Why is Ukraine in Crisis?: A Quick Primer For Those Too Embarrassed to Ask

Why have Ukraini­ans been protest­ing since Novem­ber? It’s a ques­tion you might feel strange ask­ing in Feb­ru­ary. But not to wor­ry, The Wash­ing­ton Post has put togeth­er a help­ful video that explains the cri­sis in two min­utes (above), along with a relat­ed primer: 9 ques­tions about Ukraine you were too embar­rassed to ask. A deep­er analy­sis can be found in the pages of The New York Review of Books.

For the lat­est news on what’s hap­pen­ing in Ukraine, you can get live video and social media updates at The New York Times.

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Noam Chomsky on Commemorating the JFK Assassination: It “Would Impress Kim Il-Sung”

jfk chomskyIn recent decades, his­to­ri­ans have tried to offer a bal­anced assess­ment of JFK’s life and lega­cy, offer­ing clear-eyed accounts of his han­dling of for­eign and domes­tic pol­i­cy, and rais­ing ques­tions about his infi­deli­ties and health prob­lems, all the while chip­ping away at the Camelot myth. On Fri­day, the 50th anniver­sary of the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, the hagiog­ra­phy returned, and even peren­ni­al cads like Rush Lim­baugh had lit­tle bad to say about Amer­i­ca’s 35th pres­i­dent. He sim­ply insist­ed that JFK would be a con­ser­v­a­tive, if still alive today.

Per­haps the only notable excep­tion was Noam Chom­sky. Nev­er a fan of Kennedy (or prob­a­bly any oth­er Amer­i­can pres­i­dent for that mat­ter), Chom­sky was asked by Truthout, “Do you find it odd that the coun­try is focus­ing on a 50th anniver­sary remem­brance of the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion?” A lead­ing ques­tion, no doubt, to which Chomksy replied, “Wor­ship of lead­ers is a tech­nique of indoc­tri­na­tion that goes back to the crazed George Wash­ing­ton cult of the 18th cen­tu­ry and on to the tru­ly lunatic Rea­gan cult of today, both of which would impress Kim Il-sung. The JFK cult is sim­i­lar.” It’s what you get when you live in “a deeply indoc­tri­nat­ed soci­ety.” If you’re ready to have Chom­sky throw more cold water (or is it com­bustible gaso­line?) on the JFK lega­cy, head over to Truthout for more.

P.S. Don’t shoot the mes­sen­ger on this…

via Leit­er Reports

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Emp­ty ‘Pos­tur­ing’

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky and Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature and Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

Noam Chom­sky vs. William F. Buck­ley, 1969

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Two Viral Videos Push Against Stereotypical Messages Girls Get From the Media (Mildly NSFW)

The first of two videos cir­cu­lat­ing on the inter­net, “Girls Who Read” by UK poet and “Rogue Teacher” Mark Grist (above) hits back at the lad cul­ture that objec­ti­fies women accord­ing to cer­tain “bits” named above in some mild­ly NSFW lan­guage. In his video per­for­mance piece above, Grist, asked which bits he prefers by a lad in a pub, and faced with a loom­ing cadre of both male and female peers putting on the pres­sure, answers halt­ing­ly, “I like a girl… who … reads.” Then, his con­fi­dence up, he elab­o­rates:

I like a girl who reads,
Who needs the writ­ten word
And who uses the added vocab­u­lary
She gleans from nov­els and poet­ry
To hold live­ly con­ver­sa­tion
In a range of social sit­u­a­tions

The ide­al girl close to Grist’s heart “ties back her hair as she’s read­ing Jane Eyre” and “feeds her addic­tion for fic­tion with unusu­al poems and plays.” In his infec­tious slam cadences, Grist’s impas­sioned paean to female read­ers offers a charm­ing alter­na­tive to the lad­mag gaze, though one might argue that he still does a lit­tle bit of pro­ject­ing his fan­tasies onto an unsus­pect­ing lone female at the bar (who turns out to be not so alone). Maybe “Girl Who Reads” is a trope, like “Man­ic Pix­ie Dream Girl,” an ide­al­iza­tion that says more about Grist’s desires than about any par­tic­u­lar, actu­al girl, but it’s still a refresh­ing chal­lenge to the leer­ing of his pub­mates, one that com­mu­ni­cates to girls that there are men out there, even in the pubs, who val­ue women for their minds.

