#German Unification Day 2023

[underthewingsofthblackeagle]

Frohen Feiertag!

Happy German Unification Day 2023 :)

#Tag der Deutschen Einheit #Feiertag #German Unification Day 2023

[zukadiary]

Flügel / A Kaleidoscope of Life ~ Moon 2023

4.5-year awaited Grand Theater return on September 22 (before things) ft. my eyes dead from the unseasonable heat and yet another failed attempt to get my FLYING SAPA REFUND FROM 2020 THAT THEY STILL OWE ME.

This, unexpectedly, turned out to be the hands-down Takarazuka highlight of Tadaima ’23, and that’s… despite a play of extremely questionable content. Tsukigumi—Mugen Musou / Krung Thep—had the honor of being my last live Takarazuka before the shit hit the fan globally, and the troupe is such different vibes I felt like I stepped through a portal (not that Yukigumi isn’t, dear lord, but small theaters are always a little weird vibe-wise). I had a feeling this would be my first and last live top Tsukishiro Kanato, and she did indeed announce taidan days later. We have no shortage of 95th top stars, but, since I was a hardcore Yukigumi fan ten years ago, Reiko is the only one I’ve been closely following since her shinko days. She’s gotten so good, and every time I’ve watched her since the Romance Gekijou stream, I’ve seen in her movements and expressions that she's absolutely watched Komu on repeat in her moments of doubt. It makes my heart sing.

FLÜGEL SPOILERS (can’t believe I’m saying this again, but cw suicide, also nazis 🙄):

If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “Gee, you know whose take I’d love on the politics of a divided Germany? TAKARAZUKA’S,” well, maybe this show is for you! It’s the 1980s (although you wouldn’t know it till they bust a hole through the Wall… they really dropped the ball on costuming) and Jonas (Reiko) is a GDR officer who grew up thinking his mother (Shirayuki Sachika) was a nazi after she was arrested in his childhood for war crimes and they were separated on opposite sides of the partitioned country. After we open with a completely historically inaccurate scene from the Russian Afghan war (just SCREAMS Takarazuka, doesn’t it?), Jonas is put in charge of overseeing an East German concert featuring wildly popular West German idol Nadia (Umino Mitsuki), while other GDR officer Helmut (Houzuki An) is tasked with keeping an eye on them/preventing spying or something (idk, this plot doesn’t hold a ton of water to be honest). The general conflict is that Team Reiko is pro-unification, and Team Chinatsu is staunchly anti. Amidst a flurry of various activities that realistically would have gotten Jonas thrown in the gulag 1000 times over—including helping old war buddy?? Amashi Juri escape to West Germany via an underground route operated by Irodori Michiru and Haon Mika—Team Helmut attempts to dampen pro-unification sentiment by plotting a terrorist attack at the concert (in the form of an exploding microphone) and pinning it on a priest (Yumena Rune) and his band of peaceful student protestors. Thanks to Jonas and Luis Wagner (Kazama Yuno), who is Nadia’s manager and also secretly the best spy in the world or something, the mic is retrieved and the plan is thwarted. When Nadia returns to West Germany, she is moved to become a pro-unification activist thanks to the friends she made on the other side, and leads a protest that results in breaking the wall down. Helmut, unable to cope with the defeat of his ideology, takes his own life quite dramatically (so be aware of that). After travel is permitted between east and west, Jonas discovers that his mother (aging with dementia), while employed by the nazis, actually used her position to help Jews escape. Jonas and Nadia don’t fall in love, but they do look off into the sky together in hope and friendship.

I really did not care for this plot, yet somehow I also didn’t absolutely hate watching it. I think there were enough isolated highlights to make the experience worth it:

I! Love! Reiko! And I’m so happy I got to see her as top once! And her voice is fantastic lately!

Reiko and Chinatsu have an unexpectedly compelling chemistry

Chinatsu has an unexpected chemistry with me and my feelings

The final protest scene (set to a dramatic rendition of Ode to Joy) features Chinatsu repeatedly trying to hit Reiko, while Reiko just blocks all her punches and stares straight into her eyes. It’s a lot.

