Saturday, January 25, 2020

The Surrealist Movement in Egypt in the 1930s and the 1940s


Ondřej Beránek 

Introduction
In the past decade, the crisis concerning types of literary self-expression has made the latest generation of Egyptian artists turn to the past to look for new sources of inspiration. Among other things, these artists have discovered their heritage in the Surrealist movement. The basic feature of this revived interest was the publishing of reprints of the most important books written by prominent members of the Egyptian Surrealist group called
al-Fann wa’l-urrīya (Art and Liberty), which was founded in Cairo thanks to the initiative of Georges Hénein, the leadinG Egyptian poet and Surrealism theorist. 
It should be noted that this event was accompanied by a “suspicious silence”1 on the part of country’s best critics and contemporary Egyptian literature historians. After 1946, another group, La part du sable ,continued the group’s cultural activities. Anwar Kāmil (1913-1991), one of thefounders of the Art and Liberty group and the editor-in-chief of its Arabic review,at-Taṭ awwur (Evolution) should be credited for this revival of Cairo heritage. It was his contribution that made it possible to publish, between 1987 and 1991 and in a limited print run, a range of important Egyptian Surrealist works.This paper attempts to depict the genesis and the main features of the Surrealist movement in Egypt and will be primarily concerned with the movement’s heyday during the 1930s and 1940s. It is beyond the reasonable scope of this paper to give a complete historical and aesthetic analysis of Egyptian Surrealism. Instead,emphasis will be placed on the examination of the basic trends in its evolution. The organization of the article therefore follows the development of the main features of Egyptian Surrealism. Consequently one may ask to what extent it is possible to  transfer certain art forms that were created under specific artistic,and above all historical, conditions to a cultural environment that is markedly different.The Surrealist group in Egypt, one of the most active in the world, was officially established on January 9, 1939, sixteen years after the publishing of the first Surrealist manifesto in Paris. Georges Hénein played an important part in the process; during his studies in France he got acquainted with the key representatives of Surrealism and he and André Breton, the Pope of Surrealism, even became friends. Besides Hénein, other people were important participants in creating the Egyptian group,namely Ramsīs Yūnān, Fu’ād Kāmil, and Kāmil at-Tilimsānī, all of whom were distinguished painters as well as writers. Hénein coordinated the Egyptian activities with the French group and other groups in the world, including Belgium, Great Britain, and the USA. The Egyptian Surrealist movement flourished during the first five years of its existence. The period 1940-1945 saw five Surrealist exhibitions in Cairo under the common label Macāriḍ al-fann al-ḥurr (The Exhibitions of the Free Art), where the Egyptian Surrealists tried to articulate all their theoretical concepts.

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science E.A. BURTT DOVER PDF

https://www.academia.edu/9956762/The_metaphysical_Fundations_of_modern_Science
PUBLISHED 1931

The Strange Career of Charles Lahr Anarchist Bookseller

ANARCHIST BOOK SELLER 
In 1927, Pádraic Colum complained in the Irish Statesman that not enough writers were working in the Irish language. Liam O’Flaherty replied testily. His play Dorchadas had recently been performed by the Gaelic Dramatic League to full houses, he wrote, but the only payment he had received for it was from a man who could not even read it. O’Flaherty had sold the manuscript to ‘an English Socialist’ for £25. He would not write another word in Irish, he blustered, at least not for the public’s benefit. In any case, the only readers he now wrote for were his wife and his London editor, Edward Garnett. His intellectual world had shrunk to a party of two. The parsimonious Gaels were on their own.
In fact the buyer of the O’Flaherty playscript was neither English nor a socialist. Charles Lahr was a German anarchist; he was also a bookseller and publisher. The Progressive Bookshop on Red Lion Street in central London, which Lahr ran with his wife Esther Archer, was a tiny place – no more than a cubicle, according to the writer H.E. Bates – which shared the ground floor of an eighteenth-century building with a jumble shop. They rented the floors overhead to lodgers; the basement was home to book stacks and packages of unsold magazines, along with the decayed sofa used by overnight visitors. Some of the lodgers sat in the shop during the day, and if there were five or six of them there was no room for customers. ‘The Human Notebook’, an elderly man who always wore a battered silk hat, might be in place loudly expounding on world affairs. One hand pulled stacks of fried potatoes from greasy newspaper while he talked, the other produced from his pockets an endless stream of tattered newspaper clippings. Another visitor, occasional lodger, and confessed book thief was the Antrim-born orator Bonar Thompson, ‘the Prime Minister of Hyde Park’. Michael Foot would remember him as an oratorical hero; to Sean O’Casey he was just an insufferable chancer. Outside the shop were the usual dusty barrows full of unsellable stock. Underneath the front pavement was the lavatory – occupied, one visitor remembered, for two hours every morning by an old man who descended slowly and painfully from the building’s upper stories, sending all the other lodgers and customers around the corner to the public conveniences by the Holborn Empire.

