The Melbourne International Arts Festival is well underway with just another week to go before it concludes. As is to be expected some things have been very good, others so-so. Reviews of various artists or performances have been mixed. One thing, though, which always seems to find favour is the wonderful Spiegeltent. For those who have not seen it, it stands in the forecourt in front of the State Theatre. It, together with the cafe and wine bar alongside the Spiegeltent, attract a variety of people all day long and well into the night. This year the Spiegeltent will continue with a variety of acts of all sorts until just before Xmas. Do go! You are in for a treat and something very different.
There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...
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