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Brazil: Revisited
“A modern city, warts and all.” — Dennis Brutus Dawnlight seeps slowly into Sao Paulo skies as if reluctant to rediscover old betrayals or disclose new ones in Lula’s disappointed lands (IMF/World Bank scoundrels have tenacious as well as rapacious ravening claws) but trees silhouetted against pale skies against malodorous ditches assert irrepressible growth, undeterrable […]
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Cinema as a Democratic Emblem1
Philosophy only exists insofar as there are paradoxical relations, relations which fail to connect, or should not connect. When every connection is naturally legitimate, philosophy is impossible or in vain.
Philosophy is the violence done by thought to impossible relations.
Today, which is to say “after Deleuze,” there is a clear requisitioning of philosophy by cinema — or of cinema by philosophy. It is therefore certain that cinema offers us paradoxical relations, entirely improbable connections.
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“Welcome, Obama”
Ashraf Omar is a socialist cartoonist from Egypt. This cartoon was published by Revolutionary Socialism, an Egyptian Web site, under a Creative Commons license. The title given by Revolutionary Socialism reads: “Caricature: Welcome, Obama” (Caricature: Marhaba Obama).
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García Lorca
نصير شمة يعزف غارسيا لوركا Naseer Shamma was born in 1963, in Al Kut, Iraq. He is one of the greatest oud players.
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How the Media Annexed East Jerusalem to Israel
Talks between Barack Obama and the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships over the past fortnight have unleashed a flood of media interest in the settlements Israel has been constructing on Palestinian territory for more than four decades. The US president’s message is unambiguous: the continuing growth of the settlements makes impossible the establishment of a Palestinian […]
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Second Issue of Jafa Now Available!
Labour for Palestine is pleased to announce the second issue of Jafa – Labour Bulletin in Solidarity with Palestine. This second issue has a special focus on Israel’s war on Gaza. We publish here a range of solidarity resolutions that were passed by unions around the world, analysis of the aftermath, and discussion around […]
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Nation-States as Building Blocks
Paul Nugent. Africa since Independence: A Comparative History. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. xix + 620 pp. $99.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-333-68272-2; $35.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-333-68273-9. This is a masterful work of usable academic history. By sharply delineating diverse trends in scores of countries, it applies expert analysis to sub-Saharan Africa, “the continent which has been […]
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Parsa
Here is Parsa. He is ten months old. He is my nephew and I love him with all my heart and soul. Parsa was born just eight days after the second sanction resolution against Iran. Parsa has learned a few things since he was born ten months ago. He points to everything that seems […]
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The Indefatigable Educator
Chavez is an indefatigable educator. He does not hesitate in describing what capitalism means. One by one he takes apart all its lies. He is relentless.
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Dislodging Comfortable Fictions
Celia E. Naylor. African Cherokees in Indian Territory: From Chattel to Citizens. The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Illustrations, maps. xii + 360 pp. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8078-3203-5; $22.50 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8078-5883-7. Debates about the citizenship status of Cherokee freedmen […]
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Chinglish Lessons
“It’s hard,” says an American in Rachel DeWoskin’s Repeat After Me, “to know much about someone whose language you don’t speak.” Communication is not the only difficulty experienced by the people in this nimble first novel. Whether from the United States or from China, they are angry, guilty, distrustful, insane. Lovers singe themselves with suspicion […]
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The Many Faces of Humanitarianism
Humanism and Human Rights Who or what is the ‘human’ of human rights and the ‘humanity’ of humanitarianism? The question sounds naïve, silly even. Yet, important philosophical and ontological questions are involved. If rights are given to beings on account of their humanity, ‘human’ nature with its needs, characteristics and desires is the normative […]
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Interview with Farian Sabahi
Here we publish an interview with Farian Sabahi, an Italian-Iranian professor at Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Turin. A professional journalist, Sabahi has been writing for Corriere della Sera for several months. She was a guest of LibrInTerra on the 26th of March, presenting her two books Storia dell’Iran [A History […]
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Ten Years Teaching and Learning
“Hello President” began broadcasting on May 23, 1999. That day this year, Chavez was in Ecuador celebrating the 187th anniversary of the Battle of Pichincha. Tomorrow the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the program will begin.
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Torture can never be justified
On Sunday, while putting the finishing touches to the Reflection on Haiti, I was listening to the television report on the ceremony commemorating the Battle of Pichincha that took place in Ecuador on May 24, 1822, 187 years ago. The background music was beautiful.
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Socially Conscious Art and Its Social Contexts
Hazel Dickens, Bill C. Malone. Working Girl Blues: The Life and Music of Hazel Dickens. Music in American Life Series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Illustrations. ix + 102 pp. $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-252-03304-9; $17.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-252-07549-0. One of the foremost voices on behalf of working people in country music recently […]
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Sociologist of the Heart
C. Wright Mills created the concept of a “power elite;” he imported the term “New Left” from Europe to the United States, and he was among the first to catch the phrases “paradigm” and “postmodern.” A global thinker in a square era, he was everything postwar America was not: radical, original, and hip. His work […]
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The Final Match
Saman Salour was born in Boroujerd, Iran in 1976. His last feature film Lonely Tune of Tehran was screened during the Directors’ Fortnight a the Cannes Film Festival last year. “The Final Match” was made as part of Art for the World’s “Stories on Human Rights” on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of […]
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A Boy, A Wall and A Donkey
Hany Abu-Assad is a Dutch-Palestinian filmmaker, whose 2005 film Paradise Now won the 63rd Golden Globe Best Foreign Language Film award among other awards. “A Boy, A Wall and A Donkey” was made as part of Art for the World’s “Stories on Human Rights” on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal […]
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Interview with Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jr.
Part 1 Part 2 Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jr., the son of Ken Saro-Wiwa, is the author of In the Shadow of a Saint: A Son’s Journey to Understand His Father’s Legacy (2001). Omoyele Sowore is a Nigerian human rights activist and the publisher of Sahara Reporters. This interview was produced for Sahara Reporters and brought […]