city:vienna

Inside America’s Dirty Wars
http://www.thenation.com/article/173980/inside-americas-dirty-wars

How three US citizens were killed by their own government in the space of one month in 2011. Source: The Nation

Agrarian Justice | Land concentration, land grabbing and people’s struggles in Europe
http://www.tni.org/briefing/land-concentration-land-grabbing-and-peoples-struggles-europe
http://www.tni.org/sites/www.tni.org/themes/custom/tni960/images/banner-top.png

Land grabbing is widely assumed to be happening only in the global South, but an in-depth analysis by a team of researchers shows that land grabbing is also expanding into Europe.

Land concentration, land grabbing and people’s struggles in Europe (PDF, 2.95MB) http://www.tni.org/sites/www.tni.org/files/download/land_in_europe_1.pdf

Executive summary

The report, involving 25 authors from 11 countries, reveals the hidden scandal of how a few big private business entities have gained control of ever-greater areas of European land. It exposes how these land elites have been actively supported by a huge injection of public funds – at a time when all other public funding is being subjected to massive cuts. While some of these processes – in particular ever-increasing land concentration — are not new, they have accelerated in recent decades in particular in Eastern Europe. They have also paved the way for a new sector of foreign and domestic actors to emerge on the European stage, many tied into increasingly global commodity chains, and all looking to profit from the increasingly speculative commodity of land.

les sites d’actualités du 22/05/2013 :
–http://gatesofvienna.net
–http://www.capitalbay.com
–http://aiddatachina.org (data china)
–http://nwotruth.com
–http://sinonk.com
–http://siasatrooz.ir/en/world
–http://chainsoff.wordpress.com
–http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress
–http://peoplestrusttoronto.wordpress.com
–http://www1.jamejamonline.ir/en/service.aspx
–http://centralasiaonline.com/en_GB
–http://www.breakingnews.ie/world
–http://www.newsmaxworld.com
–http://intellihub.com
–http://www.veteranstoday.com
–http://www.malinsmalines.com/Actualites.mvc/ALAUNE
–http://www.thesyrianpolicy.com
–http://www.equaltimes.org
–http://www.freeinews.com/category/global
–http://www.therepublic.com
–http://www.terminalx.org (geopolitique)
–http://nigeriacamera.net
–http://riyadhbureau.com
–http://www.islamtimes.org/en
–http://www.britishpathe.com (archive)

on est mardi ! #suivre_mardi #sm ... allez quelques recommendations ?

Nikolaus Gansterer | Drawing a Hypothesis : The Bottom Line « The Drawing Center »

http://thebottomline.drawingcenter.org/2013/05/02/nikolaus-gansterer

Un projet carto-artistique ouf mais super auquel j’ai (modestement) participé

In advance of the third program in The Drawing Center’s Drafts series, Curatorial Assistant Nova Benway speaks with Vienna-based artist Nikolaus Gansterer about the generative potential of diagrams.

http://thebottomline.drawingcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Gansterer_Drawing-a-Hypothe.jpg

For years I have had a strong fascination with diagrams (in German “Schaubilder”) and I was questioning how these relational visual artifacts—graphic forms visualizing complex associations—could be comprehended from an artistic point of view. In an intensive exchange with artists and scientists, I developed new forms of narratives and hypotheses by tracing the speculative potential of diagrams. Based on a discursive process, I sent my drawings to various interpreters with a request for a written interpretation (which I call “micrology”), so that in return I could react to their texts with diagrammatic drawings and models. In 2011 a publication resulted from this five-year exchange of figures of thought and figures of speech, describing, from various angles, the reflexive and dynamic character of diagrams.

http://thebottomline.drawingcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Gansterer_Figures-of-Though.jpg

#visualisation #art #représentation-graphique #cartographie-radicale #perception #imaginaire

Vienne a la réputation d’être la ville de langue allemande la plus morbide
monochrom http://www.monochrom.at/english

monochrom: Experience the Experience of Being Buried Alive --- in Vienna!
monochrom content info
We have the coffin. We just need you.

