Two days without turning on my computer. That was very relaxing. However, not having the computer on did not mean I was distanced from my newsfeed. Here are some interesting links:
And here is a result of the corporate student protests: academics are asked to provide “diversity statements” quantifying how many diverse consumer goods. . . sorry, people they have purchased for the organization.
A brilliant article on the Republican political field. It’s long but it’s very insightful and goes beyond the superficial “all them Trump supporters are stoopid.”
A Montreal blogger made a roundup of all Montreal murders in 2015. It was an eye-opening reading because it turns out that beneath the Montreal I know there is a city of gangs, drive-by shootings, organized crime, dismemberments, and God knows what else. Every place has a secret life of its own, and we should not forget that.
An English translation of the most popular article of the most valiant Russian journalist. Russia’s official ideology is infantilism, says the journalist.
And this piece is the comedic sensation of the week. I almost fell over with laughter when I first read it. UN delegates from Poland, Costa Rica and the UK visited the US and “were appalled by the lack of gender equality in America.” I wish they’d invited women from Saudi Arabia, Russia and Afghanistan to be appalled at the horrible life of women in the US, as well. That would have made the piece even punchier.
“There must be a consensus on how all of a country’s residents are expected to treat each other. A government that invites people of dramatically different ideas into the country without clear plans for developing such a consensus is cruelly betraying its residents. It’s also setting up the immigrants themselves as scapegoats whenever anything goes wrong, whether it involves them or not.” All true but does anybody have any examples of creating such a consensus without strictly punitive means and / or extreme propaganda (like in Israel)?
A tenured professor of Spanish is fired, and with good cause. Once again: people who say that tenure exists to prevent professors from being fired are degenerate idiots.
For those who still don’t know: this is how Russia’s mafia state functions. It’s the same state that Syriza and Marine Le Pen take funding from, the same state that Spain’s Podemos loves so much, the same state that Trump glorifies, and the same state that Bernie Sanders is convinced will give up its profits because of global warming.
In Russian. A brilliant example of why psychotherapy is difficult.
Why have we never heard of the great Fatema Mernissi?
How Montreal is sticking it to Vancouver. Hilarious! But also points to a very dangerous immigration-related precedent.
I had no idea such unhinged anti-Semitism even existed any longer: Jews are blamed for “the war on Christmas.” And they slaughter innocent babies, too.
People are so passionately rejecting the label of being anti-psychiatry as if there were anything wrong with it. I’m anti-psychiatry, so what? Weirdos.
Anti-Semitic attacks in wartime Montreal. Also, the story of a Jew who decked Montreal’s fascist leader.
Clarissa's Blog 
\ Also, the story of a Jew who decked Montreal’s fascist leader.
I want to read it, but the link doesn’t work. 😦
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It seems like the story has been deleted. That’s sad because it was a good one.
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I repost the links here since they are interesting and nobody will see them in the previous post:
Denmark wants to seize jewelry and cash from refugees
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/12/17/denmark-wants-to-seize-jewelry-from-refugees/
End of an Era: England Closes Its Last Deep-Pit Coal Mine
Closure heralds end of a centuries-old industry that helped build the British Empire
http://www.wsj.com/articles/pit-closure-marks-dying-embers-of-british-coal-industry-1449837861
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Denmark, Bernie Sanders’s favorite country, has always been very harsh towards immigrants, so I wouldn’t be surprised.
What is really shocking is that this seems to be the only way in which people at least somehow manage to verbalize the conflict between the welfare state and massive intake of refugees. And if something isn’t discussed openly, it will return in the ugly form of Freud’s “the repressed.”
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My diversity statement will be the following.
“I have for the last eight years taught almost exclusively diverse students. From 2007 to 2010 the vast majority of my students were Central Asians with only a few students of European ancestry. From 2011 to today almost all of my students have been Black Africans. I have undoubtedly taught more non-White students than any other applicants for your job so you have to give it to me.” 😎
Of course it doesn’t work that way. They aren’t looking for people with experience in teaching Asians and Africans. They are looking for people adhereing to an extremist left wing political correctness. They are okay with hiring white people who have never met any Black people as long as they adhere to this left wing ideology.
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“Of course it doesn’t work that way. They aren’t looking for people with experience in teaching Asians and Africans. They are looking for people adhereing to an extremist left wing political correctness. They are okay with hiring white people who have never met any Black people as long as they adhere to this left wing ideology.”
