All entries by this author

‘Repressed Memory’ as Cultural Phenomenon *

Dec 28th, 2007 | Filed by

Romanticism created fertile soil for the idea that the mind could expunge a trauma from consciousness.… Read the rest



McGinn Reviews Honderich; Sparks Fly *

Dec 28th, 2007 | Filed by

‘This book runs the full gamut from the mediocre to the ludicrous to the merely bad.’… Read the rest



Rights Here, Rights Now *

Dec 28th, 2007 | Filed by

It’s no good waiting until after the revolution.… Read the rest



Human Rights Are Geographically Relative *

Dec 28th, 2007 | Filed by

‘What one western culture deems a gross violation is not so in another culture.’… Read the rest



Benazir, Daughter of destiny

Dec 28th, 2007 | By Gina Khan

Thirty years ago I watched my mum cry when Zulfiqar Bhutto was executed, today I cried for the daughter of Pakistan’s destiny.

Benazir Bhutto was a more than a beacon of light for mobilising Pakistanis against Islamism and instilling Pakistan’s democracy. She had the same fire, passion, commitment that her father had for his country, and for the tenets of democracy. In 1986 after years in jails and then exile, she left the safety of England to return to Pakistan and took on dictatorship, she bravely ignored death threats and achieved her ambitions to become Pakistan’s first woman Prime Minister.

In her autobiography Daughter of Destiny in 1988, she was the first to identify the ‘Islamization’ of Pakistan and the … Read the rest



Location

Dec 25th, 2007 11:55 am | By

Merry Xmas. (No war on Christmas here.)

As may be obvious, I’m away for a few days. I’m on the Monterey peninsula doing my day job, and Jeremy and Cheryl are here for a visit. We went to Point Lobos yesterday, on a brilliant beautiful windy day, with pelicans flying back and forth in front of us. Jeremy took a few thousand photographs (he’s a professional you know) and he says he will post some here when he gets back. Normal broadcasting will resume on Friday.… Read the rest



Niger – Where Girlhood Ends on the Marriage Bed *

Dec 21st, 2007 | Filed by

In many countries what happened to Hadjo would be called paedophilia and the male attacker would be imprisoned.… Read the rest



AC Grayling on Nick Clegg and Not-God *

Dec 21st, 2007 | Filed by

Keep religion out of politics and out of the mouths of politicians.… Read the rest



Ali Eteraz on One-eyed Ideology *

Dec 21st, 2007 | Filed by

Neocons seized the human rights narrative, but that doesn’t mean the left should abandon it.… Read the rest



Andrew Anthony on Wishful Thinking and Evasion *

Dec 21st, 2007 | Filed by

Far-right hate speech bad, hate speech in a mosque – er – um –… Read the rest



Moses Tells Jesus and Mo About Otherness *

Dec 21st, 2007 | Filed by

‘We in the west have no privileged place from which to judge other cultures and traditions.’… Read the rest



Mitchell Cohen on a Left That Doesn’t Learn *

Dec 20th, 2007 | Filed by

People who pivot until they can ‘understand’ almost anything in order to keep their own presuppositions intact.… Read the rest



Review of Michael Walzer’s Thinking Politically *

Dec 20th, 2007 | Filed by

Walzer’s goal in these essays is to argue that liberal values can and should be preserved in leftist politics.… Read the rest



Walter Lippmann’s Liberty and the News *

Dec 20th, 2007 | Filed by

Public Opinion demonstrated how much people see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear.… Read the rest



Review of Ibn Warraq’s Defending the West *

Dec 20th, 2007 | Filed by

Postcolonial studies placed a dime-store psychology of empire at the center of every discussion of ‘East meets West.’… Read the rest



Student Sues Teacher for ‘Anti-Christian’ Remarks *

Dec 20th, 2007 | Filed by

Student and parents filed a lawsuit alleging history teacher violated student’s constitutional rights. … Read the rest



Smuggling

Dec 20th, 2007 11:41 am | By

‘If the essays in “Thinking Politically” share a single theme, or better, a common tension,’ says Adam Kirsch, ‘it is Mr. Walzer’s effort to reconcile his liberal instincts with his leftist commitments to socialism and cultural relativism.’

The problem for Mr. Walzer, as a left liberal, is that the left has never really shared the morality of liberalism, or even credited it…To the left, the liberal love of freedom is a self-deception, designed to obscure the fact that the material conditions of life leave most [people] unable to enjoy their freedom. The danger of this conviction is that, once the love of freedom is discredited, freedom itself usually follows, as the history of the last century shows again and

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Discover’s Top 100 Science Stories *

Dec 19th, 2007 | Filed by

Pollution, consciousness, planets, arctic thaw, dark matter, drought.… Read the rest



Mark Bauerlein on an Anthology of New Criticism *

Dec 19th, 2007 | Filed by

The disappearance of the New Critics isn’t just another evolution in intellectual history. It’s a critical gap.… Read the rest



Rustum Roy Says Something About Homeopathy *

Dec 19th, 2007 | Filed by

Also ‘homeophobia’ and the virulence of Ben Goldacre.… Read the rest