David Adler
Burma update
Following up on this post to note that Burmese comedian U Maung Thura has been sentenced to 45 years in prison. His crime? Organizing an independent relief effort for victims of Cyclone Nargis. And telling the truth: that the regime did nothing. “Bloggers, musicians and poets have also been sent to prison,” reports Sharon Otterman in the NY Times. [Update:
Barack baiting
[Cross-posted at Z Word.] John Pilger, the ultra-left New Statesman columnist, infamously said, in regard to the 2004 Iraq insurgency, that “we cannot afford to be choosy” — i.e., that people of the left must support the Baath/jihadi assassins and bombers because they are arrayed against the forces of Empire. He was hardly alone in this view; Arundhati Roy and George
On Francisco Mela
My feature [pdf] on the sought-after drummer and bandleader Francisco Mela, in the December 2008 issue of Jazz Times. Because Mark Turner plays on Mela’s new recording, Cirio, I should add that my story was written before news came of Mark’s hand injury. Accounts of his recovery so far are encouraging.
Cello madness
It’s not often you get to hear two contrasting albums with cello, bass and drums. Erik Friedlander’s Broken Arm Trio (Skipstone) and Daniel Levin’s Fuhuffah (Clean Feed) are pretty far apart in terms of aesthetics — Levin’s is the more tonally abstract — but both advance the cause of the cello as a lead improvising instrument, in a role more
Beg your pardon?
The Taliban has issued a statement calling on President-elect Obama to “observe the norms of human rights.”
Power’s strengths
During primary season, Samantha Power said an unguarded thing about Hillary Clinton and had to step away from the Obama campaign. It’s too bad the American public knows her name thanks largely to this inconsequential episode. One can gauge Power’s caliber partly from the ignorant bile she’s attracted from the far right and the far left. During the campaign, Spectator
“Deconstruct this”
Marc Cooper on anti-Obamism among the academic left: With all due respect to the skepticism of such revolutionaries as Judith Butler and others who disdain the corporate tool known as Barack Obama, there’s an entire new generation who went out and actually did the grinding work of defeating the Bush administration (and of at least cracking the door open to
A new blog
My dear friend Yigal Schleifer has launched the blog Istanbul Calling, presenting news and views from Turkey and the region. This part of the world will be crucial to any understanding of geopolitics in the Obama era. And no one is more qualified than Yigal to provide the straight dope. Bookmark him.