By Susan C. Pearce, January 28th, 2013 
On a steamy July evening in 2012, I arrived at the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo for an independently organized event entitled “Culture Shutdown.” While this museum’s name leads one to anticipate a place of grand stature to chronicle Sarajevo’s and Bosnia’s position in world history—from the outbreak of World War I to the city siege at the epicenter of the 1990s Bosnian war—what one finds is a crumbling façade juxtaposed next to a gleaming shopping center. The museum building itself is intentionally its own exhibit, left with its battle scars from nearly 20 years prior.
I happened on this event somewhat accidentally, while conducting research on a different subject. It was collaboratively organized by young professionals who work in the arts, including Dr. Azra Akšamija, Assistant Professor in Art, Culture and Technology at M.I.T., originally from Bosnia-Herzegovina. Joining her were members of the New York-based artist and on-line magazine collective, Triple Canopy, one of whom, Molly Kleiman, had lived and worked in Sarajevo.
Too hot to meet inside, the group garnered folding chairs and convened in a small circle under the trees. Having grown up in a country with no ministry of culture, where the arts are under assault whenever fiscal resources are tight (the United States), I was accustomed to the ongoing struggle for support for the arts and museums. But my country’s problems dimmed in comparison to what unfolded in this meeting: in a matter of weeks or months, seven of Bosnia’s top national cultural institutions were likely to close their doors.
As we talked, the stakes involved became clearer. This means major works of art with no storage oversight to protect them from summer heat or winter cold. It means national archeological treasures locked away with no guards to keep thieves and vandals at bay. It means no exhibits or cultural events for public education or tourism. It means the deterioration of shelves and shelves of books. It means buildings left to crumble. And it means . . .
Read more: Culture Shutdown? A Plea for Museums, Galleries, and Libraries in Bosnia and Herzegovina
By Tomasz Kitlinski, January 16th, 2013 
12. In the sixteenth century, Lublin was a hub of anti-war and anti-feudal religious group Socinians who – exiled to Transylvania and the Netherlands – influenced the political philosophy of John Locke. In the Renaissance, this city attracted dissenters; in modernism: the avant-garde; and in the 1970s and 80s: conceptual artists and alternative theatre. Today it boasts young artists: Robert Kusmirowski (featured in the recent Liverpool Biennial), Urszula Pieregonczuk (who queers Dostoevsky and war history) Mariusz Tarkawian (whose drawings will be on show at the Glasgow School of Art Mackintosh Museum in January: ) and Piotr Brozek who has authored the FB profile of a Jewish child murdered in the Holocaust, Henio Zytomirski. Brozek updated the profile with newsfeeds in the first-person, using the present tense. Invitations to add Henio as a friend read: “I would like to tell you the story of one life.” Internet users befriended Henio, and sent him messages, comments and even gifts. Mariusz Tarkawian drew a monumental panorama of bloodshed throughout human history in Lublin’s Biala Gallery. The Holocaust was presented, as was the Armenian genocide (the artist’s ancestors were Armenian, who had for centuries been living in Poland). Tarkawian also graffitied a house with the lyrics to a Yiddish song in order to commemorate Jewish Lublin. Such artistic-social initiatives are necessary in Poland, where mourning for the victims of the Holocaust is lacking. Unmourned millions, unmourned life.
13. In a book Jewish Lublin: A Cultural Monograph, published by the Grodzka City Gate Centre-NN Theatre and the Centre for Jewish Studies, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, the Jewish Mexican sociologist Adina Cimet writes, “What had been home became hell and much was severed: lives, culture, faith, hope, and humanity. The Majdanek extermination camp, just a bus ride away from the city, remains one of the tombstones of that destruction.”
Author of educational projects at the YIVO Institute for Jewish . . .
Read more: 21 Notes on Poland’s Culture Wars, Part 2 (12-21)
By Tomasz Kitlinski, January 15th, 2013 
Grassroots Political, Intellectual and Art Activism versus Censorship, Soccer Hooliganism and Far-Right Threats in the City of Lublin
1. Art representing Roma, gays and Jews has been banned and destroyed in Lublin, Poland, twice host to Transeuropa Festival. Stop Toleration for Toleration, a far-right soccer hooligan march, with hate speech chants, has lashed back against the social-artistic campaign Lublin for All, led by Szymon Pietrasiewicz. The campaign included bus tickets with the images of national and sexual minorities who have shaped this city for centuries as a hub of Jewish, Romany, Protestant and queer cultures. City Hall, under pressure from the soccer hooligans, censored and shredded this art. As the municipal authorities have caved in to the extreme right, Lublin — it appears — is not welcoming at all.
