China feels the country isn’t patriotic enough. A new law aims to change that Hong KongCNN — On a brisk December day, junior high school students in Fuzhou, southeast China, converged at a country park to study the thoughts of Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Unfurling a red banner that declared their outing a “walking classroom of politics and… Read More Nationalism = Enforced patriotism
Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd was born in Quhafa, some 120 km from Cairo, near Tanta, Egypt on July 10, 1945. He died on 5 July 2010 in Cairo as a result of an unidentified virus infection and was buried in his birthplace, on the same day. He was 67. At the age of 12, Abu Zayd was imprisoned for allegedly sympathising with the Muslim Brotherhood. After receiving… Read More The religious persecution of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1945-2010) / Mahmoud Mohammed Taha & the Second Message of Islam
Before me there was no time, after me there will be none With me it is born, with me it will die Daniel von Czepko, Sexcenta Monidisticha Sapientum III, II (1655) the feeble artifice of an Argentine adrift on a sea of metaphysics . . . A word on the title: I am not unaware… Read More J. L. Borges: A New Refutation of Time
The intrepid logician Kurt Gödel believed in the afterlife. In four heartfelt letters to his mother he explained why Alexander T Englert As the foremost logician of the 20th century, Kurt Gödel is well known for his incompleteness theorems and contributions to set theory, the publications of which changed the course of mathematics, logic and… Read More Kurt Gödel to his mother: We’ll meet again
Parvati Sharma It is an odd thing about very famous works of art that the better they are known, the more they can surprise you with their brilliance. This is how it was for me when, a few months ago, I had the luck to see Michelangelo’s David. In the flesh, or so it seems,… Read More Goliath is now David
The Amazon rainforest brims with some of the world’s most diverse flora and fauna. Countless species of fungi dot the landscape, many still unnamed and awaiting discovery. Rockefeller and Quark carefully collect data by photographing and cataloguing each specimen for submission to the national herbarium in Quito and eventual DNA sequencing. Words and photographs by Rachel Bujalski… Read More Life, death and zombie mushrooms: in search of the Amazon’s rarest fungi
Fahad Zuberi The New Delhi Municipal Council’s plan to demolish Delhi’s Sunehri Bagh Masjid has triggered an uproar. While the Delhi High Court is hearing another petition challenging the status quo, a section of the media has already begun linking objections – especially those by political leaders such as AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi – to an… Read More Heritage, freedom struggle, practical solutions: What NDMC’s Sunehri Masjid plan has overlooked
NB: For all those who think violence will put an end to violence; and that it’s not their problem anyway Are You Still Alive picture yourselfthe best way you canput it onlineand live up to it never weakeverything goes welland no alarmseverything to keep the dream alive nothing ever brings you downit is not your… Read More The Bony King of Nowhere – Are You Still Alive
Kevin B. Anderson and Russell Rockwell, eds, The Dunayevskaya-Marcuse-Fromm Correspondence, 1954-1978: Dialogues on Hegel, Marx and Critical Theory, 2012 Reviewed by Ben Watson Raya Dunayevskaya died in 1987 aged 77, but her ideas remain alive and to-be-lived-by today, a permanent reproach to thought’s accommodation to an intolerable present. Dunayevskaya inspired and inspires a special enthusiasm, evidenced here by… Read More The Raya Dunayevskaya – Herbert Marcuse -Erich Fromm Correspondence
Bharat Bhushan Democracy is in peril in Bangladesh with elections widely perceived as flawed. Combined with economic woes and social unrest, the country is on the brink. The Bangladesh general election on January 7 is widely expected to be neither inclusive nor competitive. The main Opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), is boycotting the elections… Read More Bangladesh: A staged election could result in political instability
After the truth-shower 