I had similar feelings watching Oda as I did watching Agachin; she wore those 4.5 years loud and proud. +1000 confidence, absolutely ready for her nibante era.

Nice little send off role for Ren Tsukasa, who is ABSOLUTELY BELOVED. People cheered the theater down for her, it was genuinely moving. No one in anything else I saw got that much applause except for maybe Kaiho Naoto.

KALEIDOSCOPE SPOILERS:

This, brainchild of Kurita-sensei making her revue debut, was the revue of the year, and probably the revue of all pandemic era for me. It was fresh, it had a theme, the music slapped, it actually called back a little to Ogita-sensei who I will miss in tkz until the end of time. LET WOMEN MAKE REVUES!!

The premise is a journey through different eras of Tokyo, triggered by the turn of a magic kaleidoscope. Each era’s scene is beautifully designed, and has a little self-contained plot. The transitions are seamless, and I loved the song choices (CITY! POP! CHUUZUME!). Tsukigumi as a whole is vocally outstanding right now, and the impact was awesome. Verbal descriptions don’t do it justice! If you’re tired of Fujii/Saitou/Nakamura B throwing all their old scenes into a tumble dyer and pulling them back out in a random order, watch Kaleidoscope, even if you aren’t a fan of Tsukigumi.

#takarazuka #reviews #flugel #tadaima 23

[beardedmrbean]

At the end of March, Germany's Environment Minister Steffi Lemke of the Green Party used just a few words to put an end to the dispute that has kept the country in suspense for years: "The risks of nuclear power are ultimately uncontrollable; that's why the nuclear phase-out makes our country safer, and avoids more nuclear waste."

Nuclear power extended to April 15

Last year, the government found itself once again caught up in a dispute over nuclear power. In their coalition agreement, the governing SPD, Greens, and the FDP had agreed to stick to Germany's nuclear phase-out, which was decided under Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2011. Accordingly, the last nuclear power plants were to close at the end of 2022. 

But Russia's invasion of Ukraine changed everything, because Russian gas supplies to Germany stopped and the government feared an energy shortage. Chancellor Olaf Scholz finally decided to extend the operating period of the power stations until April 15, 2023.

A decades-long dispute

Few disputes have polarized people, especially in the former West Germany, for as many decades as the one over nuclear power. On June 17, 1961, a German nuclear power plant supplied electricity to the grid for the first time, at Kahl in Bavaria.

Some 22,596 days and plenty of heated debate later, the last three German nuclear power plants still in operation will finally be shut down on April 15.

Altogether, 19 nuclear power plant units supplied up to a third of the country's electricity, though the last time this happened was about 20 years ago. In the 1970s and 1980s in West Germany, before German unification, opposition to nuclear power brought hundreds of thousands of mostly young people out onto the streets. Then in 1986, the Chernobyl disaster in the then-Soviet Union appeared to confirm warnings about the dangers of nuclear power. But the various governing parties – the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), the SPD, and the FDP – stood firmly behind the use of nuclear power for many decades.

Nuclear power in Europe

Other European countries were quicker to phase out nuclear power. Sweden was the forerunner, ending nuclear power shortly after Chernobyl, as was Italy, which also decided to close its last two nuclear power plants following the disaster. In Italy, the decision remained in force; in Sweden, the phase-out was reversed in 1996. Today, six nuclear power plants there produce around 30% of the country's electricity needs.

Other European countries, such as the Netherlands and Poland plan to expand their nuclear power systems, while Belgium is postponing its planned phase-out. With 57 reactors, France has always been Europe's leading nuclear power country, and it intends to stay that way. All in all, 13 of 27 EU countries intend using nuclear power in the coming years, with a number expanding their capacities.

First German phase-out in 2002

In 2002, Germany's then Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin, also of the Green Party, pushed through the country's first plan to phase out nuclear power. This was then softened by subsequent governments, but the horrific reactor disaster at Fukushima in Japan in 2011 finally sealed the fate of German nuclear power plants. The chancellor at the time, Angela Merkel (CDU), decided: That was it for nuclear energy in Germany.