The destruction of art crushes the human geography of Lublin: this is a blow to the heritage of this intercultural city and to the current art activism working to make Lublin hospitable.
We need to reclaim Lublin from the far-right soccer hooligans. That’s why the ground breaking Holocaust scholars Jan T. Gross and Irena Grudzinska-Gross of Princeton, Poland’s leading feminist Kazimiera Szczuka, and this country’s only out gay MP Robert Biedron have all signed an open letter “Let’s not give Lublin up to intolerance, aggression and social exclusion,” authored by Agnieszka Zietek, a political activist and lecturer at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin.
2. “Lublin free of fags!” “Run Pietrasiewicz out of Lublin!” “F … Gazeta Wyborcza [Poland’s progressive newspaper]!” “A boy and a girl are a normal family!” “Lublin, a city without deviations!” These were the chants of the soccer hooligan marchers. As editor-in-chief of the local branch of the Gazeta Wyborcza broadsheet Malgorzata Bielecka-Holda writes, the catcalls were received with sympathy by City Hall. This is just one element of the rise of the far right in Lublin. Other ominous developments: the mobilization of the National Radical Camp (ONR) and the hosting . . .
Read more: 21 Notes on Poland’s Culture Wars, Part 1 (1- 11)
By Andrea Hajek, January 14th, 2013 
In a previous article I argued that Italy is witnessing a sort of end of ideology: Prime Minister Mario Monti’s technical government responds to the economic market alone, while Beppe Grillo’s a-political grassroots movement is winning over disappointed voters. But with the elections in sight, the old political guard is warming up, eager to regain control over the country. Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has governed the country on and off since 1994, is first in line: after months of tactical holding off, the Cavaliere – as Berlusconi is also called – decided to get back into the game as it became clear that Monti might run for the elections. For some weeks now he has been appearing on every single political and current affairs show on Italian television, primarily on his own TV channels but also on the more critical, independent La7, where he engaged in a highly media hyped duel with a critical journalist Berlusconi managed to have removed from state television back in 2002. On another talk-show, old times again revived as Berlusconi took it out on magistrates who ordered the former PM to pay €36 million ($48 million) a year in a divorce settlement with this ex-wife Veronica Lario: they were accused of being Communists and now also feminists.
The sense of history repeating itself was reflected in a satirical cartoon, where we see Berlusconi’s face on TV as he yells “Happy 1994!” to a terror-stricken viewer. Unless Monti’s newly found political list, “Civic choice,” can put a stop to it. Positioned neither to the left nor to the right, Monti seems to want to do away with traditional polarities in politics for good and give continuity to his technical government, with no one to respond to but the European Union. In fact, when criticized for the rigorous measures taken in order to bring down the government bond spreads, i.e. the spread between Italian benchmark 10 year bonds and safer German Bunds, Monti inflexibly shifted responsibility to bad management by previous governments. In the name of rigor and . . .
Read more: Mario Monti’s Midway: A Civic Choice in the Italian Elections?
By Lukasz Pawlowski, January 10th, 2013 
The American president has signed the bill drafted by Democratic and Republican leaders, which allows the United States to avoid “fiscal cliff.” The solution adopted by the Congress does not, however, solve the problem, but only touches some of its elements and postpones dealing with the others for a few weeks. So who won in this dramatic battle, fought late into the first night of the New Year? Choosing the winner depends on one’s point of view, but no matter the viewpoint we take, one thing seems to be certain – the national interest has lost.
Regardless of who we consider to be the main wrongdoer, it is difficult to identify a clear winner. Obama’s spin doctors are striving to present the agreement as a triumph of the administration, since it succeeded in making many Republicans vote in favor of tax increase for the first time in 20 years. For the richest Americans, with annual revenues of more than $ 400,000, the tax rate will rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, i.e. to the rates existing under Bill Clinton before George Bush’s cuts. The problem is that President Obama wanted to set up a new tax threshold at $ 250,000 of annual income. That’s a significant difference. The White House hoped the tax increase would bring $ 1.5 trillion over the next decade, but according to the current arrangements the federal government will receive a modest 600 billion. Given the scale of the U.S. debt, it’s not much, and what’s more, this money will only contribute to the U.S. budget, if all the citizens who should pay more actually do. But will they?
