America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it’s the home of the extraordinary, the only home.
There is nothing very remarkable about being immortal; with the exception of mankind, all creatures are immortal, for they know nothing of death. What is divine, terrible, and incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal.
— Borges, “The Immortal”, IV, in The Aleph (1949)
All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
— Jorge Luis Borges
1969- somehow we wound up as guests at a wedding, somewhere in Morocco. I'm the nerd with the big stoned smile and the embroidery on my pants cuffsSo there I was-- 1969, Hippie Trail, headed for India in my VW van. We were in eastern Turkey getting read to cross the border into Iran the next day. We were: me, the only American on board, a French guy, two Danes and a German.
There are no protests on the streets and no effigies of university officials being burned by protesting students today. There are no protests outside the offices of the over-remunerated Vice Chancellors and their various hench persons. It is business and malpractice as usual after revelations by Australia’s national broadcaster that Australian universities have been adjusting admission requirements to boost student numbers. Standards have been cooked, if not waived altogether, on the iss
To protect its culture Québec has decided veiled women shouldn’t be allowed to teach. But the crucifix adorning the National Assembly can stay, as well as a large cross atop the highest point in Montréal, not to mention the streets named after Catholic saints. The government has decided laïcité (secularism) should be pursued on the backs of the most marginalized immigrants.
Underlying support for this cultural chauvinism is a blindness to power relations that has long been part of Québec’s self-image and is especially evident in international affairs.
What?
On April 19, 2019 (the date of the original Patriots’ Day in New England), American tech giant Google disabled the accounts of Press TV, an Iranian news service, and its sister channel Hispan TV, an outlet in Spain. Google denied their access to all its services, including its popular video streaming platform YouTube and its E-mail service Gmail. The company’s move took place without prior notice or subsequent explanation.
Guest Post by Ravi Sinha 1. मार्क ट्वेन ने कभी कहा था – धूम्रपान की आदत छोड़ने में मैं ख़ासा माहिर हूँ; यह काम मैंने हज़ारों बार किया है.सन्धान की यह केवल तीसरी शुरुआत है. वह भी काग़ज़ पर छप कर नहीं. अभी केवल वेब-पेज़ के रूप में. अतः यह दावा तो नहीं किया जा … Continue reading संस्कृति की ज़मीन, बदलाव के बीज : रवि सिन्हा →
On 26 February, Stephen Hickey, UK political coordinator at the United Nations, delivered a statement at the Security Council briefing on Venezuela that put the blame for the situation in that country on its government. He said that years of misrule and corruption have wrecked the Venezuelan economy and that the actions of the “Maduro regime” have led to economic collapse.
He continued by talking about the recent attempts to bring ‘aid’ into the country:
Last week, Canadian feminist and journalist, Meghan Murphy, announced that she is suing Twitter.
Enough is enough! There have been plenty of empty talk and peace conferences, more than enough of begging: “Please, West, stop murdering people, stop your genocides, stop robbing all continents of their resources, stop enslaving billions!”
Look where it has ended up! Nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. The more people begged, the more they protested, the harder the West hit.
Rulers in Washington, London and Paris have no mercy. They have no sense of justice. They only know greed and power.
On February 13, 2019, RT reported:
