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Tag: defying

  • ‘We created our own weapon’: the anti-invasion magazines defying Putin in Ukraine

    ‘We created our own weapon’: the anti-invasion magazines defying Putin in Ukraine

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    When 26-year-old documentary photographer Sebastian Wells travelled from Berlin to Ukraine shortly after the Russian invasion, he wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to do. “Many of my colleagues went directly to the frontline,” he explains from a sunny cafe in Kyiv. “I knew that wouldn’t be my role, but I didn’t know what else I should do. I spent two weeks in Kyiv getting frustrated and feeling like some kind of war tourist, and that’s when I started trying to find young creative people in the city.”

    His first meeting was with 22-year-old fashion photographer Vsevolod Kazarin, and together the pair set about taking pictures of young people on the streets of Kyiv. Sharing a camera and an SD card, they assembled a series of street-style images, with their subjects photographed alongside sandbags, concrete barricades and anti-tank obstacles.

    They thought they could maybe use their images to create propaganda posters that they could send to friends in European cities, building bridges with young people across the EU and encouraging them to donate to Ukraine.

    But then they came across illustrations by the 18-year-old artist Sonya Marian that rework Soviet-era Russian paintings to explore the origins of Russian aggression. They read the text that Andrii Ushytskyi, 22, posted to his Instagram account, reflecting on his personal experiences of the war – and as the texts and imagery came together, they realised they had something much more substantial than a series of posters.

    The first issue of Solomiya was published in August 2022 as a big, beautiful and defiant piece of print, with the second issue printed last month. It has come a long way from the early idea of posters but the mission has stayed the same. Reading Solomiya gives an intimate account of what life is like for young people in Kyiv. It also makes it easy for readers to send support – the magazine gives details of charities and organisations run by young Ukrainians alongside QR codes for donating to them.

    Another magazine on its second issue is Telegraf, which was first published in May 2021 as a journal for the Ukrainian design community. The second issue was initially focused on Ukrainian digital product design and was nearing completion when Russia invaded. Priorities suddenly shifted.

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    “From the first days of the full-scale invasion we have seen a huge surge of activity by designers, illustrators, artists and all other creatives,” says editor-in-chief Anna Karnauh. “These artworks have become a huge inspiration for many Ukrainians. We realised that we simply had to collect them and to tell the real story of how creatives lived and worked during this war.”

    Now on its third print run, Telegraf’s war issue is a remarkable object, with each cover customised by hand and slogans printed on the fore-edges of the pages so that either “Slava Ukraini!” (Glory to Ukraine) or “Heroiam Slava” (Glory to the heroes) appears on the edge of the magazine depending on which way it’s held. It is only available in Ukrainian so far, but an English version will be published in the coming months, and Karnauh and her team hope to reach a wider audience with it.

    The war has inspired magazine-makers on the Russian side, too – BL8D (pronounced “blood”) is published by a group of Russian artists and creatives who oppose Vladimir Putin’s regime, and, like Telegraf, it resulted from a sudden change of plan. Originally intended as a trendbook that searched for the essence of Russian culture, the project was ready to print when Russia invaded. The team responded by scrapping their PDFs and setting to work on an anti-military manifesto, condemning the war and looking forward to a day after Putin’s regime has been toppled.

    The magazine is based on two long interviews probing deep into Russian identity – one with art historian Tata Gutmacher and one with museum researcher Denis Danilov. The interviews are presented alongside photography and illustration that create a stark and striking picture of “Russianness” and argue that a different reality is possible.

    “The entire Putin regime rests on the myth that Europe hates Russia and nothing good awaits a person outside,” says creative director and editor-in-chief Maria Azovtseva. “We decided to create our own weapon – an art book about the imminent death of the Putin myth.”

    Art and soul: images from the new magazines

    A spread from Solomiya from 30 April 2022.
    A spread from Solomiya from 30 April 2022. Photograph: Sebastian Wells/Ostkreuz and Vsevolod Kazarin
    Solomiya cover

    Solomiya
    “If we were to describe life in times of war, we would use the word ‘but’, because it evokes a feeling of discomfort and ambiguity that emerges when discussing something that is far beyond our control. Ukrainians have to keep living, but must also remember that death may come at any second.” Taken from editor’s letter.

    Bl8d cover.

    BL8D
    “[The magazine is] our voice against the war. It is our anger and our rage towards those who started this war, and those who still support it … It is our fears and an attempt to look at ourselves in the mirror to understand how this could have happened to all of us.” Taken from editor’s letter.

    A spread from Telegraf.
    A spread from Telegraf.
    Telegraf cover

    Telegraf
    “We have collected iconic images that arose during the full-scale war,” says editor Anna Karnauh, ”together with personal stories of people who lived in and fled out of the occupation, who instead of working in the office or sipping oat lattes on the way to design meetups, are now defending their country on the frontline.”

    Steven Watson is the founder of stackmagazines.com

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    #created #weapon #antiinvasion #magazines #defying #Putin #Ukraine
    ( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

  • Trump tries to intervene as Navarro faces trial for defying Jan. 6 committee

    Trump tries to intervene as Navarro faces trial for defying Jan. 6 committee

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    capitol riot contempt 60017

    “This confirms President Trump’s position that, as one of his senior advisors, you had an obligation to assert executive privilege on his behalf and fully comply with the principles of confidentiality stated above when you responded to the Committee’s subpoena,” the attorney, Evan Corcoran, wrote on Trump’s behalf.

