The French political philosopher was both mouthpiece and model for the best defense of liberalism. Paul T. Wilford, Ethan Cutler March 01, 2024 NB: The final paragraph of this review contains these lines: ‘As Mark Lilla notes in his preface to Aron’s lecture, the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine may be a wake-up call: “Sometimes it… Read More Raymond Aron’s Liberal Virtues
Bharat Bhushan There is strong suspicion in Nepal that the revivalist demand for abandoning secularism and restoring Nepal as a Hindu Rashtra is being encouraged by the Hindutva forces in India. Nepal’s politics has once again taken an unexpected turn with Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, aka Prachanda, breaking his alliance with the Nepali Congress. Prachanda’s Communist… Read More Not China, Nepali Congress forced Prachanda’s hand
The West has set itself on a path of collective suicide — both moral and economic. NB: The ideological dissolution of Western imperialism began with the League of Nations illegal mandate system at the end of the Great War of 1914-1918. This system enabled the colonial occupation of Palestine and other territories of the defeated… Read More Michael Brenner: The West’s Reckoning?
NHRC office-bearers are handpicked to ensure that the charter of human rights remains merely on paper. Although meant to protect the citizens, the rights body has instead resorted to covering the government’s violations. M.G. Devasahayam Democracy, the highest form of human rights, is at peril in India today. The 2023 V-Dem Institute at the University… Read More The National Human Rights Commission is a Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing
By AMANDA MARCOTTE Despite the best efforts of the Beltway press to present him as a spry young man next to 81-year-old Joe Biden, it’s getting harder by the day to ignore that 77-year-old Donald Trump is decompensating rapidly. He wasn’t all that healthy or coherent to begin with but, lately, watching him speak has the… Read More Trump is degenerating before our eyes — MAGA voters don’t notice or don’t care
The world which is rising into existence is still half encumbered by the remains of the world which is waning into decay; and amidst the vast perplexity of human affairs, none can say how much of ancient institutions and former manners will remain, or how much will completely disappear… Although the revolution which is taking… Read More America in 2024: Blind, blundering Colossus on a downward slide
There are some who are in darkness / And the others are in lightAnd you see the ones in brightness / Those in darkness drop from sight.(Bertold Brecht, The Threepenny Opera) People in the West seem naïve to us because they don’t suffer like we do, they have a remedy for every little pimple. We’re… Read More Svetlana Alexievich: Secondhand Time
Secretive Whitehall units have been monitoring government critics’ speech online – including MPs, academics, journalists, human rights campaigners and the public – under the guise of combatting ‘disinformation’. Our report, Ministry of Truth: the secretive government units spying on your speech, revealed for the first time the truth behind the government’s five anti-fake news units and… Read More British Government’s Ministry of Truth Exposed
First posted June 07, 2016 The astonishing story of the uproar in Egypt over the publication of a Syrian novel set in Algeria—a work of literature as trigger for political crisis and polemical turmoil, two decades after it was written, in a landscape completely transformed. Haydar Haydar’s fiction as tuning-fork of stark dissonances of time… Read More Sabry Hafez: the Novel, Politics and Islam – Haydar Haydar’s Banquet for Seaweed
There is not a single university left. The health system has basically collapsed. 1.9 million people have been forcibly displaced. The UN has said 100,000 people in Gaza have been killed, injured, or are missing. And Biden seems to think so little of the devastation that he seems to think it is appropriate to weigh in on a ceasefire while… Read More If Biden loses in November, don’t blame voters who are angry over Gaza
After the truth-shower 