On The Road To War! – In Saner Thought

British Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika, however, has raised serious doubts about that. Maj. Gen. Ghika said that there has been “no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces,” despite the claims from US officials, mostly Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. Perhaps more damningly, Ghika says he does not believe there is any daylight between Britain’s assessment of “no increased threat” and the assessment from US intelligence. In other words, the US officials are lying about the intelligence, presumably to justify the growing US buildup and to keep hyping the possibility of a war with Iran. US Central Command, however, angrily shot back contradicting Ghika, insisting his statement runs counter to established US position on the matter.

Source: On The Road To War! – In Saner Thought

‘Terrifying’ Ebola epidemic out of control in DRC, say experts

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More than 1,600 people infected in North Kivu province since outbreak began in August

An Ebola epidemic in a conflict-riven region of Democratic Republic of Congo is out of control and could become as serious as the outbreak that devastated three countries in west Africa between 2013 and 2016, experts and aid chiefs have warned.

New cases over the past month have increased at the fastest rate since the outbreak began last year, as aid agencies struggle to enact a public health response in areas that have suffered decades of neglect and conflict, with incredibly fragile health systems and regular outbreaks of deadly violence involving armed groups.

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Nicola Zingaretti pledges to take on Italy’s rightwing government

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New leader of centre-left Democratic Party (PD) is currently third in polling for the European election

Nicola Zingaretti, the new leader of Italy’s centre-left Democratic Party (PD), said European leftwing and liberal forces must unite to protect the EU against those who want to “take a pickaxe” to it.

Zingaretti, 53, has endeavoured to re-energise his party, which governed Italy until June last year, before European parliamentary elections later in May in order to take on Italy’s rightwing populist government with a broad list of leftwing candidates.

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Paris, New York & Havana Come to Life in Colorized Films Shot Between 1890 and 1931

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Cities have long provided a rich environment for photography, at least to photographers not interested exclusively in nature. But only with the advent of the motion picture camera did the subject of cities find a photographic form that truly suited it. Hence the popularity in the 1920s of “city symphony” films, each of which sought to capture and present the real life of a different bustling industrial metropolis. But while city symphonies certainly hold up as works of art, they do make modern-day viewers wonder: what would all these capitals look like if I could gaze backward in time, looking not through the jittery, colorless medium of early motion-picture film, but with my own eyes?

Youtuber Ignacio López-Francos offers a step closer to the answer in the form of these four videos, each of which takes historical footage of a city, then corrects its speed and adds color to make it more lifelike.


At the top of the post we have “a collection of high quality remastered prints from the dawn of film taken in Belle Époque-era Paris, France from 1896-1900.” Shot by the Lumière company (which was founded by Auguste and Louis Lumière, inventors of the projected motion picture), the sights captured by the film include the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Tuileries Garden, the then-new Eiffel Tower, and the now-soon-to-be-rehabilitated but then-intact Notre Dame cathedral.

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The Paris footage was colorized using DeOldify, “a deep learning-based project for colorizing and restoring old images.” So was the footage just above, which shows New York City in 1911 as shot by the Swedish company Svenska Biografteatern and released publicly by the Museum of Modern Art. “Produced only three years before the outbreak of World War I, the everyday life of the city recorded here — street traffic, people going about their business — has a casual, almost pastoral quality that differs from the modernist perspective of later city-symphony films,” say the accompanying notes. “Take note of the surprising and remarkably timeless expression of boredom exhibited by a young girl filmed as she was chauffeured along Broadway in the front seat of a convertible limousine.”

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Shot twenty years later, these clips of New York’s Theater District have also undergone the DeOldify treatment, which gets the bright lights (and numerous ballyhooing signs) of the big city a little closer to the stunning quality they must have had on a new arrival in the 1930s. The streets of Havana were seemingly quieter during that same decade, at least if the colorized footage below is to be believed. But then, the history of tourism in Cuba remembers the 1930s as something of a dull stretch after the high-living 1920s that came before, during the United States’ days of Prohibition — let alone the even more daiquiri- and mojito-soaked 1950s that would come later, speaking of eras one dreams of seeing for oneself.

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via Twisted Sifter

Related Content:

Immaculately Restored Film Lets You Revisit Life in New York City in 1911

The Oldest Known Footage of London (1890-1920) Shows the City’s Great Landmarks

Time Travel Back to Tokyo After World War II, and See the City in Remarkably High-Quality 1940s Video

Berlin Street Scenes Beautifully Caught on Film (1900-1914)

Pristine Footage Lets You Revisit Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Brothers

The Oldest Known Footage of London (1890-1920) Shows the City’s Great Landmarks

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall, on Facebook, or on Instagram.

Paris, New York & Havana Come to Life in Colorized Films Shot Between 1890 and 1931 is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don’t miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooksFree Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

More than half the population in Gaza may not have enough food by June

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At a time when Muslims around the world are observing the holy month of Ramadan, often characterized by the festive nature of its Iftars, in Gaza, more than half the population depends on food aid from the international community. Unless UNRWA secures at least an additional US$ 60 million by June, our ability to continue providing food to more than 1 million Palestine refugees in Gaza, including some 620,000 abject poor – those who cannot cover their basic food needs and who have to survive on US$ 1.6 per da y – and nearly 390,000 absolute poor – those who survive on about US$ 3.5 per day – will be severely challenged.

UNRWA is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions and financial support has been outpaced by the growth in needs. From fewer than 80,000 Palestine refugees receiving UNRWA social assistance in Gaza in the year 2000, there are today over one million people who need emergency food assistance without which they cannot get through their day. “This is a near ten-fold increase caused by the blockade that lead to the closure of Gaza and its disastrous impact on the local economy, the successive conflicts that razed entire neighborhoods and public infrastructure to the ground, and the ongoing internal Palestinian political crisis that started in 2007 with the arrival of Hamas to power in Gaza,” said Matthias Schmale, Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza.

Moreover, the tragic death of 195 Palestinians – including 14 students from UNRWA schools and the long-lasting physical and psychological injuries of 29,000 people during the year-long demonstrations known as the Great March of Return – come after three devastating conflicts in Gaza since 2009, which resulted in at least 3790 deaths and more than 17,000 injuries combined.

A report issued by the United Nations (UN) in 2017 predicted that Gaza would be unlivable by the year 2020. Today, with over 53 per cent unemployment rate among Gaza’s population and with more than one million people dependent on quarterly UNRWA food handouts, it is mostly preventive humanitarian action of UN agencies, including UNRWA, and remittances from abroad that have held Gaza back from the brink of total collapse.

At a time of increased uncertainty about the future of the Israel-Palestine peace process, UNRWA is one of the few stabilizing elements in a very complex environment. By continuing to deliver upon its mandate, the Agency remains a critical lifeline in Gaza, where its services in health and education and its defense of rights and dignity are indispensable to the most of Gaza’s 1.9 million inhabitants. Most urgent though is the food assistance that the Agency provides to counter the food-insecurity of more than one million Palestine refugees.

The Five Hundred Year Rebellion: Indigenous Movements and the Decolonization of History in Bolivia

After centuries of colonial domination and a twentieth century riddled with dictatorships, indigenous peoples in Bolivia embarked upon a social and political struggle that would change the country forever. As part of that project activists took control of their own history, starting in the 1960s, by reaching back to oral traditions and then forward to […]

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