Konstantin Paustovsky’s fiction tends to be set in public and among strangers, so that one is tempted to think: ‘Aha, the great frieze of society,’ or ‘Is this perhaps social realism?’ But that’s probably wrong: what he is describing is Nature, give or take a few human figures.
Reading
Most of us would find it horrible to be told that we aren’t worth engaging with, that our views are socially unacceptable or merely a function of demography. But that it is painful to be on the receiving end of such remarks doesn’t mean that one’s own rights to ‘free speech’ are thereby imperilled; it might simply be a reminder that speech can wound.
My brother John and I knew that the telephones in both our parents’ houses were tapped. My dad had been a surveillance target since the formation of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), and probably before. It was obvious, sometimes, talking to a schoolfriend on the phone, that we were actually having a three-way call with the police. You heard a continual clicking.
Some final-year students may not graduate this summer; others will ‘graduate’ without their assessments being marked, or even read – including capstone assessments such as dissertations. If marks don’t matter, what is an examination system for? What does a degree mean?
The letters page from London Review of Books Vol. 45 No. 13 (Friday 16 June 2023)
Unlike most realists, Marx does not see art as precious because it reflects reality. On the contrary, it is most relevant to humanity when it is an end in itself. Art is a critique of instrumental reason. In its free, harmonious expression of human powers, it is a prototype of what it is to live well.
Table of contents from London Review of Books Vol. 45 No. 13 (Friday 16 June 2023)
The DifferenceIn those days, fearlessnesshadn’t come to mean bravery yet, just an absenceof fear. What they called holiness could meanthe drama of reindeer stampedingcounter-clockwise in the...
Coward absorbed many of the ideals of the lower-middle-class Edwardian England in which he grew up and never repudiated them. Patriotic, enthusiastic about the Empire, mistrustful of intellectualism and deferential to the monarchy – if he made fun of these attitudes from time to time, he held them all the same.
Fassbinder predicted a world of ubiquitous screens. He was flamboyantly gay, proudly ugly, extremely left-wing, outrageously productive and had an astonishing eye. It’s easy to imagine him, if he’d lived, being one of those strange boomers who have managed a seamless transition to the new media reality.
The price of Israel's major plans in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank is not just humanitarian. It is essentially political, aimed at cutting off Palestinian communities from one another, isolating Jerusalem completely, and ensuring a Jewish demographic majority for generations to come.
The post Permanent Apartheid in Palestine: Why Israel Wants to Reactivate The E1 Plan appeared first on MintPress News.
Report exposes delayed pandemic preparation due to government machine having to focus fully on avoiding a crash-out exit from the EU without a deal.
As it turns out, it’s never too late. I mention that only because last week, at nearly 79, I managed to visit Mars for the first time. You know, the red planet, or rather — so it seemed to me — the orange planet. And take my word for it, it was eerie as hell. There was no sun, just a strange orange haze of a kind I had never seen before as I walked the streets of that world (well-masked) on my way to a doctor’s appointment. Oh, wait, maybe I’m a little mixed up. Maybe I wasn’t on Mars. The strangeness of it all (and perhaps my age) might have left me just a bit confused. My best... Read more
Source: Living on a Smoke-Bomb of a Planet appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
An undercover FBI agent befriended the teenager online. When he turned 18, he was arrested for supporting ISIS.
The post The FBI Groomed a 16-Year-Old With “Brain Development Issues” to Become a Terrorist appeared first on The Intercept.
“He’s scared s—less” That is why Trump, who pleaded not guilty this week, is under indictment on 37 federal felony charges. Not because he listens to idiots. Although, that is a factor, the Washington Post reveals: One of Donald Trump’s new attorneys proposed an idea in the fall of 2022: The former president’s team could try to arrange a settlement with the Justice Department. The attorney, Christopher Kise, wanted to quietly approach Justice to see if he could negotiate a settlement that would preclude charges, hoping Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department would want an exit ramp to avoid prosecuting a former president. Kise would hopefully “take the temperature down,” he told others, by promising a professional approach and the return of all documents. Trump would not have it. Trump time and again rejected the advice from lawyers and advisers who urged him to cooperate and instead took the advice of Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch, and a range of others who told him he could legally keep the documents and should fight the Justice Department, advisers said.
Critics say fossil fuel companies are abusing a regulatory vacuum in green finance
Low-paid migrant workers, including cleaners at the Department for Education, are taking coordinated strike action in London
One would have a difficult time finding a musical composition that better suits the emotions of a recently divorced dad than Keith Jarrett’s
The Prime Minister is deeply complicit in every part of Boris Johnson's disgraceful period at the top of British politics
It’s increasingly hard to ignore the fact that democracy around the world is in retreat. On the one hand, many of the world’s most powerful states—from China to Saudi Arabia—are governed by authoritarian regimes that seem only to be growing in strength. On the other hand, the respect for liberal democratic norms—like the right to […]
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- by Timothy Andersen
- by Kennon Sheldon