Theodor Horydczak Snow Globe 1935 Alright, alright, let’s do a little timeline again first. It’s common knowledge by now that Khrushchev gave the Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. But nobody really cared that much, they just figured it happened because Khrushchev was himself Ukrainian and drunk at the time he did it. It never seemed to matter one way or the other because Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union anyway. As can be seen in this great little video
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Arthur Rothstein Boy living in shanty at city dump, Herrin, IL. January 1939 It’s somehow eerily comforting to know that an entire Boeing 777 plane can completely disappear from everybody’s view, leading to an area from Kazachstan to Australia now being searched, in the days when it’s become common knowledge that the NSA and its global sister organizations track billions of phone calls and internet communications on a daily basis. Still, much as the idea is appealing, it’s so comfortably
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Dorothea Lange Sleeping gypsy in El Paso, Texas, waiting for streetcar to Mexico June 1938 So what are we going to do over the weekend? For many of us it’ll be a lot of nerves and anguish over the rattling of sabres and armored personnel carriers by the Black Sea, and there’s not much we can do about it. Maybe a good time to take store of friends and loved ones, and spare a thought and prayer for all the
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Carl Mydans Auto transport at Indiana gas station. May 1936 Britain’s Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) recently issued a report on the future of pensions and healthcare that reads as one big warning sign. But the chances that the warning will be heeded are slim to none, simply because the task is too daunting for both politicians and their voters to even begin to contemplate. No politician who tells the truth about the report’s contents has a chance in frozen
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Arthur Rothstein “Family on relief living in shanty at city dump, Herrin, Illinois January 1939 I like alternatives that people draw up for how our societies can be better run and better positioned for both hard times and good. I also like tearing into any such plans, a taste I acquired after being exposed to too much well-meant not-so-smart nonsense. It’s become a kind of a sport to figure out where the next batch of ignoramuses lose their way. Not
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G. G. Bain Pawn Shop, 15 Cooper Square, New York 1920 The other day I stumbled upon an image that got me thinking. I’m still thinking. And I doubt I’ll be done anytime soon. So perhaps it’s a good idea to simply share both the image and my thoughts, and invite you to share what you think, and see where we get. I found it on the site of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Education,
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Joseph Horne for OWI Catholic Evidence Guild, Logan Circle, Washington, D.C. July 1943 Both Japan and China have poured huge amounts of stimulus into their banking systems lately (yeah, sort of like the US). What they have to show for it is the – fully predictable – disaster of the born of despair, three arrowed Abenomics (fiscal stimulus, monetary easing and structural reforms) in Japan and a Chinese financial system that grew from $10 trillion to $24 trillion in just
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Jack Delano for OWI Female Gas Attendant, Philadelphia, PA June 1943 Forests and trees. We live in a world built on such an overkill of 24/7 propaganda and misinformation that some of it easily slips by. At that point you need to rely on the little man inside to raise a warning sign. That’s about how I felt when I read yesterday about EU plans to deliver gas to Ukraine by reversing the flow through existing pipelines. That made me
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Jack Delano Milk Woman Taking Over In Wartime, Bryn Mawr, Pa. June 1943 175,000 new jobs (we await revisions) and a rising unemployment rate (6.7%). Which was not due to people re-entering the labor force, as has been suggested, since the labor force participation rate remained stuck at 63%. This hasn’t been going anywhere for years now, it’s all stuck around 150,000 or so – the running to stand still level – , sometimes up, sometimes down, with lots of
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Lee Angle Fort Worth Flood 1949 Crimea just declared itself part of Russia. Well, its government did. What the status is of that government is unclear, but then that’s also true for the Ukrainian government, which the west is all too eager to declare the one and only. Perhaps the first thing to do for the US and EU is to sit down with Russia and agree on the legal standing of the Kiev government, since without any such agreement
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