E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Eyewear has been watching developments closely in Crimea, and as we predicted in earlier posts, the Russians have taken a hard line, and today it is reported they have effectively taken control of Crimea with their troops.  This is huge.  This is war in Europe - Russia has invaded a sovereign nation.  Consider Germany (in 2014) occupying a part of Austria - unthinkable.  Uncivilised.  Unwelcome.  And, unlikely to be stopped.  The West seems powerless to do more than threaten to cancel meetings (though Obama sounds tough).  Ukraine may fight back.  They have an army of one million reservists and a rusty but large air force, with a lot of their own tanks.  If Crimea becomes a firefight, it will be all about containment - keeping the conflict local, if possible.  We have begun a new cold war, as many papers report today - but if the Russia-Ukraine war spreads to the main part of Ukraine, then all bets are off, and NATO would be expect...

The USSR has a history of crushing dissent, in the spring.  One need only think of Prague.  And, tanks sent from Moscow rolled into Budapest too.  In both cities, in both countries, proud rebels opposed the moves.  But the tanks crushed in the end.  Russia is not the USSR, as I have been arguing, but since its Winter Games it has been playing a very aggressive sort of game with geo-politics.  I think the reason is the Black Sea Fleet, and the emotive, and real, linguistic and ethnic ties between Russia proper and Crimea.  President Putin , playing to the home crowd, would become a great iron man if he took back the Crimea.  I fear he may just try.  I am not sure what could or would stop him, short of thermo-nuclear threat, or severe economic sanctions.  This is the closest the world has been on the brink of world war since before 1989 - in a quarter century.  I don't think it is time to duck and dive just yet.  But this is seri...

The world has many divisions - one of them is between those who love the Olympics, and their idealism, and sporting opportunities for the youth of the world - and those who detest them, seeing mostly their propaganda value and their money-wasting potential.  Obviously, anyone in the second camp was going to be particularly indisposed to a winter games (the 22nd) held at a Russian resort in a land whose, shall we say democratic experiment (to be tactful) has yet to fully succeed (to be hopeful).  Many of these bitter commentators and protesters - often supporting the hard done by gay community in Russia, where to be gay is to be potentially killed or beaten - failed to see that Putin is not Stalin , and Russia is not Nazi Germany circa 1936.  Much more needs to be done in Russia, but it is not run by a madman who has published a book calling for genocide, nor does its society practise euthanasia of the mentally ill. Indeed, as the games reminded us, Russia, despite...

Eyewear is pleased to publish a new translation of a great poem by Mandelstam , by Alistair Noon in Berlin. This is probably one of the first poems on the cinema.  Vachel Lindsay , of course, had written on the subject. Cinema Three benches. A projector. The fever of sentimentality. An heiress who's been trapped in her evil rival's nets. Hands off this love's true flight, our heroine's done nothing wrong! So pure it's almost platonic is her love for a lieutenant of the fleet, collaterally conceived by a grey count and now wandering the desert wastes. This, for the pretty countess, is the way her picture-adventure leaves the ground. She starts to wring her hands like a gypsy gone insane. The lovers split. The demonic sounds now follow of a hounded piano. Her trust's not hard to abuse. She possesses sufficient bravery to swoop on some crucial papers of interest to an enemy HQ. Along an avenue of chestnuts, a black motor car lumbers. The film reel rat...

Eyewear has been biting its tongue, biding its time, and being mum, on the topic of the American-Russian spy scandal that has gripped certain sections of the media and public this past week.  Given the relative ineptitude of these Rocky and Bullwinkle -style spooks, and the lack of any atom-smashing-secrets purloined, the focus of the story has increasingly been on the pneumatic young Russian, Anna Chapman , pictured, formerly married to a British chap, who described her as the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on.  This red-haired 21st Century Fox, with her Wonder Woman physique (described in the Guardian , tactlessly, as "bowling balls") - or, as one paper gushed, "Victoria's Secret figure" - seems to have raised eyebrows merely by fulfilling a casting couch need for a Russian Spy - in short, she is a Central Casting wet dream. But drop those arched brows, lads and ladettes - and stop licking thy lips.  Many -perhaps most - women are attractive, ...