The people present will have an opportunity to be buried alive in a coffin for fifteen minutes.

http://www.monochrom.at/english/monochrom-burial.jpg

Inside America’s Dirty Wars
http://www.thenation.com/article/173980/inside-americas-dirty-wars?page=full

While the battle over leaks concerning the operation—as well as the various contradictory stories on how bin Laden was killed—raged in the media, the White House was deeply immersed in planning more lethal operations against so-called “High Value Targets.” Chief among these was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen of Yemeni descent born in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

#JSOC #exécutions #guerre

Une définition par la statistique... de la criminalité.

Mars 2013, Université de Reading dans les environs de Londres

Je passe une journée au département de typographie de l’Université de Reading

http://www.reading.ac.uk/typography

http://isotyperevisited.org/1981/01/isotype-and-the-university-of-reading.html

où je suis venu pour me familiariser avec le contenu des archives « Otto Neurath », père de la « méthode de Vienne »

http://www.datascope.be/sog/SOG-Chapter6.pdf

http://isotyperevisited.org/isotype-collection/index.html

Et en tournant délicatement les documents de travail que Neurath a rassemblé il y a 90 ans et qui dorment dans ces boites en carton depuis les années 1940, je trouve une série de trois articles (il y en a quatre en fait, mais je n’ai pas trouvé le premier) sur la criminalité selon les statistiques publiés en juin 1939... en français dans un journal qui s’appelait « Le messager d’Athènes ».

Neurath était abonné à une agence de documentation à Paris à laquelle il demandait de lui envoyer les coupures de presses relatives aux thèmes sur lesquels il travaillait : Statistique, Cartographie, Atlas, etc...

J’en ai rapidement pris des photos, que j’ai assemblé ici pour que vous puissiez lire comment, en 1939, on définissait la criminalité (du peuple grec) par la statistique... C’est incomplet (hélas) mais suffisant pour se faire une idée.

Une définition par la statistique (II)
Le caractère du peuple grec et la criminalité
https://dl.dropbox.com/s/uw0spzfayr0bwdm/definirlastat2.jpg

Une définition par la statistique (III)
Le caractère du peuple grec et la criminalité

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/48q0ryqno8ejzd9/definirlastat1.jpg

Une définition par la statistique (IV)
Le caractère du peuple grec et la criminalité

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/8akxln64cd88j6v/definirlastat3.jpg

#statistiques #data #données #criminalité #grèce

Drive Through Airport prototype by Büro für MEHR

http://www.gizmag.com/drive-through-airport-concept/23123

Via Olivier Pironet

Amsterdam and Vienna-based design studio Büro für MEHR has created a drive through concept for an airport passenger terminal that could change the way airports process traffic. The concept offers a significant reduction of the size of an airport’s layout to simplify ground traffic and significantly reduce its environmental impact.

http://images.gizmag.com/hero/drivethroughairport.jpg

It is anticipated that within next decade aviation traffic could almost double, with many airports already struggling to facilitate increased demand. The Drive Through Airport concept has been designed with future logistics in mind, while simply presenting an idea that raises the question, why hasn’t anyone done this before?

#dfs #aéroports #espace-puplic #espace-privé #transport aérien

The myth of the cowboy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/20/myth-of-the-cowboy

How did the lone cowboy hero become such a potent figure in American culture? In an extract from his final book Fractured Times, the late Eric Hobsbawm follows a trail from cheap novels and B-westerns to Ronald Reagan

There is thus no shortage of potential cowboy myths in the western world. And, in fact, practically all the groups I have mentioned have generated macho and heroic semi-barbarian myths of one kind or another in their own countries and sometimes even beyond. But none of them has generated a myth with serious international popularity, let alone one that can compare, even faintly, with the fortunes of the North American cowboy. Why?

