Happy 246th Birthday, America. Stay strong.
Tuesday/ tell us more, tell us more 💬
[Photo by Getty Images]
Trump was aware that his supporters had deadly weapons, and he still encouraged them to march on the Capitol. He tried to go, too, but the Secret Service would not let him. (In the days before the attack, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone was frantically warning staff that if anyone from the White House, let alone the president, went to the Capitol on Jan. 6, they’d be charged ‘with every crime imaginable’).
Trump wrestled with a Secret Security agent in ‘The Beast’ (the heavily armored vehicle), wanting to go to the Capitol after his speech at The Ellipse, and not back to the West Wing.
Trump threw dishes against the wall in the White House dining room, and would pull off the tablecloth with dinnerware and food and all onto the floor —regularly.
Trump really, really did not want to call off the rioters.
From inside the White House, the President can go on national TV on a moment’s notice. Trump never did.
—2.24 pm: Sent the now-infamous tweet condemning Mike Pence.
—2.38 pm: Tweeted that ‘protestors should stay peaceful’, as the violent break-in into the Capitol with the loss of life unfolded.
—4.17 pm: Tweeted the ‘we love you, go home’ recording to the rioters.
Thursday/ conspiracy against the United States 💀
It was Day 5 of the Jan. 6 Committee’s hearings, and man! – brazen, shameless, and flagrant are all words that come to mind, when one hears the testimony of what Trump was attempting to do, in the run-up to the Jan. 6 certification of the votes for President-elect Joe Biden.
On Jan. 3, 2021, with 17 days to go in his disastrous presidency, he pushed as hard as he can to replace former Acting Attorney General Rosen with a guy called Jeff Clark (so that Clark can contend the election was stolen).
Now: the AG oversees 115,000 people, including the FBI. Clark was utterly unqualified for the position.
Former DOJ officials Rosen, Donoghue, & Engel testified before the Jan. 6 committee that they had told Trump many DOJ officials would resign if Trump were to replace Rosen with Clark.
As Teri Kanefield notes on Twitter: What finally got through to Trump wasn’t the threats of resignation (and the damage it would do to the Dept of Justice), but persuading Trump that the con wouldn’t work.
It’s all very Title 18 U.S.Code § 371 a case of conspiracy against the United States.
Monday/ commemorating Juneteenth ⓳
This year’s Juneteenth* (June 19th) is the first one as a designated federal holiday. Since June 19th fell on a Sunday this year, today was a public holiday.
*Juneteenth commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.
From blackpast.org:
Following the Union Army victory at Antietam, Maryland on September 17, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation. This document gave the states of the Confederacy until January 1, 1863 to lay down their arms and peaceably reenter the Union; if these states continued their rebellion all slaves in those seceding states were declared free.
Fearing the secession of neutral border slaveholding states such as Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation excluded those states, which left almost one fifth of the four million slaves in bondage. Their freedom would come with the 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865.
Thursday/ ‘your dishonor will remain’
The Jan. 6 committee of Congress held its first prime-time (televised) hearing tonight, about the attack on the Capitol and the events leading up to it.
There were clips of pre-taped testimony from Bill Barr (Trump’s former Attorney General that had interfered with the first impeachment trial), and even from Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
Viewers were also shown new footage of the attack from the blood-thirsty mob that had been egged on by President Trump.
The Jan 6. insurrection at the U.S. Capitol now lies 18 months behind us, and more than 800 people across the U.S. have been charged.
Of these, 189 had been sentenced, with sentences ranging from probation to five years in jail. High-profile trials involving the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys are expected to start in the fall.
Several of their members are charged with seditious conspiracy (a serious but lesser counterpart to treason).
Will any of the really big fish, or the Mob Boss himself, pay a serious price? Nobody knows— and ultimately that will be up to US Attorney General Merrick Garland and his Dept. of Justice, not the Jan. 6 committee.
Memorial Day
“They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”
– For the Fallen, a poem by Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)
In 1951, Johns was drafted into the army and spent two years in service during the Korean War at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and in Sendai, Japan.
The forty-eight stars and red-and-white stripes depicted here picture an American flag from the year this work was made (Alaska and Hawaii had not yet become part of the union).
Medium: Encaustic (using pigments mixed with hot wax that are burned in as an inlay), oil, and collage on fabric mounted on plywood, three panels.
Dimensions: 42 1/4 x 60 5/8″ (107.3 x 153.8 cm)
[Picture Credit: moma.org]
Monday/ about that Russian convoy
The extended 40-mile parade of Russian armored vehicles, tanks and towed artillery headed from the north on a path toward Kyiv has both alarmed and befuddled watchers of this expanding war. It’s not just its sheer size. It’s also because that for days, it has not appreciably been moving.
U.S. officials attribute the apparent stall in part to logistical failures on the Russian side, including as a result of food and fuel shortages, that have slowed Moscow’s advance through various parts of the country. They have also credited Ukrainian efforts to attack selected parts of the convoy with contributing to its slowdown. Still, officials warn that the Russians could regroup at any moment and continue to press forward.
