totalitarianism today

30 things you should read splayed on couch with books as foot-rest.

 

 

1. There is a fine, grim line between love and stalking in fiction. 
2. J.M. Cotezee on therapy, memory, and fiction.
3. Brian Chippendale's graphic novel, Puke Force, which probes the relationship between online groupthink and lone-wolf terrorism. 
4. The couple crush waltz: negotiating crushes with your significant other.
5. Let's talk about the subversiveness of love novels in jihadist culture. 
6. Irving Allen on the construction of an inclusive civil rights movement for the future. 
7. Inside the secret lives of tumblr teens.
8. Among the many excuses for penis portraits, an analysis of the patriarchy's soft spot might be the best.
9. For females posing nude, it's the underarm hair which stands out.
10. A historic look at security, umbrellas, and civil society. 
11. The limitations of "thank you for your service" ethos. 
12. The unethical side of Dave Ramsey's Christian financial-planning empire and its social media tentacles.
13. A documentary account of Soviet samizat and the internet. 
14. Time to sum the real-life costs of Barbie's new smart-home. Barbie and smart don't work well together for me. 
15. The rise of Donald Trump and "the joys of toy fascism". Erector set aficionados, this one's for you. 
16. Paranoia is on the rise. Where do you fall on the suspiciousness spectrum? 
17. Franz Kafka on how books dissolve the frozen tundra of the human soul. 
18. A well-translated excerpt from Dumitru Tsepeneag's The Bulgarian Truck. 
19. Rebecca Solnit's concern about the rise of rape as a rite of passage. 
20. How much pop culture reference does it take to ruin good fiction? 
21. The secrets to long-lasting love from the mouths of long-married.
22. How it feels to plan weddings when your own marriage is trash.
23. Wendell Berry on what poetry teaches us about the secrets of marriage. Hint: form culls the dross. 
24. Cracking the porn ceiling: how it feels to be a female addicted to porn.
25. A modern guide to the epistolary romance. 
26. Eileen Myles drags us through the devastating angst of awaited love.
27. How it feels to witness your autistic brother's quest for love.
28. The story of an American who went AWOL: an intimate perspective.
29. Everything you ever needed to know in order to adopt a mindless, fear-driven position on home birth.
30. And finally, my favorite, Frank Garrett's fascinating hauntology of the Berlin Wall.

Sources and referenced publications include: Vice, Wired, Pacific Standard, Utne Reader, Guernica, The Wilson Quarterly, The Atlantic Monthly, Aeon, Village Voice, 3AM Magazine, The Guardian, In Translation, Esquire, New York Magazine, Literary Hub, No Caption Needed, Voice of America, Nerve, Brain Pickings, Long Reads, Vocativ, Yes! Magazine, Electric Literature. The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Narratively

Remarkable.

50 Russian classic films on YouTube in HD.

"In praise of dissent".

Mark your calendars. It's Pynchon in Public Day.

"Britain's top 300 intellectuals" in John Naughton's opinion.

 A letter from Joan McClure on May 30, 1969.

"Shirtless Others", a poem by Jason.

John Kerry prepares Pakistan for a tough squeeze.

Karl tries to find a sane position on Libya.

Proving one's point sometimes requires a live chicken vending machine.

 

The Saturday goulash.

A documentary about skinheads in Russia doesn't sit so well with the Russian government. Director Pavel Bardin discusses his new film, Russia 88. + Theo Anderson reviews Alan Wolfe's The Future of Liberalism. + Nicolas D. Kristoff maintains that "silence is the enemy". + "Jesus mania", the KGB, and the aftermath. + "Vietnam: The History of An Un-winable War", and the title of a Wilson Center event which promises to post the audio stream soon. + French actress, songstress, and muse Charlotte Gainsbourg insists that she is "not a prude". + Ultra-right radicals clash with anarchists in a Czech town. + The Vatican considers art as a means of building peace between Muslims and Christians. + What a Berlin court deemed as "totalitarian methods" may keep Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany from gaining official status as a religion. + Deception as a way of knowing, and other conclusions which emerge from a conversation with Anthony Grafton. + Thomas Harrison takes a look at socialism and homosexuality. + Political Animal is tired of the right-wing violence which has taken on the hue of a trend. + Anthropologist Olivia Harris passed away too soon. + Phillipe Bourgois is, in some sense, a righteous dope fiend who writes books about other righteous dope fiends. The interview. The long article. +  Bob Trubshaw knows a little something about paganism in British folk customs. + Sculptures in the sky, or the aesthetic importance of chimneys in Cambridge. + The American Indian Mafia, FBI agents, historical battlefields, and tingly conspiracies. + Left-wing architecture from 1998-2000. Image credit due. + A survey finds Estonian companies are suspicious of foreign religious minorities and tend to hire workers who live closer to home. +  1914 and environs at the Library of Congress' flickr photo group. + The top ten existential movies of all time from Sentient Developments. + JD Salinger is not too old to sue over sequels. + Image borrowed from Blondie's Highlights. 

Afternoon links + a song.

The evolution of crayons, a visual history.

"Emergency Threats and Security Planning: How Should We Decide Which Hypothetical Threats To Worry About?", a new report from RAND attempts to do what no government or whiskey has done before-- acknowledge the hypothetical nature of security threats and security dilemmas.

Newt Gingrich thinks being a citizen of the world is "stunningly dangerous". I guess he plans on refusing funding from those American international corporate executives most likely to use such labels.

These are economic boom times for private prison firms, like GEO, in America. 

Les femmes de Brancusi. In Romanian. With French titles.

Iranian dogs may be playing a role in the elections.

A Greek gentleman's opinion on "why the left got hammered" in the EP elections. Compare & contrast with this Italian politician's view on what happened in the EU elections.