Oh, absolutely. There is somebody sitting at the HR office, ticking off boxes for each correct formula reproduced in the “diversity statement” verbatim. What your actual teaching experience is and how qualified you are is of no concern. It’s all about hitting the exact formulations the greatest number of times. It’s pathetic, that’s what it is.
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No. You should say: unfortunately, in my first job there was a lack of diversity, since the vast majority most of my students were South Asians. When I switched jobs, I taught an equally undiverse population of Black Africans. Between the two jobs, however, there is some diversity, thought most of my students still fall into those two categories.
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Hilarious. 🙂
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Since this is a multiple-topic “encyclopedia” post, you might want to take note of the fact that the USSR officially abolished itself exactly 24 years ago today, on December 26, 1991.
“The Nation” website has a article that (of course) wistfully regrets the end of the Soviet Union.
http://www.thenation.com/article/december-26-1991-the-soviet-union-dissolves/
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Diseased freaks. It was one of the greatest days in history, and these losers would not survive a month in the USSR whose death they bemoan.
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From the two interpretations of Russian politics I would choose mafia mentality over infantilism any day. While some significant part of the population is indeed infantile, I do not see a qualitative difference between Russia and many other countries in this respect. The mafia mentality is where the qualitative difference is indeed present. And mafia mentality strongly favors sociopaths over the infantile. Definitely for the leadership. The system and the ruling classes deeply believe in Homo homini lupus est, (apologies for the lack of cultural sensitivity towards the wolves… ) ignoring the fact that despite all the excesses there was some net progress of the social development of the humankind. They perceive the Western talk of freedom, democracy and humanist values to be 100% manipulative BS (and not 50% BS and 50% sincere even if sometimes misguided attempts to truly better itself, as I would estimate).
In this scheme of things, the annexation of Crimea is not so much a toddler’s temper tantrum, but a part of a game of chess, and a calculated risk rooted in the belief that the history is written by the winners. And that everybody can be bluffed into submission, because the West is weak and decadent and intolerant of conflict and anxiety. By the way, “total winning” is not even required. It is enough not to lose badly (as in being occupied and experiencing some analog of the forced denazification). Then you still get to write your own version of history, and teach it in your schools to the next generation. And you get to fight (or bluff) another day. Messianic authoritarian regimes can plan for longer than 4 years… and there is no contradiction – yes, they are thugs, but they are messianic thugs. Simply because (almost) everyone needs to believe that they are part of something bigger and better. Accepting that they are just thugs would be too depressing for them.
Actually, from the Russian viewpoint, the risks are minimal. How likely is it that Russia will be military defeated AND someone else will remain alive out there AND that they make forced denazification their first priority AND they have enough competent professionals (I mean social psychologists, not firing squads) to perform it successfully?
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Maybe there is a better word than infantilism to describe this but this perennial Russian complaint of “if Americans can, then why can’t we?” does smack of profound immaturity. That’s their main problem that keeps driving them into trouble. They can’t accept life outside of this inane competition. “If Americans are bombing Syria, why shouldn’t we?” is a serious argument to them and it’s delivered always in a sulky tone of a boy whose older brother is allowed to stay up later.
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It may be my personal peculiarity, but I am generally suspicious of branding unwillingness to accept status quo as “infantilism”. Some sort of a teenage protest is actually healthy. And the proper way of resolving the problems of a little boy in your example is growing up and actually staying up late… But understanding your teenager does not mean you have to bend backwards to accommodate teenager’s every whim…
And more thoughts along the mafia-state lines… Remember all those discussions at another forum in another life? 🙂 How it bothered me to no end when educated middle-class people engaged in political discussions using pseudo-sexual prison-style vocabulary? Describing the relationships between the countries in terms of who was forced into oral or anal sex by whom?
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I agree. It’s silly to contemptuously dismiss the domestic and international behavior of a country as powerful as Russia as merely “infantile.” Infants don’t successfully conquer other countries’ territories and then manage to fill international power vacuums like the one left by the U.S. in the Middle East.
So far — hate to say it, but it’s true — Putin is winning whatever chess game he’s playing with Europe and Obama.
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“I had no idea such unhinged anti-Semitism even existed any longer: Jews are blamed for “the war on Christmas.” And they slaughter innocent babies, too.”
Speak for yourself, and don’t attribute your own prejudices to others.
You may blame all Orthodox Christians for the calculated provocations of Putin et al, but I certainly don’t blame all Jews, or even all Israelis, for the calculated provocations of politicians like Sharon or Netanyahu.
