The New York Review (Continuación)

Bob Dylan outside his Byrdcliff home, Woodstock, New York, 1968

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia, ,

The Swedish Academy’s mid-October announcement regarding literature seldom fails to occasion second-guessing, if not outrage. Whenever a foreign writer mostly unknown to English speakers is awarded the Nobel, a certain constituency will suggest that the Swedes are trolling us. Whenever someone who is already a household name across the world gets it, a different faction is crestfallen, because he or she did not need the publicity. This has presumably been going on since Sully Prudhomme took it away in 1901, his honeyed verses to dance forevermore on every child’s lips.

Bob Dylan was awarded the big prize this morning, and my social-media timeline has been alive with indignation ever since.…  Seguir leyendo »

Donald Trump during the second presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, October 9, 2016. Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Images

MundoAmérica,

Hands down, the nearly two-week span between the first two presidential debates culminated in probably the most disturbing and extraordinary weekend in all of presidential campaign history. What set it all off was the release Friday afternoon, October 7, via The Washington Post, of a tape, mainly audio, of the Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States bragging about how he sexually assaulted women. “You grab ’em by the pussy,” he said in the 2005 recording—talking into a hot mic while on a bus supplied by Access Hollywood that was taken him to the taping of a soap opera, in which he was to make a brief appearance.…  Seguir leyendo »

A sketch by truck driver Liu Renwang showing abuse he received in an extralegal detention center, 2014-2015

MundoAsia,

Every year in China, thousands of people suffer what the United Nations calls “arbitrary detention”: confinement in extra-legal facilities—including former government buildings, hotels, or mental hospitals—which are sometimes known as “black jails.” There is no formal arrest or presentation of charges, and access to lawyers is denied. Many of those detained in this way have criticized the government, complained about abuse, petitioned for remedies, or assisted others in seeking justice (rights lawyers have been especially vulnerable). Others are simply people whom authorities regard as “troublemakers” who might “disturb order” at politically sensitive times such as meetings of the National People’s Congress, anniversaries of the Tiananmen massacre, or last month’s G20 summit in Hangzhou.…  Seguir leyendo »

Bolivar Square after Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos cast his ballot there in the referendum on a peace accord, Bogotá, Colombia, October 2, 2016. Mario Tama/Getty Images

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

On Monday, September 26, President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri, alias Timochenko, leader of the Fuerzas Armadas de Colombia, or FARC, signed a peace accord in the photogenic coastal city of Cartagena. I was in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, that afternoon, packed into the central Plaza de Bolivar along with several thousand celebrants. Giant screens had been set up in public parks and squares, and in the Plaza de Bolivar three of Colombia’s top musical groups were announced as warmup acts to the peace-signing itself. It was a gorgeous afternoon, the best this Andean city can offer, with clear skies and a high breeze.…  Seguir leyendo »

Internees after the liberation by Allied forces of the Ferramonti camp, near Cosenza, Italy, September, 1943

ReflexionesSocial, ,

A Note to Readers: In response to many queries and comments, we want to make it clear that the two-part investigation of Elena Ferrante by Claudio Gatti was undertaken on behalf of Mr. Gatti’s Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. After the Il Sole investigation was completed and definitely scheduled to appear on October 2 in Il Sole as well as in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and on the French website Mediapart, an English version of both articles was offered to the NYR Daily for publication on the same day. We regret any confusion about the origins of the Il Sole investigation and publication.…  Seguir leyendo »

Seven years after the start of the revolution, rebel army leader Camilo Cienfuegos, center, and his fellow “barbudos” approaching Havana, 1959. Lee Lockwood/Taschen.

MundoAmérica,

The twentieth century yielded few moments of political euphoria as heady as Fidel Castro’s triumph on January 1, 1959. Against all odds, Castro and his bearded band defeated a US-backed dictator in the name of post-colonial independence, economic equality, free education and health care. It was for some time an eminently salable story, and in certain quarters still is. Schoolboys in Cuba relive the myth every New Year’s. Dressed as revolutionary barbudos (“bearded ones”), they parade in green fatigues and brandish toy guns to re-enact, with wild, fierce glee, a victory that took place long before their parents were born.

