Alasdair MacIntyre Leaves a Legacy to Wrestle With / Alasdair MacIntyre obituary

The major intellectual and moral preoccupations of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who died this week at the age of 96, speak to key issues of modernity and morality that leftists will be grappling with for a long time. Nick French: Alasdair MacIntyre Leaves a Legacy to Wrestle With lasdair MacIntyre, the preeminent moral philosopher known for… Read More Alasdair MacIntyre Leaves a Legacy to Wrestle With / Alasdair MacIntyre obituary

Irina Rakobolskaya Member of the all-female Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment of the Red Army, dies at 96. RIP comrade

Irina Vyacheslavovna Rakobolskaya, physicist and second world war veteran, born 22 December 1919; died 22 September 2016 First posted October 17, 2016 Major Irina Rakobolskaya in the early 1940s During the second world war, Irina Rakobolskaya, who has died aged 96, was a member of the all-female Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment of the Red Army that… Read More Irina Rakobolskaya Member of the all-female Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment of the Red Army, dies at 96. RIP comrade

All That’s Left of You review – deeply moving epic of Palestinian intergenerational trauma

Cherien Dabis’s drama, spanning nearly 75 years in one Palestinian family, is a heart-wrenching, if sometimes blunt, portrait of displacement… The framing for this Arabic-language family saga, spanning from 1948 to the near-present, evinces the film’s primary modes – lived-in, propulsive, multifaceted drama with a fraught, ardent sense of place, and heart-on-its-sleeve, direct plea for… Read More All That’s Left of You review – deeply moving epic of Palestinian intergenerational trauma

Amiens Cathedral (Pipers play Amazing Grace. Memoriam for Armistice, 1918)

Pipers play Amazing Grace. Memoriam for Armistice, 1918 United Pipers for Peace, 1918-2018, was a gathering of around 400 bagpipers from across the globe to commemorate the centenary of the armistice of the First World War. In a short remembrance ceremony in Amiens Cathedral, Emma Brown sang Amazing Grace, followed by Pipe Major Tom Jamieson… Read More Amiens Cathedral (Pipers play Amazing Grace. Memoriam for Armistice, 1918)

Reading Vasily Grossman’s ‘Stalingrad’ and ‘Life and Fate’

War heightens the kaleidoscope of temporality. That you might say is the premise of Grossman’s entire book. It is an effect of combat and of the proximity of death. There would be other such moments in World War II – Bagration, Normandy, and the Battle for Berlin come to mind. But perhaps never again, indeed… Read More Reading Vasily Grossman’s ‘Stalingrad’ and ‘Life and Fate’

A Massive Database of Evidence, Compiled by a Historian, Documents Israel’s War Crimes in Gaza

NB: This is the most painful thing I have ever posted on Palestine, and is painful reading, but it needs to be circulated. It is to the credit of the Israeli historian that he has done this work. We can only bow our heads to the victims. DS A woman with a child is shot… Read More A Massive Database of Evidence, Compiled by a Historian, Documents Israel’s War Crimes in Gaza

Eruption of Truth: An Interview with Raimon Panikkar (1918-2010)

NB: An important thinker, Fr Pannikar combined compassion with thoughtfulness; and sought dialogue as a means of addressing the worlds problems. I empathise with him, and am sorry to note (for my part) the absence of divine compassion for the innocents of Gaza; not to mention the millions of innocents who suffered and died in… Read More Eruption of Truth: An Interview with Raimon Panikkar (1918-2010)