A LONGMEN GROTTO BUDDHA AND HIS SURROUND

LONGMEN GROTTOES

II

ON THE SIDE

More here

MONUMENT VALLEY II

MONUMENT VALLEY

II

ON THE NAVAJO RESERVATION

(ARIZONA-UTAH)

NEAR THE FOUR CORNERS AREA

Monument Valley I here

CARL SAGAN b. November 9, 1934

CARL EDWARD SAGAN

November 9, 1934-December 20, 1996

CARL SAGAN

ASTRONOMER, ASTROPHYSICIST, COSMOLOGIST,

POPULAR SCIENTIST AND

SCIENCE POPULARIZER EXTRAORDINAIRE

For more, see here

STEPPING UP IN LIMA, PERU

STEPPING UP

AT THE

MAGIC WATER

CIRCUIT

LIMA, PERU

NINETY-FOUR YEARS SINCE THE GREAT OCTOBER REVOLUTION

THE BOLSHEVIKS

SEIZE

THE

WINTER PALACE

November 7, 1917

(October 25, 1917, O.S.)

THE WINTER PALACE

THE HERMITAGE

ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

Photographed in Leningrad, the USSR, in 1984

Power was seized in October/November 1917 not from the Tsar; Nicholas II had been overthrown in the February Revolution earlier in 1917, and not by the Bolsheviks (their leader Lenin was absent in Switzerland at the time).

It was Premier Alexander Kerensky's Provisional Government that was in the autumn of 1917 headquartered in the Winter Palace, and found itself the object of the coup the communists organized, successfully. It took a Civil War and more, but the Soviet Union founded out of this "Great October Revolution" lasted until December 1991.

SUNDAY WHIMSEY: HAPPY FACE ORCHID

IN A DREAR

WORLD

A BIT OF WHIMSEY

RUSSIAN POLITICAL SATIRE THEN & NOW

ELECTIONS AHEAD

"PUTIN-SAN" ON THE SATIRICAL PUPPET SHOW "KUKLY"

IN THE RUN-UP TO THE 2000

RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

With Russian parliamentary elections coming next month, and the presidential election in March 2012 (and Vladimir Putin an announced candidate), the BBC has an informative analysis of some popular pushback to Kremlin media control (here). As Stephen Ennis writes, "TV political satire has been virtually extinct in Russia since the puppet show Kukly ... disappeared from the screens shortly after Mr Putin came to power." The photograph above shows Putin as a martial arts master on "Kukly."

Now there is YouTube: "The videos are in a variety of genres - political polemic, satire and song - but they have one thing in common: a critical or irreverent attitude to the country's leadership - Mr Putin, President Dmitry Medvedev and their party, United Russia." Some of them have had over one million views -- "unprecedented" in "a just a few weeks." (There are sixty million internet users in a population of 140 million plus.)

Putin's negatives are said to be up.

The general law of politics probably still applies: You can't beat somebody with nobody.

PRIVILEGED AIR: CHINA NOW

POLLUTION

FOR THE

PEOPLE

IN THE PEOPLE'S

REPUBLIC OF CHINA

NATURAL AIR FILTERS

IN THE GREAT HALL OF THE PEOPLE

BEIJING, CHINA

The news is out: "Creating clean, healthy air for our national leaders is a blessing to the people." So, according to the New York Times, says the Broad Group, which markets air-purifying machines to members of the Chinese political elite. Those machines are reported to be found in the Great Hall of the People (above, and here and here and here) and in that sanctum sanctorum, Zhongnanhai -- think White House or the Kremlin (see here and here).

Some of the laobaixing -- the common people, or at least those that "microblog" on Sina Weibo -- are revolting.

MICHAEL DUKAKIS TURNS SEVENTY-EIGHT

MICHAEL STANLEY DUKAKIS

b. November 3, 1933

FANS OF MICHAEL DUKAKIS

AT THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION

WHICH NOMINATED HIM FOR PRESIDENT

ATLANTA, GEORGIA, JULY 1988

Michael Dukakis, the longest-serving Massachusetts governor (1975-79 and 1983-91), chose Senator Lloyd Bentsen (D-TX) as his running mate (dreaming of JFK-LBJ/Boston-Austin?) in a convention "exhilarating the delegates" and leading to a party "unified, hungry to win" (see here for the instant first draft of history). Ann Richards gave the keynote address (see here); Jesse Jackson got his day in the TV sun (see here and here).

The author of the "Massachusetts Miracle," voted the most effective governor by his peers only two years before, got creamed (the bald facts are here) by two-term Vice-President George Bush (see here) and Senator Dan Quayle (R-IN) (see here).

Michael Dukakis's current Northeastern University faculty webpage is here; the official but useful Massachusetts gubernatorial webpage is here; and a photograph of the Dukakises and the (Boston Mayor) Kevin Whites on parade is here.

BARBER CONABLE b. November 2, 1922

BARBER BENJAMIN CONABLE, JR.

November 2, 1922-November 30, 2003

BARBER CONABLE

Notably

Member, U.S. House of Representatives (R-NY), 1965-1985

7th President of the World Bank, 1986-1991

The World Bank has a lengthy and informative retrospective of Barber Conable's time as its president here. It points out that the twenty-year Republican Representative from New York "was the first career politician to be appointed president of the Bank, and the only one without substantial Wall Street experience." The New York Times (here) and the Los Angeles Times (here) ran substantive obituaries, but two of the most interesting came from this American politician came from the U.K.

Conable, the Guardian wrote (here), "is best remembered as the man who took the World Bank by the scruff of the neck, totally reorganised its often sclerotic bureaucracy and persuaded the US Congress to double the amounts the bank could disburse to developing nations." He "also engineered a significant shift in the disbursement of this additional cash. He diverted the bank from its previous fascination with glitzy prestige projects towards schemes more clearly designed to relieve poverty. He encouraged far wider education in birth control, without which few Third World women could ever hope to improve their lot. He also insisted that the bank pay greater attention to the environmental impact of the large engineering schemes it decided to support."

The Telegraph noted (here) that Conable also paid attention to "to Eastern Europe as it emerged from Communism and attempted to establish free market economies. 'I pledge to you,' he told the Eastern Europeans, 'you can count on the World Bank in the tough times ahead, not just in the first euphoric moments of change.'"

But he left the World Bank presidency after the end of his single five-year term, not long into the changes in Eastern Europe, when his long friendship with George Bush "turned sour after Bush ascended to the presidency in 1989." (Conable had been appointed by Ronald Reagan.) Bush "'thought I should be supporting an American agenda,' Conable said in 1998. 'I thought I was there to help the poor people. So I got the reputation of not being a team player, and that was the one thing George wouldn't stand for.'"

Finally, more than one of the obituaries noted that during his Congressional career, Conable refused to accept more than fifty dollars from any campaign contributor, "for fear of compromising his integrity."

TO LIGHT THE WAY TO NOVEMBER

GARDEN LAMPPOST

CUSCO, PERU