Tariq Ali reviews David Caute's book in The Guardian:

For decades, David Caute has written both histories of ideas and novels. I've always preferred his novels, in particular Comrade Jacob, a sympathetic account of Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers during the English revolution (Caute's history tutor at Oxford was Christopher Hill). In his new book, he has expanded a cold war footnote into an entire volume, but has performed a valuable service in doing so. The work is a portrait of Isaiah Berlin, with whom the author shared a perch at All Souls College, Oxford, where they engaged in lofty conversations. One of the less elevated talks concerned Isaac Deutscher, and troubled Caute.

Berlin the liberal political philosopher and Deutscher the Marxist historian were both asylum seekers, given refuge and residence in Britain during the early decades of the last century. That was about all they had in common. Their intellectual trajectories pointed in opposite directions. Berlin was escaping the Russian revolution, Deutscher was fleeing from the armies of the Third Reich, poised to take Poland. Both were Jews: the first was a Zionist, who annoyed Chaim Weizmann by refusing all his requests to move to Tel Aviv and become an adviser; the second famously defined himself as a “non-Jewish Jew”, and despite arguing with David Ben-Gurion, remained sympathetic to Israel – until the 1967 war. Deutscher's next of kin had perished in the camps. His surviving relations lived in Israel. He died in 1967 aged 60, and his last interview in the New Left Review took the form of a prescient warning to Israel, comparing its intransigence to that of old Prussia: “To justify or condone Israel's wars against the Arabs is to render Israel a very bad service indeed and harm its own long-term interest … The Germans have summed up their own experience in the bitter phrase: 'Man kann sich totsiegen!' 'You can triumph yourself to death'.”

Houman Barekat in 3:AM Magazine:

The trauma of growing up among the ruins of World War Two was a formative experience, not only for the late WG Sebald (1944-2001), but for the modern German nation as a whole. The memory of the incineration of large swathes of several of its major cities was tucked away in an obscure recess of the collective consciousness, to be occasionally revisited by scholars and historians but largely effaced in the wider society. Sebald’s Zurich lectures, an impassioned yet laconic interrogation of this historical amnesia, became On the Natural History of Destruction. Originally published in German in 1999 under the title Luftrkridg und Literatur, Anthea Bell’s English translation was first published in 2003 by Hamish Hamilton, and reappears here in a slim hardback courtesy of Notting Hill Editions.

For Sebald, the tragedy of the war and its aftermath had its roots in a fundamental weakness in the national character: he traces a link between ‘the German catastrophe ushered in under Hitler’s regime and the regulation of intimate feelings within the German family.’ This notion was subtlety alluded to in Michael Heneke’s 2009 film, White Ribbon, which hints at a connection between the repressed rigidity of social life in early 20th century Germany and the later brutality of the Third Reich. The same emotionally detached Protestant stoicism that had allowed National Socialism to thrive also coloured the character of the post-war rebuilding – the nation became like a family with dark secret about which it dared not speak. Sebald takes us beyond the cordon sanitaire, and back to the burning cities:

At its height the storm lifted gables and roofs from buildings, flung rafters and entire advertising hoardings through the air, tore trees from the ground and drove human beings before it like living torches. Behind collapsing facades the flames shot up as high as houses, rolled like a tidal wave through the streets at a speed of over 150 kilometres an hour, spun across open squares in strange rhythms like rolling cylinders of fire. The water in some of the canals was ablaze.

His purpose is not to exculpate or rehabilitate the German nation or even to elicit sympathy as such, but merely to invite recognition on a basic human level, to claw something back for posterity in defiance of that blanket silence. ‘The majority of Germans today know,‘ he candidly maintains, ‘that we actually provoked the annihilation of the cities in which we once lived.’

Esam Al-Amin in Counterpunch:

The people in Egypt went to the polls at least six times: to vote for a referendum to chart the political way forward (March 2011), to vote for the lower and upper house of parliament (November 2011-January 2012), to elect a civilian president over two rounds (May-June 2012), and to ratify the new constitution (December 2012). Each time the electorate voted for the choice of the Islamist parties to the frustration of the secular and liberal opposition.

To the discontent of the Islamists, all their gains at the polls were reversed by either the Mubarak-appointed Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) or the military. The lower house of parliament, of which the Islamists won seventy three percent of the seats, was dissolved by the SCC a year ago, while the military has just suspended the new constitution, while ousting the democratically-elected president.