-Reported by the Washington Post
Saturday/ Ukraine’s nuclear power plants
Russian attacks on nuclear sites could destabilize Ukraine’s energy supply
Russian forces attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on March 3 and are now reportedly pushing toward the South Ukraine nuclear power plant. These are Ukraine’s two largest nuclear power plants, together responsible for one-third of Ukraine’s electricity generation.
Ukraine has a total of four nuclear power plants consisting of 15 reactors that generate roughly 50 percent of the country’s electricity. After nuclear power, coal is the largest source of electricity generated in the country. Many of Ukraine’s coal-fired power plants lie in the Donbas region, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.
-From the New York Times, as reported by Lazaro Gamio and Eleanor Lutz
Monday/ the refugees
About half a million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began last week, according to the United Nations refugee agency. About half of them crossed Ukraine’s western border to Poland. Others have gone to Hungary, Moldova, Romania and Slovakia. Ukraine enacted martial law at the beginning of the conflict that requires men ages 18 to 60 to remain in the country.
-Reported by the New York Times
Thursday/ it’s not just about Ukraine
Columnist David Ignatius writes in the Washington Post, in an opinion piece called ‘Putin’s assault on Ukraine will shape a new world order’:
Now that Russian troops have surged into Ukraine, how does Putin plan to extricate himself? It’s likely that he hopes to keep Russian ground troops out of Kyiv and other big cities, instead using Spetsnaz special forces and FSB operatives to neutralize these targets. He will probably seek to install a puppet government. But here’s where U.S. officials believe Putin’s planning breaks down.
What Putin doesn’t appear to realize, with his vision of Russian-Ukrainian oneness, is that his bullying has deeply alienated Ukrainians. I saw that anti-Putin sentiment when I visited Kyiv in late January, and it’s undoubtedly even stronger now that Russian tanks are on the streets and jets are in the sky. Putin obviously believed his own rhetoric that Ukraine wasn’t a real country. That level of self-absorption so often leads to mistakes.
With his unprovoked invasion, Putin has shattered the international legal rules established after World War II, along with the European order that followed the Cold War. That old architecture was getting shaky, and it was destined to be replaced eventually.
The Ukraine assault, pitting a messianic Russian autocrat against the wishes of every other major nation, perhaps including China, will determine the shape of the new order to come. If Putin loses his battle to subjugate Ukraine, the new order will have a solid and promising foundation. If Putin wins, the new era will be very dangerous indeed.
Wednesday/ Russia invades Ukraine (again)
Putin’s war on Ukraine has started.
Where will it end?
[Photo by REUTERS/Michele Tantussi]
Monday/ Washington’s Birthday
Presidents’ Day, officially Washington’s Birthday, is a holiday in the United States, celebrated on the third Monday of February. Its intent is to honor all persons who served in the office of president of the United States. (Tomorrow the 22nd, is Washington’s actual birthday*).
I would exclude some presidents—especially one recent one— from this honor.
Then again, Washington himself was a slave owner, and mistreated them.
‘Too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station and reputation’ said fellow Founding Father John Adams, of George Washington’s eight years as the nation’s first commander-in-chief.
That sounds awfully familiar.
*It’s actually vastly more complicated than just saying it’s the 22nd.
England was still using the Julian calendar in 1731 when Washington was born.
Then, when England (and its colonies) switched to the Gregorian calendar in Sept. 1752, the date Sep 2, 1752 (Julian) was followed by Sept 14, 1752 (Gregorian). There were 11 ‘lost days’.
Another thing: when England and its colonies switched, they also moved New Year’s Day from late March to Jan. 1 (except for Scotland, which was already using Jan. 1 for the new year).
So the calendar year 1751 (with Julian dates) was only about nine months long, going from March 25 to Dec. 31. This meant that anyone born between Jan. 1 and March 25 (Julian) had to start using a different birthday (Gregorian) and a different birth year (Gregorian), or continue using an ‘inaccurate’ birthday and birth year — even though the number of days they had spent on planet Earth was unchanged.
So depending on which calendar you are using for Washington’s birthday, he was born on both Feb. 11, 1731 (Julian) and on Feb 22, 1732 (Gregorian). They are the exact same day.
Martin Luther King Day
It’s Martin Luther King Day, the day when Republican politicians trumpet their hypocrisy on Twitter. They would have us believe they support civil rights and voting rights for all Americans. (They do not).
[Artwork is from a blog page on Levi Strauss & Co.’s web site, called ‘Reflecting on the Significance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day’].
Thursday/ Jan. 6, a year later
A year later, some 800 rioters and insurrectionists have been indicted for the events at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Some have been tried, found guilty, and have started to serve lengthy jail terms. The Mobster-in-Chief is still the de facto leader of his party, though (the Republican Party National Committee Chair said that he is the leader, in August).
History will not forget, though — whether the disgraced, defeated former President pays a price or not.
Further down on the page “Americans at the Gates: The Trump Era’s Inevitable Denouement”. Looking back now, was it a denouement? (Denouement= the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved).
