Samizdat in Cuba

by Jack Brummet, Travel Ed.

This is a fascinating and hopeful article (there is a button on the site to translate) that Keelin found.

The Cuban people have developed something like a modern/digital Samizdat (the clandestine distribution of literature banned by the state, in the communist countries of eastern Europe) to get news and entertainment from outside the state-controlled media and propaganda machine. Instead of Xeroxes, they use USB drives that can be purchased for 30 pesos (about $1.20) or portable hard drives.

https://www.cubanet.org/reportajes/el-paquete-semanal-manda-en-los-hogares-cubanos/ (Translation button is on the right-hand side of the page)

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The Banned PETA Superbowl Ad

By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That National Affairs Editor

Ok, maybe becoming a vegetarian does make sense after all. Here is a YouTube video of the banned PETA ad from the recent Superbowl. I don't know how to write this without appearing crude (and the wise course would be not to write it at all), but I note that [quite intentionally] nary a carrot, cucumber, parsnip, or zucchini appear amongst the less blatantly suggestive vegies. And, still, they wouldn't air the ad.


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The Nazis and "Degenerate Art"

click poster to enlarge

In Munchen, in 1937, the Nazis staged a huge exhibit of "degenerate art," from which this poster is taken. Unfortunately for the Nazis, this show it drew more visitors than a concurrent exhibit of state-sanctioned art. This poster announces the exhibition.

Stephanie Barron wrote a monograph called "Degenerate Art": The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany" (published by LACMA [a favorite museum of mine], or, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1991).

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