#histoire #eric_hobsbawm

An Ugly Truth in the War on Drugs
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/opinion/11iht-edcardoso11.html

This week, representatives from many nations will gather at the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna to determine the appropriate course of the international response to illicit drugs. Delegates will debate multiple resolutions while ignoring a truth that goes to the core of current drug policy: human rights abuses in the war on drugs are widespread and systematic.

#stupéfiants

« La #musique comme instrument de #torture » | #documentaire de Tristan Chytroschek

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xwyjgj_la-musique-comme-instrument-de-torture_news

Quelques vieux mythes qui refont surface une fois ou deux, mais très intéressant. Notamment le fil directeur avec Christopher Cerf, compositeur de Sesame Street, consterné par un tel usage de sa musique - en cela bien différent de Bob Singleton, compositeur d’autres chansons pour enfants, qui trouvait que c’était ridicule de supposer que la musique puisse torturer qui que ce soit et qu’après tout, les militaires étaient bien libres d’en faire ce qu’ils voulaient. Le groupe Drowning Pool aussi, qui n’en sort pas bien grandi (si tant est qu’il y ait des fans parmi les habitants de seenthis-land).

#CIA #Guantanamo #Etats_Unis #armée #guerre #armes_acoustiques

Kerry: Turkish PM’s comments complicate Mideast peace process - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/kerry-turkish-pm-s-comments-complicate-mideast-peace-process-1.506681

U.S.­ Secretary of State John Kerry says comments by the Turkish prime minister equating Zionism to a crime against humanity complicate the efforts to find peace in the Middle East.

Speaking at a news conference in Ankara with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Kerry stressed the “urgent need to promote a spirit of tolerance, and that includes all of the public statements made by all leaders.”

Kerry said he had raised the comments “very directly” with Davutoglu and would do the same when he saw Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan later on Friday.

Addressing the UN Alliance of Civilizations conference in Vienna this week, Erdogan complained of prejudices against Muslims. He said Islamophobia should be considered a crime against humanity “just like Zionism, like anti-Semitism and like fascism.”

Kerry said the on the U.S. side, “we not only disagree with it, we found it objectionable.”

Statement from the refugee camp in Vienna – which was evicted violently « Corasol
http://corasol.blogsport.de/2012/12/29/statement-from-the-refugee-camp-in-vienna-which-was-evicted-violen

Récit de la grêve de la faim, de l’évacuation par la police et texte de la pétition.

The hunger strike
The days of Christmas, which so festively celebrate that Joseph and Maria found asylum in Bethlehem, have been a cold and inhospitable time for the protesters. As politicians joined their families, leaving the refugees with little more than vague promises of more talks, the refugees saw little other option but to enter into hunger strike.

Meanwhile, migrants have come to Vienna from all over the country, to join this protest and affirm the importance of another kind of politics of migration and asylum. Their demands have been echoed and supported: we have heard the director of Caritas as well of different union leaders affirm the importance of giving migrants the right to work as they seek refuge.

The eviction
Today, on the 28th of December, in the dark of the night, a large number of police violently evicted the camp. The frame of the democracy and community that has been built up in the cold winter month running up to Christmas was razed to the ground within few hours.

The politicians in charge have not only broken the talks, but chosen to penalize the act of protesting against the inhuman conditions that asylum seekers have to tolerate in Austria. Police registered the identity of everyone at the camp; people who were inside tents had to stand up in front of the tents, were photographed and filmed from all sides in most humiliating ways. The police now presses charges against 24, and two are said to be arrested because of lack of residence permit.

#asile, #Autriche, #violence, #migrations

Refugee-camp Vienna : les demandeurs d’asile se révoltent en Autriche | Le blog de Julia Druelle
http://juliadruelle.blog.lemonde.fr/2012/11/27/refugee-camp-vienna-les-demandeurs-dasile-se-soulevent-en-

Depuis un mois au centre de Vienne, campement de migrants pour protester contre les conditions de vie dans les centres de rétention, pour l’abolition du règlement Dublin II, etc.
Le camp vient d’être évacué par la police autrichienne (nuit du 28/12/12). Plusieurs personnes arrêtées.

