Or rather a book purporting to be by Flew.… Read the rest
Bad, bad, very bad
Dec 28th, 2007 12:20 pm | By Ophelia BensonSo…I was driving around in San Francisco yesterday afternoon, I had dropped Jeremy and Cheryl at the SF airport and then gone on into the city to have fun looking around for a couple of hours until it was time for me to go back to the airport. I turned the radio on and found some okay music and drove up 19th and through the park and through the Avenues a little and over to Arguello, and then the music changed so I looked for another station and hit a news one – and then I found myself repeatedly shouting a bad word as loudly as I could possibly shout it, and kind of thrashing back and forth in rage. … Read the rest
Pakistanis React 
Dec 28th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘She was a liberal force, a hope for a Pakistan overrun by militancy. Now there is a great vacuum.’… Read the rest
Reactions to Bhutto Assassination
Dec 28th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
People are upset.… Read the rest
Malaysia: Only Muslims Can Say ‘Allah’
Dec 28th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Christians not allowed to use the word.… Read the rest
‘Repressed Memory’ as Cultural Phenomenon
Dec 28th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
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 Ophelia Benson
‘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 Ophelia Benson
It’s no good waiting until after the revolution.… Read the rest
Human Rights Are Geographically Relative
Dec 28th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘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 KhanThirty 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 Ophelia BensonMerry 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 Ophelia Benson
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 Ophelia Benson
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 Ophelia Benson
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 Ophelia Benson
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 Ophelia Benson
‘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 Ophelia Benson
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 Ophelia Benson
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 Ophelia Benson
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 Ophelia Benson
Postcolonial studies placed a dime-store psychology of empire at the center of every discussion of ‘East meets West.’… Read the rest
