The letters page from London Review of Books Vol. 45 No. 23 (Friday 17 November 2023)
Reading
After nearly two decades of relative calm along the Lebanese-Israeli border, the Israeli defence minister is threatening to do to Beirut what he is doing to Gaza. Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah’s leader, has warned Israel that if it ever attacks Beirut again Hizbullah will start bombing Tel Aviv and beyond.
Table of contents from London Review of Books Vol. 45 No. 23 (Friday 17 November 2023)
All agree that Israel has a right to defend itself, though there are many differences of opinion among lawyers as to the basis for this. What no one contests, however, is that serious violations of humanitarian law by your opponent do not give you licence to do the same to them.
Nowadays, if this prodigy of wickedness is remembered at all, it is for an Alma-Tadema painting showing the emperor smothering his guests in a shower of roses. Polite society no longer tolerates the Orientalist racism of the older accounts but, more prosaically, everyone now knows that these stories are nonsense.
For the 13th-century Muslim scholar Zakariyya al-Qazwini and his contemporaries, to contemplate the wonders of nature was to contemplate the majesty of God, so much so that cosmography was a mainstay of Islamic theology. But wonder was also an intellectual method. It acted as the initial stimulus for acquiring knowledge.
At the turn of the 20th century, the Swiss were plagued by strange, interlinked medical conditions, which existed elsewhere to a degree, but in Switzerland were endemic in more than 80 per cent of the country. It was a curse that had a mark: the goitre.
it came, before the turn in the cherishedwind, what we called history, the turntowards, all of it more and moretowards – what is it that iscoming – must come – unfathomable,...
Historians should not have been asking whether Connolly abandoned socialism for Irish republicanism. Seeing the two as opposed is a fundamental misunderstanding: Connolly increasingly came to believe that national and socialist questions were synonymous in the case of Ireland.
Documentary has customarily been regarded as a genre duty-bound to deal in facts. But the only duty Herzog has ever felt as a filmmaker is, as he puts it, to ‘follow a grand vision’.
“The new Supreme Court ethics code released on Monday looks good on paper, experts in legal ethics said. But only on paper. Its lack of an enforcement mechanism means that it will operate on the honor system, with individual justices deciding for themselves whether their conduct complies with the code.” — New York Times, 11/14/23
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Fellow justices, now that we’ve adopted a “new” “ethics” “code,” you may be wondering about compliance. Accordingly, I have composed the following series of scenarios based on past conversations I have had with you. Please note that recusal is still up to you, and there are still no penalties for failure to disclose anything. So, while the below should be taken as strict guidance, you should also be aware, just among us, that you can still do pretty much whatever the hell you want.
H.P.Lovecraft’s name rarely appears today without the requisite condemnation. Yet nobody is really suggesting that we stop reading him, cancel Cthulhu and de-platform the Great Old Ones.
The BBC released stills from the Doctor Who remaster of "The Daleks" in colour and wow, the floors are blue. Like... really, really BLUE!
The Lever speaks with cryptocurrency critic Molly White about the criminal trial of former cryptocurrency titan Sam Bankman-Fried.
- by Aeon Video
- by Philip Goff
- by Leif Weatherby
Details about the rapid U.S. military buildup since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza are largely unknown to the public and risk war with Iran, experts say.
The post Pentagon Won’t Say Where It’s Sending U.S. Troops — to Avoid Embarrassing Host Nations appeared first on The Intercept.
If the UK's First Past the Post electoral system can’t deliver its supposed advantages, why we are continuing with it?
Alicia Clegg reports on how Britain’s employment tribunals are not providing fair and equal access to justice
Gabija Zemaityte and Danny Walker Inflation has been high in many countries since 2021. Some have said that companies have increased their profits over that period: so-called ‘greedflation’. We use published company accounts for thousands of large listed companies to look for signs of increased profits in the data. Consistent with previous analysis of aggregate … Continue reading Profits in a time of inflation: what do company accounts say in the UK and euro area?
The government, under its own new definition, is an extremist organisation. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 19th November 2023 As good citizens, we are told, we should report extremism to the authorities. It hasn’t always been clear what this term means, so we should be grateful to Michael Gove’s levelling up department, which […]
THE 2025 SOCIAL JUSTICE KITTENS CALENDAR HAS ARRIVED! It’s 2025, and the Social Justice Kittens are back with twelve inspiring new months, each one a stern, colorful reminder that while you enjoy a life of privileged comfort enabled by oppression, these defiant darlings continue their selfless fight for real progress! Never in human history has…
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