Dans la foulée des mouvements de protestation en Allemagne, aux Pays-Bas, en Pologne, en Hongrie, en Finlande mais aussi en Australie, les demandeurs d’asile ont entamé samedi 24 novembre un vaste mouvement de protestation en Autriche. Sous le mot d’ordre « kein Mensch ist illegal » (aucun être humain n’est illégal), 500 personnes, demandeurs d’asile et sympathisants, ont effectué à pied les 35 km qui séparent Vienne du camp de rétention de Traiskirchen. Et depuis dix jours, malgré des températures frôlant le zéro, environ 70 d’entre-eux campent dans le Sigmund-Freud-Park, en face de l’église votive et à quelques centaines de mètres du Parlement. Mi-octobre déjà, des réfugiés somaliens avait campé trois jours, face au Parlement.

Leurs revendications portent sur l’amélioration des conditions de rétention, la fin des expulsions vers les pays présentant un danger manifeste et l’abrogation des accords Dublin II prévoyant le renvoi d’un migrant dans le premier pays européen ayant enregistré ses empreintes digitales.

#asile, #Dublin, #migrations, #Autriche

Refugees on hunger strike in Vienna

Meanwhile, as of December 25th, there are 32 refugees on hunger strike. Every day people without papers from other parts of Austria and even from other European countries are joining the movement, because they got aware of the ongoing protests in Vienna.

Video :
http://refugeecampvienna.noblogs.org/post/2012/12/24/video-refugees-on-hunger-strike-refugees-im-hungerstreik

#Vienna #migration #asile #grève_de_la_faim #Austria #proteste
@reka

Rigolo qu’à moitié, sachant l’ambiance anti-musulmans qui règne en Europe en ce moment...

The Great Mosques of Lake Geneva - Essay by architect Mika Savela

After the Swiss referendum that decided on a constitutional ban on the construction of any new minarets in 2009, Mika Savela speculates about what would the imagery of classical Switzerland have looked like if merged with late 19th century images of Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

http://www.mascontext.com/issues/10-conflict-summer-11/the-great-mosques-of-lake-geneva

#referendum_minarets #suisse #Geneve #Mika_Savela #islam #islamophobie #paysage #minaret

Did Iran’s Cyber-Army Hack Into the IAEA’s computers? - The Daily Beast
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/05/did-iran-s-cyber-army-hack-into-the-iaea-s-computers.html

“It’s very hard to know who is behind the clickety clack of the keyboard at the time of a breach,” said Frank Cilluffo, the director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. But regarding the most recent hacking, he said there were clues. “[C]learly whoever was behind the IAEA incident shares the intentions of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, and if not them directly, this could be a cyber-assassin, a hired gun Iran has enlisted to do their bidding.”

#nucléaire #iran #cyberguerre

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY NOVEMBER 19 « MasterAdrian’s Weblog
http://masteradrian.com/2012/11/19/this-day-in-gay-history-november-19

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY NOVEMBER 19
November 19, 2012

/ / | \ \ | / / | \ \
GAY WISDOM for Daily Living…

from White Crane a magazine exploring
Gay wisdom & culture ►http://www.Gaywisdom.org

Share this with your friends…
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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

NOVEMBER 19

1828 – FRANZ SCHUBERT, died; TheAustrian, classical composer, born (1797) as Franz Peter Schubert in Vienna was, arguably, one of the great masters of 19th century classical music. Not much about Schubert’s life would immediately suggest anything resembling a modern gay man. But so what? An entire book in 1998 by musicologist and theorist, Lawrence Kramer, Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song, is, if not entirely devoted to the subject, addresses it at length with chapter titles like: The Ganymede Complex: Schubert’s Songs and the Homoerotic Imagination, and Mermaid Fantasies: Schubert’s Trout and the “wish to be woman.” No, seriously. As NY Times writer, Edward Rothstein wrote in 1992:

“By the end of the all-day symposium on Schubert at the 92d Street Y … the audience was getting feisty. The last two hours of discussion on “Schubert the Man: Myth vs. Reality,” were concerned with Schubert’s possible homosexuality. The historical evidence was made available throughout the weeklong Schubertiade festival in a carefully argued 1989 paper by Maynard Solomon. … The second movement of the “Unfinished” Symphony had been analyzed to show its possible homosexual character by the feminist musicologist Susan McClary. And the “marginalization” of Schubert in 1820′s Viennese society had been debated by the panel.

So by the evening’s end, comments were getting more heated. One frustrated listener asserted that “heterosexuals are more repressed than homosexuals.” Another, speaking with irony, asked whether the fact that Schubert was a “short, fat man” had affected the way he wrote music.

On the stage, a few of the seven panelists exchanged barbs as well. But controversy was to be expected; this type of discussion is among the most important of our time; musical analysis is becoming less abstract, and critical interpretation steadily draws the most innocent of compositions into the hothouse world of contemporary politics. Crucial questions were raised, though not satisfactorily addressed: Is there any musical importance to a composer’s homosexuality? Can we generalize about homosexual taste? If so, do we risk imposing contemporary notions on a different era?

The only thing agreed upon, probably, was that Schubert’s personality is not well understood. As for me, I sat through most of Sunday’s talks with a consistent mixture of interest and strong disagreement. Joseph Horowitz, who planned [the 1992] festival, began by summarizing the ambition of the Schubertiade itself. Schubert, he argued, has been trivialized; he has been turned into an innocent, sweet-tempered melodist. But his early music was actually “daring” and “extreme,” Mr. Horowitz said, and he was a promiscuous homosexual who died of syphilis.“

Aren’t we really saying something like, “If you have to ask…”?

1889 – CLIFTON WEBB (d: 1966) was an American actor, dancer and singer born Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck in a rural part of Marion County, Indiana, which would, in 1906, become Beech Grove, a self-governing city entirely surrounded by Indianapolis. Webb’s parents were Jacob Grant Hollenbeck, the son of a grocer from a multi-generational Indiana farming family, and Mabelle A. Parmelee, the daughter of a railroad conductor. In 1892, Webb’s formidable mother, Mabelle, moved to New York City with her beloved “little Webb,” as she called him for the remainder of her life. She dismissed questions about her husband Jacob, a ticket clerk who, like her father, worked for the Indianapolis-St. Louis Railroad, by saying, “We never speak of him. He didn’t care for the theater.”

Webb was in his mid-fifties when actor/director Otto Preminger chose him over the objections of 20th Century Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck to play the classy, but evil, radio columnist Waldo Lydecker, who is obsessed with Gene Tierney’s character in the 1944 film noir, Laura. His performance was showered with acclaim and made him an unlikely movie star. Despite Zanuck’s original objection, Webb was immediately signed to a long-term contract with Fox. Two years later he was reunited with Tierney (with whom he shares this birthdate) in another highly praised role as the elitist Elliott Templeton in Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge (1946). He received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for both. Webb received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 1949 for Sitting Pretty, the first in a three-film series of comedic Mr. Belvedere features with Webb portraying the snide and omniscient central character.

Webb’s elegant taste kept him on Hollywood’s best-dressed lists for decades. Even though he exhibited comically foppish mannerisms in portraying Mr. Belvedere and other movie characters, his scrupulous (read “deeply closeted, highly repressed”) private life kept him free of scandal. The character of Lynn Belvedere is said to have been very close to his real life — he had an Oedipal devotion to his mother Mabelle, who was his companion and who lived with him until her death at age ninety-one. Webb’s mourning for his mother continued for a year with no signs of letting up, prompting Noël Coward to remark of Webb, “It must be terrible to be orphaned at 71.”

