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BLÄTTER FÜR DEUTSCHE UND INTERNATIONALE POLITIK 7/2013
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It is primarily the generation born after 1990 that has defined the protests in Taksim square, declares Turkish historian and journalist Dilek Zaptcioglu in "Blätter": "As such, the young urban, well educated but reputedly apolitical generation of under-thirties for the first time actively articulated their understanding of freedom and direct democracy. They connected with a diffuse democratic, global anti-capitalist movement. Their central concern is distilled in the slogan 'What I believe, the language I speak, what I eat and drink, who I love and vote for is none of your business!'"

This decidedly open and pluralistic crowd, explains Zaptcioglu, "can get along just as well with Kurds and veiled girls as with the peaceful demonstrators of the Right." Which is remarkable in a society so clearly divided according to different "ways of life": "It seems to many today all the more important to find a third way between the fronts. For there are those who sympathize with the liberal-democratic canon of values on both, the Islamic and the Kemalist, sides. Dividing the world along religious lines obscures more than it explains. The Gezi park protests have shown that there is a new way. And that means, regardless of how the demonstrations will end, this is a turning point in Turkish history – and a great ray of hope."

Systemic transformation: The situation in Iran is different, but not entirely. Katajun Amirpur points to reasons for the failure of the green revolution in 2009: an army that took violent action against its own people, the banning of foreign journalists and the firm rejection of western interference. And there is a fourth, probably decisive reason: "The Iranians already had a revolution 34 years ago and it did no good whatsoever. There are therefore many parents who advise their children: 'It's not worth risking your life for!'"

It remains to be seen if the supposedly moderate conservative future president Hassan Rohani will really change anything for the better. But, given that most young people "consider a secular state to be compatible with Islam", writes Amirpur, there is hope for an "internal, systemic transformation".

The full table of contents of Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 7/2013
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/blatter/issue/2013-07-01.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2013-07-02-zaptcioglu-de.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/zaptcioglu.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/amirpur.html>

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MAGYAR LETTRE INTERNATIONALE 88 (2013)
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Sergio Benvenuto hopes that history proves him wrong. But in the wake of Italy's experience of a "technical" government under Mario Monti, Benvenuto is convinced that democracy has failed: "Today many say: technical governments sanction de facto the failure of political parties. But this is only a cosy euphemism: what they sanction is the failure of democracy."

Benvenuto radically revises the model of democracy that takes Adam Smith's invisible hand of the market as its cue in pronouncing democracy "an invisible brain". Whereas the self-interests at play in economic competition combine to produce wealth for society as a whole, "in the 'political market' competition is between parties and candidates. Therefore, a pluralism of parties is essential. A one-party system is as harmful as a monopoly in economy."

However, one only has to look at some of the leaders that the system has returned to appreciate the magnitude of its flaws: "Democracy fails both when it elects anti-democratic forces that behead it and when it elects leaders the international community and history will condemn as reprobates or grotesque clowns (something we know a few things about here in Italy). The invisible brain often turns out to be visible dementia."

Also: Endre Kukorelly paraphrases Thomas Bernhard's furious My Prizes, in translation by Tim Wilkinson; and Olasz-Magyar Diszvendegseg on Italy as guest of honour at the Budapest International Book Fair.

The full table of contents of Magyar Lettre Internationale 88 (2013)
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/magyarlettre/issue/2013-07-03.html>

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ARENA 3/2013
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Will it be a Swede who finally breaks up the European Union? Perhaps. When British Prime Minister David Cameron earlier this year threatened the EU with a referendum, he was reading from a script written by Mats Persson. Arguably one of the most influential Swedes in European politics, Persson is head of the London-based think tank Open Europe, which the "Economist" in 2010 described as an "assiduous Eurosceptic campaign group" with enormous influence on British press coverage of Europe.

Katrine Kielos met this éminence grise in his worn-down office in Westminister. In "Arena" (Sweden), she notes that much has changed since 2010; Open Europe is now sometimes even described as a Trojan horse inside the conservative camp. However, Mats Persson might be an ardent defender of free movement, which is what many British Eurosceptics hate the most, but he is hardly a friend of the EU as it looks today. The UK should not leave the EU, but the EU must change radically to make it possible for the UK to stay in, he says.

Contrary to several influential Tories, such as former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, Persson is convinced that it will be possible for the UK to renegotiate its relation to the EU. "Great Britain is simply too big for the other EU members to risk that the country leaves. They will see to it that the UK stays inside. Not at any price, but the price they will be prepared to pay is very high." Ultimately it will be Angela Merkel who decides, says Persson. In 2017, the UK will have a good new deal with the EU and the result of the referendum will be that they stay in. "If there is anything that can make this tip over, it's immigration."

What happened to Attac? In a long but readable essay-cum-reportage, Olav Fumarola Unsgaard tracks the rise and decline of the Swedish (and international) Attac movement from the glorious years at the beginning of the millennium to the much more anonymous existence it leads today. But even though Attac largely failed to meet the challenge of transforming protest into long-term political structures, much of its agenda is now at the very centre of mainstream politics: a version of the Tobin tax is about to become reality in (parts of) the EU; tax havens are getting a hard time; and the Washington Consensus is being questioned.