Does religion reduce homophobia? A new study nods in this direction. But that fails to explain what often comes from the pulpits of American churches.

Over And Done With - The Proclaimers [Right-click and "save as"]

Today's top ten list.

1. Clive Crook minces no words in his article describing a "criminally stupid war on drugs in the US". 
2. A tribute to East Germany's "commie couture". 
3. How government intervention quashed community health insurance schemes.  
4. "The need for autarky" explored at the lovely Front Porch Republic.
5. Poland plans to send its prisoners to Auschwitz for "shock therapy".  
6. John Komkov revisits the Marshall Plan.  
7. Make films not war, the latest venture from Cultures of Resistance.  
8. Borges and the Jews.  
9. Waking up one morning to discover you are a terrorist.  
10. Scott Horton always seems to be reading or re-reading the same books as yours truly. 

Singapore, sci-fi, the Taliban, Nobel Prizes, etc.

How Muhammed Yunus inspired the young founders of MicroPlace.

Why a Nobel Prize in economics says nothing about personal integrity or financial acumen.

Is Chief Justice John Roberts the Supreme Court's "stealth hard-liner"?

The 10 greatest libertarian science fiction stories (via Amy Sturgis at HNN).

Singapore might be the "best guide" for the new Guantanamo.

The Romanian government can't seem to make its teachers happy.

Nicolas Lezard describes "the last outpost of Bohemia".

The wife of Kiev's mayor recently received a message from God about the upcoming elections.

Google's Eric Schmidt tells newspaper owners and editors "they need to be more innovative".

Our putative enemies, the Taleban, are currently using weapons supplied by the US Army. 

Lunchtime links.

The 2008 electorate dissected by Pew and deemed "the most diverse in history".

Derek Edwards picks up the "sword" in the Bible and tries to discover its intent. 

The Argonaut is an animated tale about a colonist trying to sustain human life on another planet. No dialogue.

Al-Jazeera's profile of Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashviili credits him with bringing free-markets to the political discourse.

The Pashtuns are "caught in another proxy war".

Australian parents are charged with manslaughter in their baby's death for using homeopathic medicine. See my previous post for nausea.

The many results from a European poster contest make good browsing.

The Guardian puts Hobbes and Rand in the same equation for an interesting read.

The photo is from Zoriah's post about the Dachau concentration camp, where signs indicated that "work brings freedom" while reality indicated otherwise.

Morning links.

Baudelaire would be happy to know that German brothels remain competitive during economic down-times by cutting prices.

Kurt Schwitters brought Dada to the barn, and now the barn is fair game.

Who serves in the US military? How have the demographics changed since Vietnam?

Are NATO's new members security producers or consumers? A lengthy paper from the Strategic Studies Institute at the US Army College has a few answers.

A video interview with Hannah Arendt in which she discusses the nature of the American republic, the role of innocent people, Israel, and other bits. A treasure for Arendt fans.

A European debate and discussion on how the EU understands totalitarianism 20 years since its most recent failings on the continent. Camilla Andersson from the Institute for Information on the Crimes of Communism in Sweden told the hearing about public perceptions on Communism and Nazism. In a recent survey of students aged 15-20 it found that 90% had never heard of the Gulag whilst the same number were well informed about the Holocaust. In addition 40% believed that Communism had contributed to increased prosperity in the world.

Lunchtime links.

Some of my best web-time is harvested with sandwich in one hand and the keyboard at the other. If we were having lunch together, I’d probably furrow my brow and ask your opinions on the following:

Amy Ridenour can't conceal her outrage over "Putin's totalitarianism". But she does more than rant and rave-- she provides good evidence. Is she right? Or are we stuck in Cold-War Russophobia?

Uniformity remains the most successful endeavor of the US military. Two Sikh men say they wanted to report for active duty in July even as they refuse to comply with the Army's demands to cut their unshorn beards and hair and remove their turbans. "I am willing to lay down my life for America," said 2nd Lt. Tejdeep Singh Rattan, one of the men who filed a complaint, on Tuesday. "In return, I ask only that my country respect my faith, an integral part of who I am. My turban and my beard are not an option -- they are an intrinsic part of me." For anyone unfamiliar with Sikhs and their history, the Sikhs began as warriors and their turbans are, indeed, a critical part of their religious belief. Should American Sikhs be denied the opportunity to exist as Sikhs in the military? Are Christian men allowed to wear crosses in uniform?

Dana Goldstein encourages a return to "the questioning spirit" for American and diaspora Jews. A well-written piece to which I will return at another time. So much to say about this...

The image is from the Children's Books of the Early Soviet Era collection at McGill's library. Early Soviet propaganda and agitprop infected so many with its idealism.

Arthur Suciu urges Romanians to refrain from the temptation to commi-nostalgia and embrace the future.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime released its handbook for prisoners with special needs. 

Our Neandethal roots seem to be closer than ever. German scientists have substantially deciphered the genome of Neanderthals. George Church, a genome researcher at the Harvard Medical School, recently told The New York Times that since modern human and Neanderthal genes are mostly the same, it should be relatively straightforward to create a living Neanderthal. He suggested splicing the uniquely Neanderthal genes into a human genome and using a chimpanzee as the surrogate mother. What would Richard John Nuehaus do?

Today's touches.

Touche #1.

Touche #2.

Touche #3.

Touche #4.

Touche #5.

Touche #6.

Touche #7.

Touche #8.

Touche #9.

Touche me till it hurts.

Not touche at all.

The touche you regret.

Good old touche.

Touche #10.

Touche #11.

Touche #13.

Touche #16.

Image credit.

Touche #17.

Touche #18.

Touche #19.

Touche #20.

Touche #21.

Touche #22.