Among the many stories, once, he and Tallulah Bankhead were smitten with the same handsome Austrian army officer and vied for the uniformed stud’s favors. While Tallulah did her stuff vamping him, Webb retreated for a moment, and returned with an armload of roses. To Tallulah’s amusement and the officer’s shock, Webb danced around the man and began pelting him with flowers. Tallulah won.

1942 – CALVIN KLEIN, American clothing designer, born; Calvin Richard Klein was born in The Bronx to Jewish-Hungarian immigrant parents. He attended the High School of Industrial Arts and matriculated, but never graduated, from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, receiving an honorary Doctorate at the graduation ceremony in 2003. He did his apprenticeship in 1962 at an old-line cloak-and-suit manufacturer, and spent five years designing at other New York shops. He later launched his first company with a childhood friend, Barry K. Schwartz.

Klein was one of several design leaders raised in the Jewish immigrant community in the Bronx, New York along with Robert Denning and Ralph Lauren. Cal became a protégé of the ever-so-flaming editor of Town & Country Baron de Gunzburg, through whose introductions he became the toast of the New York elite fashion scene, even before he had his first mainstream success with the launch of his first jeans line. Later, speaking in an interview with Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol for Interview magazine, published shortly after the Baron’s death, Klein said: “He was truly the greatest inspiration of my life… he was my mentor, I was his protégé. If you talk about a person with style and true elegance — maybe I’m being a snob, but I’ll tell you, there was no one like him. I used to think, boy, did he put me through hell sometimes, but boy, was I lucky. I was so lucky to have known him so well for so long.” Calvin Klein was immediately recognized for his talent after his first major showing at New York Fashion Week. Klein was hailed as the new Yves Saint-Laurent, and was noted for his clean lines.

His wildly homoerotic advertisements transformed the men’s fashion advertising and fashion industry. Married twice, he has never actually come out. But come on…does anyone really think this man is heterosexual? Even a little?

1953 – THOMAS LOUIS VILLARD (d: 1994) was an American actor best known for his television role in the 1980s series We Got It Made as Jay Bostwick. His best known film role was in the 1986 film One Crazy Summer, as Clay Stork. He also starred in the 1991 horror film, Popcorn, and the 1992 movie Shakes the Clown with his One Crazy Summer” co-stars Joel Murray and Bob Goldthwait. Villard also appeared in the 1994 comedy movie In The Army Now.

Villard made numerous guest appearances on TV shows as well and was a panelist on two weeks’ worth of To Tell The Truth in the early ’90s. He was a celebrity guest on Super Password and The Match Game as well as appearances in episodic television on CHiPS, Taxi, The Golden Girls, The A-Team and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Villard was out gay and died of complications of HIV-AIDS November 14, 1994 in L.A..

1962 – JODIE FOSTER, American actress, born; Foster began acting in commercials at 3 years old, and her first significant role came in the 1976 film Taxi Driver as the preteen prostitute, Iris, for which she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She won for Best Actress in 1989 for playing a rape survivor in The Accused. In 1991, she starred in The Silence of the Lambs as Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee assisting in a hunt for a serial killer. This performance received international acclaim and her second Academy Award for Best Actress. She received her fourth Academy Award nomination for playing a backwoods hermit in Nell (1994). She has also won three Bafta Awards, two Golden Globes, a Screen Actors Award and a People’s Choice award as well as two Emmy nominations.

Foster is, as the phrase goes, “intensely private” about certain aspects of her personal life, notably her sexual orientation, which has been the subject of speculation. She has two sons but has never revealed the identity of the children’s father(s).