Sunday/ the Glasgow Climate Pact
The 97 points of the Glasgow Climate Pact (COP26) make heavy reading for a Sunday night, but I glanced through it. Man a.. and China and Russia did not even attend the conference.
The United States is at least serious again to make an effort, but as George Monbiot writes for The Guardian, it’s too late for incremental changes, and we need a critical minority to commit to the cause.
It works like this: ”There’s an aspect of human nature that is simultaneously terrible and hopeful: most people side with the status quo, whatever it may be. A critical threshold is reached when a certain proportion of the population change their views. Other people sense that the wind has changed, and tack around to catch it. There are plenty of tipping points in recent history: the remarkably swift reduction in smoking; the rapid shift, in nations such as the UK and Ireland, away from homophobia; the #MeToo movement, which, in a matter of weeks, greatly reduced the social tolerance of sexual abuse and everyday sexism.
But where does the tipping point lie? Researchers whose work was published in Science in 2018 discovered that a critical threshold was passed when the size of a committed minority reached roughly 25% of the population. At this point, social conventions suddenly flip. Between 72% and 100% of the people in the experiments swung round, destroying apparently stable social norms. As the paper notes, a large body of work suggests that “the power of small groups comes not from their authority or wealth, but from their commitment to the cause”.
As far as the hard numbers go, here is a to-the-point summary written by Adam Taylor and Harry Taylor in the Washington Post:
Where (temperature change) are we at now?
A Washington Post analysis of multiple data sets has found that Earth has already warmed more than 1 degree Celsius on average over the past century. Some places may already have seen rises of 2 °C.
Where are we headed?
In their latest report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that under the current scenario, the world would likely hit the 1.5 °C threshold by 2040. Under the most optimistic scenario presented in the report, global temperatures would reach 1.5 °C by the middle of the century and then drop back down as emissions were cut further, potentially avoiding some of the worst outcomes.
Under the worst scenario envisaged by the IPCC, the best estimate was that the world will likely see a rise of 4.4 °C by the end of the century — with an extreme impact on life on Earth.
[Infographic from the Washington Post]
Thursday/ Veterans Day
[Original is in the National Museum of American Jewish Military History, Washington DC, United States. Picture from Google Arts & Culture]
Above is the plaque awarded to Sgt. Andrew Segal.
At the top it reads “COLUMBIA GIVES TO HER SON THE ACCOLADE ON THE NEW CHIVALRY OF HUMANITY”.
The inscription below reads “Andrew N. Segal Sgt. Co. G 316th Inf. SERVED WITH HONOR IN THE WORLD WAR AND WAS WOUNDED IN ACTION”, with President Woodrow Wilson’s signature.
Saturday/ it’s official: LEGO’s RMS Titanic
From CNN Style:
Made up of 9,090 pieces, the replica model divides into three sections to reveal the interior of the ill-fated vessel, including the first-class grand staircase, which sprawls over six decks, as well as a Jacobean-style dining saloon and the engine room.
The LEGO ship is a 1:200 scale model and also includes a recreation of the ship’s bridge, promenade deck and swimming pool.
“At the time of its launch the Titanic was the pinnacle of nautical engineering, the largest moving vehicle ever created. It has been an incredible journey to recreate this iconic vessel from LEGO bricks, using blueprints created over a century ago,” Mike Psiaki, design master at the LEGO Group, said in a statement Thursday.
“Designing the LEGO Titanic with such a focus on immense detail and scale, but also accuracy, has allowed us to create one of the most challenging building experiences to date,” he added.
The set won’t come cheap though: Available for pre-order from November 1 and general sale from November 8, the ship will retail at $629.99.
All pictures are from Lego.com.
Saturday/ Twenty Years later
On Saturday, both President Bush and President Biden acknowledged that what has happened in the years since, has only challenged the notion that Americans prized coming together over choosing to grow hostile to one another’s differences.
– Katie Rogers reporting for the New York Times
[Picture by Todd Heisler/The New York Times]
Monday/ wheels up, for the last time
It’s official: America’s 20 year-long war in Afghanistan is over.
The last cargo plane from the United States armed forces had left at midnight Kabul time on Monday night. Someone on flightradar24.com noted that the United States military has ceased to provide air traffic control functions at Kabul Airport, and that the entirety of Afghan airspace is now without air traffic control.
‘Afghanistan has once more completed a cycle that has repeatedly defined the past 40 years of violence and upheaval: For the fifth time since the Soviet invasion in 1979, one order has collapsed and another has risen. What has followed each of those times has been a descent into vengeance, score-settling and, eventually, another cycle of disorder and war’, writes Thomas Gibbons-Neff for the New York Times.
[Hand-out photo from U.S. Air Force]
Friday/ the national flower of Mexico
Summer is dwindling, and so are the flowers to be found on my neighborhood walk. Still, I got these two beautiful dahlias tonight.
Centuries ago, dahlia tubers were grown as food crops by the Aztecs. This use of the plant largely died out after the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519-21). The dahlia was declared the national flower of Mexico in 1963.