Undoubtedly, the MB committed colossal mistakes. For example, they reneged on several promises to their secular and liberal coalition partners, including to not contest the majority of parliamentary seats, field a presidential candidate, or exclude others in the composition of the Constitution Constituent Assembly. Perhaps, their gravest mistake was to ally themselves closely with the Salafist groups during the process of writing the constitution, thus alienating many of the secularists, liberals, as well as Christians even though the MB did not care much about the constitutional ideological battle. Their motivation was not to be outflanked by the Salafis on the Islamic identity of the state. To accomplish this objective, they lost most of the others.

In addition, Morsi and the MB did not adhere to their promise of full partnership in governance. Many of the youth and opposition groups felt that the president and MB leadership were not genuine in their outreach and only sought their participation for cosmetic reasons. Even their Islamic partners such as the Salafist Al-Noor Party complained that the MB wanted to monopolize the major power centers in the state.

Zahir Janmohamed in the Boston Review:

The physician sat in the corner of his office in Ahmedabad, a map of India’s western state of Gujarat on one side, a map of the human nervous system on the other, his hip leaning against the drawer that I spent weeks trying to convince him to open.

After agreeing to a list of conditions—I could not take any photographs, I could not remove anything from his office—he agreed to show me the drawer’s contents. It was a six-inch stack of letters between two longtime pen pals, the physician and a young man named Narendra Modi, the current chief minister of Gujarat and the official candidate from the Bharatiya Janata Party to contest next year’s elections for India’s prime minister. I took out my digital recorder and began reading each letter aloud. A few days before I boarded my return flight to California, the physician called me to his office.

“Zahir bhai,” he said. It was unusual for him to address me this way—he is in his 60s, twice my age, and “bhai” means brother in Hindi and is used most often with someone older.

“Zahir bhai,” he repeated. “I am very sorry. You cannot use my name in your piece.”

I was not surprised; very few in Gujarat are willing to use their real name when asked about Modi. I told him I would be happy to change his name.

“No, you cannot use my name or my letters or my story. I have three children. Modi will ruin their lives if people know my views on him.”

I pleaded with him to reconsider but he would not budge.

“You do not have children. You do not know what it is like to live in Gujarat. You will return to America eventually. Please, you must understand.”

Unfortunately, I do understand.

More here.

Last fall, the publishing industry met the music world in a cheerfully anachronistic way when Beck, a darling of literary indie-rock aficionados, released Song Reader, an album in the form of sheet music. No downloadable tracks, no limited-edition vinyl, just a big book of notes. The album was published by McSweeney’s and was supplemented with a crowd-sourced website, where fans uploaded their own interpretations of Beck’s songs. Within weeks the site had amassed a kaleidoscopic array of performances—including polished, even animated, videos. Song Reader became a favorite of the staffs at NPR, NewYorker.com, and Kurt Andersen’s Studio 360, where the host and a handful of editors and producers performed a version of “Saint Dude.” Even USAToday’s Pop Candy blog asked, in a somewhat cheeky headline, “Have You Played It Yet?” Far from an old-timey, craft-movement stunt, Song Reader was embraced by both critics and consumers as a legitimate attempt to publish music that people could play—an invitation to musicians, amateur and professional, to interpret the works and share their musical gifts, promising or mediocre. For some of us concerned about the fate of sheet music, Song Reader also served as a litmus test of sorts: How many music fans (at least among the sample Beck attracts) still read, or know someone who reads, Western music notation, notes and chords placed on a five-line staff with clefs, rests, and time signatures?

more from Adam Baer at VQR here.

From The Globe and Mail:

How do you know when your new book is a success? When Google promptly offers you a plum job as soon as the book is on the stands. That's the pleasant turn of events that Ray Kurzweil, 64, is enjoying. His most recent book, his sixth, is How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed. His new job at Google is director of engineering. Google made the announcement in December. Kurzweil has many fans. The Wall Street Journal once described him as “the restless genius” and Fortune said he was “a legendary inventor with a history of mind-blowing ideas.” Time put him on its cover, and Forbes called him “the ultimate thinking machine.”

…The thesis of How to Create a Mind is that the human brain itself is the most powerful thinking machine available today, so it is logical that we look to the brain for guidance on how to make devices smarter. He outlines a theory he calls “the pattern recognition theory of mind (PRTM),” which he says “describes the basic algorithm of the neocortex (the region of the brain responsible for perception, memory and critical thinking).” By reverse-engineering the human brain, we will be able to “to vastly extend the power of our own intelligence.” What will we do with this new intelligence? First, we will better understand the brain itself and develop superior treatments for the brain's ailments, such as psychiatric disorders. Second, we will use our expanded intelligence to solve the many problems that confront mankind. Finally, we will use the intelligence to teach us how to be smarter.