In December 2007, Foster made headlines when, during an acceptance speech at Hollywood Reporter’s “Women in Entertainment” event, she paid tribute to film producer Cydney Bernard, referring to Bernard as “my beautiful Cydney, who sticks with me through the rotten and the bliss.” Some media interpreted this as Foster coming out, as Bernard was believed to be her girlfriend since both met in 1992 during the filming of Sommersby. Foster and Bernard never attended premieres or award ceremonies together, nor did they ever appear affectionate with one another. Bernard, however, was seen in public with Foster’s children on many occasions. In May, 2008, several news outlets reported that Foster and Bernard had “called it quits. Oh Jody, Jody Jody…are you really going to let Ellen be the “It” Lesbian in town?

|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|

Dinner with Hitler

How a brilliant starlet created a worldwide technology boom

It all started with a skin flick...

In 1933, a beautiful, young Austrian woman took off her clothes for a movie director. She ran through the woods... naked. She swam in a lake... naked. Pushing well beyond the social norms of the period, the movie also featured a simulated orgasm. To make the scene “vivid,” the director reportedly stabbed the actress with a sharp pin just offscreen.

The most popular movie in 1933 was King Kong. But everyone in Hollywood was talking about that scandalous movie with the gorgeous, young Austrian woman.

Louis B. Mayer, of the giant studio MGM, said she was the most beautiful woman in the world. The film was banned practically everywhere... which of course made it even more popular and valuable. Mussolini reportedly refused to sell his copy at any price.

The star of the film, called Ecstasy, was Hedwig Kiesler. She said the secret of her beauty was “to stand there and look stupid.” In reality, Kiesler was anything but stupid. She was a genius. She’d grown up as the
only child of a prominent Jewish banker. She was a math prodigy. She excelled at science. As she grew older, she became ruthless, using all the power her body and mind gave her.

Between the sexual roles she played, her tremendous beauty, and the power of her intellect, Kiesler would confound the men in her life... including her six husbands, two of the most ruthless dictators of the 20th century, and one of the greatest movie producers in history.

Her beauty made her rich for a time. She is said to have made - and spent - $30 million in her life. But her greatest accomplishment resulted from her intellect... And her invention continues to shape the world we live in today.

You see, this young Austrian starlet would take one of the most valuable technologies ever developed right from under Hitler’s nose. After fleeing to America, she not only became a major Hollywood star... her name sits on one of the most important patents ever granted by the U.S. Patent Office.

Today, when you use your cell phone or, over the next few years, as you experience super-fast wireless Internet access (via something called “long-term evolution” or “LTE” technology), you’ll be using an extension of
the technology a 20- year-old actress first conceived while sitting at dinner with Hitler.

At the time she made Ecstasy, Kiesler was married to one of the richest men in Austria. Friedrich Mandl was Austria’s leading arms maker. His firm would become a key supplier to the Nazis.

Mandl used his beautiful young wife as a showpiece at important business dinners with representatives of the Austrian, Italian, and German fascist forces. One of Mandl’s favorite topics at these gatherings - which included meals with Hitler and Mussolini - was the technology surrounding radio-controlled missiles and torpedoes. Wireless weapons offered far greater ranges than the wire-controlled alternatives that prevailed at the time. Kiesler sat through these dinners “looking stupid,” while absorbing everything she heard...

As a Jew, Kiesler hated the Nazis. She abhorred her husband’s business ambitions. Mandl responded to his wilful wife by imprisoning her in his castle, Schloss Schwarzenau. In 1937, she managed to escape. She drugged her maid, snuck out of the castle wearing the maid’s clothes, and sold her jewelry to finance a trip to London.

(She got out just in time. In 1938, Germany annexed Austria. The Nazis seized Mandl’s factory. He was half Jewish. Mandl fled to Brazil. Later, he became an advisor to Argentina’s iconic populist president, Juan Peron.)

In London, Kiesler arranged a meeting with Louis B. Mayer. She signed a long-term contract with him, becoming one of MGM’s biggest stars. She appeared in more than 20 films. She was a co-star to Clark Gable, Judy Garland, and even Bob Hope. Each of her first seven MGM movies was a blockbuster.

