Kitsch is a German word that’s been adopted by a number of other languages, including English. It refers primarily to art that is overly sentimental or melodramatic, and so refers to aesthetics. What’s interesting is the way Kundera uses the concept in his novel, not to talk about art, but to talk about political ideology.… Read More Milan Kundera's use of Kitsch
First posted June 29, 2016 It is no exaggeration to say that with 1989 a long historical phase – the one initiated by the October Revolution of 1917 – came to its end. From now on, whatever might be the future of socialism, it will have to be established on radically new foundations, beyond the… Read More Book review: Conceptualizing an Emancipatory Alternative: Peter Hudis reviews István Mészáros’s ‘Beyond Capital’
KUNAL DUTT NB: Like Kishanji, resident of Varanasi (quoted below) I too was a small boy, just less than eleven years of age, when Queen Elizabeth arrived in Delhi in January 1961. Us schoolchildren (from what is now called the Army Public School), were taken to Sardar Patel road, to welcome her. We stood on… Read More When the Queen came calling in 1961
The climate crisis has driven the world to the brink of multiple “disastrous” tipping points, according to a major study. It shows five dangerous tipping points may already have been passed due to the 1.1C of global heating caused by humanity to date. These include the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap, eventually producing a huge sea level rise,… Read More World on brink of five ‘disastrous’ climate tipping points, study finds
New research shows small gestures matter even more than we may think. By Catherine Pearson In late August, Erin Alexander, 57, sat in the parking lot of a Target store in Fairfield, Calif., and wept. Her sister-in-law had recently died, and Ms. Alexander was having a hard day. A barista working at the Starbucks inside the… Read More The Unexpected Power of Random Acts of Kindness
CADTM International Many countries and their populations currently face a critical situation because of the rising prices of food or the impossibility of getting access to food in sufficient quantity. As the main cause is not the war in Ukraine, as repeated by several media, the global food crisis we are facing is actually a… Read More Press Release: 2022: Let us end the food crisis
Yorgos Mitralias At least during the interwar period, when there was a confrontation between the left and the fascists, it was always the fascists who won. And unfortunately, most of the time without meeting a real resistance. However, there has been one important exception. That of the Italian revolutionary Guido Picelli, who, the first and… Read More 100 years ago, in early August 1922, the barricades of Parma repelled Mussolini’s hordes…
First posted on October 27, 2012 The decision not to start world war three was not taken in the Kremlin or the White House, but in the sweltering control room of a submarine. The launch of the B-59’s nuclear torpedo required the consent of all three senior officers aboard. Arkhipov was alone in refusing permission.. … Read More Vasili Arkhipov (1926-1998), the man who prevented nuclear war
Alexander Larman When Hitler rose to power in the early 1930s, public reaction in Britain was not that of unalloyed horror. Instead, it lay somewhere between disinterest, snobbish, if inaccurate, contempt (“the man’s a house painter!”), and, in some circles, quiet satisfaction that a vigorous reformer had shaken up his country in an apparently effective and… Read More Book review: Coffee With Hitler by Charles Spicer – polite society v the Nazis
After the truth-shower 