The Muslim nation that saved Jews Lime Basha’s family hid three Jewish brothers in their home during WWII (Norman Gershman)   This is an account of an extraordinary and – to me at least – unknown corner of modern history. It concrns the determined efforts of Albania’s most Muslim population to protect both the country’s own Jewish communities and that of neighbouring countries during the Holocaust. ‘To look after your guests, your neighbours, is a matter of national honour’, says Dashmir Balla, whose family hid three Jewish brothers in their home during World War II, explaining the background to this… More

Symbolic graves for victims of the war’s May 2009 final stages in and around Mullivaikal. Seven years on from the brutal ending to Sri Lanka’s civil war, here is some moving footage from one of comemmorations now finally allowed to take part in Mullivaikal and around the Tamil North (follow the Twitter link) 7 years on, these comemmorations still the reality for so many in #lka https://t.co/cnE3QqYB3z — Mark Salter (@marsal61) May 20, 2016

Soviet History Returns – to Eurovision 2016 Ukraine’s Eurovision 2016 entry: ‘1844’, a powerful song about Stalin’s deportations of Crimean Tartars that year in revenge for their perceived collaboration with the Nazis. It’s sung partly in the Tartar language by Jamala,,who is herself of Tartar origin. All in all, can’t imagine Moscow is too pleased about this one.

Illustration: Zohar Lazar Here’s a brilliant, chastening dissection of Trump’s tyranny-in-the-making from Andrew Sullivan, writing in the New York Magazine  It’s framed by a searing analysis of how US democracy got itself into a place where such a thing as a Trump election victory was even conceivable. Democracies end when they are too democratic.And right now, America is a breeding ground for tyranny. Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine, 2 May 2016 As this dystopian election campaign has unfolded, my mind keeps being tugged by a passage in Plato’s Republic. It has unsettled — even surprised — me from the moment I first read it in graduate school. The passage… More

Here is my brother Tom’s alternately lyrical and learned tribute to the great Congolese singer Papa Wemba, who died after collapsing on stage in Abidjan earlier this week. Among Wemba’s many achievements, Tom Salter argues, was his embodiment of what is described as ‘a very Congolese cultural trajectory – the creation of ways of being modern that were not Western’. Photo credit above: Congo’s most famous musician Papa Wemba, performing at a concert in Kinshasa in 2004. Reuters/ David Lewis Papa Wemba: musical king of the Society of Ambianceurs and Elegant People Tom Salter, 27 April 2016, The Conversation Sadly, we have lost another great of… More

Bombay: Music and Heartbreak Final port of call at this year’s Stockholm Indian Film Festival: Nachom-ia Kumpasar, a bittersweet, tenderly observed Konkani work that made it into this year’s Oscar lists. A paen to the unsung Goan musicians who populated the Mumbai jazz scene  through the  60s and 70s. And what a singer lead Palomi Gosh is too – ‘Lisboa’, a stirring period hymn to a Lisbon lover included.   G M T <optio Text-to-speech function is limited to 100 characters Options : History : Help : FeedbackClose

‘Arshinagar’ at the Stockholm Indian Film Festival Think Mumbai slum meets West Side Story meets the delicate tightrope of Hindu-Muslim relations . . that at least gives you some idea of where Arshinagar is coming from in its take on Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’. Caught this lovely slice of Bengali cinema at yesterday’s opening evening of the Stockholm Indian Film Festival,. Catch it if you can! (Festival programme:http://www.cinemaindien.se/ )  

Here’s noted US historian Timothy Snyder’s excellent dissection of what a Donald Trump victory in forthcoming presidential elections would mean for US-Russian relations – and a whole lot more besides. Trump’s Putin Fantasy Timothy Snyder, New York Review of Books, 19 April 2016 Donald Trump in Syracuse, New York, April 16, 2016; Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia, April 14, 2016. Carlo Allegri/Reuters; Maxim Shemetov/Reuters.   Few foreign leaders seem enthusiastic about the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency. But there is one who should be pleased: Vladimir Putin. Or so Trump seems to think. Most prominent Republicans criticize President Obama for… More

Another week …and yet again the need to counter a particularly fatuous ‘review’ of my Sri Lanka book that featured on the pages of The Island newspaper last week, claiming that in reality I ghost wrote the whole thing on Erik Solheim’s commission and to his political specifications. Forgive any grammatical infelicities detected – this was written in something of a hurry. The main points, however, stand firm I hope! Misery, Kamal Wickremasinghe Style The Island, April 17, 2016 Mark Salter addressing a gathering at ICES, Colombo at the launch of To End a Civl War recently. From (L-R). Jehan Perera, Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke,… More

With Obama reiterating gung-ho visions of the imminent/inevitable defeat of global terrorism – focused on the growing presence of IS in Libya this time round – this is a good moment to take heed of a rather more sober assessment of the actual ground situation. The war on terror: an interim report Paul Rogers, openDemocracy, 7 April 2016 Al-Qaida and ISIS bookmark a fifteen-year era of global conflict marked by western hubris and failure. Chambers Street, New York, 11 September 2001. David Farquhar/Flickr. Some rights reserved In the wake of 9/11 there was widespread support across western governments for strong… More