The video above, for a new line of toys called GoldiBlox, designed by Stan­ford-edu­cat­ed engi­neer Deb­bie Ster­ling, upends anoth­er ado­les­cent male cul­tur­al touchstone—this time a by-now clas­sic Amer­i­can one—the Beast­ie Boys glee­ful­ly misog­y­nis­tic anthem “Girls.” While the orig­i­nal still like­ly scores many a frat par­ty, it now must com­pete with the rewrite per­formed by “Raven.” The re-appro­pri­at­ed “Girls” plays over video of a trio of young girls, bored to death with stereo­typ­i­cal pink tea sets and the like, who build a com­pli­cat­ed Rube Gold­berg machine from Goldiblox, which resem­ble plas­tic tin­ker toys. I fore­see snip­pets of the updat­ed lyrics (below) mak­ing their way onto play­grounds around the coun­try. Hear the orig­i­nal Beast­ie Boys song, with lyrics, below.

Girls.
You think you know what we want, girls.
Pink and pret­ty it’s girls.
Just like the 50’s it’s girls.

You like to buy us pink toys
and every­thing else is for boys
and you can always get us dolls
and we’ll grow up like them… false.

It’s time to change.
We deserve to see a range.
‘Cause all our toys look just the same
and we would like to use our brains.

We are all more than princess maids.

Girls to build the space­ship,
Girls to code the new app,
Girls to grow up know­ing
they can engi­neer that.



Girls.

That’s all we real­ly need is Girls.
To bring us up to speed it’s Girls.
Our oppor­tu­ni­ty is Girls.
Don’t under­es­ti­mate Girls.

As with all kids adver­tis­ing, this is aimed as much at parents—who remem­ber the Beast­ie Boys’ song—as their kids, who could­n’t pos­si­bly. And unlike Grist’s video, which only sells, per­haps, him­self, the Goldiblox video aims to get kids hooked on plas­tic toys as much as any of the ads for prod­ucts it dis­places. Nonethe­less, I’ll play it for my daugh­ter in a few years, because lines like “we are all more than princess maids” con­sti­tute the per­fect retort to the seem­ing­ly end­less cul­tur­al slot­ting of girls into ridicu­lous­ly sub­servient and fan­ta­sy roles.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Sci­ence: It’s a Girl Thing!” OMG, Seri­ous­ly?! The Botched Video by the EU

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Read­ing List for Eight-Year-Old Girl

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Gives Teenage Girls Endear­ing Advice About Boys (And Much More)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Slavoj Žižek & Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova Exchange An Extraordinary Series of Letters

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot writing to Slavoj Žižek

Miss­ing for almost a month, impris­oned Pussy Riot mem­ber Nadezh­da Tolokon­niko­va has been report­ed by her hus­band as recov­er­ing in a Siber­ian hos­pi­tal from issues relat­ed to her hunger strike. As The Guardian reports, Tolokon­niko­va didn’t only resist by refus­ing to eat, she also kept up a live­ly cor­re­spon­dence with Sloven­ian the­o­rist Slavoj Žižek while endur­ing report­ed abuse at the penal colony in Mor­dovia where she had been sen­tenced. It seems from the edit­ed cor­re­spon­dence pub­lished by The Guardian that Žižek began the con­ver­sa­tion in ear­ly Jan­u­ary. “All hearts were beat­ing for you” he writes, until “it became clear that you reject­ed glob­al cap­i­tal­ism.” In a lat­er, April 16 reply, Tolokon­niko­va explains exact­ly what Pussy Riot rejects:

As a child I want­ed to go into adver­tis­ing. I had a love affair with the adver­tis­ing indus­try. And this is why I am in a posi­tion to judge its mer­its. The anti-hier­ar­chi­cal struc­tures and rhi­zomes of late cap­i­tal­ism are its suc­cess­ful ad cam­paign. Mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism has to man­i­fest itself as flex­i­ble and even eccen­tric. Every­thing is geared towards grip­ping the emo­tion of the con­sumer. Mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism seeks to assure us that it oper­ates accord­ing to the prin­ci­ples of free cre­ativ­i­ty, end­less devel­op­ment and diver­si­ty. It gloss­es over its oth­er side in order to hide the real­i­ty that mil­lions of peo­ple are enslaved by an all-pow­er­ful and fan­tas­ti­cal­ly sta­ble norm of pro­duc­tion. We want to reveal this lie.