Those who aren’t Cuban schoolboys will be grateful for Castro’s Cuba, a compilation of photographs and text from 1959 to 1969 by the late Lee Lockwood, a US photojournalist who specialized in Communist regimes.…  Seguir leyendo »

Charro Days Festival, Brownsville, Texas, 1997

ReflexionesSocial

In early September, the novelist Lionel Shriver gave a speech at the Brisbane Writers Festival in which she expressed her hope that identity politics and the concept of cultural appropriation would turn out to be passing fads. During her lecture, several audience members walked out in protest, and the text of her address has sparked a controversy that has spread across the Internet and the British and American press. It has stoked a debate already raging on college campuses, in the literary world, in the fashion and music industries, on city streets, and in other areas of our social and political lives.…  Seguir leyendo »

Valley of the Tombs, Palmyra

MundoOriente Próximo,

In September 2015, the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles acquired the first photographs ever taken of Palmyra, the great trading oasis in the heart of the Syrian desert. Louis Vignes was a young lieutenant in the French navy whose interest in photography earned him a place on a scientific expedition to the Dead Sea region in 1863. The twenty-nine photographs he made of Palmyra during his visit in 1864 (including two panoramic shots) were finally printed in Paris by the pioneering photographer Charles Nègre (who had taught Vignes) between 1865 and 1867.

With a history that extends back nearly four thousand years, Palmyra has risen and fallen many times.…  Seguir leyendo »

Hillary Clinton, Detroit, Michigan, March 6, 2016. Carlos Barria/Reuters

MundoAmérica,

Historians are going to have a hard time with this election, featuring as it does two candidates each of whom presents unprecedented and unique qualities: the first woman presidential nominee in a society that hasn’t yet quite come to terms with the idea of a female president or even candidate, and a businessman out of reality television who knew next to nothing about governing or government policies and played on America’s dark side.

But while Donald Trump has garnered most of the attention—we keep wondering what outlandish thing he’ll say next—the story of Hillary Clinton may well in the long run be the more interesting.…  Seguir leyendo »

Abner Dean: I can cure you (detail), from Dean’s What Am I Doing Here?, which will be published in a new edition by New York Review Comics on October 11

EuropaUnión Europea,

Is there a continuity of behavior between the stories we tell and the way we live? And if there is, does it hold at the level of the community, as well as at the level of the individual? Might we hazard the hypothesis that fiction and real behavior are mutually supporting and reinforcing?

Take the case of Italy. It’s generally agreed that one of the most distinctive features of Italian public life is factionalism, in all its various manifestations: regionalism, familism, corporativism, campanilism, or simply groups of friends who remain in close contact from infancy through to old age, often marrying, separating and remarrying among each other.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ramat Shlomo, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, 2009. Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos.

MundoAméricaMundoOriente Próximo,

Barack Obama entered the White House more deeply informed about and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than any incoming president before him. He had attended and spoken at numerous events organized by the Arab-American and Palestinian-American communities, in which he had numerous contacts, and he had repeatedly criticized American policy, calling for a more even-handed approach toward Israel. Yet if there has been a distinguishing feature of Obama’s record on Israel-Palestine, it is that, unlike his recent predecessors, he has not a single achievement to his name. In the view of some top advisers, Obama’s final months in power are a unique opportunity to correct the record, and, more important, score an achievement that his successors could scarcely undo.…  Seguir leyendo »

The People in Retreat An Interview with Ai Xiaoming

MundoAsia

Ai Xiaoming is one of China’s leading documentary filmmakers and political activists. Since 2004, she has made more than two dozen films, many of them long, gritty documentaries that detail citizen activism or uncover whitewashed historical events. Among them are Taishi Village, which recounts the efforts of farmers to remove a corrupt party secretary; The Epic of the Central Plains, which tells the story of an AIDS village in Henan province; a five-part series on the 2008 Beichuan Earthquake that focuses on the efforts of activist Tan Zuoren; and, most recently, a five-part documentary on Jiabiangou—a labor camp for political prisoners where thousands died of famine in the Great Leap Forward.…  Seguir leyendo »

Brian Snyder/ReutersHillary Clinton boarding her campaign plane, Tampa, Florida, September 6, 2016

MundoAmérica,

Despite the myth that the presidential campaign begins on Labor Day, this election might well turn out to have been decided in August. Though Hillary Clinton’s double-digit lead in the popular vote that prevailed in the first part of August shrank to three or four points at the end of the month, the narrowing had mainly to do with the inevitable evaporation of Clinton’s “convention bounce.” She still enjoys a strong lead in the Electoral College, and as of now it’s difficult to find a path for Donald Trump to win the needed 270 electoral votes in November. An in-depth survey of all fifty states by The Washington Post and SurveyMonkey published this week found that Clinton has “a big electoral college advantage,” though Trump “is within striking distance in the Upper Midwest.”…  Seguir leyendo »

Supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, July 18, 2016. Kursat Bayhan/Getty Images

Europa,

Since a group of senior military officers, backed by thousands of armed soldiers, came close to toppling him on the night of July 15, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought comfort in the bosom of his angry, exhilarated people. The country has spent the past three weeks in a state of collective hyperventilation. The combination of nationalism and religiosity is like nothing I have seen in twenty years of following Turkish politics, and it is supposed to climax in a huge, government-sponsored “democracy vigil” in Istanbul on August 7.

