The current Israeli election season has been surprisingly eventful. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu jumpstarted the process by joining forces with ex-Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s party. So far, it hasn’t worked. The kindest polls show the Likud-Yisrael Beitenu combo losing at least seven seats from what it has now. Say what? (More…)
When my agent and I shopped my book about Israel’s migrant workers and African refugees around, we got a lot of those, “We love it but it’s not right for us” and “This is an important book that needs to be published. But there’s no audience for this.” But perhaps the most common response was, “Where are the Palestinians?” (More…)
“When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the terrorist organisations build [sic] up from our own ranks.” So wrote Albert Einstein, in a letter to Shepard Rifkin in Spring, 1948. (More…)
Gangnam Style is not a protest song. If anything, the 2012 hit, by Korean rapper Psy, is a celebration of meaninglessness, a musically repurposed novelty phrase, in a non-English language, cleverly paired with pedestrian, early ‘90s rave arragements. Imagine Americans’ shock when its author, about to perform at the White House, was outed for inciting against the US military, back in 2004. (More…)
We live in the age of lists. The range of culture available to us is staggering, the cost of consuming it less than ever before. Confronted with such overwhelming abundance, we long for the means to impose order upon it. And that’s why we scour the Best-Ofs compiled by anyone with a trace of expertise for guidance. (More…)
Besides their release this year in beautifully packaged vinyl editions, and use of Mediterranean field recordings, Mutamassik’s album Rekkez, and Savage Republic’s Varvakios LP, don’t seem to have a lot in common. However, both come from an aesthetic of fatalistic, yet rebellious, sonic energy, fuelled by an urgency to burst into a future weighed down by ancient history. (More…)
Five years of on-the-ground research. Almost three years of writing and rewriting. And my book about migrant workers and African refugees in Israel just won’t sell. What gives? I’ve spent three years addressing everything, with the help of an excellent literary agent who has developed and sold some very big books. (More…)
2012 was a damn good year for music in general, and for new musical discoveries, personally. I found my own tastes wandering between the seemingly-unrelated-yet-actually-interconnected worlds of hardcore punk, deathrock, postpunk, and neofolk. My “top 10” for 2012 reflects this. (More…)
2012 is just about done. A good deal has transpired in the Israel-Palestine conflict in this year, to put it mildly. In many ways, the events of the past twelve months have paved the way for significant developments in 2013. Let’s take a look at what some of those events might be. (More…)
Piazza Vittorio was empty. With the exception of two elderly men, struggling to inflate what looked like an enormous stage prop. As I grew closer, its details came into focus. It was a fake boulder, with the word “Crisis” (Italian for “crisis,” shorthand for the economic crisis) written on it. (More…)
Times are tough in Spain. Suffering the aftereffects of the collapse of a speculative real-estate bubble in 2008, debarred from improving its export position through devaluation because of its participation in the Euro, the government of Mariano Rajoy has recently proposed a budget plan involving cuts of over $85 billion in the next two and a half years. (More…)
This sticker, the final installment in Souciant’s series on the German Left Party’s youth outreach campaign, complements the other anti-military message in the series. But, whereas that one builds on a pull-no-punches approach developed in the Weimar Republic, and reanimated by punk, today’s is strangely subdued. (More…)