The House of Terror opened in 2002. Since then, it's become one of the most popular tourist destinations in Budapest. It’s a museum, and it presents the last sixty years of Hungarian history through a mix of exhibits and multimedia displays. It’s also a memorial, dedicated to “the victims of both the Nazi and the Communist terror.” The building that houses it, an elegant 19th century villa, was once the headquarters of both the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian Fascist Party, which ruled Hungary for a few bloody months in 1944, and of the Communist Secret Police, up until the 1956 revolution. Thanks to the building’s history and to the dungeons [...]

Here's a phrase you never, ever want to hear from the person in charge of a country, in this case Egypt's interim prime minister Essam Sharaf, appointed by the governing military council: "The only beneficiary of these events and acts of violence are the enemies of the January revolution and the enemies of the Egyptian people, both Muslim and Christian."

Whenever a state declares someone or something an "enemy of the revolution," your best possible outcome is indefinite detentions and disappearances. (History says that the other choices down that road are often worse.)

A demonstration initially about the destruction of a Copt church was joined [...]

Over the weekend, beneath the hot sun, a bit more than 18 million Egyptians—41% of eligible voters—waited in same-sex lines to vote in a constitutional referendum that will shape the country’s transition from military rule.

Don! Since the beginning of "Mad Men," all have been agog about Don Draper's magnetism. What is it? Why do women wilt and men follow? How does his staff endure his endless floggings? (Ahem.) And how does he turn the most banal products into objects of desire? Granddaddy sociologist Max Weber provides an answer: Don is a charismatic. Charismatics draw their power from the mystic and divine. For the early Christians, a charismatic was a human vessel through which a god revealed its power. Charismatics are theatrical, eloquent, and fervent. We first saw a glimpse of Don's supernatural power when he coolly walked around a conference table of skeptical [...]

There was a full house on hand last night at New York's Housing Works Cafe and Bookstore for an Occupy Wall St. panel organized by n+1, Brooklyn's hometown literary journal. The panel was larger than advertised, totaling seven in addition to moderator and n+1 progenitor Keith Gessen. A healthy mix of contributors were on board: there was the earnest, washed-up political wonk who'd been sleeping in Zucotti Park for a month now, the filmmaker who'd been downtown since the very first meeting, the SEIU representative and the education policy activist; there were youngs and olds, students and professionals, seasoned organizers and first time protesters.

The discussion all got started [...]

As of last Wednesday, two days after his press conference, a Marist poll showed that a majority—56%—of Anthony Weiner's constituents want him to stay in his job, and as Glenn Greenwald observed last week, theirs is the only opinion that really counts (cc: Pelosi, Israel and Wasserman-Schultz.) If I were one of them, I too would recall the following glorious beatdown before I betook myself to shop around for a new representative.

I mean, isn't this what congressmen are for?

The worst of the many bad effects of the media spin 'n' scandal machine is to get our collective eye off the ball, like a [...]

"In other words, for all its many missteps of the past two decades, America is remarkably well placed to win the war of ideas now unfolding in the Middle East. This is not because Arabs are fond of America. Most aren't, right now. But thanks to globalisation, education, satellite television and the palpable failure of the local alternatives, most Arabs (and Iranians) are fully aware of what sort of societies the Western democracies are, and they would like some of the same fresh air for themselves. Is America less powerful today than when its pilots were shooting up Saddam's Republican Guard on the highway out of Kuwait 20 years ago? [...]

Avowed homosexuals are going to protest at the Iraqi U.N. Mission in New York City on Friday, April 10, because the murder toll for gay men in Iraq has now hit a rather shocking six a week. But Iraq, on the path to democracy, is totally catching up to the U.S.! They're just only up to 1935.

Things I don’t understand about activism, the short list: • Sleeping in a park if you have an actual bed somewhere to sleep in; • Willingly being in a place where you increase your risk of being arrested/maced; • Being uncomfortable in a crowd when you can just, you know, read coverage on blogs; • How crowds of people with signs change anything, ever.

Amount I’m willing to concede ignorance on matters of activism: • Oh, a lot; • I’d go so far as to say "total."

What I decided to do about it: • Not take an eight-hour bus ride to New York City, that’s what; • Get someone [...]

The Al-Jazeera live-blog from Syria is pretty incredible today. People have been protesting against the wildly corrupt government for the last four hours, facing dire stakes. The video above is from Aleppo, which is (fun fact) bigger than Damascus.

Talk show hosts: grr! We hate them! They are so inauthentic and trashy! They are poisoning our culture and so on! But now here it is 2011 and we are sorta-kinda mourning the retirement/evolution of two of the biggest: Oprah and Larry King. Larry aired his farewell on New Year's Eve, counting down the 25 most important moments in his show's history, which at first seems to validate all those old criticisms. Seeing Deep Throat next to Bette Davis and Marlon Brando next to Obama's inauguration sure does make it look like talk shows have no sense of importance. Larry is making serious things less serious, and America [...]