Charles Lahr manuscripts
Archive Collection
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Bookmark:https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb96-slv/36
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This material is held at Senate House Library Archives, University of London
Reference
GB 96 SLV/36
Dates of Creation
1926-1967
Name of Creator
Lahr, Charles (1885-1971) political activist and publisher
Language of Material
English
Physical Description
15 files (c250 items)
Scope and Content
Mainly comprising letters sent to Charles Lahr by various writers.
Administrative / Biographical History

Charles Lahr was born Karl Lahr in 1885 at Wendlesheim in the Rhineland Palatinate, Germany. During his teenage years he became first a Buddhist and later an anarchist. In 1905, to escape conscription into the German army, he left Germany for London. On arriving in London he worked as a baker and expressed his political involvement by joining and frequenting anarchist clubs. By 1914 Lahr had taken work as a razor grinder and had joined the British Section of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He began to accumulate books at around this time as he moved from residence to residence in the Kings Cross area of London. He also let rooms to people he met through his political activities. Designated an enemy alien, Lahr was interned in Alexandra Palace in London from 1915 to 1919. After the war Lahr returned to his trade and continued his involvement with the IWW, where he met his future wife, Esther Archer, whom he married in 1922. Lahr and Archer both joined the Communist party in 1920, but left in 1921. It was during this brief membership that the Lahr met and became friends with Liam O'Flaherty. In 1921 Lahr took over the Progressive Bookshop at 68 Red Lion Square, Holborn. The bookshop became a centre for new writers and political activists from around the world, and specialised in the sale of radical literature and first editionsThe Lahr's first moves into publishing came in when K. S. Bhat recommended the editors of the New Coterie to take the magazine to the Lahrs. From 1925 onwards Lahr started publishing items on his own account, often using his wife's maiden name to counter anti-German prejudice. During 1925 to 1927 these took the form of offprints from New Coterie, and then articles within the magazine itself. In the publishing world he was in close contact with writers such as D. H. Lawrence, T. F. Powys, James Hanley, A.S.J. Tessimond, Liam O' Flaherty, Paul Selver, Russell Green, George Woodcock, Rhys Davies and several others. The New Coterie ran until 1927, and in 1930 Lahr launched his Blue Moon Booklets and a year later the Blue Moon Press. However, by 1933 Lahr was having financial problems. In 1935 his difficulties came to a head when he was found guilty of receiving stolen books and was sentenced to six months imprisonment. However, after his release he continued his publishing activities although on a much reduced scale. The bookshop continued to be a focus for radicals and revolutionaries.The bookshop in Holborn was bombed in May 1941. Lahr moved the bookshop to several locations in central London before finally moving it to the headquarters of the Independent Labour Party at 197 Kings Cross Road, London. Charles Lahr died in London in 1971.

References:R. M. Fox, 'Lahr's Bookshop' in Smoky Crusade, Hogarth Press, 1938, pp. 180-188.D. Goodway, 'Charles Lahr: Anarchist, Bookseller' in London Magazine, Jun-Jul 1977, pp. 47-55. 

