Sinn Fein should never be able to escape Jean McConville’s ghost (2010) / Say Nothing (2018)

It is almost 38 years since the Belfast mother was abducted and killed by the IRA, yet no one has been found guilty of her murder Amanda Foreman It is almost 38 years ago to the day that a gang of masked IRA men and women in West Belfast burst through Jean McConville’s door. Jean had been… Read More Sinn Fein should never be able to escape Jean McConville’s ghost (2010) / Say Nothing (2018)

Amarjit Chandan: Remembering Gehal Singh, who gave his life for communal harmony

First posted September 21, 2014 Gehal Singh: martyr to the supreme cause On the face of it this photograph of a withdrawn gentleman does not tell much except that it night have originated in an old family album. Roland Barthes said that we give captions ‘to sublimate, patheticise or rationalise the image’.  This photograph does demand… Read More Amarjit Chandan: Remembering Gehal Singh, who gave his life for communal harmony

A Proclamation regarding the Anniversary of the First Nuclear War Crimes

H. Patricia Hynes Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – As I write, five of nine governments with arsenals of nuclear weapons – capable of destroying life on our planet many times over – are engaged in war: the United States (in multiple wars and stoking one with China), Israel, Russia, and NATO members… Read More A Proclamation regarding the Anniversary of the First Nuclear War Crimes

Jaag Musafir: Pagdandi Collective

Hello, we are pleased to invite you to join us for a conversation with Dilip Simeon in Chandigarh on Saturday, August 3; 2024. More details here: https://pagdandi.substack.com/p/jaag-musafir Kindly RSVP if you plan to come: https://forms.gle/P7vAeWmWHWic7pgi6 My regards and gratitude to Pagdandi Collective for organising this conversation. What follows below is my personal addition to the matter above,… Read More Jaag Musafir: Pagdandi Collective

After more than 350 years, the first critical edition of Hobbes’s ‘Leviathan’

First posted October 06, 2012 Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan. Edited by Noel Malcolm. Oxford University Press; 2,355 pages WHEN Thomas Hobbes was maths tutor to the future English king, Charles II, in Paris in 1646, his young charge reportedly found Britain’s first great modern philosopher to be “the oddest fellow he ever met with”. That was one of… Read More After more than 350 years, the first critical edition of Hobbes’s ‘Leviathan’

Paper trails

Husserl’s well-tended archive has given him a rich afterlife, while Nietzsche’s was distorted by his axe-grinding sister Peter Salmon I have a terrible fear that I shall one day be pronounced holy: from Ecce Homo; by Friedrich Nietzsche On the morning of 24 September 1938, a Franciscan priest by the name of Herman Van Breda… Read More Paper trails

Goodbye Mr Chips

NB: Goodbye, Mr. Chips is a novella about the life of a school teacher, Mr. Chipping, written by English writer James Hilton, and published in 1934. I think it must be among the most beautiful love stories ever told. It also reminds us of the tremendous power of the human soul. My father took me… Read More Goodbye Mr Chips

June 6, 1944. What the last veterans can teach us all as D-Day fades from memory

Nearly 80 years since the Allied invasion, the testimony of Charles Shay, a 99-year-old former US army medic, reminds us of the significance of that day Andrew Anthony American D-Day veteran Charles Shay stands on a dune overlooking Omaha beach in Normandy where he landed as a 19-year-old. Photograph: Kiran Ridley/The Observer Next month will see… Read More June 6, 1944. What the last veterans can teach us all as D-Day fades from memory