Read the full pub­lished exchange at The Guardian’s site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fear of a Female Plan­et: Kim Gor­don (Son­ic Youth) on Why Rus­sia and the US Need a Pussy Riot

Russ­ian Punk Band, Sen­tenced to Two Years in Prison for Derid­ing Putin, Releas­es New Sin­gle

Slavoj Žižek Demys­ti­fies the Gang­nam Style Phe­nom­e­non

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Žižek Blames the US Government Shutdown on Ayn Rand’s Acolytes Who Caused the 2008 Collapse

zizek-rand2

Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The gov­ern­ment shut­down and the rais­ing of the debt ceil­ing — such things are not usu­al­ly grist for our cul­tur­al mill. But all of that changes when a cul­tur­al the­o­rist pins the blame for Wash­ing­ton’s dys­func­tion on the acolytes of a pseu­do-philoso­pher. Writ­ing in The Guardian last Fri­day, in sim­ple, straight­for­ward prose, Slove­ni­a’s favorite the­o­rist Slavoj Žižek asks and answers a ques­tion in the title of his op-ed: “Who is respon­si­ble for the US shut­down? The same idiots respon­si­ble for the 2008 melt­down”. And who are those “idiots,” you might won­der? Let me spare you the sus­pense and jump you down to the last two para­graphs of his piece:

One of the weird con­se­quences of the 2008 finan­cial melt­down and the mea­sures tak­en to coun­ter­act it (enor­mous sums of mon­ey to help banks) was the revival of the work of Ayn Rand, the clos­est one can get to an ide­ol­o­gist of the “greed is good” rad­i­cal cap­i­tal­ism. The sales of her opus Atlas Shrugged explod­ed. Accord­ing to some reports, there are already signs that the sce­nario described in Atlas Shrugged – the cre­ative cap­i­tal­ists them­selves going on strike – is com­ing to pass in the form of a pop­ulist right. How­ev­er, this mis­reads the sit­u­a­tion: what is effec­tive­ly tak­ing place today is almost the exact oppo­site. Most of the bailout mon­ey is going pre­cise­ly to the Ran­di­an “titans”, the bankers who failed in their “cre­ative” schemes and there­by brought about the finan­cial melt­down. It is not the “cre­ative genius­es” who are now help­ing ordi­nary peo­ple, it is the ordi­nary peo­ple who are help­ing the failed “cre­ative genius­es”.

John Galt, the cen­tral char­ac­ter in Atlas Shrugged, is not named until near the end of the nov­el. Before his iden­ti­ty is revealed, the ques­tion is repeat­ed­ly asked, “Who is John Galt”. Now we know pre­cise­ly who he is: John Galt is the idiot respon­si­ble for the 2008 finan­cial melt­down, and for the ongo­ing fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shut­down in the US.

We’re not say­ing it’s the most tren­chant analy­sis, but we do like to take note of intel­lec­tu­al dus­tups. Speak­ing of, did you miss the Chom­sky-Žižek spat from the sum­mer? It went four rounds. Round 1. Round 2. Round 3. Round 4. And end­ed in a draw.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ayn Rand Adamant­ly Defends Her Athe­ism on The Phil Don­ahue Show (Cir­ca 1979)

William F. Buck­ley Flogged Him­self to Get Through Atlas Shrugged

Mike Wal­lace Inter­views Ayn Rand (1959)

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The Hunger Strikes at Guantánamo Bay Prison Revealed in Poignant Animated Video

In late Sep­tem­ber, the US mil­i­tary declared the hunger strikes at Guan­tá­namo Bay over. “At its peak,” writes Char­lie Sav­age in The New York Times, “106 of the 166 pris­on­ers … were list­ed as par­tic­i­pants” in the strike. That num­ber has now dropped to 19, they say, and they’re all being giv­en “the appro­pri­ate lev­el of care.” What exact­ly does that mean? You can get an idea from this ani­mat­ed video cre­at­ed by The Guardian. In 6 min­utes, you’ll get intro­duced to the world of peo­ple who have spent years in prison. They’ve nev­er been charged with a crime nor giv­en access to the legal sys­tem. Despite being cleared for release, many remain stuck in lim­bo year after year. When they lose hope and go on hunger strike, they have tubes and food crammed down their noses. Poignant as it may be, the col­or­ful ani­ma­tion may dull your reac­tion to what’s actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing in Guan­tá­namo. Per­haps it’s bet­ter to look at these col­or pho­tos to ful­ly appre­ci­ate the Kafkaesque sys­tem the gov­ern­ment has put in place.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Odd Col­lec­tion of Books in the Guan­tanamo Prison Library

The Lost/Animated Inter­view with Fidel Cas­tro: If the Rev­o­lu­tion Fails, Cuba Will be “Hell Itself” (1959)

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Jurassic Park Tells You Everything You Need to Know About the Dangers of Global Capitalism

For­get putting a bird on it. Put on a dinosaur on it for a sure­fire hit in our mar­ket-dri­ven econ­o­my. Direc­tor Stephen Spiel­berg cer­tain­ly did­n’t skimp on the “ter­ri­ble lizards” when adapt­ing Michael Crich­ton’s Juras­sic Park for the screen, and things turned out pret­ty well for him.

