#yugoslavia '83

[vintageurovision]

Džuli, Danijel | Yugoslavia, Eurovision Song Contest 1983

4th place with 125 points

[starseedpatriot]

Let’s get the facts right:

‼️Fact 1. In February 2014, a coup overthrew the Ukrainian government which came to power in an election certified by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation). The president, Viktor Yanukovich, was forced to flee for his life.

‼️Fact 2. The coup was instigated by United States officials. Neo-conservatives such as Victoria Nuland and John McCain actively supported the protests. As confirmed in a secretly recorded phone call, Nuland had determined the post-coup power composition weeks in advance. She bragged they had spent $5 billion in this campaign over two decades. Nuland managed the coup but Vice President Biden was overall in charge. Subsequently, Joe Biden’s son personally benefited from the coup.

‼️Fact 3. The coup government immediately acted with hostility toward its Russian speaking citizens, which make up 30% of the population. On the first day in power, the coup regime acted to make Russian no longer an official state language. This was followed by more actions of hostility. As documented in the video “Crimes of the Euromaidan Nazis”, a convoy of buses going back to Crimea was attacked. In Odessa, over thirty  opponents of the coup government died when they were attacked and the trade union hall set afire.

‼️Fact 4. During World War 2, there were Nazi sympathizers in western Ukraine when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union.  This element continues today in the form of Svoboda and other far right nationalist parties. The Ukrainian government has even passed legislation heroizing Nazi collaborators while removing statues honoring anti-Nazi patriots.  The situation was described three years ago in an article “Neo-nazis and the far right are on the march in Ukraine”.  The author questioned why the US is supporting this.

‼️Fact 5. The secession of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk are a direct result of the 2014 coup. In Crimea, a referendum vote was rapidly organized. With 83% turnout and 97% voting in favor, Crimeans decided to secede from Ukraine and re-unify with Russia. Crimea was part of Russia since 1783.  When the administration of Crimea was transferred to the Ukraine in 1954 they were all part of the Soviet Union. This was done without consulting the population.

In the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk on the border with Russia, the majority of the population speaks Russian and had no hostility to Russia. The Kiev coup regime was hostile and enacting policies they vehemently disagreed with.  In spring 2014,  the Luhansk and Donetsk Peoples Republics declared their independence from the Kiev regime.

‼️Fact 6. The Minsk Agreements of 2014 and 2015 were signed by Ukraine, Ukrainian rebels, Russia and other European authorities.  They were designed to stop the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine and retain the territorial integrity of Ukraine while granting a measure of autonomy to Luhansk and  Donetsk. This is not abnormal; there are 17 autonomous zones in Europe. These agreements were later rebuffed by the Kiev government and Washington. This led to the decision by Russia on 21 February 2022 to recognize the Peoples Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR).

But isn’t secession illegal under international law? The US and NATO have little credibility to oppose secession since they promoted the breakup of Yugoslavia, secession of Kosovo from Serbia,  secession of South Sudan from Sudan, and Kurdish secessionist efforts in Iraq and Syria, etc.. The secession of Crimea is justified by its unique history and overwhelming popular support. The secession of Luhansk and Donetsk may be justified by the illegal 2014 Kiev coup.

US intervention, both open and secret, has been a major driver of the events in Ukraine. The US has been the major instigator of the conflict.

https://t.me/LauraAbolichannel

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 7.7 (after 1940)

1941 – The US occupation of Iceland replaces the UK's occupation. 1944 – World War II: Largest Banzai charge of the Pacific War at the Battle of Saipan. 1946 – Mother Francesca S. Cabrini becomes the first American to be canonized. 1946 – Howard Hughes nearly dies when his XF-11 reconnaissance aircraft prototype crashes in a Beverly Hills neighborhood. 1952 – The ocean liner SS United States passes Bishop Rock on her maiden voyage, breaking the transatlantic speed record to become the fastest passenger ship in the world. 1953 – Ernesto "Che" Guevara sets out on a trip through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador. 1958 – US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Alaska Statehood Act into law. 1959 – Venus occults the star Regulus. This rare event is used to determine the diameter of Venus and the structure of the Venusian atmosphere. 1962 – Alitalia Flight 771 crashes in Junnar, Maharashtra, India, killing 94 people. 1963 – Buddhist crisis: Police commanded by Ngô Đình Nhu, brother and chief political adviser of South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem, attacked a group of American journalists who were covering a protest. 1978 – The Solomon Islands becomes independent from the United Kingdom. 1980 – Institution of sharia law in Iran. 1980 – During the Lebanese Civil War, 83 Tiger militants are killed during what will be known as the Safra massacre. 1981 – US President Ronald Reagan nominates Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female member of the Supreme Court of the United States. 1983 – Cold War: Samantha Smith, a US schoolgirl, flies to the Soviet Union at the invitation of Secretary General Yuri Andropov. 1985 – Boris Becker becomes the youngest male player ever to win Wimbledon at age 17. 1991 – Yugoslav Wars: The Brioni Agreement ends the ten-day independence war in Slovenia against the rest of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. 1992 – The New York Court of Appeals rules that women have the same right as men to go topless in public. 1997 – The Turkish Armed Forces withdraw from northern Iraq after assisting the Kurdistan Democratic Party in the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War. 2003 – NASA Opportunity rover, MER-B or Mars Exploration Rover–B, was launched into space aboard a Delta II rocket. 2005 – A series of four explosions occurs on London's transport system, killing 56 people, including four suicide bombers, and injuring over 700 others. 2007 – The first Live Earth benefit concert was held in 11 locations around the world. 2012 – At least 172 people are killed in a flash flood in the Krasnodar Krai region of Russia. 2013 – A De Havilland Otter air taxi crashes in Soldotna, Alaska, killing ten people. 2016 – Ex-US Army soldier Micah Xavier Johnson shoots fourteen policemen during an anti-police protest in downtown Dallas, Texas, killing five of them. He is subsequently killed by a robot-delivered bomb. 2017 – The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted with 122 countries voting in favour. 2019 – The United States women's national soccer team defeated the Netherlands 2–0 at the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup Final in Lyon, France. 2022 – Boris Johnson announces his resignation as leader of the Conservative Party following days of pressure from the Members of Parliament (MPs) during the July 2022 United Kingdom government crisis.

[monmorgandy]

Epimedium alpinum by Giuliano Da Zanche Via Flickr: Epimedium alpinum (Berberidaceae) 092 22 Epimedium alpinum is the type species of the genus Epimedium which contains approximately 69 to 83 species and belongs to the family of the Berberidaceae (Barberry Family). Epimedium alpinum is native to Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Yugoslavia (Serbia, Montenegro), and Albania and is naturalized in France, Germany, Danmark, and the British Isles. The perennials have a clump-forming habit and reach heights of 15 to 30 centimeters. Epimedium alpinum produces racemes of yellow cruciform flowers from March to May. Source Hortipedia.

[your-friendly-hood-anarchist]

US CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY & GLOBAL TERRORISM

US Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction The indiscriminate use of bombs by the US, usually outside a declared war situation, for wanton destruction, for no military objectives, whose targets and victims are civilian populations, or what we now call “collateral damage.”

