Tuesday news
Today is the 19th of April, 2022. Last week's news, and yesterday’s visuals. Quite long list.
I hope your Easter (Passover or Ramadan) holidays pass smoothly, you feel relaxed and can reflect on the latest news without much stress. I can’t say that those are better than a week ago.
In my case I spent the last days at my son’s bed, who was sick. And I must say compared to that I see everything around me as less dramatic now. Selfishly I distance myself from the stories of detailed violence. The main reason: it’s enough to know about the facts, no need to abuse my mind again and again.
Why do I write that? The majority of the news at the moment is about Ukraine. There’s nothing radically new happening, so the most stories are about visual materials and witnesses. If we were talking about the world news coverage, that would be justified by the importance of the event, but I’m referring to the front pages of international media groups that have their own national sections as priority. Usually.
What’s going on now is unusual. Today media judges that the attention of the public should be attracted to something happening abroad, even when there’s not much to report about - only long reads and opinions are available. For the economic news outlets, it's especially important to step aside from that line, but they can’t do it, so we still find titles like “Putin plans to meet big business owners and executives Wednesday” on Bloomberg front page.
“No agenda announced, people familiar with the plans said. EU sanctioned business leaders after the previous Putin meeting” (which was on February 24, and some of them were already in the sanction lists, Bloomberg forgot to mention, publishing the formal press-release from the Russian President’s press-office along with other 30 news outlets).
I’m glad we don’t discuss if Putin had dinner today. Though I’m not sure. Maybe that’s important as well as from which side of the bed he’ll step down tomorrow. Is there a correlation we haven’t figured out yet? A secret formula that will help to defeat the “evil”?
There’s definitely nothing more important going on in the world right now, according to the major media. So I choose to look for all the dull subjects lost in the informational noise. For example, why major climate reports cause public anxiety. Also there were clashes, manifestations and terrorists attacks that look like synchronised in the different countries as well as nationalists movements (at Sweden riots sparked by planned Quran burnings, and in Kosovo police patrols were attacked by serbian radicals, speaking of Europe).
Immigrants' flows are intensified, some governments offered pretty strange tactics to deal with those. Mr. Biden seems to be losing himself in public, he’s even ignored by his own team and the Vice President publicly, but despite the falling polls numbers for the support of the USA government the media starts blaming Russia for influencing the future elections like that country has nothing more to do right now.
The inflation and energy costs are rising so fast in Europe that people in the UK started cancelling their subscriptions on Netflix and Amazon Prime to cut their expenses.
And there are talks about the 4 day working week. What is the purpose for that?.. Well, psychologists say it’s for better productivity and for satisfaction from life and work. Legit views, I won’t argue. Very in time, I would say. When employers can’t raise the labour wages following the inflation rates, and there's a deficit of labour on the American market… Instead of closing the business or reforming the business model, you can send people home early and let them look for a second or third job. And all sides look nice. Except for the labour force that is in the middle and especially on the bottom of the food chain. Those don’t have time for reflection or simply for a proper rest if that matters.
In chilly parts of Europe, heatwaves strengthen environmentalism, according to The Economist. I’m not sure it’s because of the heatwaves, more likely because of the mentality and prosperity levels of the particular countries and their political interests as well as the moment, like it happens in France where opposite opinions on EU “green deal” is a part of the major election campaigns. The subject is extremely popular right now when Europe is searching for ways to free itself from Russian oil and gas and to cut energy expenses and need to take in concern the climate warming. Ordinary people need to deal with the prices. A magical solution at the moment is unreachable, especially for the vulnerable groups of the society that can’t buy solar panels or heat pumps.
Speaking of the alternative energy, or more precisely the alternative lightning that doesn’t need electricity: there is a bunch of biohacking research on the use of luminescent bacteria, different sorts of enzymes and genetically modified plants for urban or home lighting purposes. Some of them are about to have a practical use though that can’t be called a perfect renewable energy at the moment the whole picture is mesmerising. Can you imagine instead of ugly street lanterns glowing benches or trees? Just like those night pictures of the luminescent seacoasts or firebug magic in the forests.
But back to the issues that were reported and discussed last week. The most important was Elon Musk’s attempt to fight the Twitter censorship by bidding $43bn for it. People discussed if it is right or wrong, if it’s possible or impossible. You can judge by yourself listening the man and reading different sorts of opinions, it’s already sounds like a novel:
The Law That Shaped the Internet Presents a Question for Elon Musk
Elon Musk fails to convince the doubters that he will ‘save’ Twitter
Twitter launches poison pill to thwart $43bn bid by Elon Musk
Speaking of the censorship, I remember another discussion, much less peaceful, that happened on Instagram and ended up with multiple bans and restricted content signs for the users who shared their opinions. The subject was the clashes that erupted on last Friday, the eve of the Jewish Passover holiday, between Palestinian worshippers and Israeli security forces at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque. At least 150 Palestinians were reported injured and more than 300 detained. Meanwhile people abroad are fighting online again trying to prove each other what is “genocide” (very popular word these days) and who are terrorists, Israel’s government faces collapse as Arab party threatens to quit over the clashes. Here’s another article on the same subject: Israel coalition squeezed by attacks and shock defection. I need to add that it’s the first time Arab party is represented in the Parliament.
The last ongoing discussion right now is what should be done with frozen Russian assets. Some “experts” think that those should be used by the American government to budget Ukraine ($100 Billion. Russia’s treasure in the U.S. should be turned against Putin). Of course no one takes into account that those are people’s money. And it’s not just pure robbery of another nation’s wealth, that’s a system error undermining the trust in US dollars and into the American bank system.