The full table of contents of Arena 3/2013
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/arena/issue/2013-07-01.html>

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MUTE 20 (2013)
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Two years after core funder Arts Council England stopped financing the journal, "Mute" announces the end of its print edition. This, despite the crowdfunding initiative that closed at the end of 2012 having topped its target by 10 per cent. However, the journal is now certain of being able to pay contributors until September 2013, and the collaborative publishing programme with German university Leuphana continues.

Nonetheless, "Slave to the algorithm" is the last print issue of "Mute". It is devoted to the "escalating circularity between technological intensification and capitalist omnicrisis".

Robot phase transition: While "for many, automated algorithmic trading has turned into the very paradigm of speculation as dystopia", a "coterie of anti-humanist boosters [celebrate] the rise of the machines", writes Alberto Toscano.

High frequency trading has indeed made a real difference. In 2011, US stock was held on average for 22 seconds. In 1945, that interval was more like four years. In the interim, fibre-optic cables have been "laid through the Allegheny mountains to shave three milliseconds off the speed of a transaction between New York and Chicago", at an exquisite cost per millisecond. But, Toscano points out, the relation between trading offices and vacant foreclosed homes has yet to be fully elaborated.

Self-organization: Anna O'Lory in Greece reflects on the rise in alternative currency networks and "time banks", and the communities they support. However, "it is an open question as to whether […] such interdependent communities today could lead also to the creation of communities of struggle that would not hinge on the issue of local identity and local property, coming into conflict with those outside."

Jazz: In the third of his "Listener as operator" music columns, Howard Slater explores "free jazz as a disalienating force". But only when one considers the history of Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws can one really "honour the supreme effort of jazz musicians to maintain their propellant positivity".

The full table of contents of Mute 20 (2013)
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2011-04-04-newsitem-en.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/slater.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2013-07-03-slater-en.html>

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KRYTYKA POLITYCZNA 30-31 (2012)
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If the twentieth century was a century of fear, then the twenty-first is beginning to look like one of shame, argues "Krytyka Polityczna" (Poland). The competitive quest for self-fulfilment in an unmediated market has triggered a crisis of trust, acute anxiety and widespread loss of self-esteem.

Transition: "Shaming" formed part of the official strategy for "educating" the Polish population in democracy during the transition years, writes Jakub Majmurek. With the spectre of Europe "judging" the country always present, troublesome groups were subjected to outright mockery. The Right was lampooned as a brotherhood of bumpkins and overweight clerics and the Left dismissed as direct successors to homo sovieticus – that stereotypical communist henchman happy to barter civil rights for a full stomach, sex and security.

Today, notes Majmurek, celebrities and opinion formers feature prominently in the media and public life, and political debate is confined to a discourse between "insane reactionaries" and a "sensible middle ground" of right wingers. "Shaming" not only failed to exorcise reactionary and often far-right views. It squandered resources that might have made the transition fairer and more democratic. The result: "People are embarrassed to admit to themselves that they've failed to benefit from the system, and that they can't cope."

Shamelessness: From Kiev, Oleksij Radynski considers what prompted Ukrainian oligarchs to produce a parody of Lady Gaga's music video Bad Romance, in which they disrobe, perform a dance in the gents toilets and snort cocaine: "The obscenity and demonstrative shamelessness of this birthday present for Alexander Melamud is a creative equivalent to the business strategies and public statements of the Ukrainian ruling class."

Also: Introducing a photo-feature depicting Roma life in Slovakia, artist Tomas Rafa discusses racial segregation and walls in Michalovce and Secovce. Plus interviews with philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah and writer Leslie Kaplan.

The full table of contents of Krytyka Polityczna 30-31 (2013)
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/krytykapolityczna/issue/2013-07-01.html>

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OSTEUROPA 5-6 (2013)
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"The more we historicize communism today", write "Osteuropa" editors Manfred Sapper and Volker Weichsel, "the more puzzling the history of the communist movement seems, as does the dynamic of its rise and global political influence right up to the 1970s." Thus begins a double issue on communism as a political order and an idea, almost a quarter of a century after the totalitarian structures it spawned in Europe came to a sudden end.

Enigma: Beyond the "three huge, successive waves of communist seizure of power and founding of states" – with their respective origins in the 1917 October Revolution, the reverberations of WWII and decolonization after 1960 –, Gerd Koenen draws attention to numerous subplots, from the Greek civil war of 1944-47 to Ernesto Guevara's vision of a "tricontinental" revolution:

"From this perspective, the history of modern communism presents itself as a graveyard of failed uprisings and heroic sacrifices whose countless, and once greatly revered, martyrs almost compete with those of the Catholic church […] but today lead a much more apocryphal existence."

Indeed, real prestige was on short supply, except to those ambitious enough to win entry into the secret structures of the world communist movement:

"If one was an informal 'Moscow man' – whether in 1950s Havana, 1960s Paris or an eastern European capital during the seventies – then one had the kind of influence unavailable to a narrow party career man. All the adventurous or petite bourgeois double lives that the most varied of individuals […] under the orders of eastern organizations and 'services' slipped into constitute a distinct chapter of its own".