Japan (1945)

China (1945-46)

Korea & China (1950-53)

Guatemala (1954, 1960, 1967-69)

Indonesia (1958)

Cuba (1959-61)

Congo (1964)

Peru (1965)

Laos (1964-70)

Vietnam (1961-1973)

Cambodia (1969-70)

Grenada (1983)

Lebanon (1983-84)

Libya (1986)

El Salvador (1980s)

Nicaragua (1980s)

Iran (1987)

Panama (1989)

Iraq (1991-2000)

Kuwait (1991)

Somalia (1993)

Bosnia (1994-95)

Sudan (1998)

Afghanistan (1998)

Pakistan (1998)

Yugoslavia (1999)

Bulgaria (1999)

Macedonia (1999)

US Use of Chemical & Biological Weapons The US has refused to sign Conventions against the development and use of chemical and biological weapons, and has either used or tested (without informing the civilian populations) these weapons in the following locations abroad:

Bahamas (late 1940s-mid-1950s)

Canada (1953)

China and Korea (1950-53)

Korea (1967-69)

Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia (1961-1970)

Panama (1940s-1990s)

Cuba (1962, 69, 70, 71, 81, 96)

And the US has tested such weapons on US civilian populations, without their knowledge, in the following locations:

Watertown, NY and US Virgin Islands (1950)

SF Bay Area (1950, 1957-67)

Minneapolis (1953)

St. Louis (1953)

Washington, DC Area (1953, 1967)

Florida (1955)

Savannah GA/Avon Park, FL (1956-58)

New York City (1956, 1966)

Chicago (1960)

And the US has encouraged the use of such weapons, and provided the technology to develop such weapons in various nations abroad, including:

Egypt

South Africa

Iraq

US Political and Military Interventions since 1945 The US has launched a series of military and political interventions since 1945, often to install puppet regimes, or alternatively to engage in political actions such as smear campaigns, sponsoring or targeting opposition political groups (depending on how they served US interests), undermining political parties, sabotage and terror campaigns, and so forth. It has done so in nations such as

China (1945-51)

South Africa (1960s-1980s)

France (1947)

Bolivia (1964-75)

Marshall Islands (1946-58)

Australia (1972-75)

Italy (1947-1975)

Iraq (1972-75)

Greece (1947-49)

Portugal (1974-76)

Philippines (1945-53)

East Timor (1975-99)

Korea (1945-53)

Ecuador (1975)

Albania (1949-53)

Argentina (1976)

Eastern Europe (1948-56)

Pakistan (1977)

Germany (1950s)

Angola (1975-1980s)

Iran (1953)

Jamaica (1976)

Guatemala (1953-1990s)

Honduras (1980s)

Costa Rica (mid-1950s, 1970-71)

Nicaragua (1980s)

Middle East (1956-58)

Philippines (1970s-90s)

Indonesia (1957-58)

Seychelles (1979-81)

Haiti (1959)

South Yemen (1979-84)

Western Europe (1950s-1960s)

South Korea (1980)

Guyana (1953-64)

Chad (1981-82)

Iraq (1958-63)

Grenada (1979-83)

Vietnam (1945-53)

Suriname (1982-84)

Cambodia (1955-73)

Libya (1981-89)

Laos (1957-73)

Fiji (1987)

Thailand (1965-73)

Panama (1989)

Ecuador (1960-63)

Afghanistan (1979-92)

Congo (1960-65, 1977-78)

El Salvador (1980-92)

Algeria (1960s)

Haiti (1987-94)

Brazil (1961-64)

Bulgaria (1990-91)

Peru (1965)

Albania (1991-92)

Dominican Republic (1963-65)

Somalia (1993)

Cuba (1959-present)

Iraq (1990s)

Indonesia (1965)

Peru (1990-present)

Ghana (1966)

Mexico (1990-present)

Uruguay (1969-72)

Colombia (1990-present)

Chile (1964-73)

Yugoslavia (1995-99)

Greece (1967-74)

US Perversions of Foreign Elections The US has specifically intervened to rig or distort the outcome of foreign elections, and sometimes engineered sham “demonstration” elections to ward off accusations of government repression in allied nations in the US sphere of influence. These sham elections have often installed or maintained in power repressive dictators who have victimized their populations. Such practices have occurred in nations such as:

Philippines (1950s)

Italy (1948-1970s)

Lebanon (1950s)

Indonesia (1955)

Vietnam (1955)

Guyana (1953-64)

Japan (1958-1970s)

Nepal (1959)

Laos (1960)

Brazil (1962)

Dominican Republic (1962)

Guatemala (1963)

Bolivia (1966)

Chile (1964-70)

Portugal (1974-75)

Australia (1974-75)

Jamaica (1976)

El Salvador (1984)

Panama (1984, 89)

Nicaragua (1984, 90)

Haiti (1987, 88)

Bulgaria (1990-91)

Albania (1991-92)

Russia (1996)

Mongolia (1996)

Bosnia (1998)

US Versus World at the United Nations The US has repeatedly acted to undermine peace and human rights initiatives at the United Nations, routinely voting against hundreds of UN resolutions and treaties. The US easily has the worst record of any nation on not supporting UN treaties. In almost all of its hundreds of “no” votes, the US was the “sole” nation to vote no (among the 100-130 nations that usually vote), and among only 1 or 2 other nations voting no the rest of the time. Here’s a representative sample of US votes from 1978-1987:

US Is the Sole “No” Vote on Resolutions or Treaties

For aid to underdeveloped nations

For the promotion of developing nation exports

For UN promotion of human rights

For protecting developing nations in trade agreements

For New International Economic Order for underdeveloped nations

For development as a human right

Versus multinational corporate operations in South Africa

For cooperative models in developing nations

For right of nations to economic system of their choice

Versus chemical and biological weapons (at least 3 times)

Versus Namibian apartheid

For economic/standard of living rights as human rights

Versus apartheid South African aggression vs. neighboring states (2 times)

Versus foreign investments in apartheid South Africa

For world charter to protect ecology

For anti-apartheid convention

For anti-apartheid convention in international sports

For nuclear test ban treaty (at least 2 times)

For prevention of arms race in outer space

For UNESCO-sponsored new world information order (at least 2 times)

For international law to protect economic rights

For Transport & Communications Decade in Africa

Versus manufacture of new types of weapons of mass destruction

Versus naval arms race

For Independent Commission on Disarmament & Security Issues

For UN response mechanism for natural disasters

For the Right to Food

For Report of Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination

For UN study on military development

For Commemoration of 25th anniversary of Independence for Colonial Countries

For Industrial Development Decade in Africa

For interdependence of economic and political rights

For improved UN response to human rights abuses

For protection of rights of migrant workers

For protection against products harmful to health and the environment

For a Convention on the Rights of the Child

For training journalists in the developing world

For international cooperation on third world debt

For a UN Conference on Trade & Development

US Is 1 of Only 2 “No” Votes on Resolutions or Treaties

For Palestinian living conditions/rights (at least 8 times)

Versus foreign intervention into other nations

For a UN Conference on Women

Versus nuclear test explosions (at least 2 times)

For the non-use of nuclear weapons vs. non-nuclear states

For a Middle East nuclear free zone

Versus Israeli nuclear weapons (at least 2 times)

For a new world international economic order

For a trade union conference on sanctions vs. South Africa

For the Law of the Sea Treaty

For economic assistance to Palestinians

For UN measures against fascist activities and groups

For international cooperation on money/finance/debt/trade/development

For a Zone of Peace in the South Atlantic

For compliance with Intl Court of Justice decision for Nicaragua vs. US.

