This week, I’m taking again the reins of Required Studying as Lakshmi is presently on trip. This version is video-rich as we shuffle from one vacation to the subsequent, with New Yr’s simply across the nook. Pleased New Yr! —Hrag Vartanian
‣ For the New Arab, Alexander Durie speaks with Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha about his abduction by the Israeli army and the function of the artist in instances of genocide:
On this assortment, he merges the lyrical stream of consciousness of American poets like Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg (straight referencing the 2 in poems “After Allen Ginsberg” and “After Walt Whitman”) with the direct and musical affect of Arabic poets like Mahmoud Darwish, Ahmed Shawqi and Hafez Ibrahim.
Poem titles vary from What a Gazan Ought to Do Throughout an Israeli Air Strike to We Are Searching for Palestine and Beneath the Rubble, narrating on a regular basis tales from Gaza.
“To so many people, what matters is what happens after the airstrike. The number of people who were killed, the number of wounded children, the number of houses that were bombed, the number of schools. But we don’t usually focus on what was happening before the airstrikes. What kind of things people were holding onto before everything was lost? So this is equally important,” Mosab tells The New Arab.
Poetry is Mosab’s instrument to doc and resist Israel’s genocide — a feat much more vital as worldwide journalists are nonetheless not allowed into the Gaza Strip and over 141 Palestinian journalists have thus far been killed by Israeli forces.
‣ Siri Chilukuri, writing for Scalawag, studies that farmworkers performed an outsized function within the post-Helene and Milton hurricane cleanups:
A Futuro Media, Middle for Public Integrity, and Columbia Journalism College investigation discovered that typically, the catastrophe restoration and cleanup crews post-climate disasters are disproportionately made up of immigrants and sometimes obtain little if any formal coaching about how you can deal with any toxins they could come into contact with. Most employees have encountered both mildew, asbestos, or lead on the job.
“We’ve also heard from one of our partners that people are being recruited for the cleanup in the Tampa area, so they’re being brought over from down South and other places, and [they are] not properly trained, not paid well, and not given protective equipment,” stated O’Connor.
‣ Reporting for Jewish Currents, Theia Chatelle uncovers how Yale College used counterterrorism ways in suppressing pro-Palestine activism. She writes:
‣ For LitHub, Hyperallergic contributor Ed Simon elaborates on the enduring political relevance of Frankfurt College thinker Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History”:
Perception in unalloyed and assured progress is Benjamin’s largest goal, a religion shared (in numerous methods) by each leftists and liberals. The previous might contend that dialectics ensures an inevitable revolution whereas the latter content material themselves within the religion that the arc of historical past, although or not it’s lengthy, should ever bend in direction of justice, however Benjamin mocks the naivete that finds “current amazement that the things we are experiencing are ‘still’ possible in the twentieth century.”
‣Reuters studies on the anxieties amongst Syria’s Christians because the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorial regime and the takeover by Islamist rebels:
‣Scientists are racking up some wins in the case of studying the excavated scrolls of historical Herculaneum:
‣The unusual flags popping out of the protests in South Korea after President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial legislation and shocked the world:
‣It is a two-parter… first, Johnny Harris ‘investigates’ why Saudi Arabia’s Noem (line metropolis) continues on and what which means for locals:
‣ Now, Micro “calls out” Harris for what he thinks is a paid sponsorship of some type, and judging by the softballs, it definitely appears so. We have now seen the identical occur with artwork media that covers Saudi Arabia, and sometimes has monetary pursuits related to the Kingdom, and the way they gently spice laudatory tales with gentle criticism to have or not it’s perceived as goal. It’s simply one other type of smooth propaganda:
‣ Do you know there’s a god of male-male love in Chinese language mythology?
‣ The story of a younger man who trolled individuals round politics due to their very own damage and ache. I wager that is extra frequent than we realized:
‣ The dramatic novice footage of the crash of an Azerbaijani Airways aircraft close to Kazakhstan’s Aktau Airport:
‣ A member of the general public attended the Astoria, Queens, group board assembly and spoke in regards to the Noguchi Museum, which is situated in that very same district, and its director’s disrespect of Noguchi’s legacy by banning the Palestinian keffiyeh on the museum and firing workers who refused to adjust to the troubling rule:
‣ In an alternate universe, misogyny can be overthrown like on this particular person’s creativeness:
‣ I sang the praises for the PBS sequence on American Muslims in our greatest movies of the yr record, and the most recent installment doesn’t disappoint. Do you know Thomas Jefferson organized an Iftar dinner for the Tunisian ambassador?
‣ The Pokemon drone present in Shenzhen, China, is spectacular:
‣ Really cute, a lot in order that I can’t consider it isn’t AI:
Required Studying is revealed each Thursday afternoon, and it’s comprised of a brief record of art-related hyperlinks to long-form articles, movies, weblog posts, or photograph essays value a re-assessment.
