'Toons of the Day: It's An Obama World - o_O

Why We Should Care About Crimea

 Crimean Tatars cry during a demonstration in 2003 marking the 59th anniversary of their mass deportation by Stalin's regime during World War II.

By Marc Champion

Put aside for a moment the geopolitical issues and cries of “Munich” and “Sudetenland” that surround Russia’s ongoing annexation of Crimea: In human terms, Crimea’s Tatars are the reason to care.

The Muslim Tatars have suffered repeated persecutions since the Ottomans ceded their peninsula to the Russian Empire, including an attempted genocide under Stalin. In 1944, the entire population was deported to central Asia and Siberia, and as many as half were killed.

There were no gas chambers or Bergen-Belsens, but the best way to understand the fears of the Tatars is to imagine them as if they were Eastern European Jews, under sudden threat of reoccupation by a Germany that had yet to recognize its collective responsibility for the Holocaust.

If that sounds like a stretch, maybe it is. But consider that in recent days thugs have daubed black Xs on some Tatar homes in Crimea, according to news reports, in a grim reminder of the way they were identified for the 1944 deportation.

Ahmet Berber was among those who were sent to Uzbekistan or Siberia as children. Today the retired mechanic is 79 years old, but he has a mind like a steel trap. He was in kindergarten when Germany declared war on the former Soviet Union in 1941, and he still remembers the sound of men speaking unintelligible languages (German and Romanian) as they approached to open up the basement where he and his family were hiding in their village outside Simferopol.

“There were just old people and children left here,” says Berber, still pained and perplexed by Stalin’s accusation as the war ended that the Tatars had been German collaborators. Some Tatars did fight for the Germans in a brutal war with Soviet partisans. At least as many, however, fought for the Soviet Union.

On May 18, 1944, Berber, then 8, was awake before dawn with a toothache when two Russian-speaking men with semi-automatic rifles arrived at the door to his house. They told everyone to be out within 15 minutes.

Five families were piled into each of the trucks that were brought to the village, says Berber. They were taken to the train station at Simferopol, where he remembers being piled into a freight car with his family and about 50 other people. It was the first time he had seen a train. “I thought this was a new house we were going to live in -- I was so surprised it started moving,” says Berber.

The journey to Uzbekistan took 18 days. There was little food and people would jump out when the train stopped to quickly make fires and flatbread with flour they had brought along. They became weak, and some died in the freight cars. The train began stopping at bridges so the guards could open the car doors and push the bodies into the rivers. “Like they were dogs,” says Berber.

Finally, their car and two others were emptied in a remote part of Uzbekistan. They were taken to a set of barracks, one of which was already full with Polish Jews. Berber’s grandmother and grandfather died within months, and his older sister followed. People were so weak they couldn’t dig graves deep enough for the dead, and wild animals would dig them up, Berber says.

Eventually, the Jewish camp commander found a house for Berber’s family in a nearby village. Until 1956, they weren’t allowed to leave it, but gradually they built up their lives. Then, in 1990, the road was cleared for Crimea’s Tatars to return home.

Because all of them left at once, there was no market to buy their houses in Uzbekistan, while inflation made their savings worthless. They weren’t assigned land or homes in Crimea, so they squatted and built their own. Eventually, Ukraine’s authorities gave them title, and for the first time, Berber and his family felt free. Today he lives with one of his sons in a solidly built breezeblock house on the outskirts of Simferopol.

It is the unreality of Moscow’s claims, reminiscent of the distortions under Stalin, that gets to Berber. “Did you watch Putin’s meeting with reporters a few days ago? I have never seen a man lie so much. Every word was a lie. I didn’t know what to think,” he says.

Few groups in the region need the protections and rights that Ukraine’s gradual integration with the European Union would bring more than Crimea’s Tatars. With the arrival of masked Russian gunmen, the closure of dissenting television stations and news media outlets, and the announcement of a preordained referendum on joining Russia, that prospect is fast slipping away. Berber’s elderly wife collapsed from shock when the referendum was announced, and she remains in the hospital. Young Tatar men have begun forming neighborhood watches, in their own version of a self-defense force. There is little, however, that they can do.

