J.B. Lenoir
Chicago blues man who died early. Powerful lyrics way before their time, badmouthing the police, Eisenhower, the Korean War and Vietnam too.
Trotsky on Tolstoy
Trotsky hailed the great master on his 80th birthday. “Tolstoy has passed his eightieth birthday and now stands before us like an enormous jagged cliff, moss-covered and from a different historical World”.
A Month in Dubai
Here are some thoughts from one person’s recent stay in Dubai working for one month in October this year – a month before the bad debt threat to the city’s future.
He went as a consultant working in Dubai’s now stalled and litigious construction industry.
The Bush Capital
Canberra - unassumingly civilised, cosmically dull or just a “A good sheep paddock spoiled”. Arriving in Canberra for the first time is like arriving in Brussels, you have heard so much criticism and invective that the chances of you liking the place are nil.
Öcalan-Newroz
For many years, the biggest Newroz festivities in Turkey have taken place in Diyarbakır where a message by imprisoned PKK-leader Öcalan was read out. However, this year the surprising message on Newroz day came from deputy prime minister Bülent Arınç who openly criticised the comments of President Erdogan and reiterated that it was the responsibility of the government to run the country.
Antiquity
Even if other civilizations have singled out an original or ancient era in the periodization of their history, very few have granted such immense importance to its constitution, existence, and nature as Europe has attributed to its own Antiquity. Designated as the ancient Greek world, followed by the Roman world and then the Roman Empire, Antiquity was simultaneously the embryo and the basis for what we know now as Europe.
Revolutions
An interview with Faranguis Habibi, the former Director of the Persian desk at Radio France Internationale about the recent revolutions in North Africa, the current state of the “Green” revolution in her native Iran and the political future of the Middle East. “A slow response or a lack of clarity could easily awaken other demons”, she warns.
Afro-Turks
In the late 19th century the slave trade from Africa towards the Ottoman Empire “boomed”. Most slaves came from Kenya and Sudan and arrived in Western Anatolia. Previously Ottoman slaves had been white from the Balkans and the Caucasus. After abolition, slaves slowly integrated into Turkish society but Afro-Turkish communities exist to this day.
Eye-Music
Deaf people rarely refer to deafness as a disability or something to be fixed, but rather as a human experience. Sign language has given them a powerful means of communication, overcoming the sound barrier that speech represents. Yet the history of “signing” is fraught with controversy – that continues to this day.
Thersites
Scurrilous wag, half wit, proto marxist, social critic, insufferable cynic or the first great individualist. A bit part in the Iliad has led to a timeless debate.