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What on earth do Orthodox Christians have to do with Putin? Only 2% of people in Russia even practice the religion.
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I agree with the infantilism argument. I may have asked this before, but do you know of Dubravka Ugrešić?
A whole bunch of years ago I read a profile/interview with her and what I remember is part of her description of the nationalist hysteria in Croatia in the early 90s and how infantile it was.
The metaphor she used was that for the nationalists the nation was an infant, helpless and incapable of inflicting harm but surrounded by dangers.
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“Why have we never heard of the great Fatema Mernissi?”
Because she was going were feminism need to in order to stay relevant. Instead western feminists chickened out and turned down a road that led them to have nervous breakdowns about spectacularly meaningless trivia.
Her courage makes them look terrible by comparison (as it should).
Younger feminists from non-western backgrounds are caught in the diversity trap – multi-culturalism makes rebellion look like disloyalty to the group (the cardinal sin in most of the non-western world) and to avoid that discomfort they pretend the patriarchal cultures of their origin are just fine (or have been corrupted by western patriarchy).
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French mob trash Muslim prayer room, burn Koran on Christmas Day
…
Tensions had mounted in Ajaccio after two firefighters and a police officer were injured overnight in a low-income neighborhood of the city when they were “ambushed” by “several hooded youths,” authorities said.
On Friday afternoon around 150 people had gathered in front of the prefecture in a show of support for the police and firefighters, officials said in a statement.
But some in that crowd broke away and headed for the low-income housing estate where the violence took place the night before.
They shouted slogans in Corsican meaning “Arabs get out!” or “This is our home!” an AFP correspondent reported.
Nearby was the Muslim prayer room and a small group smashed the glass door and entered the place of worship, ransacking the room and partially burning books including copies of the Koran, said regional official Francois Lalanne.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4744751,00.html
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\ And this piece is the comedic sensation of the week. I almost fell over with laughter when I first read it. UN delegates from Poland, Costa Rica and the UK visited the US and “were appalled by the lack of gender equality in America.”
Saw another comedic sensation:
At a conference on Islamic unity, Iranian president makes a rare statement that it is ‘our greatest duty to correct the image of Islam in world public opinion’.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4744888,00.html
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I think it’s good that he’s asking Muslims to look at their contribution to this image of Islam, whether he means it or not.
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Nice article on the Star Wars movie.
http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/our-star-wars-holiday-special/
To criticize The Force Awakens for “recycling” the first three Star Wars movies—to complain that it’s “un-original” compared to that original work of genius—misses the point of the franchise so thoroughly and dramatically that this critical impulse seems more interesting to me than the movie itself.
The more interesting question is why we would expect otherwise? Why would anyone act surprised when the new Star Wars turns out to be precisely as predictable and coherent as the story of Christmas itself, or as nakedly designed to sell toys to children? No one complains that this year’s Christmas only re-packages and recycles the stories of Christmases past, and to pretend to be scandalized by how commercial Christmas is “getting” is, itself, a clichéd-to-death joke. The same is true of Star Wars. You can be cynical or you can enjoy it; you can turn your brain on or leave it off. But you can’t have it both ways. Star Wars is what it is, and you can participate, or not. But there’s nothing else it should be.
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It’s easy and fair to complain that the original trilogy had precisely one woman in it, and that she played sister, love interest, and mother all at once. This is how infantile (male) fantasies work, and Star Wars is nothing if not an infantile fantasy. Lucas liked to claim that he learned to think about myth from Joseph Campbell, but he only started saying that later, after he had decided to pretend that he had done something other than magnificently re-create Flash Gordon with better special effects.
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This is just all more grist for the “nothing’s new” mill. I remember seeing the original Star Wars about three times in different movie theaters (driving almost 30 miles at least once).
I realized it wasn’t great filmmaking, but it was a lot of fun and a lot of it seemed based on a single (great) idea: Futuristic technology that looks old and used. The opening shot of the underside of the giant space ship is one of the great visual things ever in movies (note my sophisticated cinemaphile lexicon).
But I thought it worked better as a stand alone, I never bothered to watch the second one and was dragged to the third by a friend in the 90s (and was mostly unimpressed).
Oddly, I watched a two or three hour deconstruction of what made the Phantom Menace so horrible on youtube but was never tempted to watch the movie itself just as I have no plans to watch the current one.
I sometimes wonder what went so wrong with the whole franchise and all of American popular culture that all it can do is churn out remakes and reboots of spent cultural forces…
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