Peter Kreko, Alan Sokal: In defence of the objective world

Postmodern ideas have gained the status of absolute truths. Relativism, selectively appropriated into the language of both left and right politics, has metamorphosed into dogma. As oversimplification distorts communication, public trust in scientific fact has eroded. Could renewed ideas of objectivity be a way out? ‘A relativism metamorphosed into dogmatic absolutism is obviously logically incoherent,… Read More Peter Kreko, Alan Sokal: In defence of the objective world

Dilip

The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan: Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan: Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,  President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser  Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998  Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter, Dies at 89 Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [“From the Shadows”], that American intelligence services began to aid… Read More The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan: Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

Dilip

Book review: Imperium by Ryszard Kapuściński (1993)

I thought about the terrible uselessness of suffering. Love leaves behind its creation-the next generation coming into the world; the continuation of humanity. But suffering? Such a great part of human experience, the most difficult and painful, passes leaving no trace. If one were to collect the energy of suffering emitted by the millions of… Read More Book review: Imperium by Ryszard Kapuściński (1993)

Dilip

Terry Bell: South Africa is teetering on the brink of an abyss

The past few weeks have highlighted more clearly than ever, that the authority and the rule of law within South Africa’s constitutional parliamentary dispensation has gone beyond merely fraying at the edges.  Also how confusion can be spread, with potentially dangerous consequences, by the manipulation of news. This manipulation becomes possible because there are too… Read More Terry Bell: South Africa is teetering on the brink of an abyss

Dilip

WeChat silences He Weifang, defender of rule of law in China.

Beijing (AsiaNews) – The popular Chinese messaging site WeChat continues to silence He Weifang, a Peking University academic known for his campaigns in favour of the establishment of the rule of law and freedom of expression in China. In a handwritten letter that has been circulating on the web since 3 February, the academic denounced… Read More WeChat silences He Weifang, defender of rule of law in China.

Dilip

Ivan Turgenev on Hamlet and Don Quixote / The madness in Hamlet and Don Quixote

Speech delivered by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, (1818-1883) on January 10, I860, at a public reading for the benefit of the Society for the Aid of Indigent Writers and Scientists: The first edition of Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet and the first part of Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote appeared in the same year, at the very beginning of the seventeenth… Read More Ivan Turgenev on Hamlet and Don Quixote / The madness in Hamlet and Don Quixote

Dilip

Book review: Resistance, Rebellion & Writing. Albert Camus’s dispatches on the Algerian crisis

Algerian Chronicles by Albert CamusReviewed by George Scialabba The problem of revolutionary violence was perhaps the most fateful question of political morality in the twentieth century. Two texts are indispensable to anyone wanting to engage that question: Camus’s “Neither Victims nor Executioners” (1946) and Sartre’s introduction to The Wretched of the Earth (1961), written one… Read More Book review: Resistance, Rebellion & Writing. Albert Camus’s dispatches on the Algerian crisis

Dilip

Never Again!

Dear friends, comrades,“Never again!” the call of the Hibakusha or Japanese A-bomb survivors reverberates across the decades, reminding us of the need to keep working for peace in a region with two nuclear-armed countries. This award-winning film by Karachi-based filmmaker and Sapan founding member Aisha Gazdar captures the tragedy and the resolve to “never forget” the bombing… Read More Never Again!

Dilip

The Mind of Brahma

from Himal, October 2011 The Mind of Brahma Dilip Simeon In 2009 I undertook what was to be the most memorable journey of my life. I have made other journeys as momentous in their implications, but I would have to think of a reason. The trip to Tibet by air, road and foot was unmistakably different.… Read More The Mind of Brahma

Dilip