Radical Lives: Charles Lahr
by Daniel Whittall @danwhittall

Charles Lahr was born in the Rhineland town of Bad Nauheim in 1885. Originally going by the name of Carl Lahr, he moved to London in 1905 having become an anarchist before leaving Germany. When he first arrived in England, Lahr worked in a bakery. According to Albert Meltzer, he was monitored by the Metropolitan Police, who allegedly suspected him of planning to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was visiting Britain at the same time. Lahr was interned during the First World War as a potential enemy alien, and arrested in 1935 for receiving stolen books. As a German radical in Britain, Lahr was under constant surveillance.

What did he do?

Shortly after arriving in Britain, Lahr fortuitously met Guy Aldred who was also working as a baker. A fellow anarchist, Aldred founded the Industrial Union of Direct Actionists in 1907, with Lahr becoming secretary of the Whitechapel branch. Lahr was also a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and he helped Aldred found the first Bakunin Press, as well as a number of small anarchist and educational organisations in the early years of the twentieth century. In 1922, Lahr married Esther Archer, a radical agitator and IWW organiser, having met her at the Socialist Club in Charlotte Street.

However Lahr is most renowned for the various second-hand bookshops he founded in London, foremost amongst which was Lahr’s at 68 Red Lion Street, Holborn. Described by Jonathon Rose in his book The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes as “a mecca for down-and-out Nietzcheans and scruffy poets,” Lahr’s was also frequented by prominent leftist radicals and Bloomsbury intellectuals. Rose tells the story of R.M. Fox, a factory worker and autodidact whose writings were published by the Hogarth Press and who taught for the Workers Educational Association. Fox was disillusioned with both the Labour Party and radical Marxists, but found in Lahr’s a space to indulge his passion for “philosophic Germans, gloomy Scandinavians, sour Swedes and analytical Russians.”

Lahr had bought the bookshop, originally called the Progressive Book Shop, from his friend, political associate, and fellow member of the IWW, Harold Edwards, who recalled in his short memoir that Lahr made a reasonable amount of money through the shop, especially in the 1920s, but cared so little for financial gain that much of the money was lost by being sunk into unsuccessful publishing ventures.

What were his ideas?

The popularity of Lahr’s bookshop was as much about the proprietor as it was about the availability of a diverse set of radical and cosmopolitan texts in his bookshop. As Ken Weller suggests, the shop became “a centre of radical and advanced literary ideas.” David Goodway, in a memoir of Lahr penned in the late 1970s, suggested that was “very probably the last” of the “great London radical booksellers-cum-publishers” whose lineage can be traced back to the late eighteenth century.

The beneficiaries of this vibrant atmosphere of political and intellectual discussion fostered by Lahr were numerous. For example, as Christian Høgsbjerg shows in his recent book C.L.R. James in Imperial Britain, Lahr took a particular interest in his customers and their own writings. James recalled that Lahr would “put aside a book or pamphlet for me… Through Charlie I was made acquainted with pamphlets and publications of the American Trotskysist movement, also with similar publications in French.” Lahr also shaped James’s thinking on the Russian Revolution, the demise of the German Revolution, and on Stalinism more broadly, on which James would publish his 1938 book, World Revolution.

What is his legacy?