“There is no freedom in Russia. We know this,” Berber says, sitting at night at his son’s kitchen table. “They have taken away our hope.” 



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Whatever Did We Do To Deserve This?

The 25 Most Ridiculous Photos From The Homes Of Ukrainian Government Officials (Photo Essay)

Lillian Bassman: Capturing The Iconic Look Of The 1950s (Photo Essay)

 Above: Barbara Mullen, New York, Harper's Bazaar, circa 1958

Lillian Bassman's distinctive photographs were highly sought after by fashion editors of the 1940s and 50s. Produced by careful darkroom manipulation, they brought elegance and whimsy to a previously fusty, straight-backed style of promoting clothes and jewellery.

Night Bloom: Anneliese Seubert in Givenchy Haute Couture, 1956

Bassman was born in Brooklyn in 1917 into a family of free-thinking intellectuals. So bohemian were her parents that they allowed her to move in with her future husband at 15, before they were married. She trained as a textile designer first, but decided to try her hand at fashion illustration. When she showed her portfolio to Alexey Brodovitch, the director of Harper’s Bazaar, he immediately accepted her at his prestigious Design Laboratory, where she switched to graphic design.

More Fashion Mileage Per Dress: Barbara Vaughn in a dress by Filcol, New York. Harper's Bazaar, 1956

When Harpers Bazaar launched Junior Bazaar in 1945, she became the title's art director, and worked hard to promote the work of then fledging photographers Richard Avedon and Robert Frank. She liked to help with printing the images, and would often be found in the darkroom during her lunch break, tinkering with the images in the darkroom to show the work to best effect.

 

 

Wonders of Water: Model Unknown, Harper's Bazaar, 1959

 

“I was interested in developing a method of printing on my own, even before I took photographs,” she said during an interview later in life. "In there, I felt a sense of being able to say something I wanted to say...creating a new kind of vision aside from what the camera saw.”

 

Born to Dance: Margie Cato in a dress by Emily Wilkes, New York, 1950

When she eventually turned her hand to taking pictures, her light-hearted, poetical approach caught the eye of those that mattered, and soon she was photographing for commercial as well as editorial clients. Everything she photographed received the same care and attention, whether it were a packet of cigarettes or a dress by Dior.

Betty Threat, New York. Harper's Bazaar, circa 1957

 

She fell out of fashion in the 1960s, when a rougher, hard-edged style infiltrated the fashion pages, and pictures became more about the models than the clothes they wore. Disheartened, she tried to destroy most of her negatives, and moved toward focusing on her own work, which varied from colourful still life to things she saw on the streets of New York.

Across the Restaurant: Barbara Mullen in a dress by Jacques Fath. Le Grand Vefour, Paris, 1949

It was a chance discovery of some of her remaining, long-forgotten negatives in the 1990s that led to a resurgence of interest in her work. She began working with her old negatives all over again, this time in Photoshop, producing a series of abstract images that delighted a new generation of fans.

New Look Corset: Model Unknown, Christian Dior, Harper's Bazaar, circa 1950 

Bassman died in February 2010, aged 94, but her images continue to extend a profound influence. Her gallery, Staley Wise of New York said: "While taken nearly 50 years ago, Lillian Bassman's innovative and sensual photographs continue to inspire today's photographers and fashion designers. Her work remains indelibly timeless."

 

Charles James Dress: Carmen, New York. Harper’s Bazaar, 1960

For further information, please visit the Staley Wise website.

 

Pic of the Day: A Taste Of Italy

h/t Rick Cordeiro ‏@CordeiroRick

Bellissimo!

* Not a painting

The Astonishing Photos Taken By A 16-year-old German Soldier During World War One Show How His Brothers-In-Arms Would Forever Be Haunted By Their Defeat (Photo Essay)

 

'After the storm': Walter Kleinfeldt captions one of his images showing bodies strewn across the battlefield

By Hannah Ellis-Petersen

They lay forgotten in a dank cellar for almost a century. But these remarkable photos, published for the first time, give  a rare and uncensored view of the horrors of the First World War from behind enemy lines.

