Tag: History

The Concrete Possibility of Total Nihilism: Günther Anders and the Atomic Bomb

In the atomic age, the traditional political distinction between “friends” and “enemies” utterly failed, not because we all became “friends” but because the very notion of “enemy” is now meaningless. The only real enemy threatening us is atomic annihilation; the only real totalitarianism is the atomic condition, which transforms the whole planet into a borderless… Read More The Concrete Possibility of Total Nihilism: Günther Anders and the Atomic Bomb

Dilip

Trump’s Gaza Plan Is Built on Sand: Why This Proposal Cannot Deliver Peace

Peace cannot be engineered on the basis of coercion. It requires justice, and justice is precisely what has been denied to Palestinians for generations – Rashid Khalidi In a region where peace has been promised and broken more times than history can count, optimism is a luxury few can afford. The latest proposal put forward… Read More Trump’s Gaza Plan Is Built on Sand: Why This Proposal Cannot Deliver Peace

Dilip

They’re doing to America what they did to Christianity

NB: I appreciate this author’s empathetic understanding of religion, especially this sentence: of my three particular political heroes, only one – Dr King – is a Christian. Gandhi was Hindu, and his colleague, the too-little-known Abdul Ghaffar Khan – was a Muslim. I learned something special in this line: Philoxenia is the Greek term used… Read More They’re doing to America what they did to Christianity

Dilip

The Great Global Transformation

The Serbian-American economist Branko Milanović has emerged as one of the most discerning thinkers of our time – and certainly one of the most productive. In his books since 2016, he has moved from measuring global inequality to theorising capitalism’s competing forms to excavating how we’ve historically thought about inequality. His new book, The Great Global Transformation, studies… Read More The Great Global Transformation

Dilip

Biblical Archaeology and the Judeo-Christian legends / The Deconstruction of the Walls of Jericho

This article, The Deconstruction of the Walls of Jericho; is an abridged version of The Bible: No Evidence on the Ground; by Zeev Herzog, Professor at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University. He participated extensively in collaboration with other archaeologists in excavations at ancient sites relevant to Biblical legends.… Read More Biblical Archaeology and the Judeo-Christian legends / The Deconstruction of the Walls of Jericho

Dilip

Spain: Emerging from the Labyrinth / I grew up in Spain amid a collective amnesia about Franco. It is time we faced up to our dark past

María Ramírez Franco’s Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936 – by Jeremy Treglown Reviewed by Jeremy Adelman On August 19, 1936, militiamen loyal to General Francisco Franco murdered Spain’s famous poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca. Afterward, one of the killers, the Falangist Juan Trecastro, burst into a local bar and said, “We’ve just… Read More Spain: Emerging from the Labyrinth / I grew up in Spain amid a collective amnesia about Franco. It is time we faced up to our dark past

Dilip

Brutish, bullying, imperialistic: the Ugly American is back

Donald Trump is using US power to insert himself into other countries’ affairs, treating them as vassals Steven Greenhouse For decades, president after president has sought to rid the US of its image as a bullying, imperialistic nation. But with his blustering, often brutish behavior toward other countries, Donald Trump has rapidly revived that notion. Under Trump,… Read More Brutish, bullying, imperialistic: the Ugly American is back

Dilip

The Disaster Correspondent: Why I stopped explaining the Middle East to Americans

NB: The phrase ‘the fundamental racism of their editorial line’, sums up what it feels to be the perennial object of dehumanisation by the Western establishments and a sizeable part of their populations. Lina Mounzer has said something very important here, and it has lessons not only for the West and Israel, but also for… Read More The Disaster Correspondent: Why I stopped explaining the Middle East to Americans

Dilip