"The men, who were arrested, said that they did not know each other beforehand and had merely happened to be defacing the painting at the same time."

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/05/the-south-african-presidents-spear.html

"In the coming days we will discuss the implications of Mr bin Laden’s death and how it will or will not affect American foreign policy, relations with Pakistan and the increasingly violent Arab spring. There will be a time to think about the nuance and complexity of this event, but for most Americans now is not it. In these early morning hours the country is basking in a moment of unadulterated celebration."

From “The leader of al-Qaeda is dead,” by R.M.

The key sentence is the first.

"After that, after I stole that book and read it, I went from being a prudent reader to being a voracious reader and from being a book thief to being a book hijacker. I wanted to read everything, which in my innocence was the same as wanting to uncover or trying to uncover the hidden workings of chance that had induced Camus’s character to accept his hideous fate. Despite what might have been predicted, my career as a book hijacker was long and fruitful, but one day I was caught. Luckily, it wasn’t at the Glass Bookstore but at the Cellar Bookstore, which is—or was—across from the Alameda, on Avenida Juárez, and which, as its name indicates, was a big cellar where the latest books from Buenos Aires and Barcelona sat piled in gleaming stacks. My arrest was ignominious. It was as if the bookstore samurais had put a price on my head. They threatened to have me thrown out of the country, to give me a beating in the cellar of the Cellar Bookstore, which to me sounded like a discussion among neo-philosophers about the destruction of destruction, and in the end, after lengthy deliberations, they let me go, though not before confiscating all the books I had on me, among them “The Fall,” none of which I’d stolen there."

From “Who Would Dare?” by Roberto Bolaño.

"

Never has postwar Japan needed strong, assertive leadership more — and never has its weak, rudderless system of governing been so clearly exposed or mattered so much.

Japan faces its biggest challenge since World War II, after an earthquake, a tsunami and a deepening nuclear crisis struck in rapid, bewildering succession. The disasters require nationwide mobilization for search, rescue and resettlement, and a scramble for jury-rigged solutions in uncharted nuclear territory, with crises at multiple reactors posing a daunting array of problems. Japan’s leaders need to draw on skills they are woefully untrained for: improvisation; clear, timely and reassuring public communication; and cooperation with multiple powerful bureaucracies.

"

From “Flaws in Japan’s Leadership Deepen Sense of Crisis,” by Ken Belson and Normitsu Onishi.

“Scenes from the Suburbs” trailer (via).

(Via.)

The Strokes return…

"

‘You build an army of women,’ (Eve Ensler) said. ‘And when you have enough women in power, they take over the government and they make different decisions. You’ll see. They’ll say “Uh-uh, we’re not taking this any longer,” and they’ll put an end to this rape problem fast.’

Over the weekend, Ms. Ensler took the first step toward building this army: the opening of a base here in Bukavu called City of Joy.

The gleaming new compound of brick homes, big classrooms, courtyards and verandas will be a campus where small groups of Congolese women, most of them rape victims, will be groomed to become leaders in their communities so they can eventually rise up and, Ms. Ensler hopes, change the sclerotic politics of this country. They will take courses in self-defense, computers and human rights; learn trades and farming; try to exorcise their traumas with therapy sessions and dance; and then return to their home villages to empower others.

"

From “Fighting Congo’s Ills With Education and an Army of Women,” by Jeffrey Gettleman.

"

Perhaps the most revealing window into America’s media-fed isolation from this crisis — small an example as it may seem — is the default assumption that the Egyptian uprising, like every other paroxysm in the region since the Green Revolution in Iran 18 months ago, must be powered by the twin American-born phenomena of Twitter and Facebook. Television news — at once threatened by the power of the Internet and fearful of appearing unhip — can’t get enough of this cliché.

Three days after riot police first used tear gas and water hoses to chase away crowds in Tahrir Square, CNN’s new prime-time headliner, Piers Morgan, declared that ‘the use of social media’ was ‘the most fascinating aspect of this whole revolution.’ On MSNBC that same night, Lawrence O’Donnell interviewed a teacher who had spent a year at the American school in Cairo. ‘They are all on Facebook,’ she said of her former fifth-grade students. The fact that a sampling of fifth graders in the American school might be unrepresentative of, and wholly irrelevant to, the events unfolding in the streets of Cairo never entered the equation.

