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From Brutality to Beauty: Collective trauma, culture and meaning – Part three

“After I had my two children, I thought I would never dance professionally again” said Mercedes Salazar “I thought I was going to have to become a bank employee or take an office job….” her reserved husky voice hinting at maturity beyond her 21 years. We sat in a shady courtyard among the low-rise concrete dormitories of Cuba’s Korimakao Art Commune. Our conversation was overlayed … Continue reading From Brutality to Beauty: Collective trauma, culture and meaning – Part three

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Lebanon bank holdups: Who is the real criminal?

This story was originally published on Al Jazeera on November 18, 2022. By Alex Ray and Nizar Ghanem Today, Lebanon has an enormous $72bn hole in its national finances. That figure alone, by any measure of the law, maths or logic should mean that Lebanon’s banks are bankrupt. Yet since the onset of the financial crisis, Lebanon’s banks and their supposed regulator, the Banque du … Continue reading Lebanon bank holdups: Who is the real criminal?

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Precarious Adolescence – Part Two: Democracy, Responsibility and the Deplorables

Part one of this piece showed how insufficient collective moral responsibility is blinding Western democracies to the results of their actions. Part two looks at how this shortcoming in the social and economic realms undermines the West’s social contract from within. Legacy and independent media in the West are replete with pundits decrying a raft of issues ‘tearing society apart’. Identity politics, the migration crisis, … Continue reading Precarious Adolescence – Part Two: Democracy, Responsibility and the Deplorables

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Precarious Adolescence – Part One: What Osama Bin Laden and the killing of civilians must teach the West about democracy and responsibility

This three-part essay looks at systemic phenomena which represent a turning point in the adolescence of human collective consciousness. Part one looks at how the killing of civilians in Israel and Palestine should force dominant Western powers to fully integrate the values modern democracy is founded on.Part two looks beyond the moral realm at how a denial of democratic responsibility is undermining the Western social … Continue reading Precarious Adolescence – Part One: What Osama Bin Laden and the killing of civilians must teach the West about democracy and responsibility

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From Brutality to Beauty: Collective trauma, culture and meaning – Part two

Read part one here. In 2019 I travelled by taxi on the highway north from the Syrian capital, Damascus, to Aleppo. It was late April, the most beautiful time to be in Syria. I had last visited Aleppo a decade earlier, before the war, when it was still Syria’s largest city. The war had raged for six years when my journalist father and I took … Continue reading From Brutality to Beauty: Collective trauma, culture and meaning – Part two

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From Brutality to Beauty: Collective trauma, culture, and meaning – Part One.

Part one of a three-part series reflecting on the role of culture in providing meaning for devastated communities. “Can you ask him to explain what happened that day?” asked my journalist father sitting alongside me, notebook in hand. “There have been different accounts in the media and some video that might have been faked. I need to clarify what happened.” Tarek sat in front of … Continue reading From Brutality to Beauty: Collective trauma, culture, and meaning – Part One.

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Nada: Easter tragedy washes away lives and livelihoods of Timor-Leste’s most vulnerable –

Words by Alex Ray and Maria Lopes for UNDP Timor Leste – Photos by Alex Ray – (c)UNDP Timor-Leste 2021 Nada is the Tetum and Portuguese word for ‘nothing’ and a good summary of what Flavia Ribiero Soares and her family – of seven children and one grand-child – have left after the Easter Sunday cyclone and flooding. The cyclone devastated communities across Timor-Leste – … Continue reading Nada: Easter tragedy washes away lives and livelihoods of Timor-Leste’s most vulnerable –

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Burning ambition: Timor-Leste’s waste management problem

by Alex Ray Originally published by DevPolicy Blog on May 24 2021 Fifty kilometres east of Dili is the site of one of Timor-Leste’s most renowned scuba diving locations. It is reached via the nearby Santo Antonio Grotto rest stop where timber-slat huts sell plastic bottled water and noodles in Styrofoam cups. Directly behind the shops are mountains of burning plastic packaging in a seasonally-dry … Continue reading Burning ambition: Timor-Leste’s waste management problem

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HATUTAN: Communities empowered through school meals program

by Alex Ray, for Care International (2020) Eight o’clock in the morning Monday to Saturday is ‘rush hour’ in Timor-Leste’s Liquica municipality, when the area’s remote muddy roads are dotted with children grouped in camaraderie, walking long distances to school. For 265 of them, aged 5-12, their trip to Faulara primary school takes up to two hours each way, with regular river crossings in wet-season. … Continue reading HATUTAN: Communities empowered through school meals program

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