**For a conference and measures to prevent international terrorism (including its underlying causes)

For ending the trade embargo vs. Nicaragua

US Is 1 of Only 3 “No” Votes on Resolutions and Treaties

Versus Israeli human rights abuses (at least 6 times)

Versus South African apartheid (at least 4 times)

Versus return of refugees to Israel

For ending nuclear arms race (at least 2 times)

For an embargo on apartheid South Africa

For South African liberation from apartheid (at least 3 times)

For the independence of colonial nations

For the UN Decade for Women

Versus harmful foreign economic practices in colonial territories

For a Middle East Peace Conference

For ending the embargo of Cuba (at least 10 times)

In addition, the US has:

Repeatedly withheld its dues from the UN

Twice left UNESCO because of its human rights initiatives

Twice left the International Labor Organization for its workers rights initiatives

Refused to renew the Antiballistic Missile Treaty

Refused to sign the Kyoto Treaty on global warming

Refused to back the World Health Organization’s ban on infant formula abuses

Refused to sign the Anti-Biological Weapons Convention

Refused to sign the Convention against the use of land mines

Refused to participate in the UN Conference Against Racism in Durban

Been one of the last nations in the world to sign the UN Covenant on

Political & Civil Rights (30 years after its creation)

Refused to sign the UN Covenant on Economic & Social Rights

Opposed the emerging new UN Covenant on the Rights to Peace, Development & Environmental Protection

Sampling of Deaths >From US Military Interventions & Propping Up Corrupt Dictators (using the most conservative estimates)

Nicaragua – 30,000 dead

Brazil  – 100,000 dead

Korea – 4 million dead

Guatemala – 200,000 dead

Honduras – 20,000 dead

El Salvador – 63,000 dead

Argentina – 40,000 dead

Bolivia – 10,000 dead

Uruguay – 10,000 dead

Ecuador – 10,000 dead

Peru – 10,000 dead

Iraq – 1.3 million dead

Iran – 30,000 dead

Sudan – 8-10,000 dead

Colombia – 50,000 dead

Panama – 5,000 dead

Japan – 140,000 dead

Afghanistan – 10,000 dead

Somalia – 5000 dead

Philippines – 150,000 dead

Haiti – 100,000 dead

Dominican Republic – 10,000 dead

Libya – 500 dead

Macedonia – 1000 dead

South Africa – 10,000 dead

Pakistan – 10,000 dead

Palestine – 40,000 dead

Indonesia – 1 million dead

East Timor – 1/3-½ of total population

Greece – 10,000 dead

Laos – 600,000 dead

Cambodia – 1 million dead

Angola – 300,000 dead

Grenada – 500 dead

Congo  – 2 million dead

Egypt – 10,000 dead

Vietnam – 1.5 million dead

Chile – 50,000 dead

Other Lethal US Interventions CIA Terror Training Manuals Development and distribution of training manuals for foreign military personnel or foreign nationals, including instructions on assassination, subversion, sabotage, population control, torture, repression, psychological torture, death squads, etc.

Specific Torture Campaigns Creation and launching of direct US campaigns to support torture as an instrument of terror and social control for governments in Greece, Iran, Vietnam, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Panama

Supporting and Harboring Terrorists The promotion, protection, arming or equipping of terrorists such as:

Klaus Barbie and other German Nazis, and Italian and Japanese fascists, after WW II

Manual Noriega (Panama), Saddam Hussein (Iraq), Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic), Osama bin Laden (Afghanistan), and others whose terrorism has come back to haunt us

Running the Higher War College (Brazil) and first School of the Americas (Panama), which gave US training to repressors, death squad members, and torturers (the second School of the Americas is still running at Ft. Benning GA)

Providing asylum for Cuban, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Haitian, Chilean, Argentinian, Iranian, South Vietnamese and other terrorists, dictators, and torturers

Assassinating World Leaders Using assassination as a tool of foreign policy, wherein the CIA has initiated assassination attempts against at least 40 foreign heads of state (some several times) in the last 50 years, a number of which have been successful, such as: Patrice Lumumba (Congo), Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic), Ngo Dihn Diem (Vietnam) Salvador Allende (Chile)

Arms Trade & US Military Presence

The US is the world’s largest seller of weapons abroad, arming dictators, militaries, and terrorists that repress or victimize their populations, and fueling scores of violent conflicts around the globe

The US is the world’s largest provider of live land mines which, even in peacetime, kill or injure at least several people around the world each day

The US has military bases in at least 50 nations around the world, which have led to frequent victimization of local populations.

The US military has been bombing one Middle Eastern or Muslim nation or another almost continuously since 1983, including Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Iran, the Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq (almost daily bombings since 1991)

[nanshe-of-nina]

... The land of nearly all of West Asia and Central and Eastern Europe is saturated with blood.

A mere 200 years ago, Anatolia was a mixture of Armenians, Greeks, Kurds, and Turks; Circassians lived in the Caucasus; ethnic Poles lived in the Prussian part of the German Empire; Jews made up around 10% of Poland's population and had sizable communities throughout Western and Central Asia; numerous Muslims lived throughout Greece, Bulgaria, and the Balkans; ethnic Germans could be found throughout what are now the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and Romania; Italians made up around 50% of the population of Istria and 20% of Dalmatia; and the Crimea was around 83% Tatar.

None of this is the case any longer and absolutely none of it came about through wholly voluntary migrations.

No, it came about through massive amounts of ethnic cleansing, deportations, forced exoduses, massacres, and genocide, most of which occurred between 1830 and 1950, though the expulsions of Muslims from Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia started in 1821 and the exodus of Italians from Yugoslavia lasted until around 1960.

What's more, counties without, at minimum, a history of attempted cultural genocide and forced assimilation are few.

No citizens of any country are somehow inherently bad or evil because of their government. Full stop. That includes Russia citizens, Israeli citizens, Palestinian citizens, Chinese citizens, Iranian citizens, North Korean citizens, etc.

Everyone in this world is just living their lives, each with their own complex needs and desires and interests and emotions. They all have hobbies and friends and families and favorite foods. They all have their own motivations and varying political opinions and views on their governments. They all weigh the risks of standing out or speaking up and they all make their own decisions about that.

They all fear the same in times of danger. They all feel grief and pain and terror the same. They all love and hate and bleed the same.

They are people. They are no different from anyone else, they are not monsters or caricatures or nameless bodies in videos. Complexity and humanity are not exclusive to your country, to people like you.

[architectuul]

Saving Hotel Podgorica: Who, if not Architects?

Hotel Podgorica, one of the most important modernist buildings in the capital of Montenegro, has never been recognized as an important cultural heritage which, by all accounts, it is. A local group of activist architects is committed to changing that.

Hotel Podgorica in the 1980s   | Photo © Podgorički cikotići

Podgorica is a very young – and a very new – capital city. Young because the capital of Montenegro was moved there from Cetinje, the old royal base, only after World War 2; new because World War 2 brought about such destruction that, once the war ended, the city had to be built anew, almost from the scratch. Rebuilt within a new country, Yugoslavia, and under a new name, Titograd, today’s Podgorica still exhibits the modernist principles and structures of 20th-century urbanism and architecture which shaped and accentuated the cityscape. This heritage is undoubtedly precious; also, it has undoubtedly been systematically neglected and eaten away by the unhinged and poorly regulated urban development of the postsocialist decades. One of the victims of this process has been Hotel Podgorica.

Hotel Podgorica has been built into the riverbank before other parts of the contemporary city of Podgorica (1970). | Photo © Podgorički cikotići

Hotel Podgorica was built in 1967, at the time when the city government was looking for new ways to include the Morača riverbank into the nascent urban fabric. The winner of the public architectural competition was Svetlana Kana Radević, whose project succeeded in joining together the modernist tendencies of Yugoslavian architecture with Montenegrin building traditions, all while respecting the specific location of this building site. Once the hotel was constructed, it inspired awe and glowing reviews from all over Yugoslavia. In the distinguished professional magazine Arhitektura Urbanizam, Zoran Petrović wrote about “real joy, to encounter such accomplishment, which stands out from the grayness of our architectural everyday life, to come into contact with the work which escaped the mediocre, which wanted to say something new and which was absolutely successful in doing so[…]”. The building was a Montenegrin contender for the Federal Borba Prize for Architecture, the most prestigious architectural recognition in Yugoslavia, and it won. Svetlana Kana Radević became the first and only Montenegrin architect to receive this award, as well as the youngest laureate to ever accomplish such a feat; she was 29. She was also the first and only woman presented with this prestigious prize.

