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Confessions of a Child Smuggler

by Gabriel Thompson

Local

At present, my greatest fear is not that I will be mistaken for a kidnapper, or a child molester, or someone set on bringing a two-year-old girl and her three-year-old brother from Mexico to the United States on a diabolical organ transplant scheme. My concern is less fantastic, and more frightening: I am worried that once we board the plane from Mexico City to Newark, Jackie and Juan will begin to cry and I won’t know how to get them to stop.

Santa Claus is on Strike

by Phong Bui and Matthew Vaz

Local

“No fuckin’ give backs. No way. Not one,” explains Kevin Murphy as he drives a Manhattan-bound N train through Brooklyn on Saturday December 12th. “There’s no fuckin’ chance.”

Inside Lebanon: A Cold Civil War

by Moustafa Bayoumi

Express

The Christmas season was drab and lifeless this year in Beirut. Bombings continue to plague the city, fifteen in the last fifteen months, with the December 12th assassination of the anti-Syrian journalist and politician Gebran Tueni the most recent. The violence has spooked the population into caution and political pessimism. Downtown Beirut, beautifully reconstructed and lit like a romantic movie set, was largely abandoned. The few people milling about looked as if they were extras or well-dressed stagehands. Nearby Martyrs’ Square—former site of massive political action—was vacant. And the commercial district of Hamra saw disappointingly slow sales. Retailers jawed to the local press about the lack of business, and post-season specials, usually reserved for February, popped up in December. It was, in the words of one local friend, as if Christmas had been cancelled.

In Conversation

The Splendor of the Word: Lucy Freeman Sandler with Jim Long

by Lucy Freeman Sandler

Art

Performa 05, the first Biennial ever of “new visual art performance,” that ambiguous yet agreed-upon term encompassing spoken word, theater, film, video, computer art, photography, music, sound, travel, and lectures, stormed across the alleyways, byways, hallways and city streets of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Governor's Island, revitalizing the tattered memories and hearts of that even more ambiguous thing referred to as “downtown.”

Harold Pinter’s Nobel Speech

by Harold Pinter

Express

Ed.’s note: The following speech was delivered by Harold Pinter in December of 2005, upon his acceptance of the Nobel Prize in Literature. We have left the British grammatical style intact.

ArtSeen

Jake Berthot with Ron Janowich

by Ron Janowich

Art

In the midst of his preparations for a new exhibit at Betty Cuningham Gallery, Jake Berthot takes time to welcome painter Ron Janowich to his Accord studio in upstate New York to talk about his life and work.

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