Mike Rugnetta, the fast-talk­ing host of PBS’s Idea Chan­nel, the­o­rizes that the 20-year-old film is a great, pos­si­bly inad­ver­tent com­men­tary on the dan­gers of glob­al mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism. His mer­ry spoil­er-packed video touch­es on such phe­nom­e­na as risky invest­ments, the sub­prime mort­gage cri­sis, and the hav­oc that can be wreaked by a dis­grun­tled employ­ee. He hales both Richard Atten­bor­ough’s park own­er char­ac­ter and Direc­tor Spiel­berg as ego­tis­ti­cal mad­men chas­ing mon­strous prof­its. His kitchen sink approach inevitably leads to appear­ances by both Bar­ney and Sloven­ian philoso­pher and cul­tur­al crit­ic Slavoj Žižek.

Rugnetta is quick (of course) to point out that he could come up with sim­i­lar hypothe­ses for such com­par­a­tive­ly fresh releas­es as World War Z (wage slav­ery), Iron Man (glo­ry be to the world-sav­ing entre­pre­neur), and Pacif­ic Rim (the glob­al mar­ket will unite us all)… but why, when Juras­sic Park’s got endur­ing, mar­ket-test­ed crowd-pleasers?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Does Math Objec­tive­ly Exist, or Is It a Human Cre­ation? A New PBS Video Explores a Time­less Ques­tion

Hen­ry Rollins: Edu­ca­tion is the Cure to “Dis­as­ter Cap­i­tal­ism”

Intel­li­gent YouTube Chan­nels

Ayun Hal­l­i­day final­ly got around to see­ing this movie last spring. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday 

Henry Rollins: Education is the Cure to “Disaster Capitalism”

We’ve already fea­tured for­mer Black Flag front­man and cur­rent spo­ken-word artist Hen­ry Rollins explain­ing why, to his mind, only edu­ca­tion can restore democ­ra­cy. He also believes it can cure some­thing he calls “dis­as­ter cap­i­tal­ism,” and you can hear more from him about it in the Big Think video above. He address­es, in his char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly straight­for­ward man­ner, the ques­tions of what exact­ly ails the Amer­i­can econ­o­my, how that ail­ment might have come about, and how the coun­try can edu­cate itself back to health. We may indi­vid­u­al­ly get our edu­ca­tions now, he grants, but “how long will it be until Amer­i­ca fis­cal­ly turns itself around” to the point of repay­ing “the risk of the invest­ment on that stu­dent loan to get a per­son through four years of col­lege? Will that per­son get a job where pay­ing off that loan and get­ting a house and afford­ing a fam­i­ly, will that be a pos­si­bil­i­ty? In the present Amer­i­ca, it doesn’t look like it is.”

See­ing a dire nation­al sit­u­a­tion, Rollins rec­om­mends doing like Chi­na, but not in the way you might assume. He sug­gests look­ing “500 years at a time,” much far­ther up the road than we have of late. “I’d be look­ing up the road so far my eyes would fall out of my head.” He wants the coun­try to become “like Europe, where they’ll edu­cate your kid until his head explodes,” pro­duc­ing “three doc­tors per floor of every apart­ment build­ing” and doing so by mak­ing “col­lege tuition either free or real­ly low.” Gen­er­al­ly thought of as lib­er­al, Rollins sums this up in a way that might appeal to his ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­nents: “If you have a coun­try full of whip-crack smart peo­ple, you have a coun­try the rest of the world will fear. They will not invade a coun­try of edu­cat­ed peo­ple because we are so smart we’ll build a laser that will burn you, the ene­my, in your sleep before you can even mobi­lize your air force to kill us. We will kill you so fast because we are so smart and we will have for­eign pol­i­cy that will not piss you off to the point to where you have to attack us.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hen­ry Rollins Pitch­es Edu­ca­tion as the Key to Restor­ing Democ­ra­cy

Hen­ry Rollins Tells Young Peo­ple to Avoid Resent­ment and to Pur­sue Suc­cess with a “Monas­tic Obses­sion”

Hen­ry Rollins Remem­bers the Life-Chang­ing Deci­sion That Brought Him From Häa­gen-Dazs to Black Flag

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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