Adam Lebor’s hymn to a wonderful city, here.
Archive for the 'Z word blog' Category
Federal Judge Claudio Bonadío yesterday denied bail to the five detainees arrested as a result of their participation in an antisemitic attack in Buenos Aires on Sunday as he judged them to be a flight risk and capable of intimidating witnesses. The judge now has ten days to decide exactly what charges to bring against the five; newspaper reports suggest a number of possibilities, ranging from resistance to lawful authority to assault causing injury and attempting to impose their ideas by force or through fear.
Continue reading ‘Judge Refuses Bail to Buenos Aires Antisemites’
A street event jointly organized by the government of the city of Buenos Aires and the Israeli embassy to celebrate the 61st anniversary of Israel’s foundation was yesterday disrupted by a gang of 15 or 20 people who emerged from a nearby subway station and laid into members of the public with clubs, chains and nunchakus.
Paul Rogers here speculates about the possibility of Iran testing a basic nuclear device before its presidential election in June.
There’s a retrospective of Avi Mograbi’s films on at a leading Buenos Aires art house and Z32, his most recent effort, has a regular slot at a state-sponsored cinema that normally only puts on Argentine films that wouldn’t survive on the commercial circuit.
A hearty mazal tov to occasional Z Word contributor Terry Glavin, who was awarded the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence at the British Columbian Book Prizes ceremony. As anyone who knows Terry and his work will realize, it’s richly deserved.
This is a guest post by Michelle Sieff.
Last Friday, I attended a “Durban Counter Conference” at Fordham Law School in New York. The event was sponsored by the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists and The New York Jewish Week. There were only about 40 people in the room, most of whom were over 50 years old. It was an assembly of alter cockers, an unfashionable scene for sure, nothing like the boho chic Darfur rallies and anti Iraq war protests I had attended in years past.
Netanyahu said he would support President Obama’s decision to engage Iran, so long as negotiations brought about a quick end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “How you achieve this goal is less important than achieving it,” he said, but he added that he was skeptical that Iran would respond positively to Obama’s appeals. In an hour-long conversation, held in the Knesset, Netanyahu tempered his aggressive rhetoric with an acknowledgement that nonmilitary pressure could yet work. “I think the Iranian economy is very weak, which makes Iran susceptible to sanctions that can be ratcheted up by a variety of means.”
Benyamin Netanyahu is interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg, here.
David Adler will be known to readers of this blog as an occasional contributor of both posts and comments. He’s now written an essay for the main Z Word site entitled Jazz and Protest: A Reappraisal. As one of New York’s most prominent jazz critics, David is uniquely placed to tackle some of the contemporary interpretations of the notion of jazz as “freedom music,” particularly from such unsavory characters as Amiri Baraka and Gilad Atzmon.
Continue reading ‘New on Z Word: Reappraising Jazz and Protest’
Jeffrey White has an excellent piece here about the IDF’s operations in Gaza. I take the liberty of quoting the last three paragraphs in their entirety. Do yourself a favour and read the rest too. Hat tip Abu Muqawama
Continue reading ‘The IDF in Gaza: Conduct of War vs. Conduct of Soldiers’
It’s rare for us to highlight the comments on this blog, but I did want to draw your attention to this one on a recent piece by Eamonn. “I was born to a secular Muslim family in Iran and lived there until I was fourteen,” says a contributor named ganselmi. “I still have family back there. And I will say that the current regime in Iran makes life absolutely hellish, not just for Jews, Armenians, and Baha’is, but for all Iranians. To minimize the IRI’s Islamist brutality — especially from those who should know better — is simply inexcusable.”
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Via Engage comes the sad news that Steve Cohen, a British Jewish socialist and campaigner against racism and antisemitism, has passed away.
“The dominating emotion of this most undecided of elections has been anguish. Normally reserved for the most troubling of love affairs, this anguish has seized my nights and conquered my days; the scenarios all laid out, the permutations thoroughly hypothesised.”
Read Alex Stein on his journey to the ballot box here.