    The letter appears calculated to undercut the ruling of U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta rejecting Navarro’s effort to dismiss the cases against him. Mehta noted in a 39-page opinion last week that Navarro had presented no evidence that Trump actually asserted executive privilege on his behalf — even though he made explicit assertions to block the testimony of other former aides.

    “Defendant has failed to come forward with any evidence to support the claimed assertion of privilege,” Mehta wrote. “And, because the claimed assertion of executive privilege is unproven, Defendant cannot avoid prosecution for contempt.”

    Mehta is unlikely to consider Corcoran’s letter sufficient to derail Navarro’s trial. Navarro had initially claimed in court arguments that Trump told him, during a private conversation, to assert executive privilege before the Jan. 6 committee. But Corcoran’s letter makes no reference to such an assertion.

    It’s the second time Trump has made a last-second bid to disrupt the pending contempt trials for aides who defied the select committee. Days before longtime ally Steve Bannon faced a criminal trial for contempt, Trump took the opposite tack — writing a letter to Bannon waiving any potential executive privilege and clearing the way for Bannon to testify to the committee. Prosecutors dismissed the gambit as a stunt to disrupt the trial, and Bannon ultimately took no steps to actually comply with the select committee’s subpoena, even after Trump’s explicit permission.

    Navarro, like Bannon, both claimed that they were categorically “immune” from appearing before the Jan. 6 committee to discuss their involvement in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. They said their sensitive conversations with Trump were protected by executive privilege and therefore they could not be compelled by Congress to discuss them. But U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols rejected Bannon’s contention, noting that longstanding legal precedents don’t permit witnesses to defy congressional subpoenas even over assertions of executive privilege.

    And in both cases, prosecutors noted that there was no evidence Trump had asserted privilege on Bannon or Navarro’s behalf.

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    #Trump #intervene #Navarro #faces #trial #defying #Jan #committee
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Judge denies Navarro effort to dismiss contempt case for defying Jan. 6 committee

    Judge denies Navarro effort to dismiss contempt case for defying Jan. 6 committee

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    “Defendant has failed to come forward with any evidence to support the claimed assertion of privilege. And, because the claimed assertion of executive privilege is unproven, Defendant cannot avoid prosecution for contempt,” Mehta wrote in the 39-page ruling.

    It’s a significant decision in an area with little precedent: what current and former presidents must do to assert executive privilege. Mehta acknowledged that there’s not much to guide how courts should determine when a proper assertion has been made. But he said limited court rulings on the subject suggest there must be at least some formal evidence it occurred.

    Mehta noted that two other Trump aides whom the House sought to hold in contempt — Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino — produced letters from Trump ordering them to assert executive privilege on his behalf. The Justice Department declined to prosecute the men, and Mehta indicated that the absence of a similar letter from Trump to Navarro led to a reasonable conclusion that Trump had not asserted executive privilege over his testimony.

    Mehta’s ruling means that Navarro’s trial on two charges of contempt of Congress is likely to commence later this month. He faces a maximum sentence of a year in prison on each charge — one for refusing to testify and the other for refusing to provide documents — if convicted.

    The select committee had hoped to interview Navarro about his coordination with former Trump adviser Bannon and efforts to strategize with members of Congress seeking to challenge the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021, during the counting of Electoral College ballots. The committee recommended that Navarro be held in contempt in April 2022, and the full House quickly followed suit. The Justice Department charged him in June.

    Mehta’s ruling also gutted a series of defenses Navarro had hoped to raise at his trial, including that he had a “good-faith belief” that he was immune from the committee’s subpoena. Mehta also agreed to prohibit Navarro from arguing that the select committee’s subpoena was invalid because the panel didn’t have a full complement of 13 members or a ranking Republican member appointed by GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy.

    Although he declined to say whether the committee was operating improperly, Mehta noted that Supreme Court precedent required Navarro to first raise his rules complaint with Congress itself. Because he didn’t do that, he effectively waived that argument. Navarro had argued that raising his complaints to Congress would have been “futile” because the House would have simply rejected them. But Mehta said the rules were clear.

    “Neither the Supreme Court nor the D.C. Circuit has recognized a futility exception. … And, given the rationale of the rule, it is doubtful that higher courts would recognize one,” Mehta wrote.

    The ruling essentially puts Navarro on a track similar to his close ally Bannon, who was tried and convicted of contempt of Congress in July. Bannon, like Navarro, had hoped to argue that he believed he was immune from testifying and that longstanding Justice Department precedents precluded Congress from subpoenaing advisers to former presidents. But in that case, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols relied on a decades-old appeals court ruling — United States v. Licavoli — to reject Bannon’s proposed defenses, ruling that prosecutors simply needed to show that Bannon deliberately refused to appear before Congress.

    Mehta cited the case, as well, in tossing most of Navarro’s defenses.

    “Defendant apparently believes the law applies differently to him,” he wrote of Navarro. “Because he is a former aide to the President of the United States, he contends, a more stringent state-of-mind standard applies, meaning that the government must be held to a higher burden of proof to convict him as opposed to the average person.”

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    #Judge #denies #Navarro #effort #dismiss #contempt #case #defying #Jan #committee
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )