Timothy Garton Ash says enemies of freedom are manifold and ubiquitous.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Read David Luban Instead
Oct 6th, 2006 8:08 pm | By Ophelia BensonA reader wondered in comments why B&W hasn’t done more to protest Bush’s torture bill. There are items on it in News, I pointed out. It’s also true that if you type ‘torture’ into B&W’s ‘Search’ you’ll get a lot of items, some of which are about FGM or ‘witchcraft’-related torture in Africa or India, but many of which are about Bush & co. Then there’s the fact that I only have two hands, as the saying goes, and I’m a bit pressed for time right now, and there are a lot of subjects to cover. But having said all that, I have been wanting to mutter something (but have also felt inadequate to the task), or rather squawk something … Read the rest
O what a sensitive surrender
Oct 6th, 2006 7:20 pm | By Ophelia BensonI liked this letter in the Independent. It said what I wanted to say but didn’t have time to say about that Vallely piece.
I found Paul Vallely[‘s] piece disturbing. He states that Theo Van Gogh “routinely described Muslims as ‘goatfuckers’, before one of them murdered him”. Whether or not Van Gogh described Muslims thus, the point is that he was murdered for expressing an opinion in the form of a work of art. Vallely, by emphasising Van Gogh’s “vile”‘ vocabulary, appears almost to be justifying his killing.
Yes. I did want to point that out – and it wasn’t just his emphasizing the vocabulary, it was also the peculiar, sly phrasing – that ‘before one of them … Read the rest
Benjamin Balint on Why Hannah Arendt Matters
Oct 6th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonArendt predicted that totalitarian tendencies will survive the death of the era of totalitarian states.… Read the rest
Sen and Appiah Reviewed
Oct 6th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBoth use their experiences to cut through the thickets of nationalism.… Read the rest
Replies to Paul Vallely [scroll down]
Oct 6th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘These works of art were not self-censored out of sensitivity, but out of fear.’… Read the rest
Jack Straw’s Article on Faces and Veils
Oct 6th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe thinks there is an issue.… Read the rest
Guardian Rebukes Jack Straw
Oct 6th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe ‘provoked anger and indignation among broad sections of the Muslim community yesterday.’… Read the rest
God Disproved by Fact of Scepticism
Oct 6th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonGod is of necessity too large and imposing to get lost in the sock-drawer.… Read the rest
Secular Islam Summit March 2007
Oct 6th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAn international forum for secularists of Islamic societies.… Read the rest
Berman Answers Alterman
Oct 5th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe controversy is not entirely bogus.… Read the rest
Eric Alterman on Paul Berman on I F Stone
Oct 5th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDisservice to truth via faulty reading of bogus controversy over whether Stone ever spied for the Russians.… Read the rest
Jonathan Liu on Michael Bérubé
Oct 5th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Conservatives have somehow become both voices of intellectual “rigor” and allies of populist anti-intellectuals.’… Read the rest
A Newly Discovered Frost Poem
Oct 5th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonScott McLemee on a vision of disturbance.… Read the rest
Interview with Marjane Satrapi
Oct 5th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘The prat is international. The prat is everywhere.’… Read the rest
Motoon Row Helpful to BNP
Oct 5th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNew BNP leaflets with Motoons handed out in Sutton; Lal Hussain said residents were shocked.… Read the rest
It’s all his fault for wearing that tight skirt
Oct 4th, 2006 8:09 pm | By Ophelia BensonThere’s some nasty stuff around.
From Paul Vallely in the Independent for instance.
Cherished traditions, such as freedom of speech, the alarmists complain, are being surrendered out of political correctness and appeasement…Everywhere have sprung up champions of freedom of expression and crusaders against religious darkness in the name of Western values.
Everywhere? Not really – not in the places for instance where people who sneer about ‘cherished traditions’ have sprung up, for instance. And some of us don’t defend freedom of speech or resist religious darkness ‘in the name of Western values’ at all, we do it for quite non-geographical reasons.
… Read the restThis is not so much a clash of civilisations as one between religious and secular fundamentalists…Take the article in
It opened a window
Oct 4th, 2006 7:17 pm | By Ophelia BensonMeet Ruth Simmons. She’s a hero of mine – I’ve mentioned her here several times, I think. She’s a hero for a variety of reasons; she forms a little cluster of examples of what can be thought and said and done that it’s popular to say can’t be thought and said and done, so I reach for her often, in different contexts. It all comes from just one interview on the US news show 60 Minutes – her being the twelfth child of Texas sharecroppers, her discovery of books as a child, school as a doorway to a better world, her wide interests. The best bit was when Morley Safer asked her why a black woman would want to … Read the rest
Guardian Interviews Ruth Simmons
Oct 4th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFor me [reading] opened a window into a different reality, where it was possible for someone like me to be accepted… Read the rest
John Carey and the Higher Destruction
Oct 4th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHaving enjoyed a successful career as an elitist, he finds that elitism has become a dirty word.… Read the rest