More here.

Miguel Borba de Sa in Jacobin:

Mark Bergfeld: How could a twenty-cent increase in bus fares spark protests in more than 100 towns and cities across Brazil?

Miguel Borba de Sa: In his book, The Road To Serfdom the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek wrote that there are two areas that one cannot leave to the competitive principle: transport and the environment. Brazil’s bourgeoisie consistently fails to understand this.

In the last ten years transportation has become a lucrative business for the Brazilian elite and local government officials. Enterprises and corporations bid for local routes and lines. Local government officials cosy up to the bus companies for benefits.

Here in Brazil, transport costs cut into workers’ wages far more than other utilities such as electricity or water. Fares have risen faster than inflation. An average workers’ wage is 650 Brazilian real. A bus ticket is 2 real. This private-public relationship has broken down.

The movement we see on the streets today actually started in Porto Alegre. People protested the fare increase two months ago. The police turned violent. Public outrage followed and the hike was halted. Was it a victory? No! The money for the bus company was raised by exempting the local bus company from future tax payments. In Rio, for every real I pay for a ticket the local authorities adds the same amount in subsidies or tax exemption.

At the same time the huge infrastructure projects like the Confederation Cup, the Pope’s visit later this year, the FIFA World Cup have displaced poor people from the city center and, in many cases, even cut them off from public transport. Dissatisfaction and “unfairness” have been simmering on Facebook, in the popular neighbourhoods and among working class youths. Radicalization and marginalisation have gone hand in hand. Now there is collective rage.

From LiveScience:

1. John Adams thought Americans would celebrate July 2

The Continental Congress officially declared its freedom from British rule on July 2, 1776, the day that John Adams wrongly thought would be commemorated by future generations. July Fourth, meanwhile, marks the day Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. As copies of the declaration spread across the colonies, celebrations kicked off. Americans lit bonfires, fired celebratory shots from their guns, rang bells, and took down symbols of the British monarchy. At that point, the Boston Tea Party and the Battles of Lexington and Concord had already happened, but the American Revolutionary War wouldn't end until the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783.

2. Three presidents died on the Fourth of July

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson passed away within hours of each other on July 4, 1826. The two had been political rivals and then friends later in life, and both signed the Declaration of Independence. James Monroe, the nation's fifth president, was the next U.S. leader to die, and he passed away on July 4, 1831. Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president, is the only U.S. chief to have been born on the Fourth of July.

More here.

From the website of the International Crisis Group:

As Egypt teeters on the verge of a catastrophic confrontation, it is difficult to discern who has been more short-sighted: an arrogant Muslim Brotherhood that misread electoral gains for a political blank-check or a reckless opposition that has appeared ready to sink the country in order to bring down the Islamists and whose criteria for ousting the president – generalised incompetence and wide unpopularity – could send many presidents packing. The priority today must be to avoid further bloodshed. It is, too, to ensure that the next chapter in Egypt’s troubled transition, unlike the last, is inclusive and consensual. The alternative is to continue with exclusionary, confrontational politics, albeit with greater violence with only a change of characters at the helm.

Egypt’s profound divisions rarely have been on starker display than these past days. Millions took to the streets on 30 June to demand President Mohammed Morsi’s departure; smaller, yet still large numbers responded to insist on his remaining in office. From all sides has come talk of blood and martyrdom – from the Brotherhood, the youth-initiated Tamarrud (Rebellion) and the army itself. The forceful removal of the nation’s first democratically-elected civilian president risks sending a message to Islamists that they have no place in the political order; sowing fears among them that they will suffer yet another bloody crackdown; and thus potentially prompting violent, even desperate resistance by Morsi’s followers.

The current crisis to a large extent is the product of a fundamentally flawed political transition. Political actors were unable to reach basic agreement on rules of the game or the desired political system, instead proceeding with a winner-take-all mentality that was sure to alienate – and frighten –losers.

More here.

Father

Last night
I dreamt about you,
father.
You came
into my dream
as a deer
and stood astride
a grassy
mound.

I called you
by your name,
father.
I called you
by the word: father
I said:

Look,
my eyes are
two wet flowers
by the mountain
stream.
Come,
let your warm
deer tongue
dry the dew
that fell upon
my eyes.

And you stood
as in another
world,
as in another
dream,
on a mound,
overgrown with grass.

You shook your
mighty
antlers
and vanished in the white
cloud
of no one’s
dreams.