Hotel Podgorica  | Photo © Arhitektura urbanizam, Vol. 45–46, Beograd 1967

The terrace in 1979 | Photo © Podgorički cikotići

Main facade towards the river. | Photo © Archive Svetlana Kana Radević

Much has been written about the building of the hotel Podgorica since – it has definitely been one of the most researched objects of modern architecture in Montenegro. It was presented at Venice Biennale in 2004 and it was shown in the much-lauded MoMA exhibition on Yugoslavian architecture in 2018. Throughout this time the building has been deteriorating, unrecognized as architectural and cultural heritage by the Montenegrin institutions – hence, unprotected from the unprofessional repairs and reconstructions.

In 2004, the same year it was presented in Venice within the project Montenegrin Eco-logic Lab: Interfaces Between Architecture and Environment, it was privatized: the new owner, Normal Tours Company, bought it from the state for 840.000€ and went on to renovate the building in 2005, altering the original design in the process, especially the interior. The harm that was inflicted did not go unnoticed in the professional community, but the action was rather slow. Finally, Hotel Podgorica was nominated for protection and preservation in 2012 by the non-government organisation Architecture Forum, together with 47 other buildings deemed to be among the most valuable pieces of 20th century architecture in Montenegro. The list, along with the description of the most distinguishing features of each of these objects, was submitted to the Ministry of Culture. However, the response never arrived, and another few years had passed until the condition of Hotel Podgorica and its surroundings captured the attention of the wider public.

The interior of Hotel Podgorica in the 1970s | Photo © Podgorički cikotići

Hotel Podgorica was presented in Venice Biennale in 2004, as part of Serbia and Montenegro Pavilion

Towards the end of the 2015, the construction works started right next to the hotel walls; it turned out that a new office tower was to be built in a proximity and at the scale which would be distructive both for the hotel building and for its harmonious riverbank surroundings. This new development was outlined by the 2012 detailed urban plan for the area, but the proper public discussion, including expert analysis and media reports, happened only after the ground was broken and the construction of the tower became apparent and imminent. In the week following the start of the works 14 young architects signed a letter explaining the extent of devastation that is about to happen if the original plans are permitted to materialize. The letter was widely shared and reprinted, and in the following days the news of new construction threatening Hotel Podgorica have spread through social media and provoked wider action aimed at criticizing and stopping the project.

A group of young architects, most of whom have gathered around the letter of protest, started a Facebook group which they named KANA, short for the rhetorical question of “Ko ako ne arhitekt?”, meaning “Who if Not Architect?”. The name draws attention to the importance of having architects stand up against the destructive urban development policies and for the preservation of architectural heritage, and honours Svetlana Kana Radević, whose most famous work these young architects in action were trying to protect. Facebook group gained traction and got public attention, making it easier to disseminate information about the plans for further activities.

Invitation to the protest: come have a coffee! | Design © Srdja Dragović 

The first such activity was to publish the manifest detailing the expert attitude of the KANA group regarding the new construction, along with their requests: to secure the status of the cultural heritage of the highest order for Hotel Podgorica; to set the exact borders of the territory surrounding the building, which should also be protected as cultural heritage; to abolish the urban plan which permitted the new construction, and to stop the construction process immediately. This proclamation was followed by a short protest walk of around 60 students of architecture, from the Faculty of Architecture to Hotel Podgorica, where they were joined by a group of citizens supporting the cause, and where the demands of the KANA group were reiterated. While promoting the protest, the organizers actually invited citizens of Podgorica to “come have a coffee at the hotel,”  teasing at the same time the proverbial inaction of Podgorica students and the general lack of protest activity in the city, and pointing towards the obvious and cynical necessity to consume in order to access the building which should be designated as cultural heritage. Support and endorsement of the cause came from numerous established architects, NGOs, public figures, intellectuals, as well as from political parties and associations. Docomomo International supported the effort as well. 

The protest in December 2015  | Photo © KANA/Ko ako ne arhitekt

The construction of the new office tower, January 2017 | Photo © KANA/Ko ako ne arhitekt

For the entire next year, KANA group continued the action towards achieving the goals they outlined and publicized with this protest - to protect the hotel, and halt the construction of the tower which was already, ominously, starting to grow in its immediate vicinity. The evidence which the group gathered by analyzing the planning documents and building permits were substantial enough for the Urbanism Inspection to suggest revoking the building permit for the tower, and for the Administrative Court to rule in favor of this suggestion. However, the City of Podgorica took no action, and the building was soon completed. In a parallel process, the initiative the group submitted to the Ministry of Culture in 2015 – aimed at protecting the hotel building and its surrounding area, as the two form a historical, architectural, visual and functional whole – was not accepted. At the time, the Ministry explained the decision by stating that their experts have already started working on the elaborate on the valorization of cultural values of the Hotel Podgorica and that this building will “soon” get the status of the protected cultural property. This was almost five years ago; the status remains unchanged.

Hotel Podgorica and its surroundings today  | Photo © Lazar Pejović

This November, to mark 83 years since the birth and 20 years since the death of Svetlana Kana Radević, KANA/Ko ako ne arhitekt group has submitted another initiative to the Ministry of Culture, requesting once again for the building to be recognized as the cultural heritage and for its integrity to be protected. This action was inspired by several recent developments, which neatly illustrate how political and economic changes and global and local flows have the power to swiftly change and shape our urban environments. Namely, a couple of months ago the hotel was sold to a new private owner whose plans for the building are still unknown but might involve substantial changes to the structure –  especially if the owner decides not to continue using the building for the hotel business, largely unprofitable during the global pandemic. If the hotel remains unprotected, the building might be further damaged, or even destroyed; hence, it is necessary to establish the protection as soon as possible. A factor that might influence the process is the recent election victory of the Montenegrin opposition, which means the state’s government is about to change, and the new ministry in charge of cultural heritage might be more sympathetic towards this initiative. It is encouraging that, apart from the architects and researchers, this time the initiative was also signed by the leaders of the new majority in the Montenegrin Parliament. This also, hopefully, indicates that the new Government might handle the issues related to spatial development, urban planning and built heritage in a more studious and serious manner.

The struggle to protect Hotel Podgorica was started by KANA group five years ago and it is still ongoing. Much has changed in the meantime, including the active group membership, to which I also joined in 2017. One aspect, however, stays the same: since 2015, KANA group works to bring the conversation about the urban problems to the broader audience, to equip citizens with information and understanding of the sources and effects of these problems, and to help local communities advocate for their spatial rights. We will continue to do so. Meanwhile, here’s a bold suggestion: let’s return Hotel Podgorica to public ownership and transform it into a space for thinking and conversing about the architecture, urbanism, the issues of spatial development, and the right to the city.

---

By Sonja Dragović

[distilled-prose]

WWII uncovered: Captain Alfonza Davis: Red Tail Hero Lost Over the Adriatic Sea (from Facebook)

Captain Alfonza W Davis, of Omaha Nebraska, joined the Army Air Corps on March 17, 1941 after graduating from Creighton University.

