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Philosophy POLITICS
The Withered State
Disaster is the only news of the day. It was providential that a sinkhole has opened up in Guatemala. It is 100-feet deep with a circular chasm of 66 feet. An act of nature, it is felt, is so much easier to deal with than the many, too many acts of human despoliation. Oil plumes…
POLITICS
Beirut Diary
Beirut Diary, April 2010   Walking into Beirut this spring was like walking into history. Not ancient history, necessarily, but the history of the city which is the history of Lebanon, pulled apart between “western” and “eastern” poles. Being in the city evokes the memory of people who lived there. Writers, intellectuals, activists, and artists from all…
POLITICS
The New American Imperialism
Interviewed by David Barsamian MIT, Cambridge, MA  2 April 2010 (Article Courtesy of Alternative Radio : www.alternativeradio.org) One of the themes that Howard Zinn tried to address during his long career was the lack of historical memory. The facts of history are scrupulously ignored…
Philosophy
Come back to Pleasure
Despite his image as the sober genius of high modernism, T.S. Eliot often speaks of art as essentially amusement. The poet, says Eliot, "would like to be something of a popular entertainer,..would like to convey the pleasures of poetry...As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a…
POLITICS
Report on the Anti-Cuts Campaign at the University of Sussex
Report on the Anti-Cuts Campaign at the University of Sussex  Images: Catarina Neto Carvalho  This report is for information.                                     - HEFCE Strategic Plan, 2010-2011 We begin with a comparison of two proposals. In January 2009 the Vice Chancellor’s Executive Group (VCEG) issued, in an attractive high-gloss brochure, a new strategic plan. Titled Making the Future, the document…
POLITICS
Chhattisgarh: The Future of India?
NANDINI SUNDAR Chhattisgarh: The Future of India? Interviewed by David Barsamian New Delhi, India  29 November 2009 Nandini Sundar is a professor of sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University.  Let’s start with Chhattisgarh, a state in India where you have spent a great deal of time and you’ve written about. There is an…
POLITICS
Vortex in Bengal.
Violence in West Bengal's western districts has reached crisis proportions. Each day, one or more cadre member or sympathizer of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPM] is killed either by Maoists or the Trinamul Congress (TMC). The total figure is now over two hundred dead since late 2007 (most are members and supporters of…