The Automatic Earth

National Photo Co. Janes’ candy store, Ninth Street, Washington, D.C. 1924 Boxing champ Vitali Klitschko, who was reportedly the most popular opposition leader in Ukraine during the Maidan protests before Yanukovych was chased away, and was then shunned by the west as interim PM in favor of banker-boy Yatsenyuk, this morning announced he’s no longer a candidate in the presidential elections in May. Instead, he’ll throw his heavyweight behind Ukraine’s own Willy Wonka, candy man Petro Poroshenko, known locally as

Esther Bubley Sign at the National Zoological Park, D.C. May 1943 The story itself may at times feel repetitious and belonging to a different era, but in the case of Ukraine it’s certainly applicable: another country is being given the Shock Doctrine treatment; it’s by no means restricted to South America in the 1970s. Ukrainians have hit the streets for months, and about a hundred of them got taken out cold by nobody knows who, just to end up with

Dorothea Lange Mississippi grocery store June 1937 If I were a citizen of the European Union, especially of either the more eastern countries or of Britain, I’d be getting worried right now. I wouldn’t be so sure that what the Boys from Brussels are concocting is in my best interest. It’s one thing to hear the leadership declare that when it comes to gas, Putin needs Europe more than the other way around, but is that really true or is

Arthur Rothstein Family on relief living in shanty at city dump, Herrin, Illinois 1939 My buddy VK sent me a link yesterday to a limits to growth piece by Nafeez Ahmed, executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, in the Guardian, The Global Transition Tipping Point Has Arrived – Vive La Révolution, in which the author says almost all of the right things, but unfortunately gets a lot wrong as well. What Nafeez gets wrong, a lot