Alfonza received his flight training at the Tuskegee Airfield in Alabama, becoming the first pilot from Omaha to graduate and earn his wings. Having graduated at the top of his flight class, he was chosen to be Squadron Leader of the 302nd Fighter Group based in Italy. He later became attached to the 332nd Fighter Group (known as the Red Tails) as the Assistant Group Operations Officer.

The group operated with the Fifteenth AF from May 1944 to Apri1 1945, being engaged primarily in protecting bombers that struck such objectives as oil refineries, factories, airfields and marshalling yards in Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece. The group also made strafing attacks on airdromes, railroads, highways, bridges, river traffic, troop concentrations, radar facilities, power stations, and other targets.

His final assignment was with the 99th Pursuit Squadron as Squadron Commander. Flying a P-51 “Mustang,” his missions included reconnaissance and strategic flights, but mostly flew escorts for the large bomber squadrons stationed in Italy. During one of the missions, the P-51 “Mustang” fighter group he commanded destroyed 83 German aircraft. His final mission occurred October 29, 1944 while on a special high-reconnaissance mission to Munich, Germany. About 12 miles west of Salvatore Point, near the Gulf of Trieste, he was lost in overcast weather, never to be seen or heard from again. The War Department later issued a presumptive finding of death while missing in action on October 30, 1945.

Captain Davis’ awards and decorations included: Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying Cross and Distinguished Unit Citation (Source: Tuskegee Airmen, Alfonza W. Davis Chapter and ancestry.com)

The Alfonza W. Davis Chapter was founded in 1988 and named after one of the 16 original Tuskegee Airmen from Nebraska.

Captain Alfonza W. Davis was only 25 years old at the time of his death. Captain Davis is memorialized at Tablets of the Missing at Sicily-Rome American Cemetery, Nettuno, Italy. Lest We Forget.

[jackredfieldwasmyjacob]

so my new weird obsession is making up this couple who for 10 years travel around the world, living 1 year in each country, and travel through that country etc. They work for a travel magazine / blog so they pay their expenses. I basically then record what they do month to month, like where they go etc. It's very cool cause I get to learn a ton about these places I wouldn't have known otherwise! Also, I'm making all of this based on my alternative world map I talked about in a previous post (i've searched it up but i couldn't find it :( ), so the countries are slightly different. I just finished their first year, where they stayed in the United Baltic States (our Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania combined), and I wanted to let you know a bit about what I do!

So, first of all, the couple is conformed by Leo Butler, an Australian from Dampier (WA) and Marina de la Cruz, from the Federated States of Central America, precisely she's from La Chorrera (PA). They met in The University of Notre Dame Australia, in Sidney, where they fell in love and decided to go through this adventure together. After 10 years, they'll decide to settle in one of the countries they've been living and have kids and all :)

I'm not gonna write here like all they did in the year they lived in the United Baltic States, but here's a snippet of what they did in a random month (april) so you can see what i do and stuff:

April 11-13th: They go hitchhiking 479 km (Riga - Minsk)

They leave their house at 8 a.m. April 11th, they catch a truck at 9:45 h.

Riga - Grenctale, 2 hours 30 minutes, 88 km. They arrive at 12:15 hours. They eat lunch at Pit Stop, Kafejnica. They catch a truck at 16:55 hours.

Grenctale - Vilnius, 3 hours, 206 km. They arrive at 19:55 hours. They have dinner at Valdovu Sodas and they visit the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania before sleeping in the Artagonist (83€) hotel. They catch a car at 10 a.m. on April 12th.

Vilnius - Border with Western Russia in Medininkai, 40 minutes, 35 km. They arrive at 10:40 hours. They visit the Castle of Medininkai and have lunch at the driver's house. They cross the border at 12:30 hours and catch a car at 13:00 hours.

Medininkai - Zabrez'ye, 1 hour, 75 km. They arrive at 14:00 hours. They catch a car at 16:30 hours.

Zabrez'ye - Minsk, 1 hour 10 minutes, 87 km. They arrive at 17:40 hours. They have dinner at Kin Sushi, they walk through the old town, go to the Opera Casino, and sleep in the Beijing Hotel (79€).

They catch the plane back to Riga at 9 a.m. on April 13th, they arrive at 10 a.m.

April 17th: They visit the Etnographic Open Air Museum of Latvia in Riga.

April 24th: They spend the day in the Langstinu Ezers, a lake near Riga.

Also here's the recap I did at the end!

City of residence: Riga (6 months), Tallinn (3 months), Vilnius (3 months)

Places visited:

United Baltic States: Riga, Tallinn (3 times), Vilnius (4 times), Parnü, Medininkai, Šiauliai, Trakai, Paneriai, Jelgava, Joniškis, Bauska, Alytus

Finland: Helsinki (3 times)

Scandinavia: Stockholm

Latgalia: Zilupe

Ingria: Saint Petersburg

Western Russia: Minsk (2 times), Grodno, Kiev, Vitebsk

Denmark: Copenhagen

Lapland: Cáhcesuolu, Unjárga, Ránda, Áhkanjárga, Áiluokta, Gáivuotna, Áltá

Yugoslavia: Dubrovnik

New languages learned: Latvian, Russian

New friends: 4 from Riga (Martiņs, Ricardas, Erika, and Anita; Martiņs and Ricardas are dating), 2 from Tallinn (Allan and Krista; they're siblings) and 6 from Vilnius (Milda, Henrikas, Joana, Darius, Agne and Irma; Milda and Henrikas are dating, and Irma and Agne are sisters).

Year 2 is in Mon (our Mon State, in Myanmar), so excited to see what it has to offer!!

[exyusimp]

the Emilija podcast in a nutshell

-peak rock me instrumental I haven’t heard anywhere else at the beginning

-cried because her hair was cut before esc

-rajko was part of the calling people at 4am gang

-calls yugopop the i don’t know genre

- prefers kiss me over rock me

-kiss me acapella, still god tier

-hates politics (bitch me too)

- indirectly shaded the interviewer

-still is besties with the Riva members

-loves juli from the 83 entry

-translated stuff for the interviewer

-has no yugo entry hate

-has cute sayings for words she can’t remember in English

-still watches esc 89

-Rivas Swedish label literally told them they can’t be recognised as Croatian bc “it’s all Yugoslavia to Swedes”

-Word by word representation of the esc 90 situation

Can we go on stage?

No

K

K

-Was raised in the German part of Switzerland

-was kinda considered a win for them too

-has a cute laugh

-“you’ll get Croatian today or a day after today”

-just decided to goof around and make a English version of one of her solo songs in 2001 bc why not

-at the end was worried her English wasn’t good enough and said her brain goes into omg mode

[vintageurovision]

Eurovision Song Contest 1983 - Top 5

Full results and voting system:

1st: Corinne Hermès, Si La Vie Est Cadeau - Luxembourg (142 points)

2nd: Ofra Haza, Hi (חי) - Israel (136 points)

3rd: Carola Häggkvist, Främling - Sweden (126 points)

4th: Danijel, Džuli (Џули) - Yugoslavia (125 points)

5th: Hoffmann und Hoffmann, Rücksicht - Germany (94 points)

6th: Sweet Dreams, I'm Never Giving Up - United Kingdom (79 points)

7th: Bernadette, Sing Me A Song - The Netherlands (66 points)

8th: Guy Bonnet, Vivre - France (56 points)

9th: Westend, Hurricane - Austria (53 points)

9th: Jahn Teigen, Do Re Mi - Norway (53 points)

11th: Ami Aspelund, Fantasiaa - Finland (41 points)

