A clip from a 2012 interview with Dustin Hoffman has gone viral. As a potential antidote to the casual and furious misogyny unleashed during Wimbledon, where women were invisible or too ugly, one can see why. In the video, Dustin Hoffman describes his experience preparing for the title role of Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982) and the revelation it yielded. (More…)
Few cultural movements have left more of a mark than DIY (Do-it-Yourself) punk. For the last four decades, the scene has had a tremendous impact on both music and radical politics. Best known for its anarchists, little attention to has been paid to its ideological contradictions. For example, even its most politicized form, anarcho-punk, proclaims anti-capitalist goals, yet economically ends up working through market mechanisms. (More…)
Bluntness can be a masquerade. The declaration here is unequivocal: “Henry Ford was an anti-Semite.” And the supporting evidence laid out below is hard to argue with. Ford did publish The International Jew, a pernicious slander that won the admiration of the future Führer. These are facts. But what does it mean to share them in this manner? (More…)
I have not fasted for years. I rejected Ramadan along with the doctrine of Saudi-Pakistani Wahhabism. For me, Ramadan was another reminder of a Salafist ritualistic obsession. I never saw this as inherently a problem. However, I began to note that for the higher classes, Islam seemed to have deteriorated. (More…)
It’s hard not to hope that Egypt gets the democracy it deserves. In the wake of the second ouster of a head of state in two years, such hopes might be elevated. However, the current state of affairs in the Middle Eastern country is not an optimistic one. (More…)
Ten minutes off a flight from Tel Aviv, the television monitors were running a story on terrorism. “Big raids against Islamists,” the caption declared in German, beneath a photo of Muslims knelt in prayer. Security forces had just raided sixteen separate locations in the north, searching for wanted Salafists, from a banned organization. (More…)
A decade after they announced the shutdown of their Portland-based dubwise label BSI Records, Ezra Ereckson and his visual-artist wife Tracy Harrison are back in the record game, having just put out “Freedom Fighter” by the Disciples, the tenth release on their recently activated artisan-dub label ZamZam Sounds. (More…)
It was, and likely remains, standard practice for troops deploying to our current theatres of war to be briefed by an official from the British equivalent of the NSA, known as GCHQ. Our man was a rather dusty-looking character, who seemed more like an academic than a spook, as he ambled out onto a stage to give us a briefing on information security. (More…)
It’s May, 2013. I’m standing by a metal detector near the entrance to the masjid. There is an old man sitting a few feet from me. I close my eyes and feel the evening sun on my face, as Urdu phrases begin dancing through the air. I look over at the man singing, his fingers pressing against an instrument that sounds like an accordion. I breathe in as he sings his dervishes. (More…)
Single-state advocates may have a surprising new ally. Likud legislator Tzipi Hotovely believes that the two-state solution is dead, and that Israel should annex the West Bank, granting citizenship to its Palestinian residents. Hotovely, the Deputy Minister of Transportation, is a rising star in her party. While her extremist views are not typical of Likud, her one-state solution is becoming popular amongst Israeli conservatives. (More…)
The solidarity flyer seemed apropos. A stone’s throw from the Mole Antonelliana, the 19th century tower dominates Turin’s skyline, evocative, in some ways, of the Dome of the Rock. Originally conceived as a synagogue, it’s difficult to disconnect the Mole from its religious intent, despite the fact that it was never used as such. (More…)
The fight, in which Clément Meric died, apparently started over some shirts. An 18-year-old student at Paris’ prestigious Sciences Po, Meric was headed to a clothing shop in the 9th Arrondissement when he encountered a group of skinheads headed to the same store. His killer, Esteban Morillo, is alleged to have been associated with the rightist Jeune Nationaliste Révolutionnaire, the largest organized skinhead group in France. (More…)