The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Monday March 13th, 2023
Branding the Acceptable by Dr. Binoy Kampmark
Writing festivals are often tired, stilted affairs, but the 38thAdelaide Writers’Week did not promise to be that run-of-the-mill gathering of yawn-inducing, life draining sessions. For one thing, social media vultures and public relations experts, awaiting the next freely explosive remark or unguardedcomment, were at hand to stir the pot and exhort cancel culture.
The fuss began with the festival organisers’ invitation of two Palestinian authors, Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd. Abulhawa was specifically targeted for critical comments on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, notably regarding NATO membership, and for being a mouthpiece of “Russian propaganda”, while El-Kurd has been singled out for social-media commentary on the Israeli state, calling it “sadistic”, “demonic” and “a death cult”.
Righteously, the South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas showed his less than worldly view on such festivals by insisting on boycotting their talks and presentations. Ever the vote-getting politician, there were those constituents at the Association of Ukrainians in South Australia who had been making noise, notably through their president, Frank Fursenko. “We are very concerned that [the festival organisers] are giving a platform to people who are known apologists for the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” insisted Fursenko.
Continue reading HERE!
Desire to return #poem & #painting by Amir Khatib
“I desire to return home.
burn the wood and light the candles of the pine-tiled room,
Covered with lime-white silence,
light the stairway to the dim mist,
turn on the radio on its only station,
walk barefoot,
I listen to jazz…”
Continue reading HERE!
Worming #61 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas
For more Worming HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!
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