Author: Mark Salter

So the man has passed on. Not sure how I managed to miss the news of Ornette Coleman’s death at the time six weeks back, but I did. Now it’s reached me I find myself locked in a bittersweet combination of sadness-at-the-passing and recollection of the joy and inspiration his music has so often provided me. Above all it was thanks to Ornette that at the age of 16 I discovered the world of free jazz, of boundless improvisational freedom bound together with collective emphathy and  responsiveness in a musical embrace that – for me at least – opened up… More

Here is a thoughtful review of Sri Lankan Tamil intellectual and human rights activist Rajan Hoole’s new book: Palmyra Fallen; From Rajani to War’s End. Having made my way through a fair bit of the book – which could certainly have used a decent editor – I find myself firmly in agreement with this reviewer’s main conclusions, reproduced below: Former Sri Lankan President Mahindra Rajapaksa meets with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo in 2013. “Hoole does not exonerate the Sri Lankan military and indeed, at considerable personal risk, he has meticulously reported on their war crimes and human rights… More

In the aftermath of the murderous attacks on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo at the beginning of 2015, calls to rally to the defence of French ‘republican values’ have resounded throughout the country and indeed, much of the rest of the world. Beyond a simple enumeration of the fundamental human rights these values are supposed to represent, what does the historical record look likes when it comes to the actual application of those rights to citizens of la patrie? The answer to that question, it turns out, very much depended on who you were. Simply put, from 1881, all… More

The cartoon sequence below,  a visual adaptation of passages from Neil Postman’s seminal Amusing Ourselves to Death by artist Stuart McMillan, is featured in a stimulating openDemocracy article just published  under the title ‘Are you cultivating knowledge – or just consuming information?’ I’m reproducing it here because I think it speaks to some fundamental concerns of our times. While highlighting the main thrust of the cartoon’s warnings regarding the dangers of ‘amusing ourselves to death’, article author Gregory Ciotti nonetheless argues that it, along with much contemporary discussion of the internet’s impact on human behaviour and consciousness, is in danger… More

I have several eminently worthy recipients for this cartoon lined up. You?

It’s the inauguration of your country’s newly-elected President, and you’re a sharp, enterprising young female journalist covering the event. One of the guests at the ceremony turns out to be Robert Mugabe, that African paragon of democratic virtue. This is what you do as a consequence – if you’re Nigeran satirist Adeola Fayehun at least – as revealed in a YouTube clip that’s already scored over 270,000 views since it was first broacast following the 29 May inauguration ceremony for the country’s newly-elected president Muhammadu Buhari: Fayehun has been beavering away at this kind of thing for some years: since… More

Here’s a very strong piece from two Sri Lankans looking at the uses – and abuses – of the demand for accountability in post-war Sri Lanka. In particular the politicization – domestic and international – of the accountability agenda and the way in which it is used by hard-liners on both sides of the ethnic divide to attempt to ‘discipline’ their only people. Don’t give into demands for international involvement in war crimes investigations – that’s imperialism pure and simple (Sinhalese version). And don’t countenance, let alone attempt to accomodate proposals for a domestic accountability mechanism – that the siren… More

A stimulating piece by Michael Massing in the latest edition of The New York Review of Books takes a look at the present state of online media: tunrs out in fact, it’s the first of three articles on the subject. While understandably skewed in the direction of US media, plenty of the points he makes are relevant for a much wider audience, Europe included. Online media outlets covered in a wide-ranging analysis include Huffington Post (of course), Andrew Sullivan’s popular but now discontinued blog The Dish, The Drudge Report, Salon.com, Politico and ProPublica – most, but not all, of these… More

Dawn arrests in 5-Star Zurich hotels. A special press conference called by US Attorney Loretta Lynch to present a charge sheet of what she called “rampant, systemic and deep-rooted” international corruption spanning decades and involving eye-watering kick-backs, fixed tournament allocations and rigged presidential elections . . . Except we’re not talking about an authoritarian statelet here. Not in the slightest. No, this is all about the latest attention-grabbing developments in FIFA, world football’s governing body. Here’s my old friend David Goldblatt’s take on the FIFA corruption scandal – an extraordinary story that he has been following closely, writing about and… More