Georgian-Western Literary Relations

The Politics of the Anthropocene in a World After Neoliberalism, by Duncan Kelly, Professor of Political Thought and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge, via Boston Review "Can today’s crises inspire action at the scales required to think about planetary sustainability?"... "Why has it proven so difficult politically to act in the face of ample evidence of an increasingly uninhabitable Earth?" "Perhaps not even the pandemic has condemned neoliberalism to the dustbin of history."

Kakhi Kavsadze, beloved Georgian theatre and movie actor, passed away at the age of 85.

"Susan Pack's "Film Posters of the Russian Avant-Garde" celebrates the experimental film posters from the pre-Stalin Soviet Union." - Via Hyperallergic

Phase-three trials of China’s CoronaVac vaccine, which were conducted on health-care workers in Brazil, yielded an efficacy rate of just 50.7%. This is barely ...above the 50% threshold set by the World Health Organisation for covid-19 vaccines. The results of a real-world trial were even worse: the vaccine was estimated to be just 49.6% effective against symptomatic covid-19 cases, or 35.1% effective against asymptomatic infections. Effective or not, Sinovac Biotech, the jab developer, has already exported doses to 19 different countries. In China, nearly 180m people have already been vaccinated. Read why it is significant that the trial was held in Brazil, and why the vaccine is still useful https://econ.st/3xjnIfA

"NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has confirmed, for the first time, water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface, and not limited to cold, shadowed places. SOFIA has detected water molecules (H2O) in Clavius Crater, one of the largest craters visible from Earth, located in the Moon’s southern hemisphere. Previous observations of the Moon’s surface detected some form of ...hydrogen, but were unable to distinguish between water and its close chemical relative, hydroxyl (OH). Data from this location reveal water in concentrations of 100 to 412 parts per million roughly equivalent to a 12-ounce bottle of water trapped in a cubic meter of soil spread across the lunar surface. The results are published in the latest issue of Nature Astronomy." See more

"One of the immune system’s oldest branches, called complement, may be influencing the severity of COVID disease, according to a new study from researchers at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Among other findings linking complement to COVID, the researchers found that people with age-related macular degenerationa disorder caused by overactive complementare at greater risk of developing severe complications and dyin...g from COVID." The connection with complement suggests that existing drugs that inhibit the complement system could help treat patients with severe COVID-19." "The authors also found evidence that clotting activity is linked to COVID severity and that mutations in certain complement and coagulation genes are associated with hospitalization of COVID patients. Together, these results provide important insights into the pathophysiology of COVID-19 and paint a picture for the role of complement and coagulation pathways in determining clinical outcomes of patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, says Sagi Shapira, PhD, MPH, who led the study with Nicholas Tatonetti, PhD, both professors at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons." Via Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients Shown To Be Younger, Healthier Than Influenza Patients - via Columbia University Department of Biomedical Informatics

This engineer is using powerful lights, cameras, and computer software to digitally remove the varnish from the "Mona Lisa," allowing people today to see the painting as da Vinci once did. Stream "Decoding da Vinci" online now to learn more: https://to.pbs.org/2Qu7htX

"Armenia and Azerbaijan said on Tuesday their foreign ministers would meet U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington on Friday in efforts to end the heaviest fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh since the 1990s." - Reuters (10.20.2020)

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Reckoning With a Resurgent Russia - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace "The greatest obstacle to countering Russia’s hard-edged foreign policy has been the West’s incoherent response."

A Call for Lasting Peace in Nagorno-Karabakh By: GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK, TARIQ ALI, VIKEN BERBERIAN, NOAM CHOMSKY, JUDITH HERMAN, CORNEL WEST, SEYLA BENHABIB Via Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB)

"Jack London’s novel Martin Eden was published in 1909, a marker that proves as insignificant here as the book’s Northern California setting. In relocating the action to the Campania region of southern Italy and deliberately muddling the time frames, Marcello and his cowriter, Maurizio Braucci, pursue a wilder, more radical kind of faithfulness. The novel was already its own semi-autobiographical hall of mirrors, refracting London’s rise-and-fall journey through that of a r...estless, misguided and intensely captivating alter ego. This latest of many movie adaptations attempts an even bolder transformation: luminously shot (by Francesco Di Giacomo and Alessandro Abate) on 16-millimeter film, it’s both a richly textured bildungsroman and a rambling cultural, political and historical panorama." "An ostensible success story that becomes a chronicle of human failure, Martin Eden was in some sense London’s own thinly veiled self-indictment; in another sense, it was an attack on the cultural industry that shaped his destiny. Most of all it was his condemnation of individualism, a point lost on most readers who fell under the spell of his wayward hero. Marcello’s approach is nuanced but unambiguous: By allowing time to fold in on itself, engaging history itself as his subject, he speaks as much to the present as to the past. He amplifies the extraordinary prescience of the novel, which anticipated in the story of one man and his nihilistic pursuit of his own self-interest how tides of violent fascism could infect a nation under the guise of sweeping social reform." - via Los Angeles Times

"The war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorny Karabakh is a humanitarian catastrophe. A failure to respond properly undermines the European Union’s claims to be a strategic actor in its neighborhood." "[A] timid reaction is unacceptableand not just on purely moral grounds. A failure to respond properly undermines European claims to be a strategic actor in its neighborhood. It tears a great hole in the normative agenda of the EU’s Eastern Partnership policy and puts huge strain on the common neighbor of the two countries, Georgia, which has large Armenian and Azerbaijani minority populations."

United States Power Vacuum Risks Escalating Violence in Armenia-Azerbaijan, by Thomas de Waal, via Carnegie Europe "Groan as they may about this faraway conflict in the hills of the Caucasus, with its unpronounceable name, the Europeans and Americans will ultimately have no option but to engage with it more seriously. Turkey’s involvement, Iran’s proximity, the enigmatic role of Russia, the presence of major oil and gas pipelines all make this a region where a local flare-up ...can quickly turn into an international headache. There is also of course a humanitarian imperative. The last time there was a full-blown war in the region, about 20,000 people were killed and more than 1 million displaced from their homes. Both countries have undergone a fearsome militarization since fighting stopped, buying heavy artillery, attack aircraft, drones and long-range missiles, as there was never a truce on the aggressive rhetoric that stoked fear on both sides. It is unacceptable that similar devastation could occur in two European countries again."

Queen Tamar: The myth of a perfect ruler - The Forum - BBC World Service "Queen Tamar was one of Georgia’s most iconic and colourful rulers, a powerful medieval sovereign who controlled large parts of the Caucasus and the eastern side of the Black Sea and forged strong cultural links with both the Byzantine West and the Persian South. Her influence extended beyond the battlefield: she presided over the last phase of the Georgian ‘Golden Age’ which saw the building of classic ...Georgian churches and a flowering of the Arts that produced one of Georgia’s most important poets. So who was Queen Tamar? How did she rise to power and outmanoeuvre her enemies? And why do the myths about her rule publicised by her faithful chroniclers persist till today? Bridget Kendall is joined by Dr. Ekaterine Gedevanishvili, Senior Researcher at the National Centre for the History of Georgian Art in Tbilisi; Alexander Mikaberidze, Professor of History at Louisiana State University; Dr. Sandro Nikolaishvili, researcher at the University of Southern Denmark, who works on retracing connections between the Byzantine and Georgian worlds; and Donald Rayfield, Emeritus Professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary, University of London."