.
by Peter Semolic
from Bizantinske rože
publisher: DZS, Ljubljana, 1994
translation: 2004, Ana Jelnikar
.
Read more »

Sophie Pinkham in n+1:

Last week, a new documentary about Pussy Riot aired on HBO. Two anonymous Pussy Riot members attended the premiere in New York, bumping shoulders with Salman Rushdie and Patti Smith but skipping the “Riotinis” at the Russian-themed SoHo afterparty. One year after the trial, the world is still on a first name basis with Nadya Tolokonnikova, Masha Alyokhina, and Katya Samutsevich, the “Pussy Riot girls,” the ones who got caught.

The Pussy Riot trial was only the first in a string of pseudo-legal proceedings meant to punish the opposition and teach the public a lesson, but it’s still the one that’s made the biggest splash abroad. The prosecutions of Aleksei Navalny, one of the Russian opposition’s strongest leaders, and of twenty-seven people arrested in connection with the political demonstrations on Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square have been equally absurd, hollow, and unfair. But they haven’t become pop culture phenomena in the way the Pussy Riot trial did; they don’t have the same simple hook or punk rock appeal.

Any trial that exists only to justify punishment is a kind of “show trial,” a performance rather than a judgment. Such trials have a long history in Russia. In the 19th century, Russia’s greatest lexicographer recorded proverbs and sayings that included, “Where there’s a court, there is falsehood,” and “Go before God with the truth, but before the courts with money.” Show trials come in many flavors, though Stalin’s are the ones we remember best. The stakes in the recent trials have been far lower than those in Stalinist trials: fortunately, no one was ever at risk of being shot. Putin doesn’t have Stalin’s iron grip, and in all of the politically motivated trials of the last year there have been plenty of loud, dissenting voices, both inside and outside the courtroom. In fact, these modern show trials have more in common with the lesser-known trials of the Brezhnev era and late imperial Russia, periods that saw authoritarian governments losing control of their narrative, upstaged by another, more compelling show—the defense.

Martin Wolf in the NYRB:

Austerity came to Europe in the first half of 2010, with the Greek crisis, the coalition government in the UK, and above all, in June of that year, the Toronto summit of the group of twenty leading countries. This meeting prematurely reversed the successful stimulus launched at the previous summits and declared, roundly, that “advanced economies have committed to fiscal plans that will at least halve deficits by 2013.”

This was clearly an attempt at austerity, which I define as a reduction in the structural, or cyclically adjusted, fiscal balance—i.e., the budget deficit or surplus that would exist after adjustments are made for the ups and downs of the business cycle. It was an attempt prematurely and unwisely made. The cuts in these structural deficits, a mix of tax increases and government spending cuts between 2010 and 2013, will be around 11.8 percent of potential GDP in Greece, 6.1 percent in Portugal, 3.5 percent in Spain, and 3.4 percent in Italy. One might argue that these countries have had little choice. But the UK did, yet its cut in the structural deficit over these three years will be 4.3 percent of GDP.

What was the consequence? In a word, “dire.”

In 2010, as a result of heroic interventions by the monetary and fiscal authorities, many countries hit by the crisis enjoyed surprisingly good recoveries from the “great recession” of 2008–2009. This then stopped (see figure 1). The International Monetary Fund now thinks, perhaps optimistically, that the British economy will expand by 1.8 percent between 2010 and 2013. But it expanded by 1.8 percent between 2009 and 2010 alone. The economy has now stagnated for almost three years. Even if the IMF is right about a recovery this year, it will be 2015 before the economy reaches the size it was before the crisis began.

Max Dunbar in 3:am Magazine:

In the autumn of 2010 a beautiful, exasperating young woman appeared in Manchester: Sian Rathore. A singer-songwriter, critic and poet, her inventive approach to the spoken word made her a hit at the poetry nights there, and in terms of content her work eclipsed the more established mediocrities of that city. Sian is very much a poet of the digital age with a lively presence on Twitter, a plethora of blogs and tumblrs, an occasional column for the Huffington Post and a passion for something called ‘flarf poetry’ which I am too old to pretend to understand. So in Sian’s collection there is a poem about bereavement, called ‘She Sometimes Still Emails Him’ – where the narrator has just bought a smartphone and is messaging a dead friend, while still struggling to work out the keypad. (‘Youd; have really lvoed one/Apple make there own Phones now’). Another poem lists the bizarre search terms people have used to find Sian’s blog. The rhythms are like electronica and the locale is contemporary, abounds with references to Blackberry messaging, Spotify and Made in Chelsea. Yet the poetry comes from a traditional place. Sian is better read than most of her peers and her favourite book is Wuthering Heights.