The main problem with taxing the rich is that while these are the people who have the most money to share, they also have the most money to find ways to avoid sharing. When a few months ago Mitt Romney (remember him?) revealed his 2011 tax return, it turned out he paid tax rate of 14 percent instead of 35 percent or, to put it in dollars, 1.9 million instead of 4.8 million. If every American . . .
Read more: The Fiscal Cliff: American Follies Seen from Abroad
By Clifton Truman Daniel, January 9th, 2013 
This past August, my wife and two sons and I traveled to Japan for the annual ceremonies honoring those who died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were the first members of the Truman family to do so. On our first full day in Tokyo, I sat down for an interview with Nana Yamada, the Nagasaki reporter for NHK, the country’s largest television network. Her third question was, “Are you here to apologize?” When I said no, she followed up with, “Then why are you here?”
Someone was going to ask that question – or something like it – but I had not expected it so soon or so bluntly. In the months leading up to the trip, my hosts, Masahiro Sasaki and his son, Yuji, reported that buzz in the Japanese media was overwhelmingly positive. In July, reporters from two Japanese papers interviewed me at home in Chicago and turned in upbeat stories. At one point, our friend, guide and interpreter, Kazuko Minamoto, even suggested that we hire bodyguards, not to protect us from angry mobs, but to keep us from being mobbed by all those who would want to get close enough for a look.
I explained to Ms. Yamada that this was a mission of reconciliation. I had come, I said, to honor those who died and hear the testimony of those who lived. That did not satisfy her. She rephrased her question several times, digging for a different answer. It got to the point that Kazuko was on the edge of her chair, ready to intervene.
All through the six-hour train ride to Hiroshima that afternoon I wondered how badly I had misread the Japanese view of my visit and whether or not the whole thing had been a colossal mistake. Out of respect for the survivors and their countrymen, I would not defend the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but neither could I apologize for my grandfather or my country. After all, I have shaken the hands of dozens of WWII veterans . . .
Read more: A Mission of Reconciliation: Honoring the Victims of the Atomic Bomb
By Kenneth Mori McElwain, December 19th, 2012 
At the best of times, elections provide social catharsis. Voters are given the opportunity to replace an under performing government with one that promises a brighter future. In reality, though, elections are messy, relative contests. Voters are choosing not their ideal government, but rather the best of available options. In the recent House of Representatives elections (Dec 16, 2012), the Japanese electorate clearly demonstrated its disenchantment with the reigning Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), whose seat share collapsed from 48% to 12%. However, ex-DPJ supporters did not flock to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the eventual winner. Instead, they divided their ballots among a host of new or minor parties, or chose not to vote at all. As a result, the LDP dominated the election with 61% of the seats despite winning fewer absolute votes than they did in the last contest. The lopsided outcome was the product of voter disappointment with all parties, and the LDP won by default as the best of bad alternatives.
Explaining the Outcome: Disenchanted Voters
Voter disenchantment produced the LDP’s victory in two ways: declining partisanship and a collapse in voter turnout. While Japanese voters have traditionally been less partisan than in the United States or Western Europe, the ranks of “independents” have been growing since the mid-1990s. According to monthly opinion polls by the Jiji Tsushin, a Japanese wire service, close to 70% of the population declared no partisan affiliation leading up to the 2012 contest. This ratio has been increasing steadily since the last election in September 2009, suggesting that disaffection with the ruling DPJ was not translating into support for an LDP government. With so many undecided voters, twelve political parties and over 1500 candidates competed in the election. One prominent new entry was the Japan Restoration Party (JRP), led by Toru Hashimoto, the charismatic mayor of Osaka, and Shintaro Ishihara, the nationalistic governor of Tokyo. The JRP had formed in September 2012 under the banner of stronger regional governments and constitutional reform. Independent voters who rejected the status quo choice between the . . .
Read more: Japan’s Disappointment Election
By Andrea Hajek, December 11th, 2012 
Forty three years ago, on 12 December, 1969, a bomb exploded in a crowded bank in Piazza Fontana, Milan, killing seventeen and wounding eighty eight. This bomb was the first in a series of terrorist massacres performed as part of the so-called “strategy of tension,” a political climate of terror orchestrated by a variety of right-wing organizations which aimed at promoting “a turn to an authoritarian type of government.” (see Anna Cento Bull’s study on Italian Neofascism) Other major bomb massacres followed: in 1974, during an anti-fascist demonstration in the Northern city of Brescia and on a train traveling from Florence to Bologna. Bologna was also the stage of another dramatic massacre, when a bomb exploded in the waiting room of the central railway station, on 2 August 1980: eighty-five people died (including a three-year old girl), two hundred were wounded.