Today, Trittin is still a member of the Bundestag for the Green Party. "Yes, this is an important day, because it brings a story to an end, namely that of the civilian use of nuclear energy," he said of this week's final shutdown. "But it's not the end of nuclear energy in Germany, we're still dealing with the fact that we'll have to safely store the world's most dangerous waste for a million years," he told DW.

Arguments for nuclear energy

But is this really it for nuclear energy in Germany? KernD, an association representing the interests of nuclear technology in Germany, told DW that ending nuclear power was not a good idea, in view of an energy crisis that it says has been suppressed, rather than resolved.

"Also, in view of climate policy and the very unfavorable development in electricity generation last year — due to a sharp increase in coal-fired power generation — the shutdown of three functioning nuclear power plants with a low greenhouse gas footprint beggars belief," a KernD spokesperson said.

"Considering security of supply, environmental and climate protection, as well as competitiveness, more nuclear power would make more sense than none at all."

Nuclear power around the world

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there are currently 422 nuclear reactors in operation worldwide, with an average age of about 31 years.

But a recent IAEA report said there was no indication that nuclear was experiencing a renaissance: Nuclear power generation peaked at 17.5% in 1996, and fell below 10% in 2021 — the lowest in four decades.

Asia expands its nuclear capacity

Nevertheless, China, Russia and India in particular are all planning to build new nuclear power plants. China, where there is virtually no civil society to fight new projects, wants to build another 47 plants. China already produces more nuclear power than France.

It is often argued that expanding nuclear power production protects the climate because it emits hardly any carbon dioxide. Even Japan wants to return to more nuclear power, despite the 2001 earthquake that caused several nuclear reactors to rupture in succession, forcing the initial closure of several nuclear power plants.

Since then, however, some reactors have been brought back online. Now the Japanese government has decided: The resource-poor country wants to build new reactors and let its old ones run for up to 70 years. "We must make full use of nuclear energy," Prime Minister Fumio Kishida declared recently, as if it were his motto. Surveys show that, despite a long period of resistance, support among the Japanese population is gradually increasing.

And Jürgen Trittin notes that no one wants to invest in nuclear power on a large scale "because nuclear power is not competitive." Building new nuclear power plants is very expensive, often having to be co-financed by public money, and often plagued by delays and local resistance to new projects.

#nunyas news

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 2.3 (after 1930)