Sian has a somewhat turbulent romantic life, suffers from bipolar disorder and, as a person, can be fairly scattershot and disorganised. So it’s always a double take when you read her stuff and realise quite how disciplined she is as a writer. Every word has been put on trial for its life. That discipline is coupled with a cold, caustic, Parker-style sense of humour. A few lines from her poem ‘The Last Stand of the World’s Most Famous Observational Comedian’, a satire on male dominated stand up, recall even Eliot at his most vitriolic:

The great observer overflows from the seat at the strip club
With white foam collecting at the corners of his mouth
Like small clouds precipitating the sweat on his upper lip
With one hand in his pocket and one between her breasts
Before she forces it back
God, it’s mad in’t it, this so-called ‘women’s lib’
The exotic dancer who had the recent abortion
Notices his failed erection
And sniggers with unsubtle laughter.

More here.

Juan Cole in Truth Dig:

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi may or may not survive Sunday’s massive protests, organized by the youth Rebellion (Tamarrud) Movement. They are, nevertheless, a milestone in modern Egyptian history and a warning to him about his arrogant and highhanded style of governing from his fundamentalist base. Morsi, from the Muslim Brotherhood, represents the equivalent of the American tea party in Egyptian politics—captive to the religious right, invested in austerity and smaller government, and contemptuous of workers and the political left. In his first year in office, the nation’s first freely elected head of state has squandered Egyptians’ willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt. He has acted like the president of the somewhat cultish Muslim Brotherhood, rather than like the president of the whole country. Here are the major errors he has made, which have polarized Egypt and created a severe crisis that some observers worry could turn into a civil war.

On taking office in summer 2012, Morsi did not appoint a government of national unity. He named no politicians from other major parties to important cabinet posts, nor did he reach out to the revolutionary youth. Although he made a neutral technocrat, Hisham Qandil, his prime minister, he put members of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party in charge of key cabinet posts. He thus created the impression that he was trying for a “Brotherization” of the government.

Despite Egypt’s sagging economy, Morsi did not make stimulating it his first priority, and instead tried to please the International Monetary Fund with austerity policies, rather on the model of the Mariano Rajoy government in Spain.

More here.

It has been one year since scientists announced the discovery of a particle believed to be Higgs. Read this essay by a Nobel prize winner in physics.

Frank Wilczek in Big Questions Online:

Imagine a planet encrusted with ice, beneath which a vast ocean lies. (Imagine Europa.)

Within that ocean a species of brilliant fish evolved. Those fish were so intelligent that they took up physics, and formulated the laws that govern motion. At first they derived quite complicated laws, because the motion of bodies within water is complicated.

One day, however, a genius among fish, call her Fish Newton, had a startling new idea. She proposed fundamental laws of motion––Newton's laws––that are simpler and more beautiful than the laws the fish had derived directly from experience. She demonstrated mathematically that you could reproduce the observed motions from the new, simpler laws, if you assume that there is a space-filling medium that complicates things. She called it Ocean.

Of course our fish had been immersed in Ocean for eons, but without knowing it. Since it was ever-present, they took it for granted. They regarded it as an aspect of space itself––as mere emptiness. But Fish Newton invited them to consider that they might be immersed in a material medium.

Thus inspired, fish scientists set out to find the atoms of Fish Newton's hypothetical medium. And soon they did!

That story is our own. We humans, like those fish, have been living within a material medium for millennia, without being consciously aware of it.

More here.

Fair warning: I’m about to use a short phrase, consisting of two words, each of which are so excruciatingly dull that reading either one could very well cause you fall into an extended slumber, like Dorothy approaching Oz. Combined, they may induce a coma. Proceed at your own risk. To wit: Pedestrian infrastructure. Also, I will be writing about Cincinnati. Still with me? Good, because Cincinnati is a pretty fascinating place if your interests run to the history of walking in America in general, or, say, pedestrian infrastructure in particular. It’s home to a couple of groupings of artifacts that bookend the highs and lows of American walking culture over the past century and a half. Let’s start the tour at City View Place, at the edge of the Clifton Heights neighborhood, which I visited a couple of weeks ago. The most interesting thing about this short block is that it wholly lacks a city view. It’s actually at the bottom of a hill. But it ends at a long set of concrete steps that ascend a steep hill. These steps rise through a dense wood — I didn’t realize how shady and dark it was until a cardinal flew past, startling me with its sudden brightness. A few steps later — presto! — I was in another old neighborhood atop a hill filled with elaborately mansarded houses.

more from Wayne Curtis at The Smart Set here.