But Kiesler cared far more about fighting the Nazis than about making movies. At the height of her fame, in 1942, she developed a new kind of communications system, optimized for sending coded messages that couldn’t be “jammed.” She was building a system that would allow torpedoes and guided bombs to always reach their targets. She was building a system to kill Nazis.

By the 1940s, both the Nazis and the Allied forces were using the kind of single- frequency radio-controlled technology Kiesler’s ex-husband had been peddling. The drawback of this technology was that the enemy could find the appropriate frequency and “jam” or intercept the signal, thereby interfering with the missile’s intended path.

Kiesler’s key innovation was to “change the channel.” It was a way of encoding a message across a broad area of the wireless spectrum. If one part of the spectrum was jammed, the message would still get through on one of the other frequencies being used. The problem was, she could not figure out how to synchronize the frequency changes on both the receiver and the transmitter. To solve the problem, she turned to perhaps the world’s first techno-musician, George Anthiel.

Anthiel was an acquaintance of Kiesler who achieved some notoriety for creating intricate musical compositions. He synchronized his melodies across twelve player pianos, producing stereophonic sounds no one had ever heard before. Kiesler incorporated Anthiel’s technology for synchronizing his player pianos. Then, she was able to synchronize the frequency changes between a weapon’s receiver and its transmitter.

On August 11, 1942, U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387 was granted to Antheil and “Hedy Kiesler Markey,” which was Kiesler’s married name at the time.

Most of you won’t recognize the name Kiesler. And no one would remember the name Hedy Markey. But it’s a fair bet than anyone reading this newsletter of a certain age will remember one of the great beauties of Hollywood’s golden age - Hedy Lamarr. That’s the name Louis B. Mayer gave to his prize actress. That’s the name his movie company made famous.

Meanwhile, almost no one knows Hedwig Kiesler - aka Hedy Lamarr - was one of the great pioneers of wireless communications. Her technology was developed by the U.S. Navy, which has used it ever since.

You’re probably using Lamarr’s technology, too. Her patent sits at the foundation of “spread spectrum technology,” which you use every day when you log on to a wi- fi network or make calls with your Bluetooth-enabled phone. It lies at the heart of the massive investments being made right now in so-called fourth-generation “LTE” wireless technology. This next generation of cell phones and cell towers will provide tremendous increases to wireless network speed and quality, by spreading wireless signals across the entire available spectrum. This kind of encoding is only possible using the kind of frequency switching that Hedwig Kiesler invented.FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr

Eric Hobsbawm obituary | Books | The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/01/eric-hobsbawm?intcmp=122
#histoire #marxisme

Pink Shrouds Aimed to Draw Attention to Iran Military Site, Analysts Say by Gareth Porter
http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2012/09/07/pink-shrouds-aimed-to-draw-attention-to-iran-military-site-analyst

The latest episode in the months-long media story of alleged Iranian “sanitisation” of the site at Parchin began with an Aug. 22 story by the Associated Press Vienna correspondent, George Jahn, who has long served as a conduit for stories leaked by Israeli officials.

J’adore cette dernière tournure: «who has long served as a conduit for stories leaked by Israeli officials».

Norvège Extrême droite Blog

Blog de grande qualité sur l’extrême droite en Norvège et en Scandinavie

eurofascism.info http://eurofascism.info
on the renaissance of hatred

Welcome to eurofascism.info – the English language web-site of Norwegian freelance journalist and author Øyvind Strømmen.

At this web site you will find some of my writings on right-wing radicalism and extremism, as well as material on other forms of political extremism. You will also find a few somewhat revised chapters from my book Eurofascism, self-published in 2008.

Levante - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A0KCCGMmhY&feature=related

14. juillet 2012 - 150ème anniversaire de Gustav Klimt
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/klimt/freundinnen.jpg
WebMuseum: Klimt, Gustav
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/klimt