1930 – The Communist Party of Vietnam is founded at a "Unification Conference" held in Kowloon, British Hong Kong. 1931 – The Hawke's Bay earthquake, New Zealand's worst natural disaster, kills 258. 1933 – Adolf Hitler announces that the expansion of Lebensraum into Eastern Europe, and its ruthless Germanisation, are the ultimate geopolitical objectives of Nazi foreign policy. 1943 – The SS Dorchester is sunk by a German U-boat. Only 230 of 902 men aboard survive. 1944 – World War II: During the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, U.S. Army and Marine forces seize Kwajalein Atoll from the defending Japanese garrison. 1945 – World War II: As part of Operation Thunderclap, 1,000 B-17s of the Eighth Air Force bomb Berlin, a raid which kills between 2,500 and 3,000 and dehouses another 120,000. 1945 – World War II: The United States and the Philippine Commonwealth begin a month-long battle to retake Manila from Japan. 1953 – The Batepá massacre occurred in São Tomé when the colonial administration and Portuguese landowners unleashed a wave of violence against the native creoles known as forros. 1958 – Founding of the Benelux Economic Union, creating a testing ground for a later European Economic Community. 1959 – Rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson are killed in a plane crash along with the pilot near Clear Lake, Iowa, an event later known as The Day the Music Died. 1959 – Sixty-five people are killed when American Airlines Flight 320 crashes into the East River on approach to LaGuardia Airport in New York City. 1960 – British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan speaks of "a wind of change", signalling that his Government was likely to support decolonisation. 1961 – The United States Air Force begins Operation Looking Glass, and over the next 30 years, a "Doomsday Plane" is always in the air, with the capability of taking direct control of the United States' bombers and missiles in the event of the destruction of the SAC's command post. 1966 – The Soviet Union's Luna 9 becomes the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon, and the first spacecraft to take pictures from the surface of the Moon. 1971 – New York Police Officer Frank Serpico is shot during a drug bust in Brooklyn and survives to later testify against police corruption. 1972 – The first day of the seven-day 1972 Iran blizzard, which would kill at least 4,000 people, making it the deadliest snowstorm in history. 1984 – Doctor John Buster and a research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in the United States announce history's first embryo transfer, from one woman to another resulting in a live birth. 1984 – Space Shuttle program: STS-41-B is launched using Space Shuttle Challenger. 1989 – After a stroke two weeks previously, South African President P. W. Botha resigns as leader of the National Party, but stays on as president for six more months. 1989 – A military coup overthrows Alfredo Stroessner, dictator of Paraguay since 1954. 1994 – Space Shuttle program: STS-60 is launched, carrying Sergei Krikalev, the first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard the Shuttle. 1995 – Astronaut Eileen Collins becomes the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle as mission STS-63 gets underway from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 1998 – Cavalese cable car disaster: A United States military pilot causes the death of 20 people when his low-flying plane cuts the cable of a cable-car near Trento, Italy. 2005 – One hundred five people are killed when Kam Air Flight 904 crashes in the Pamir Mountains in Afghanistan. 2007 – A Baghdad market bombing kills at least 135 people and injures a further 339. 2014 – Two people are shot and killed and 29 students are taken hostage at a high school in Moscow, Russia. 2023 – 2023 Ohio train derailment: A freight train containing vinyl chloride and other hazardous materials derails and burns in East Palestine, Ohio, United States, releasing hydrogen chloride and phosgene into the air and contaminating the Ohio River.

#Events

[egoschwank]

al things considered — when i post my masterpiece #1201

first posted in facebook august 18, 2023

albert bettannier -- "la tache noire" (1887)

"teach your parents well their children's hell … will slowly go by and feed them on your dreams the one they pick's … the one you'll know by" … graham nash

"while today france and germany are leading a peaceful and (hopefully) common way out of the euro crisis, it may be good to remember that historically, european future was more often than not decided on the battlefield.

rising tension between the two nations resulted in the franco-prussian war of 1870-1871, leading to the downfall of napoleon III and the unification of germany under kaiser wilhelm I. moreover, france had to surrender its eastern provinces of alsace-lorraine to the victors. the revanchist sentiments resulting from this humiliation, fuelled by nationalist pride on both sides of the volatile alsatian border, inevitably contributed to causing the two 20th-century world wars.

in 1871, lorraine-born painter albert bettannier opted for french citizenship and dedicated much of his later work to the public desire of recovering the lost territories. in 'the black stain', painted in 1887, a geography teacher shows his pupils the area that must be regained by a next generation, in line with the ‘one and indivisible’ education policies of the french republic. various details reveal the warlike spirit of the day. next to the black stain, a huge sinister blackboard represents the german threat in the east, heightened by the drum in the corner. on the far wall, a map of the walled-in city of paris reminds of the prussian siege of 1871, symbolized by the black, unlit ceiling-lamp that stretches out its eagle-like talons towards it.

the boy in front of his classmates wears the ‘school battalion’ uniform instituted by the state in 1883. it allowed pupils to march, drill and practice shooting, as testified by the gun-rack in the right corner. one boy in the first row is dressed in impeccable white and wears the legion d’honneur, a prefiguration of future heroism. in the foreground, an optimistic splash of sunlight reflects the heraldic cross of lorraine" … jos hanou

"i said, war, huh (good god, y'all) what is it good for? absolutely nothing, just say it again war (whoa), huh (oh lord) what is it good for? absolutely nothing, listen to me" … norman whitfield & barrett strong

"teach your children well the bloody rivers … all just flow by" … al janik

#al things considered #albert bettannier #la tache noire