Lahr was a political radical who fostered an open culture of discussion and exploration through the sharing of information that crossed national and political boundaries. A passionate anarchist, Lahr nevertheless stocked books from other political traditions – C.L.R. James recalled purchasing volumes by Stalin on Leninism from Lahr – and from those focused on political discussion beyond Britain.
For someone like James, initiating himself into the British left after arriving from Trinidad, Lahr was essential, providing details of political events and discussing contemporary political questions. For James, it was Lahr’s role as a purveyor of knowledge that was most attractive; as he recalled, “Charlie did not so much argue a political issue. He disseminated information.”
In an era of social media and online access to information about almost anyone and anything, it can be difficult to recover a sense of just how important such radical purveyors of information were to political and social movements. Lahr’s bookshop was at the centre of a network of diverse radical political activists. Today’s activists use newer forms of technology to perform much the same function that Lahr used his bookshops for – the sharing of information and the fostering of radical political movements. Yet to read the testimonies of Meltzer, James and others for whom Lahr performed a formative role in their own political understandings is to recognise the power that such facilitators have. Political struggle takes place not just on the street but in the mind; it will require many more Charlie Lahrs of the modern age if the radical left is to win.
Share URL: http://novara.media/1e21XqY
Published 10th November 2014
INTRODUCTION
What follows is the basis for a comprehensive listing of radical bookshops in Britain, plus a
comprehensive bibliography. It has been compiled by Dave Cope and Ross Bradshaw. There are many gaps at the moment as we preferred to start with whatever information we had and put out something, even if sketchy in parts, rather than wait till the list was more complete. At least names of shops and any details can be added now by anyone by just sending an email.
If there is a certain bias towards CP bookshops, this is because a lot of the information was
gathered for the background to Dave Cope’s little history on Central Books. This should be corrected as more shops are added.
There is the thorny problem of definition. Generally, the emphasis is on socialist bookshops. We are including anarchist, feminist, green, black, gay and some “community” bookshops. This grouping coincides roughly with the membership of the Federation of Radical Bookshops (till 1980 called the Federation of Alternative Booksellers, an organisation which excluded those shops not run on a cooperative basis and those run by political groups). The FRB was representative of radical bookshops at the time and reflected the upsurge of such shops in the 1970s/1980s. This was an important phenomenon in cultural politics and it would be silly to ignore it in a listing like this. However, there were members who could be described as radical more because of their structure than for what they sold. I have not included the following shops, which would certainly be in some people’s definition of “radical”: new age, alternative health, community, alternative literature/underground unless members of the FRB.
Some of these shops did sell radical and socialist magazines. Compendium, for example, is included because of its size and importance as an outlet for radical books.
It is interesting to note, from an historical perspective, that Eva Reckitt who owned Collets had a broad policy on stock but drew the line at “those mysterious world religions” and “phoney psychology”.
We have more information on many of the shops than appears here, but it is not practicable to enter it all – the document would be unwieldy – and we hope eventually to publish a book on the subject. DOWNLOAD TO READ 
Charles Lahr (1885–1971), 
born Carl Lahr, was a German-born anarchistLondon bookseller and publisher.
Lahr was born at Bad Nauheim in the Rhineland, the eldest of 15 children in a farming family. He left Germany in 1905 to avoid military service and went to England.
In London he encountered the anarchist Guy Aldred (1886–1963), while working as a baker.[1] He was soon (1907) under police observation.[2] He joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1914; at that time he had a bookshop in Hammersmith.
In 1915 he was interned for four year as an enemy alien in Alexandra Palace. In 1920-21 he was briefly a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. His interest in politics led him to befriend many left-wing thinkers, several of whom went on to establish important left-wing groups in the UK. In 1921 he took over the Progressive Bookshop, in Red Lion Street, Holborn. From there he would branch out into publishing, and establish many literary friendships (including H. E. BatesRhys DaviesT. F. Powys) and D. H. Lawrence. At one point when Lahr was in financial difficulties his writer friends gathered a collection of stories together and published these as Charles Wain (1933).He married in 1922 Esther Argeband,[3] (at that time Archer), whom he had met at the Charlotte Street Socialist Club, of a British Jewish family (Lahr was not Jewish). They were close friends of William Roberts, the artist, and his wife, and William's portrait of Esther is in the Tate Gallery.From 1925 to 1927 Lahr published The New Coterie literary and artistic magazine. In 1931 he founded the Blue Moon Press, a small press amongst the books he published was the first edition of a small book of poems by D. H. Lawrence called Pansies.In subsequent misfortunes Lahr was convicted in 1935 on a charge of receiving stolen books, and was sentenced to 6 months in prison.[4] In a short story from Something Short and Sweet (published 1937), H. E. Bates describes the court case with Lahr called "Oscar" in the story. The bookshop was bombed in 1941. He moved its premises several times in London.He died in London in 1971. His funeral was attended by many representatives from left wing groups in the UK.There is substantial further information on Lahr in a book authored by his daughter Sheila. This is called Yealm and can be read in its entirety on the Militant Esthetix website, run by Lahr's granddaughter Esther Leslie.
Lahr's papers are held by the University of London.
Notes
  1. Lahr, Charles, 1885-1971 | libcom.org
  2. William J. Fishman, East End Jewish Radicals 1875-1914 (2004), p. 271.
  3. Sharman Kadish, Bolsheviks and British Jews (1992), p. 235.
  4. AIM25: Senate House Library, University of London: Lahr, Charles
External links
Sep 22, 2004 - Carl Lahr was born in Bad Nauheim in the Rhineland in 1885. He ... He left Germany on October 1st 1905 to avoid being drafted into the army, and ... He became involved with a Hampstead Anarchist Group where he met Max Nomad ... In 1921 he took over the Progressive Bookshop in Red Lion Square
A revolutionary youth - Harold Edwards - Libcom                                                Feb 12, 2012 - Harold Edwards' reminiscences of his life as an Anarchist and Wobbly in ... next door to the shop where first I and then Charlie Lahr were to become booksellers. ... I noticed also that whenever I prayed for anything I never got it! ... of the Progressive Book Shop which Charlie Lahr ultimately brought from me.
clr james in imperial britain, 1932-38 christian john h0gsbjerg ...
Indeed, he later recalled how 'my publisher's wife', Pamela De Bayou, 'a ... will only make the situation more farcical than it now is', and progressive and labour ... soon made the acquaintance of the German anarchist bookshop owner. ... 8S James's friendlv local anarchist bookseller Charlie Lahr was also on hand and keen ...
Inky Stephensen - Core Mar 10, 2019 - The name was a joke but it also indicated the pervasive impact of this. Asian naval ... at Maryborough Grammar, and one of his government's progressive ... books on guild socialism and had met the Australian communist Esmonde ... cancelled her subscription, and the bookseller Charles Lahr had sold.
TRUMP PENCE SPACE FORCE 
Boldly go where some designers have gone before