They were taken by Walter Kleinfeldt who joined a German gun crew in 1915 and fought at the Somme aged just 16. As his haunting pictures, taken with a Contessa camera, make all too clear, life in the  trenches was a harrowing experience. The images provide an insight into the epic machinery of war – and capture the darkest moments of battle, with bodies strewn among the rubble.

 Carnage: Amid the appalling devastation and bodies of dead soldiers, a crucifix stands tall - miraculously preserved from the shell fire. The powerful image was captured after a bloody skirmish in 1917 - and Walter's son Volkmar says: 'This photograph is like an accusation - an accusation against war'

Returning home in 1918, Walter set up a photography shop in the town of Tubingen, where he worked until his death in 1945. Walter’s son Volkmar discovered the pictures three years ago.

They are now the focus of a new BBC documentary. Director Nick Maddocks said: ‘It is rare to find such good-quality, honest and often beautiful  photos that show us war through the eyes of the soldier, particularly from one so young.’

 Final moments: Walter was just 16 when he fought at the Somme but his photos soon took on dark tone. Here he captures a German army medic kneeling beside a dying colleague - but he can do no more than offer comfort

Young life: Walter Kleinfeldt, pictured carrying ammunition in a Somme trench, joined a German gun crew in 1915 and fought at the Somme aged just 16, taking pictures of life on the frontline with his Contessa camera

Calm before the storm: A 16year old Walter Kleinfeldt photographed in the German city of Ulm in 1915. Just a few weeks later, he was on the Somme.

Constantly under threat: Gas attacks were a frequent menace in the Somme during the war so this group wear masks as they load shells into their gun in 1916

Two worlds: A studio portrait of 16 year-old Walter Kleinfeldt, above, taken shortly after he volunteered in 1915, and the teenager, below, on the Somme in 1916

 

 

Eyes in the sky: A German observation balloon takes off to direct artillery fire at the Somme in 1916. Walter Kleinfeldt was fascinated with the latest machinery of war

First day of horror: This photograph of members of Walter's gun crew was taken on the 1st of July 1916, the first day of the battle of the Somme

 

 Happy moment: Kleinfeldt photographed his comrades washing in a river while away from the front

Whatever Did We Do To Deserve This?

‘Uncontested Arrivals’ and Obama’s Foreign Policy

By Roger Kimball

I am holed up in in beautiful Antigua (Lat. 17.07 Long. -61.81) for a few days with a small cadre of serious thinkers helping to sort out the world’s problems. In this super-connected, technological age, no place, not even this tropical paradise, can be out of contact with the long-running circus of fatuous incompetence being run from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.  The latest reminder of the clownish antics which our masters in Washington give us in lieu of leadership comes from the great Stephen Hayes in the Weekly Standard.  In a few short paragraphs, tells us everything we need to know about “Obama’s Fantasy-Based Foreign Policy.” 

The latest exhibition of stunning incompetence, of course, is the little dance Obama, Susan Rice, and John “reporting for duty” Kerry are performing while Vladimir Putin conducts the invasion by, er, the  “uncontested arrival” of Russian troops in the (formerly) “Autonomous Republic” of Crimea. In a way, the Obama administration’s routine is funny, in a Keystone Cops sort of way.  The comedy palls however when you realize that the Obama-Rice-Kerry vaudeville act is being performed as an excuse for foreign policy.  As Hayes reminds us, team Obama just doesn’t understand the way the world works. They are completely out of touch with the unpleasant realities of power politics.  They believe evil is confined to their domestic rivals, whom they propose to regulate and police into conformity, employing where necessary the suited, bureaucratic Gauleiters from the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service to establish what an earlier age called Gleichschaltung, that “coordination,” that “bringing into line” that made Deutschland and its satellites such a place of fun and frolic from 1934 until 1945.

The spectacle of bumbling incompetence on view in the Obama administration’s response to the unfolding drama in and around Sevastopol is hardly an isolated occurrence. On the contrary, from almost the moment he assumed office in January 2009, Obama has assiduously avoided promoting U.S. interests.  A full litany might begin with his notorious speech in Cairo early on in his first term. He looked forward to a “new beginning” with the Muslim world, but, as Andy McCarthy and others warned “Obama, Obama, There Are Still a Billion Osamas!” “For five years,” Hayes points out, “the Obama administration has chosen to see the world as they wish it to be, not as it is.” It is a depressing narrative.

In this fantasy world, the attack in Fort Hood is “workplace violence.” The Christmas Day bomber is an “isolated extremist.” The attempted bombing in Times Square is a “one-off” attack. The attacks in Benghazi are a “spontaneous” reaction to a YouTube video. Al Qaeda is on the run. Bashar al-Assad is a “reformer.” The Iranian regime can be sweet-talked out of its nuclear weapons program. And Vladimir Putin is a new, post-Cold War Russian leader.

 In the real world, it was a pen pal of the late jihadist Anwar al-Awlaki who opened fire on soldiers at Fort Hood. The Christmas bomber was dispatched from Yemen, where he was instructed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The Times Square bomber was trained and financed by the Pakistani Taliban. Benghazi was a deliberate attack launched by well-known terrorist groups. Al Qaeda is amassing territory and increasing its profile. Assad is a brutal dictator, responsible for the deaths of more than 100,000 Syrians. The Iranian regime is firmly entrenched as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror and remains determined to lead a nuclear state. And in Russia we face a Cold War throwback willing to use force to expand Russian influence.

And here’s the kicker.  It’s a double whammy: “And Vladimir Putin, it turns out, is who we thought he was. Unfortunately, so is Barack Obama.” 

It is sometimes said that a people gets the leaders it deserves.  What did we do to deserve this?

The 25 Most Ridiculous Photos From The Homes Of Ukrainian Government Officials (Photo Essay)

By Pamela Engel

h/t Axie, Baby! 

Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev this past weekend, leaving behind his opulent compound. 

Hundreds of people flocked to the grounds to see how Yanukovych had been living, and photos have surfaced of his luxurious mansion, extensive vehicle collection, zoo, golf course, and boat. 

And he's not the only powerful Ukrainian enjoying a ridiculously luxurious residence. 

This photo and the one above, posted on a VKontakte page, show Ukrainian parliament member Yuriy Ivanyushchenko's opulent home:

 

http://vk.com/wall-61689929_383218

And these photos, posted by Evhen Chubuk, show former Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka's palace:

 

 

The home is full of expensive-looking trinkets like these:

 

notorious ex-Attorney General Pshonka had a couple of ego-issues, as his house's decor suggests pic.twitter.com/tLImAw93yU 

— Maxim Eristavi (@MaximEristavi)February 24, 2014

  Yanukovych's compound is also very over-the-top:

 

He also has a zoo:

Anti-government protesters and journalists look at ostriches kept within an enclosure on the grounds of the Mezhyhirya residence of Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovich in the village Novi Petrivtsi, outside Kiev February 22, 2014.

And a golf course:

A man plays golf as anti-government protesters walk on the grounds of the Mezhyhirya residence of Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovich in the village Novi Petrivtsi, outside Kiev February 22, 2014.

This large boat was also found on the compound:

Anti-government protesters and journalists walk on the grounds of the Mezhyhirya residence of Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovich in the village Novi Petrivtsi, outside Kiev February 22, 2014. 

The inside of the house is just as grand:

People look through windows of the Mezhyhirya residence of Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovich as anti-government protesters and journalists walk on the grounds in the village Novi Petrivtsi, outside Kiev February 22, 2014.

A man holds a bottle as anti-government protesters and journalists walk on the grounds of the Mezhyhirya residence of Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovich in the village Novi Petrivtsi, outside Kiev February 22, 2014.

A man turns on a water tap inside the residence as anti-government protesters and journalists walk on the grounds of the Mezhyhirya residence of Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovich in the village Novi Petrivtsi outside Kiev February 22, 2014. 

He has quite the car collection:

 

These gold coins were also found in his house:

And if you want a more complete look at Yanukovych's cars and motorcycles, check out this YouTube video:

Yanukovych is now reportedly wanted for mass murder of protesters, and the opposition has taken control of public offices. Yanukovych refuses to step down.

Clashes between riot police and protesters killed 82 people last week. It's the worst violence Ukraine has seen since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

SoRo:  Can gaudiness give you dain bramage?  If so, I am permanently disabled!!!  

My eyes!  My eyes!