Needless to say, the 1970s have a bad reputation, in Italy. Notwithstanding the fact that two neo-fascist terrorists were sentenced for the Bologna massacre, there are still too many unresolved issues and (state) secrets for Italians to make amends with this difficult past. In fact, the so-called “years of lead” are known mostly for the large number of terrorist attacks carried out by both left-wing and right-wing terrorists, as well as other forms of “subversive” violence. These have given shape to a “collective trauma” which the country has failed to come to terms with, in spite of official monuments and annual commemorative rituals that really only contribute to the silencing of memories.
The lack of a commonly shared, official memory of these events might explain why there are so many cultural products that take on the issue of 1970s political violence. A number of movies produced since 2000, for example, have tried to narrate the story of the 1970s, in different ways and with different purposes.
Recently, acclaimed filmmaker Marco Tullio Giordana has attempted to visualize the traumatic memory of the Piazza Fontana . . .
Read more: The Phantom of Subversive Violence in Italy
By David Janes, December 5th, 2012 
Recent struggles in Northeast Asia between Japan and its neighbors South Korea and China illustrate well Robin Wagner-Pacifici’s notion of the “restlessness of events.” Current territorial disputes over the Senkaku/Daiyoutai and Takeshima/Dokdo islands, as well as the uproar over the collective memory of World War II tragedies, such as the recent flare up of debate regarding Korean sex slaves, suggest that the notion that the end date of the Pacific War was 1945 may not be accurate. In some ways, the event, the world war, is continuing, and, in recent months, it’s escalating.
Governments in Northeast Asia are engaged in the escalation, but also in attempting to diplomatically calm the ongoing conflicts. Non-governmental groups also are involved, with some egging on confrontation and others trying to settle it, and still more attempting to highlight larger long-term interests over present-day concerns. My specific interest is with those non-governmental efforts that are attempting to foster peaceful coexistence, to put a final end to the great event, WWII. Through this posting, I hope to initiate a dialogue here on Deliberately Considered about the role that civil society can play in reconciliation, or at least in de-escalating tensions.
At the “end” of the Pacific War, non-governmental groups played a significant role in transforming the people of the United States and Japan from enemies to friends through carefully crafted and well-funded educational and cultural exchange programs, funded by private philanthropies such as The Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Henry Luce Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The JDR III Fund, The Asia Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Religious organizations played a role as well. All Souls Church in Washington, DC, for example, developed a program to send art supplies to elementary school children in Hiroshima as a method for achieving reconciliation. A film titled Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard has just been completed that focuses on this story. In addition, Christians in both the US and Japan raised funds to develop what today is Japan’s leading . . .
Read more: Putting World War II to “Rest?” Opening a Dialogue about Northeast Asia
By James M. Jasper, November 29th, 2012 
At a Sixteenth Arrondissement party soon after I arrived in Paris in late 1984, I was cornered by a tipsy Frenchman who repeatedly exclaimed–in a tone more resigned than angry–“You’ve won! You’ve won.” This was all he would say, elaborations and explanations apparently being unnecessary.
Once I began to look for them, signs of American triumph were everywhere: Carl Lewis’s Olympics a few months before, Reagan’s enthusiastic re-election a few weeks before, and a sense that personal computers coming from garages in Silicon Valley would displace the tiny Minitel terminals linked to a central network for which the French had instead opted (a prescient model, but ten years before the internet could have made real use of them). After several months in Paris, I realized this handwringing was a daily theme in the Parisian press: the United States had won the economic game.
The idea was everywhere: the news detailed France’s economic crisis and America’s ascendency; top journalists and other members of the intelligentsia analyzed how France had gotten into its sad state; academics wrote books setting the crisis in world-historical context; politicians spun grandiose plans for pulling France out of its malaise. But no one took the schemes of the politicians seriously: the crisis, everyone knew, was there to stay. Thus Le Monde‘s annual report on the economic state of the world in early 1985 had on its cover a tiny boat, its sail in disarray, about to drop from the crest of a wave, and a large ocean liner placidly moving along in the distance. The dinghy flew several European flags, the steamer those of Japan and the United States.
It was not just France: the entire “old world” was implicated. It was just that: old, weary, perhaps exhausted. Many French, if it fit their current political rhetoric, were fond of pointing out that France had done better than most European countries. The French were happy that they were not the Germans, the Swiss, or even the Swedes who had beaten them this time. It was America, which is after all America, and Japan, that . . .
Read more: An American in Paris: Thinking about France, Taxes and the Good Life
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