Image: US Air Force

President Donald Trump on Friday revealed the official logo for the Space Force, the newest branch of the armed forces and part of the existing United States Air Force department, in a tweet.
The Space Force, a fixation of Trump’s throughout his presidency, became a reality last month when Congress passed a $738 billion military bill that created the sixth branch of the military. And now the Air Force is responsible for branding, uniform design, and the various other requirements involved with creating a new armed force.

However, the logo appears to borrow heavily from the fictional logo of Starfleet from the Star Trek universe.
Vocal Trump critic and former Star Trek cast member George Takei also weighed in.


Analyst and former national security policy advisor John Noonan, who was a member of the USAF, commented on Twitter shortly after the announcement to point out that the Space Force logo, while similar in design to the Starfleet one, is in fact based on an existing Air Force command logo.
Adding another wrinkle to the situation is that Trump’s political action committee, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, was polling voters back in 2018 about which Space Force logos they liked the best. And the six options provided all look drastically different then the end result we have today, with quite a few featuring NASA-inspired iconography and type faces alongside retro-futurist aesthetics.
It’s not entirely clear how the team responsible for branding the Space Force went from that to what Trump revealed this afternoon. But here we are.
Although, as one user on Twitter noted, the designers did seem to take some cues from the NASA logo, predominantly the exact placement of the stars that appear to have been copied over directly.
CBS, which owns the rights to Star Trek, was not immediately available for comment.

US Space Force mocked for unveiling camouflage uniforms


Levi's found a way to make hemp feel like cotton, and it could have big implications for your wardrobe
Richard Feloni
Hemp fibers are naturally stiff and ropy, but Levi's has 
discovered a way to make it feel like cotton. Universal 
Images Group/Getty Images

Denim icon Levi Strauss & Co. debuted garments made from a soft hemp-cotton blend in March, and head of innovation Paul Dillinger said he expects 100% cottonized-hemp products in about five years.
Hemp uses significantly less water and chemicals than cotton during cultivation. Levi's has found a way to soften hemp using far less water than was previously used.
Dillinger said the long-term goal is to incorporate sustainable cotton blends by using fibers such as hemp into all of its products.
Recently, the brand has found a way to apply the indigo dyeing process to the cottonized hemp denim, as well as how to utilize its low-water finishing process on the material.
This article is part of Business Insider's Better Capitalism series, which tracks the ways companies and individuals are rethinking the economy and role of business in society.