The country’s public spaces have been the scene of countless such vigils, involving hundreds of thousands of Turks waving the star and crescent and vowing to prevent further treachery, while the Turkish media lionizes the heroes of the “resistance” of July 15.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaMundoAsiaEuropa, , , , ,

Every Olympics seems to bring with it a doping scandal, and the Rio games are no different. Well before Friday’s opening ceremonies, state-sponsored doping in Russia, widespread doping on the Chinese swim team, and questions about a Rio drug-testing lab have renewed worries about whether a “clean” Olympics will ever be possible.

It might be tempting to throw up one’s hands and see these revelations as nothing more than the latest in a series of sordid stories about athletes seeking an edge. After all, pro sports from cycling to baseball are rife with similar tales of performance-enhancing substances. But the recent Olympic doping scandals are symptomatic of something more significant: the return of semi-rogue countries determined to bypass international norms and conventions in a systematic way not seen since the cold war.…  Seguir leyendo »

Chinese protesters outside the US Consulate in Hong Kong, following an international court ruling against China’s claims to the South China Sea, Hong Kong, China, July 14, 2016. Bobby Yip/Reuters.

MundoAsia, ,

It has long been routine to find in both China’s official news organizations and its social media a barrage of anti-American comment, but rarely has it reached quite the intensity and fury of the last few days. There have been calls from citizens on the country’s social media platforms to boycott KFC, Starbucks, and the iPhone 7, accusations against the US of waging a new “war” against China, and threats that the Philippines, a close US ally, will be turned into a Chinese province. All of this is in response to the July 12 ruling against China by the Law of the Sea Tribunal in the Hague, which found Beijing to be engaging in a host of illegal actions and violations of international law as it has pressed its territorial claims in the South China Sea.…  Seguir leyendo »

Far-right leader Jörg Haider paying tribute to Austrian Nazi veterans, Ulrichsberg, Austria, October 1, 2000. Patrick Zachmann/Magnum Photos.

Europa

Could Austria become the first Western European country since World War II to have a far-right president? Amid the shock over the Brexit vote, few have noted the extraordinary sequence of events that have played out in this wealthy social democracy. On May 22, Norbert Hofer of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party lost the race for the Austrian presidency by around 31,000 votes to Alexander Van der Bellen of the Green Party. On June 8, the Freedom Party contested that result, alleging several irregularities, among them the premature opening of mail ballots and the release of election data to the media too early.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalTerrorismo InternacionalEuropaUnión Europea, ,

Among the many questions raised by last week’s terrorist attack in Nice, one of the most crucial is how it might affect the coming presidential election. A chilling, early answer was provided by Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front, in a seventeen-minute speech to the media on July 16. Excoriating the French government, which is already using state-of-emergency powers, for inaction, and calling for a sweeping new security apparatus to eradicate “Islamic fundamentalism,” the statement was a sign that French politics has shifted toward militarism, xenophobia, and the all-powerful state—toward fascism.

Of the four national figures who are serious contenders for the presidency when the French go to the polls next April, Le Pen is the only one who cannot be blamed for any administrative shortcomings that may have contributed to the jihadist attacks that have killed some 250 innocents since the beginning of 2015.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalTerrorismo InternacionalEuropaUnión Europea,

Mass murder has again been visited upon France and shaken the world. Again ISIS has claimed credit, though this time the link to the group seems confusingly ambiguous, feeding new fears in the West about random violence by alienated or radicalized Muslims anywhere. It raises the urgent questions: What does the attack tell us about the changing face of jihadist violence today? And how might our own response, in turn, be contributing to it?

The local driver of the truck that mowed down at least eighty-four people, including ten children, and wounded more than two hundred, on the Nice waterfront Thursday was a Tunisian citizen residing in France.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalTerrorismo Internacional

Just when Muslims around the world thought that ISIS was in retreat and that it was safe to celebrate the end of Ramadan, the group has struck back with a devastating series of bombings in four Muslim countries. Claiming more than three hundred lives, most of them Muslim, during the final days of the month-long fast, the attacks in Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia have created pandemonium.

But they also raise new questions about the ability of the jihadist group to execute lethal terrorist attacks, even as its power appears to be waning in Iraq and Syria. Since the early months of this year, ISIS has suffered a series of defeats, from the Assad regime’s recapture of Palmyra at the end of March to the Kurdish PYD’s reconquest of the Manbij area of northern Syria in early June and Iraqi forces’ retaking of Fallujah on June 22.…  Seguir leyendo »