11th: Riccardo Fogli, Per Lucia - Italy (41 points)

13th: Armando Gama, Esta Balada Que Te Dou - Portugal (33 points)

14th: Christie Stassinopoulou, Mou Les (Μου λες) - Greece (32 points)

15th: Mariella Farré, Io Così Non Ci Sto - Switzerland (28 points)

16th: Stavros and ConstantinaI, Agapi Akoma Zi (Η αγάπη ακόμα ζει) - Cyprus (26 points)

17th: Gry Johansen, Kloden Drejer - Denmark (16 points)

18th: Pas de Deux, Rendez-vous - Belgium (13 points)

19th: Remedios Amaya, ¿quién Maneja Mi Barca? - Spain (0 points)

19th: Çetin Alp and the Short Wave, Opera - Türkiye (0 points)

Each national jury awarded 1-8, 10 and 12 points to their 10 favourite songs

[eurovision.tv; eurovisionworld]

[kahvileib]

"And how do we account for what happened during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s? They introduced organised mass rape to the European theatre of war and used it to humiliate men and impair national honour. What had been known as more or less individualised acts of sexual violence in modern warfare developed into a strategy to foster ethnic cleansing. Rape camps were set up to impregnate women held captive and thus destroy the cultural and social ties of victims’ communities. These facts cast doubt on the liberal-progressive view that sexualised notions of honour have fallen out of fashion in post-1945 Europe. Even if women no longer accept their honour to be solely identified by notions of sexual integrity, they cannot escape patterns of male behaviour targeting them as such—and, in addition, connecting their integrity to the integrity of the nation to which they belong. In circumstances surrounding violent ethnic conflict, as witnessed in former Yugoslavia (and multiple African states ever since), women have been and are still held prey as bearers and representatives of national or ethnic honour. Anyone who violates their sexual integrity, humiliates their male protectors, insults the national honour and emasculates their ethnic group. What happened in Bosnia-Herzegovina calls into question the powerful Western narrative of female sexual liberation and emancipation. It only seems to work successfully in those regions whose inhabitants experience relative social peace and security. Highly militarized societies and those torn by war in contrast tend to quickly (re-)install notions of gendered honour that reflect older concepts of female chastity and male physical force. Wherever “obsolete classes” like military officers reclaim power, honour is back on the agenda. This is even more relevant for places where “ethnic grandmothers” hold their ground. Instead of grandmothers, however, it is mostly fathers and brothers who are obsessed with honour and tightly control their daughters’ and sisters’ sexuality. Here again, family honour essentially depends on female chastity which, as some immigrant groups see it, is threatened by the demoralising influence of the Western host society. The clash of cultures is thus being acted out over the female body, and honour comes at a high price. How long this price will continue to be paid, remains to be seen." – EMOTIONS IN HISTORY – LOST AND FOUND by Ute Frevert | Page 83

[cutulisci]

1. Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (Griffith, 1919) USA 2. Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari [The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari] (Wiene, 1920) Germany 3. Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler – Ein Bild der Zeit (Part 1 - Part 2) [Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler] (Lang, 1922) Germany 4. The Gold Rush (Chaplin, 1925) USA 5. La Chute de la Maison Usher [The Fall of the House of Usher] (Jean Epstein, 1928) France 6. Un Chien Andalou [An Andalusian Dog] (Bunuel, 1928) France 7. Morocco (von Sternberg, 1930) USA 8. Der Kongress Tanzt (Charell, 1931) Germany 9. Die 3groschenoper [The Threepenny Opera] (Pabst, 1931) Germany 10. Leise Flehen Meine Lieder [Lover Divine] (Forst, 1933) Austria/Germany 11. The Thin Man (Dyke, 1934) USA 12. Tonari no Yae-chan [My Little Neighbour, Yae] (Shimazu, 1934) Japan 13. Tange Sazen yowa: Hyakuman ryo no tsubo [Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo] (Yamanaka, 1935) Japan 14. Akanishi Kakita [Capricious Young Men] (Itami, 1936) Japan 15. La Grande Illusion [The Grand Illusion] (Renoir, 1937) France 16. Stella Dallas (Vidor, 1937) USA 17. Tsuzurikata Kyoshitsu [Lessons in Essay] (Yamamoto, 1938) Japan 18. Tsuchi [Earth] (Uchida, 1939) Japan 19. Ninotchka (Lubitsch, 1939) USA 20. Ivan Groznyy I, Ivan Groznyy II: Boyarsky Zagovor [Ivan the Terrible Parts I and II] (Eisenstein, 1944-46) Soviet Union 21. My Darling Clementine (Ford, 1946) USA 22. It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946) USA 23. The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946) USA 24. Ladri di Biciclette [The Bicycle Thief] [Bicycle Thieves] (De Sica, 1948) Italy 25. Aoi sanmyaku [The Green Mountains] (Imai, 1949) Japan 26. The Third Man (Reed, 1949) UK 27. Banshun [Late Spring] (Ozu, 1949) Japan 28. Orpheus (Cocteau, 1949) France 29. Karumen kokyo ni kaeru [Carmen Comes Home] (Kinoshita, 1951) Japan 30. A Streetcar Named Desire (Kazan, 1951) USA 31. Thérèse Raquin [The Adultress] (Carne 1953) France 32. Saikaku ichidai onna [The Life of Oharu] (Mizoguchi, 1952) Japan 33. Viaggio in Italia [Journey to Italy] (Rossellini, 1953) Italy 34. Gojira [Godzilla] (Honda, 1954) Japan 35. La Strada (Fellini, 1954) Italy 36. Ukigumo [Floating Clouds] (Naruse, 1955) Japan 37. Pather Panchali [Song of the Road] (Ray, 1955) India 38. Daddy Long Legs (Negulesco, 1955) USA 39. The Proud Ones (Webb, 1956) USA 40. Bakumatsu taiyoden [Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate] (Kawashima, 1957) Japan 41. The Young Lions (Dmytryk, 1957) USA 42. Les Cousins [The Cousins] (Chabrol, 1959) France 43. Les Quarte Cents Coups [The 400 Blows] (Truffaut, 1959) France 44. A bout de Souffle [Breathless] (Godard, 1959) France 45. Ben-Hur (Wyler, 1959) USA 46. Ototo [Her Brother] (Ichikawa, 1960) Japan 47. Une aussi longue absence [The Long Absence] (Colpi, 1960) France/Italy?48. Le Voyage en Ballon [Stowaway in the Sky] (Lamorisse, 1960) France 49. Plein Soleil [Purple Noon] (Clement, 1960) France/Italy 50. Zazie dans le métro [Zazie on the Subway](Malle, 1960) France/Italy 51. L’Annee derniere a Marienbad [Last Year in Marienbad] (Resnais, 1960) France/Italy 52. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich, 1962) USA 53. Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962) UK 54. Melodie en sous-sol [Any Number Can Win] (Verneuil, 1963) France/Italy 55. The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963) USA 56. Il Deserto Rosso [The Red Desert](Antonioni, 1964) Italy/France 57. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Nichols, 1966) USA 58. Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, 1967) USA 59. In the Heat of the Night (Jewison, 1967) USA 60. The Charge of the Light Brigade (Richardson, 1968) UK 61. Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger, 1969) USA 62. MASH (Altman, 1970) USA 63. Johnny Got His Gun (Trumbo, 1971) USA 64. The French Connection (Friedkin, 1971) USA 65. El espíritu de la colmena [Spirit of the Beehive] (Erice, 1973) Spain 66. Solyaris [Solaris] (Tarkovsky, 1972) Soviet Union 67. The Day of the Jackal (Zinneman, 1973) UK/France 68. Gruppo di famiglia in un interno [Conversation Piece] (Visconti, 1974) Italy/France 69. The Godfather Part II (Coppola, 1974) USA 70. Sandakan hachibanshokan bohkyo [Sandakan 8] (Kumai, 1974) Japan 71. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Forman, 1975) USA 72. O, Thiassos [The Travelling Players] (Angelopoulos, 1975) Greece 73. Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975) UK 74. Daichi no komoriuta [Lullaby of the Earth] (Masumura, 1976) Japan 75. Annie Hall (Allen, 1977) USA?76. Neokonchennaya pyesa dlya mekhanicheskogo pianino [Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano] (Mikhalkov, 1977) Soviet Union 77. Padre Padrone [My Father My Master] (P. & V. Taviani, 1977) Italy 78. Gloria (Cassavetes, 1980) USA 79. Harukanaru yama no yobigoe [A Distant Cry From Spring] (Yamada, 1980) Japan 80. La Traviata (Zeffirelli, 1982) Italy 81. Fanny och Alexander [Fanny and Alexander] (Bergman, 1982) Sweden/France/West Germany 82. Fitzcarraldo (Herzog, 1982) Peru/West Germany 83. The King of Comedy (Scorsese, 1983) USA 84. Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (Oshima, 1983) UK/Japan/New Zealand 85. The Killing Fields (Joffe 1984) UK 86. Stranger Than Paradise (Jarmusch, 1984) USA/ West Germany 87. Dongdong de Jiaqi [A Summer at Grandpa's] (Hou, 1984) Taiwan 88. Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1984) France/ West Germany 89. Witness (Weir, 1985) USA 90. The Trip to Bountiful (Masterson, 1985) USA 91. Otac na sluzbenom putu [When Father was Away on Business] (Kusturica, 1985) Yugoslavia 92. The Dead (Huston, 1987) UK/Ireland/USA 93. Khane-ye doust kodjast? [Where is the Friend's Home] (Kiarostami, 1987) Iran 94. Baghdad Cafe [Out of Rosenheim] (Adlon, 1987) West Germany/USA 95. The Whales of August (Anderson, 1987) USA 96. Running on Empty (Lumet, 1988) USA 97. Tonari no totoro [My Neighbour Totoro] (Miyazaki, 1988) Japan 98. A un [Buddies] (Furuhata, 1989) Japan 99. La Belle Noiseuse [The Beautiful Troublemaker] (Rivette, 1991) France/Switzerland 100. Hana-bi [Fireworks] (Kitano, 1997) Japan