But, writes Koenen, it was this that constituted "the enigmatic core" of communism: "its totalitarian […] character and associated practices of terror, which always took on auto-terroristic tendencies."

Fatal continuities: Lev Gudkov, director of the Levada Centre (recently targeted by the authorities as a "foreign agent"), traces the frightening success with which Putin has employed the pillars of Soviet totalitarianism – the secret services, the army and the courts – in maintaining his own authoritarian rule.

The full table of contents of Osteuropa 5-6 (2013)
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/gudkov.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2013-05-28-newsitem-en.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2013-07-02-gudkov-de.html>

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HOST 6/2013
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"Mommy porn", the genre of E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey, might be just a marketing ploy, but how people can fall for something so trivial is beyond "Host" deputy editor-in-chief Martin Stöhr. And was it sheer coincidence or uncanny prescience that the summer issue on literature and the erotic came out as the Czech prime minister resigned in the wake of the fraud and spying scandal surrounding his chief of staff, rumoured to be his mistress?

The Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon: Miroslav Balastik and Jan Nemec host a discussion on eroticism and sexuality in Czech culture. Eroticism came back with a vengeance after the abolition of censorship at the dawn of the post-communist era, with mixed results. Greater public acceptance of homosexuality followed. But so did rampant sexism in advertising and gratuitous nudity in filmmaking.

The artist Lenka Klodová is critical of a lasting reliance on imports: "Right now it's an imported popular trash novel, before that it was a wave of interest in foreign feminist porn. I would like to see more domestic production, […] alternative styles and forms, and more nude bodies in public, preferably male ones."

Be this as it may, Radim Kopác, one of two editors of anthologies of erotic literature in on the discussion, believes that "its stilted style makes pornography so ludicrous it actually prevents a vascular response […] Pornography is ridiculous because it is naive". Meanwhile, referring to the absence of the author in pornography, Ivan Adamovic regards "the current wave of this type of literature in the Czech Republic as a surge of eroticism rather than of pornography, as the authors are certainly not reduced to a titillating machine. On the contrary, the [female] authors surface on every page."

Short stories, morality tales and reflections: Roma studies specialist Karolína Ryvolová introduces the digital publishing house Kher ("home" in Romany), which, in its first year, has helped revive Roma literature in both Czech and Romany. Its first publication, Otcuv duch ("Father's spirit"), an eclectic selection of charming fairy tales, has so far registered 1500 downloads.

The full table of contents of Host 6/2013
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/host/issue/2013-07-01.html>

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SAMTIDEN 2/2013
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In a 30-page interview in "Samtiden" (Norway), writer Per Petterson talks to Kåre Bulie about literature and life, about class consciousness and his communist past – and about international success. Petterson's Out Stealing Horses was in 2007 named one of the ten best books of the year in the New York Times Book Review and it has been awarded countless Norwegian and international prizes. It is meanwhile published in 49 countries.

Petterson seems to be more involved in the translation of his books than most writers. The question is if all translators would agree that this is a good thing… Here is how he describes the work with the English translation:

"First the translator translates into English. Then, to phrase it somewhat arrogantly, the editor and I – sometimes it's only me – turn this into English literature. Out Stealing Horses turned out very well, but I spent several months writing the whole book anew. The editor told me that I have the right to 'the final cut'. In the case of I Curse the River of Time I even have my name on the cover as a co-translator. I later found that vain and cocky. I regret it."

The full table of contents of Samtiden 2/2013
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/samtiden/issue/2013-07-01.html>

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REVISTA CRÍTICA 97 and 98 (2012)
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Art has the power to absorb the viewer, to transform an object that one views into a subject that devours the spectator. Stendhal speaks of "losing his sense of reality" when entering the Santa Croce church in Florence in 1817.

In Revista Crítica 97 (Portugal), Carlos Fortuna subjects the overwhelming emotions that tourists risk experiencing at cultural heritage sites to scrutiny: "The antiquity of heritage promotes a sentiment of proximity with an (imagined?) community balanced between technology, art, culture and nature that provides us with a striking sentiment of security in our present age, marked as it is by disorganization."

However, there is more at stake in "the touristification of emotion" than who and what makes a contribution to the production of heritage; for heritage "is always a selection and a school". The house of Anne Frank turned into one of the most important touristic "attractions" in Amsterdam; Nelson Mandela's prison cell, ground zero and the concentration camps are all lieux de mémoire that satisfy people's longing to be responsive to the warning to avoid a repetition of any given tragedy.

The marketing and sale of emotions was never more pronounced than in "reality tourism", when the will to observe the "survivalism" of the poor becomes a reason for visiting slums.

Eurocentric football: Pedro Almeida (Revista Crítica 98) conducts a discourse analysis of the Portuguese media coverage of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and concludes that football is more than just a metaphor of society. It also helps to "reproduce and reinforce racial and Eurocentric paradigms".

The full table of contents of Revista Crítica 97 and 98
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/revistacritica/issue/2013-05-20.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/revistacritica/issue/2013-06-28.html>