитату, но это просто чтобы обрисовать масштаб арестанта в российском армейском пейзаже). Несмотря на обвинение в краже больших сумм, никаких богачеств у Попова до сих пор не обнаружено, что наводит на мысли…Бывший генерал писал слёзные письма Путину, и даже некоторые видные путинисты вроде телевизионного военкора Сладкова и профессиональной патриотки актрисы Яны Поплавской пытались заступиться за него – но всё напрасно.
Настолько тяжело для Попова расставание с армией, что пока шли следствие и суд, он даже умолял отправить его - уже уволенного из вооружённых сил, уже лишённого всех званий - на фронт в качестве простого зэка-штурмовика, и вроде бы вначале его просьбу уважили, но потом передумали и отказали.
Итог: «Генерала Попова лишили звания, присудили ему 800 тысяч рублей штрафа и отправили в колонию общего режима на ближайшие пять лет.
Перед вынесением приговора Попов выступил с последним словом, в котором опять клялся в верности Владимиру Путину: «Может, и совершал в жизни какие-то ошибки, где-то заблуждался, но уж точно не преступал закон, всегда оставался верным присяге, своему народу и верховному главнокомандующему».»
Читайте эти поразительную историю https://holod.media/2025/04/28/chto-volnuet-voenkorov-xxxvii/
Копия этого поста: https://archivist.substack.com/p/80
The audio clip, a quickie transcript of which is below, is from MacKinnon’s interview https://www.youtube.coam/watch?v=S-waDc35bKc “Trump Edition Canada fights back - Battle Lines The Telegraph” (after 11:40). MacKinnon’s picture (posted only on Substack) is from the Globe and Mail’s site.
“QUE Can we talk a little bit about how all of this is going down in Canada [in terms of] non-political effects. <...> On Thursday the last week you had this extraordinary scene in the White House where Donald Trump was sitting down with Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, who had to quietly nod along to this stuff, which was pretty awkward. [Trump] said: [Trump's voiceover]<...> [Trump] made absolutely clear his intentions to subsume Canada into the United States. [So,] speaking as a Canadian, how that is going down?
MM You mean watching Mark Rutte say nothing? <...> Watching Keir Starmer go to - you know, we're members of the Commonwealth, we share a head of state - having him go to Washington and nod along until there is no gap between him and Mr. Trump and then invite him to Buckingham Palace to meet the Canadian head of state, to invite Trump here... There is a lot of anger in Canada as the first listener expressed because<...> we are a member of NATO, we should not be subjected to territorial threats in front of the secretary general of NATO. We should not be seeing our closest... we look at England and France as mom and dad, as the new prime minister Mark Carney made clear this week by flying to Paris and London before he went anywhere else. To see the British prime minister - he sent an invitation and presumably King Charles [accepted] it. There is a betrayal on a lot of sides right now, and I think that Britain and the Commonwealth and the NATO are going to figure out what they are for.
QUE That's really interesting. I suppose you don't think about Commonwealth as much but...
MM Not until recently. (Both laugh)
QUE One of the things that really came out is a lot of Canadians died in the 1st and 2nd world wars fighting alongside Brits
MM We didn't declare war the first time, we just went to war 'cause they told us to.
QUE And that's really coming out. There is a sense [that] we should be together in the Commonwealth.
MM Absolutely. <...> So there is a sense that we thought we were in all of this together and then [when] our neighbor turns into a bully, all our other friends are scattering and taking cover.”
Copy of the post: https://archivist.substack.com/p/not-only-ukraine-is-tasting-the-bitter
As recently as in April 2017, “the Trump administration notified Congress… that Iran is complying with [JCPOA]” (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/iran-nuclear-deal-trump-administration-says-tehran-complying-with-agreement). And just a year later, in May 2018, the Trump administration terminated the agreement. And just 2 years after the withdrawal, a leading Iranian general was murdered on Trump’s order. A turnaround of huge proportions.
Fast forward to the present day. Discussing a new deal with Iran, Trump’s envoy Witkoff one day says that the acceptable enrichment level is 3.67%, and the next day he makes an about-face – now it’s zero level (https://www.alquds.com/en/posts/158123).
These wide fluctuations make me think that Trump himself, then and now, may not be really opposed to a deal with Iran but is unable / unwilling to push back against the powerful Israel lobby that wants to see Iran lethally incapacitated on every front. Now there is perhaps mighty jostling around Trump in relation to the Iran issue, as described here https://www.axios.com/2025/04/16/trump-iran-nuclear-policy-vance-rubio. What's missing in Barak Ravid’s article, however, is a rundown on the donors' positions: who is enthusiastically in favor, who is undecided / indifferent, are there powerful donors who are vehemently opposed. If there is no vigorous, active, energetic opposition among the donors, I guess the issue will be ultimately decided by the United States’ Israel lobby.
P.S. My position is that I don’t understand why Israel should be the only guy with the nukes in the Middle East. I find the aytollahs’ regime abhorring but nor do I like Israel’s militarism, and considering the present-day internal developments in Israel, I’m not sure that several years from now it will not become indistinguishable from its neighbors...
Copy of the post: https://archivist.substack.com/p/my-one-and-a-half-non-expert-thought
And I’m also present here https://x.com/Arhivistka_LJ
(no subject)
Apr. 12th, 2025 12:48 am
"Скверный анекдот"
Oct. 30th, 2021 12:49 pm
ИЗВИНЕНИЕ!!!!!!!!
Dec. 30th, 2017 06:31 am
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?
fbid=10214739245092566&set=a.1201061424508.30688.1167726390&type=3&theater
Ещё юбилейного
Oct. 7th, 2017 11:13 pm
"Игорь ЭйдманОргкомитет Форума в Берлине
Follow · 6 hrs ·
Практически все путинские СМИ раструбили о том, что в центре Берлина в день рождения Путина его поклонники сделали комплиментарное графити. В действительности просто сработали платные путинские пиарщики, которых в Германии море.
Русскоязычные европейцы не стали долго терпеть это безобразие. Уже днем на этом графити появились надписи Mörder и Dieb (то есть убийца и вор), а руки и рот Путлера были залиты кроваво-красной краской. — with Юрий Гиммельфарб".
facebook.
com/photo.php?fbid=1631946896868283&set=gm.351891468588544&type=3&theater&ifg=1