Since the legalization of hemp in the United States at the end of 2018, the industry has been exploding: Reports and Data estimated it'll be worth $13.03 billion by 2026. While you've probably noticed hemp-derived CBD products everywhere, hemp also has major implications for sustainable clothing — and denim icon Levi Strauss & Co. has made significant progress in making this happen.

Last March, Levi's debuted a collaboration with the Outerknown label that included a pair of jeans and jacket made from a 69%-cotton/31%-hemp blend that feels like pure cotton. Why is that significant? Hemp, a cannabis plant with a negligible amount of the psychoactive chemical THC, uses significantly less water and chemicals than cotton. Unlike cotton, though, the material is difficult to work with. The cotton fibers in your shirt are derived from a puffy bud on top of a plant, while hemp fibers come from a tall, sturdy trunk.

"It's a longer, stiffer, coarser fiber," Levi's head of global product innovation, Paul Dillinger, told Business Insider last year. "It doesn't want to be turned into something soft. It wants to be turned into rope."

Levi's has found a method to make hemp fibers soft and able to blend with cotton, but in a way that uses significantly less water than the process used to turn hemp plants into a rough material. "It's great that it's resonating with the consumer, but it's more important that it's helping to future-proof our supply chain," he said.

We checked in again with Dillinger in January, and he told us that last fall, Levi's discovered how to get the indigo dyeing process to work with its hemp blend, which previously was only available in a natural white denim.

He explained that the work with hemp is a significant research project that will continue for years with the intention of scaling production, rather than a project that only results in a couple of high-end, niche items. "Our intention is to take this to the core of the line, to blend it into the line, to make this a part of the Levi's portfolio," he said.

Dillinger said Levi's is continuing to work on improving the quality of its cottonized-hemp, to the point where it can be nearly half of a cotton-blend for most apparel, as well as fully hemp for certain products. And in five years, he said, he expects "a 100% cottonized-hemp garment that is all hemp and feels all cotton."

Most recently, Levi's has combined its cottonized hemp with its low-water "Water

Dillinger said that the need for cotton alternatives became apparent when looking at the growth trajectory of cotton demand compared to access to fresh water required for its cultivation and processing. Since he was familiar with the nature of hemp, he did not expect to find a solution there — until Levi's discovered cutting-edge research in Europe, where industrial hemp was already legal in many countries. Levi's would not reveal its partners or details of its breakthroughs, except to say that it had a market-ready material after three years.

When Levi's finds a way to make 100% cottonized-hemp clothing, "We're going to go from a garment that goes from 3,781 L of fresh water, 2,655 of that in just the fiber cultivation," Dillinger said, drawing from data collected by the Stockholm Environmental Institute. "We take out more than 2/3 of the total water impact to the garment. That's saving a lot."

Despite his optimism, Dillinger was quick to point out that he doesn't want hype around the hemp industry to make it seem like Levi's and its competitors are going to fully replace cotton or revolutionize the industry overnight. To do it properly, there remains many years of research and development. Plus, it's likely hemp will be just one of several natural cotton alternatives. "Initiatives with the potential to create meaningful change and environmental value often take time and patience to bring to life," he said.

The idea is that hemp clothing, whether in a cotton blend or by itself, isn't going to be a fad. Levi's markets its cottonized hemp under the sustainable "WellThread" label, but Dillinger said that while he can't speak for the company on this point, he personally isn't too concerned about the marketing of cottonized-hemp clothing. That's because the ideal scenario down the line is that customers won't even notice a difference.

"So often there's the assumption that to purchase a sustainably-made product is going to involve a sacrifice, and that the choice is between something ethically made or something that's cute," he said. "You don't have to sacrifice to buy sustainably."

This is an updated version of an article that originally ran on May 8, 2019.