Akira Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

[walaw717]

What kind of man fights in 4 wars spanning over 4 decades, sustaining injuries that result in the self-amputation of two fingers, the loss of one hand, an eye, and a lung; has his plane shot down, lives in captivity for over 7 months – and despite all of the above fondly reminisces that “frankly I had enjoyed the war”? . The kind of man that is Adrian Carton de Wiart. . The life of the ultra-wealthy Belgian Aristocracy that he was born into, clearly wasn’t the life young Adrian wanted; which is probably why he ran away from his Catholic boarding school, and like so many great war heroes start out, headed straight to the nearest British Army recruitment office. Here he would go through the late 1800’s equivalent of convincing the recruitment officer his name was ‘McLovin’ which bought Adrian a ticket to his first war – The Second Boer war. Here McLovin would lead Bayonette charges against Boer Kommandos and get shot in the groin and lung – substantial injuries that got him sent back to Britain where he finally came clean his name wasn’t McLovin. He then would commission as an actual officer in the British army until the war ended in 1902. From here he went to Oxford University, married an Austrian Countess whom he had 2 daughters with, and lived as an Aristocrat. . This life of privilege however, was never the life Adrian wanted; But luckily for him, the dawn of a new age of warfighting was near. . At the outbreak of WW1 Adrian spared no time in ditching his wife and daughters (the whole “I’m just going up the road for some cigarettes” sketch – but much posher) to immediately re-enlist back into the British army. Due to his previous experiences of combat, he was assigned to the East Africa Camel Corps. This rather bizarre-sounding unit of old school desert fighters were actually more Ally than the passage-way between two large houses. Tasked with quelling a rebellion in British Somaliland, led by who the British Dubbed “the Mad Mullah” (Mohammad Bin Abdullah, who castrated his own fighters for cowardice) De Wiart would essentially lead Camelback Commando raids against enemy positions; and it was here while scaling the walls of enemy forts with a revolver and committing multiple acts of badassery that he would get shot in the face twice, losing his eye and part of his ear. Only in the eyes (or eye) of a triple hard bastard could this be taken as good news, but bearing in mind Adrian was the kind of man that celebrated life-changing injuries and disastrous news with copious amounts of wine, it comes as no surprise that this news was music to his ears (or ear). As this news in being sent home and given a glass eye - which he drunkenly threw out of a taxi window and opted for the pirate option of an eye patch - also resulted in him getting a ticket to France, where the most brutal war in history was waging, and where Adrian assessed “the real action was at”. . After arriving in France, Adrian would have his hand shattered by German artillery during the Second Battle of Ypres. Worried he would miss out on any action by the injury getting infected he went to a field hospital to get two of the fingers amputated. The doctors refused, so the one-eyed Commander amputated them himself, which didn’t matter too much because later on in the year the whole hand needed to be amputated; Just in time for the battle of the Somme, where there were reports from the men of a one-handed Commander wearing an eye patch pulling grenade pins out with his teeth and personally delivering them to Germans of the Western front. . Later on, in 1916 the Pirate Commander was leading the 8th Gloucestershire Regiment in a Bayonette charge during the Battle of Boiselle when 3 other unit commanders were killed. Adrian then took charge of all 4 Units – Running up and down the lines barking orders, successfully holding off the German counter-attack as German bullets whizzed past his eye patch. For this, he was awarded the Victoria Cross, an award he humbly made no mention of in his memoirs, claiming “it had been won by the 8th Glosters, for every man has done as much as I have”. . Adrian went on to fight through the rest of the war. In total, he got shot/blown up 8 separate times whilst leading infantry into battle – including what should have been a fatal gunshot wound to the back of the head. When asked about his time during the bloodiest war in human history he replied, “Frankly I enjoyed the war”. . In 1920, Adrian was sent to Poland to help advise the crown. His time here was pretty average really – He survived 2 plane crashes, he ran a gun smuggling ring to bring weapons into Poland to help fight the communists, participated in a duel against Carl Gustav (future overall leader of Finnish forces in WW2), shot his way out of Warsaw on an express train as a band of Cossack Cavalrymen tried to arrest and execute him. Aside from the above Adrian would spend his time hunting ducks with one arm and a shotgun on his rather large estate on the Polish border. . However, Adrian’s Duck hunting days were numbered, as Europe yet again was about to be plunged into times of War. . When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and blew up Adrian’s estate there was only one thing for it. Whilst getting strafed by German Stukas he made his way out of Poland; and despite being a British/Belgian man with one hand and an eye patch, travelled through Romania on a fake passport (Probably under the name McLovin) to finally reach British soil again. Here, yet again he would reveal to British authorities his name wasn’t McLovin and re-enlist in the British army; and now with his retirement on the back-burner, alongside his Austrian Countess wife and two daughters, he would lead British Commando raids against the fascist invaders of Europe. . In 1940 Adrian would lead a Raid into Norway, to re-take Trondheim from the Nazis. Things didn’t really go to plan, and when the promised naval/air support and reinforcements never showed up it was time for De Wiart and his merry band of lunatics to do a runner. Chased by German ski troops through the snowy mountains of Norway, whilst being strafed by the Luftwaffe and shelled by German destroyers this band of warriors actually made it back to an extraction point with the Royal Navy to get back to England – Just in time For Adrian’s 60th Birthday. . In 1941, appointed by Winston Churchill himself, General Adrian Carton de Wiart would lead the British mission in Yugoslavia. Unfortunately for the General and his RAF Crew the plane decided to wrap its tits in and nosedive into the Mediterranean ocean. Helping an injured comrade the 60-year-old General along with his RAF crew swam to shore. A Libyan shore. A Libyan shore that was unfortunately held by fascists of the Italian variety. Adrian was thrown into captivity into the POW camp at Vincigliata Castle. With not a single duck given since 1899 he proceeded to dig an escape tunnel over a 7-month period, which he and 6 others would use to escape their fascist captors. Unfortunately, it turned out that being a one-handed 60-year-old wearing an eye patch, as well as being distinctively British with a slight Belgian undertone… Well, clearly, he was swiftly recaptured. Fortunately, the Italians had decided they wanted to switch sides – and in war, what better bargaining chip than a General? . Having been back on British soil less than a month Adrian was sent to China as the special envoy to the Chinese leader. During this final four-year period, he would survive yet another plane crash. On his way back to Britain and actual retirement he stopped off in Rangoon, where he drunkenly fell down some stairs and broke his back. . Adrian Carton de Wiart would go on to write up his life story in his memoirs, hilariously titled “Happy Odyssey”. Winston Churchill even wrote the foreword for it. In the entire Book there is literally not a single mention or even reference to the fact that he had an Austrian Countess wife and two daughters. . Adrian would finally pass away in 1963, at the age of 83, having spent his final years fishing and in peace.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 1.31 (after 1945)