At the same time some concerned economists form Europe attracted by the frozen Russian oligarch’s property addressed to the G20 ministers urged to use oligarch crackdown to tackle tax havens:
“The ICRICT economists proposed the introduction of an international network of asset registries that listed all different forms of wealth: from assets including property, yachts, jets and jewellery; to bank accounts, cryptocurrency assets and safe deposit boxes; as well as trusts and other legal arrangements; and even intangible assets such as intellectual property and trademarks… The commissioners urge G20 leaders to convene an urgent international summit to implement such a system and discuss offshore wealth and tax havens. “No more excuses, no more pandemics, no more wars to justify lack of action,” they sign off, concluding that such action was required “to preserve democracy, end spiralling inequality and rebuild the social contract”.
Couldn’t agree more on that.
So we moved to the common good and the IMF version of providing that good to the poor, vulnerable economies. There’s a very interesting article was published on the Guardian: Will Biden ever stand up to the IMF’s abuses of power? Don’t let the title mislead you, it has nothing to do with Biden, and everything to do with the American role in the IMF and its policies, as history shows. I want to quote it:
“The IMF’s abuse of power, then, comes as no surprise. It is a natural response of an institution unmoored from the laws of its member states and the United Nations that connects them. Tweaking the Fund’s mandate will not do the trick. Only strong mechanisms of accountability – changing both who decides and how – can end the Fund’s impunity. … What we have lacked so far is political will – in particular, in the IMF’s largest shareholder and only veto-wielder, the United States of America.
Here, we may have cause for optimism. The United States government appears to have rediscovered its passion for human rights, international law and the UN charter. Perhaps this selective passion will flower into a universal one, and the US will demand the application of these principles to the International Monetary Fund…”.
And the last two publications I found quite intriguing. The first one is “In Africa, U.S.-trained militaries are ousting civilian governments in coups”.
“But U.S. commanders have watched with dismay over the past year as military leaders in several African allies—including officers with extensive American schooling—have overthrown civilian governments and seized power for themselves, triggering laws that forbid the U.S. government from providing them with weapons or training…. “There’s no one more surprised or disappointed when partners that we’re working with—or have been working with for a while in some cases—decide to overthrow their government,” Rear Adm. Jamie Sands, commander of U.S. special-operations forces in Africa, said this week. “We have not found ourselves able to prevent it, and we certainly don’t assess that we’re causing it.””.
Well… looks like they never know what they do exactly.
The second article is about Russia ‘using weapons smuggled by Iran from Iraq against Ukraine’. Though the subject is clear and pretty obvious, I don’t want to get into the details of the Russian influence and the allies in the region, but quote the words of the one of the weapon salers:
“We don’t care where the heavy weapons go [because we don’t need them at the moment],” one Hashd al-Shaabi source said. “Whatever is anti-US makes us happy.”
I can’t say it makes me happy that my country is in the condition to shake hands with those people “who don’t care”, when the negotiations could end the bloodshed and stop the madness. But it sums up for me the unipolar world epoc.
Don’t want to end the review on such a sad note. Do you know how many countries offer gender-neutral passports? On April 11 the USA joined the others.
“Data gathered by The Economist show that 16 countries already have a third-gender option on their passports. In 2013 Germany became the first European country to make use of the “X” category on passports. Canada did so in 2017… In South America, Argentina and Colombia have a third-gender option for passports, as do India, Nepal and Pakistan in Asia”.
End of the report. Peace to everyone.
A digest from my feed for April 17-18th, 2022
7.30am April 17 zakharova_kaetano Good morning 🌞 and #happyeaster🐰 to those who celebrate. How are you today? #haveagoodday@baptistepicq and #charlesmeynier Polyhymnia #motioncollage#motiongraphics #artcynic #morningmood #morninginspiration#goodmorningpost #goodmorningart
4.00pm April 17 zakharova_kaetano #finding rings by @nadaghazaljewelry #artofjewellery #beautyofjewellery #jewelleryasinspiration #contemporaryjewellery
9.00pm April 17 zakharova_kaetano #nightmood #fashioneditorial#fashionportrait #futurism @chogiseok “Our Busy Society” photography #fashionstory @ohseongseok @gabe.sin@bokellysuh @takeafilm @h_y_u_n_j_ @addextrameat#artofphotography #fairytaletime #fashionasinspiration#happyeaster
11.00pm April 17 zakharova_kaetano #goodnightandsweetdreams #nightmood#surrealmood #leonorfini eggs and women #happyester🐣#artasinspiration #beautyofart #historyofart #surrealart
6.30am April 18 zakharova_kaetano Good morning 🌞 How are you today? #haveagoodday I wish us a nice sane productive week. @davidshrigley #drawing as a #morninginspiration#morningmood #goodmorningart #goodmorningpost#artasinspiration #contemporaryart
9.00pm April 18 zakharova_kaetano #todaymood we are a bit ill and exhausted here… I need flowers… to heal and to breath #flowerobsession@azumamakoto for @diorbeauty #amkkproject #makotoazuma#azumamakoto #flowerasinspiration #flowersstilllife#artofphotography #stilllifephoto #finephotography#natureasinspiration
11.00 pm April 18 zakharova_kaetano #nightmood #fashioneditorial#fashionportrait #fairytaletime “Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops” #fashionstory Photographer: #TimWalker Styled: Jacob K @kjeldgaard1 Hair and head wraps by @1malcolmedwardsmakeup by @thevalgarland Model: @karliekloss Set design by @simon_costin #SimonCostin #artofphotography#fashionasinspiration #beautyoffashion
11.30pm April 18 zakharova_kaetano #goodnightandsweetdreams #nightmood#oceanasinspiration #oceanvideophotography by @ryanpernofski #beautyofocean #natureasinspiration#artofvideography #naturalvideography
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