Rembrandt van Rijn The Adoration of the Magi 16xx I still had some things I didn’t talk about in Sunday’s Trump Derangement International, about how the European press have found out that they, like the US MSM, can get lots of viewers and readers simply by publishing negative stories about Donald Trump. The US president is an attention magnet, as long as you only write things about him designed to make him look bad. The Guardian is only too
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Diego Velázquez The Spinners 1655-60 Dirk Kurbjuweit, deputy editor-in-chief of Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine for the past 4 years, unwittingly put his foot a mile deep in his mouth this week when he reacted to a letter written by US Ambassador to Berlin Richard Grenell. His reaction presents perhaps the most perfect example of the downfall of news, journalism, the media in general, that we’ve seen so far. Most perfect among very stiff competition. After Der Spiegel itself this
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Titian The rape of Europe 1560-62 It took me a while to decide which word(s) best define the past year and the next one, but I think this is pretty much it. 2018 was chaotic more than anything else, and that chaos will give rise to mayhem in 2019. What I think is striking is that this is true across the board, in all walks of life so to speak. In finance, in politics, in energy markets, in ecological
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Wilhelm Trübner A Gorgon‘s head 1891 The news still isn’t the news, and I’m getting afraid it never will be again, because not the news just simply sells so much better than plain old real events. Maria Butina suddenly popped back into the public eye, because she was either charged with something or confessed to it. And I’m thinking, excuse me, but that poor girl has been kept in isolation for how long now? And for what reason exactly?
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Rembrandt van Rijn Bathsheba at her bath 1654 (see video at the bottom) There are not many things that I’m allergic to. But there are some. Here’s a good example: bigotry. Behold, in the article quoted below, the danger of political correctness in all its glory. A 30-year old Christmas song, Fairytale of New York, it is claimed, must be censored or banned. For a reason I’ll explain, such things always make me think of Rembrandt’s painting “Bathsheba at
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Paul Almasy Paris 1950 The concept of the EU might have worked, but still only might have, if a neverending economic boom could have been manufactured to guide it on its way. But there was never going to be such a boom. Or perhaps if the spoils that were available in boom times and bust had been spread out among nations rich and poor and citizens rich and poor a little more equally, that concept might still have carried
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Berthe Morisot The old track to Auvers 1863 Our politicians and media are not going to allow us to see Russia, and any incidents the country can be linked to, in any other way than black and white, in which we are the good party and they are the black, evil and guilty ones. So we’ll have to do that ourselves. More than enough has been said about why NATO should have been dismantled when the reason for its
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Max Ernst Ubu Imperator 1923 Ilargi: This is part 3 of Alexander Aston’s view of how upheaval and collapse can lead to new insights, new bursts of creativity, in science, religion, society and the arts. Part 1 of Quantum, Jazz and Dada can be found here, part 2 is here. Here’s Alexander: Quantum, Jazz and Dada: The Dynamic Symmetry of Destruction and Creativity Human Development “Every breath is a sacrament, an affirmation of our
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Ivan Kramskoy Christ in the desert 1920 If and when a former Rothschild banker starts telling us what the words in our respective languages actually mean, beware. Even if he has dozens of professional speech writers and spin doctors to do it for him. And even if the meaning and interpretation of words, though they may seem easily translatable, differ between English, French, German, Russian, Chinese to such an extent that Lost in Translation may appear to be an
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Marcel Duchamp Nude descending a staircase 1912 Ilargi: Much to my surprise, I received a mail from an old friend. Alexander Aston last wrote for the Automatic Earth in 2014. But he hasn’t been idle. Alexander is presently finishing his doctorate in archeology at Oxford, after prior degrees in philosophy and history. And for this article, he’s been thinking about how upheaval and collapse tend to lead to new insights, new bursts of creativity, in science, religion, society
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