1945 – US Army private Eddie Slovik is executed for desertion, the first such execution of an American soldier since the Civil War. 1945 – World War II: About 3,000 inmates from the Stutthof concentration camp are forcibly marched into the Baltic Sea at Palmnicken (now Yantarny, Russia) and executed. 1945 – World War II: The end of fighting in the Battle of Hill 170 during the Burma Campaign, in which the British 3 Commando Brigade repulsed a Japanese counterattack on their positions and precipitated a general retirement from the Arakan Peninsula. 1946 – Cold War: Yugoslavia's new constitution, modeling that of the Soviet Union, establishes six constituent republics (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia). 1946 – The Democratic Republic of Vietnam introduces the đồng to replace the French Indochinese piastre at par. 1949 – These Are My Children, the first television daytime soap opera, is broadcast by the NBC station in Chicago. 1950 – President Truman orders the development of thermonuclear weapons. 1951 – United Nations Security Council Resolution 90 relating to the Korean War is adopted. 1953 – A North Sea flood causes over 1,800 deaths in the Netherlands and over 300 in the United Kingdom. 1957 – Eight people (five total crew from two aircraft and three on the ground) in Pacoima, California are killed following the mid-air collision between a Douglas DC-7 airliner and a Northrop F-89 Scorpion fighter jet. 1958 – Cold War: Space Race: The first successful American satellite detects the Van Allen radiation belt. 1961 – Project Mercury: Mercury-Redstone 2: The chimpanzee Ham travels into outer space. 1966 – The Soviet Union launches the unmanned Luna 9 spacecraft as part of the Luna program. 1968 – Vietnam War: Viet Cong guerrillas attack the United States embassy in Saigon, and other attacks, in the early morning hours, later grouped together as the Tet Offensive. 1968 – Nauru gains independence from Australia. 1971 – Apollo program: Apollo 14: Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell, aboard a Saturn V, lift off for a mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon. 1971 – The Winter Soldier Investigation, organized by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War to publicize alleged war crimes and atrocities by Americans and allies in Vietnam, begins in Detroit. 1978 – The Crown of St. Stephen (also known as the Holy Crown of Hungary) goes on public display after being returned to Hungary from the United States, where it was held after World War II. 1988 – Doug Williams becomes the first African American quarterback to play in a Super Bowl and leads the Washington Redskins to victory in Super Bowl XXII. 1996 – An explosives-filled truck rams into the gates of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka in Colombo, killing at least 86 people and injuring 1,400. 2000 – Alaska Airlines Flight 261 crash: An MD-83, experiencing horizontal stabilizer problems, crashes in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Point Mugu, California, killing all 88 aboard. 2001 – In the Netherlands, a Scottish court convicts Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and acquits another Libyan citizen for their part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. 2001 – Two Japan Airlines planes nearly collide over Suruga Bay in Japan. 2003 – The Waterfall rail accident occurs near Waterfall, New South Wales, Australia. 2007 – Emergency officials in Boston mistakenly identified battery-powered LED placards depicting characters from Aqua Teen Hunger Force as Improvised explosive devices (IEDs), causing a panic. 2009 – In Kenya, at least 113 people are killed and over 200 injured following an oil spillage ignition in Molo, days after a massive fire at a Nakumatt supermarket in Nairobi killed at least 25 people. 2018 – Both a blue moon and a total lunar eclipse occur. 2020 – The United Kingdom's membership within the European Union ceases in accordance with Article 50, after 47 years of being a member state. 2023 – The last Boeing 747, the first wide-body airliner, is delivered.

[flavorcountry]

New Federation starship classes for you

I wanted to see what would happen if I fed the neural network that lives at minimaxir a list of Federation starship classes. I messed around with various settings (mostly the generated text length and temperature; "top k" was always set to 0) and produced some EXTREMELY GOOD results; interestingly, no matter what the setting, the beginning of the output was always the same list I'd given it, fed back to me. Then, shit got nuts. What follows is a selection from the various runs I did, minus the parts at the end where the network decided to recreate random news articles for no apparent reason. Towards the end, you can see where it, uh, went to a place.

I will accept any illustrations of any of these starship classes as canon. Thank you in advance.

A LIST OF FEDERATION STARSHIP CLASSES AS DELIVERED BY A SMALL BUT VERY HARDWORKING AI

Yun Zion Zeus Zul Axis Carnis Celestial Delphi Elona Ember Frozen Glade Golgari Uhura Yixh Zazz Albatross Blader Didact Bianca Boiledriver Better Sails Cloud Haven Big Snakes Waxian Empire 83 Espionage Avatar Carl Van Salten Egforce English Navy Fleet Hawk Ghost Guard Fleet Shepherd Greyhound Rex Eye of Commander Lachlan Marshall IX Emissary Crossline Empire Noam Zealot Varchuras Zebra Zedsian Dark Void Veteran Unicanthus Vention Cataclysm Targaron Urza's Cube Mericole Volleyball Central Flamingskin Google Jetpack Marshall Gammoll Ethimpact Cantouzacaboy Atronachdir Yugoslavia Lifetime Zephyr Zoe Mississippi Grasquito Mark Twain Nightwing Caribbean P64 Iron Man Sonic the Hedgehog Black Panther Captain America Captain America: The Winter Soldier Captain America 2 Captain America: Civil War Captain America: Civil War 2-GX Captain America: Civil War 2: The Sixth Man Coupla Coyote Flotilla Ghost Ship Naglfar Nut Nagoy Singapore Alaska Eddie Forbidden Planet Grind Ice Cold Jason Jaws Nirvana Myth Leonardo Nemesis Nicator Oriole Paul Allen Paladin of Wyo Quirinus Ruth Grisham Realm Express Rachel Scion of the Wild Star Wars: Battlefront II: Rogue One Tecmo Thiker Bakos Tiger