The social networking hype eventually had to subside for a simple reason: The Egyptian government pulled the plug on its four main Internet providers and yet the revolution only got stronger. ‘Let’s get a reality check here,’ said Jim Clancy, a CNN International anchor, who broke through the bloviation on Jan. 29 by noting that the biggest demonstrations to date occurred on a day when the Internet was down. ‘There wasn’t any Twitter. There wasn’t any Facebook,’ he said. No less exasperated was another knowledgeable on-the-scene journalist, Richard Engel, who set the record straight on MSNBC in a satellite hook-up with Rachel Maddow. ‘This didn’t have anything to do with Twitter and Facebook,’ he said. ‘This had to do with people’s dignity, people’s pride. People are not able to feed their families.’

"

From Frank Rich’s column, “Wallflowers at the Revolution.”

"In a new book, ‘The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom,’ Evgeny Morozov scrutinizes plenty of evidence and concludes that the Web can, and does, indeed help dictators in a variety of ways… We like to think that information sets us free, and that access to the Internet can lead those oppressed by authoritarians into the light of democracy. But the Internet is not a one-way street, and dictatorial regimes are quite technologically savvy. Countries like Egypt may block the Internet at times, but they can take advantage of it, too, using it not just to help track down dissidents but also to dispense propaganda. Morozov goes beyond Gladwell. It’s not just that the revolution will not be tweeted. The Internet, he argues, may prevent the revolution from getting off the ground."

From “Tangled Web,” Torie Bosch’s review of Morozov’s new book.

"As I turned the very last page, I remembered that Slawenski had mentioned earlier a typical response to enlightenment on the part of Salinger’s characters: “a satisfied, peaceful sleep.” If sleep is what you need, then I’ve got the book for you; enlightenment is another matter."

From Blake Bailey’s entertaining review of Kenneth Slawenski’s “J.D. Salinger: A Life.”

“Chinatown” by Destroyer, who play Lee’s Palace in March. High expectations for the new album out tomorrow.

"McGonigal is very smart about what makes a good game tick, both online and off, but she underemphasizes the importance of escapism. Part of the joy of playing tennis is that you are not trying to do good or save the world. You are trying to hit the ball as hard as you can. Likewise for Halo and its bretheren. Games are an escape hatch. If the game is getting better at your job, is that still really a game? Or think of all the people who turn a beloved hobby into a profession, only to watch as their enthusiasm fades. It’s fun to play golf; not as fun to be a golf pro."

From “How Video Games Can Make Us Heroes,” by Michael Agger, a review of Jane McGonigal’s “Reality is Broken.”

"The uncertainty about what is causing the strange winters highlights a core difficulty of climate science. While mainstream researchers are sure that greenhouse gases released by humans are warming the Earth, they acknowledge being on shakier ground in trying to predict the regional effects of that change. It is entirely possible, they say, that some regions will cool temporarily, because of disruption of the atmospheric and oceanic circulation, even as the Earth warms overall."

From “Topsy-Turvy Weather: U.S. Is Frigid, Arctic Balmy,” by Justin Gillis.

"A family sat at a table eating lunch and conversing in advertising slogans. It seemed to be a family joke.
‘My!’ the mother exclaimed. ‘Taste those bite-sized chunks of white Idaho turkey meat, reinforced with riboflavin, for added zest.’
‘I like the crispy, crunchy potato chips,’ the boy said. ‘Toasted to a golden brown in health-giving infrared ovens and topped with imported salt.’
‘I like the spotless rest rooms,’ said the girl, ‘operated under the supervision of a trained nurse and hygienically sealed for our comfort, convenience and peace of mind.’
‘Winstons taste good,’ piped the baby in his high chair, ‘like a cigarette should. Winstons have flavor.’"

From John Cheever’s “The Wapshot Scandal.”