“Pink Cloud”: Short Fiction from Iran
Tehran based writer and literary critic, Alireza Mahmoudi Iranmehr, won the Bahram Sadeghi Internet Prize for his short story “Pink Cloud”, set during the Iran-Iraq war. This eight-year conflict cost the lives of an estimated one million young soldiers from the two nations.
Mawson’s Antarctic Newspaper
From 1911-1914, Douglas Mawson was head of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition exploring the area around Commonwealth Bay in Adelie Land, one of the coldest and windiest places on earth. The “newspaper” he and his men produced – the Adelie Blizzard – proved crucial in propping up faltering morale during the long months at the Cape Denison base-camp as the group over-wintered for the second (unplanned) year.
Australian Aboriginal Art
Aboriginal art is part of a very ancient culture. It took the form of rock, body and sand painting and weapon and implement painting and engraving and it was steeped in ceremony related to the Dreaming.
Brexit referendum folly
Jan Zielonka, Professor of European Politics at the University of Oxford explains that the consequences of the Brexit referendum are bad for both Europe and Britain, regardless of the result.
Turkey and NATO as seen from Ankara
Turkey is currently experiencing the paradox of being integrated into the western security and defense system, while not sharing some of the most basic western objectives.
Bob Dylan: in and out of time
The work of the great American musician, born 75 years ago, both expresses and transcends his own era. “Dylan’s work, taken as a whole, is infused by deep time and the end times as well as his own, drenched in faith and fate as well as love and loss.”
From refugees to prisoners
Brad K. Blitz, Senior Fellow at the Global Migration Centre, Geneva explains that new data show that large swathes of the European public want their governments to show more solidarity with refugees, but instead the EU-Turkey deal has paved the way to mass detention.
Parliament will fight to protect the BBC
Lord Lester QC sets out why he’s leading a rebellion of peers against the government’s controversial BBC proposals, to be published today.
Trump diminishes democracy
How the Americans vote in their Presidential election should be only their business but it cannot be so because when America sneezes the world catches cold!
Papa Wemba of the Sapeurs
Papa Wemba, star of the third generation of post-1945 Congolese musicians, has died. He exemplified Congo’s cultural knack of creating distinctive, non-western ways of defining modernity.