Originally published in Agos (Istanbul), May 2011. Armenians in the U.S. consistently hear–because so many of us constantly insist–that “Turkey is silent about the Genocide and the Armenians.” Meanwhile, so many of us in the U.S. speak incessantly about the Genocide and … Continue reading “On Sound and Silence, "in a place I’d never been before"”
In Thessaloniki: This bank is French-owned. Stand-off: police attack social center (video still). Heat conspired with exhaustion to make the train ride from Thessaloniki to Athens seem cruelly extenuated. We could only blame ourselves. We’d stayed up all the previous … Continue reading “Notes from Europe: from Thessaloniki to Athens”
Note the flag above. In Berlin each morning we woke to the improvisations of little Domingo in his cage ringing changes from the basic canary songbook. Was Danny’s pet canary a genius? We couldn’t pretend to know why this caged … Continue reading “Notes from Europe: Berlin”
They’re returning to time-tested austerity measures in the West of Ireland.
See also: The Art of Google Books
Snapshot from May Day demonstration in New York’s Union Square.
Last July, in the midst of a brutal heat wave, we visited the World Exposition in Shanghai. This was the first world’s fair ever hosted by the People’s Republic of China, and its government reportedly spent over $50 billion on the event, nearly twice the amount it spent on the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Given the sheer spectacle and diplomatic value of the games, and how little attention the 2010 Expo garnered in the U.S., this sum is staggering.
ST Editorial Collective member Michael Ralph shares photos from the 2011 World Social Forum (Dakar, Senegal, February 6th-11th), including a protest outside the Egyptian Embassy just hours before Mubarak’s resignation was announced. Patrick Bond and Immanuel Wallerstein share their reflections … Continue reading “World Social Forum (Dakar, Senegal, February 6th-11th)”
Dancing in front of the May Day march against the state of Arizona’s draconian anti-immigration laws down Broadway in New York City, one protestor in festive spring drag.
By Ernest Larsen and Sherry Millner. Suppose you take a barefoot walk along the sweeping stretch of white-powder China Beach toward what the marines called Monkey Mountain (toward Da Nang, that is, where U.S. soldiers were sent for R&R–the first marines deployed to Vietnam, came ashore at Namo Beach, on the north end of Da Nang in ’65). It’s best, if you have any sort of a sensitive streak, not to allow your gaze to stray too far ashore.
By Ernest Larsen and Sherry Millner.It was the more than 40-year resonance of all those indelible place names that made the final reckoning for us to come to
Vietnam–but no such name was more fraught than My Lai. We hired a car and driver to take us on a cloudy day to what is called–not My Lai–the Son My Vestige Area.
By Ernest Larsen and Sherry Millner. The bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap makes its routine rest-stop in Kampong Thom, a dusty bustling provincial town. From the open-air restaurant, where we consume a quick bowl of pho, Sherry points out that the street corner sign reads in English: “Democrat Street.” I take a quick photo, noticing that we are in fact at the eternally imperiled corner of Democrat Street and National Road.
By Ernest Larsen and Sherry Millner. Travel: Getting from this place to that place in one piece. We arrived in Phnom Penh on the so-called fast boat from Chau Doc, a mere six hours upriver, and weighing at least two kilos lighter, after the slow/fast sweatbath in the ever-increasing heat. At the Viet/Cambodian border, a minor blip with Sherry’s passport might well have sent us back downriver.
By Ernest Larsen and Sherry Millner. Sherry and I arrived at Tan Son Nhut Airport–a designation like so many others with a grim resonance for us for more than forty years–just minutes before Tet, the week-long New Year’s Festival was to begin. Outside the airport people were clamoring for taxis–so anxious or so excited were they to get into Saigon proper before the Year of the Tiger began. We got in the mood.
