civilisationReview

[My comment, that follows the excerpt by Goldberg below, was deleted by their 'moderator' and i was sent a warning email.] Said Michelle Goldberg in the Guardian, “ To plenty of people on the left, and not only on the left, there's an easy solution to the Israel dilemma: a single, bi-national state. Like Communism, this seems just in theory but would be catastrophic in practice. Who really believes that the Israelis and Palestinians could coexist in a way that Serbs, Croats and Bosnians could not? The end of Zionism would merely be the beginning of a new nightmare for Jews and Palestinians alike. Yet Israel is doing much to make even the pained, conflicted love of liberal Jews impossible. Without a two-state solution, the country will soon consist of a Jewish minority ruling over an oppressed Arab majority. Comparisons to South Africa will become ever more apt. And when the Arabs living under Israel's thumb demand their vote, they'll have justice and the...

The Protestant Reformation, in retrospect, was a movement to place God in the hands of wo/man, whilst the mind of wo/man was being interned within the diocese of capitalism and nationalism. In this, the choice between God and Mammon was resolved by allowing the former to exist, and the people to find subsist, within the latter. e X <p>your browser does not support IFRAMEs</p> . [ source ]

As MJ's 'This is it' is set for a global premiere tonight, a2ed is republishing this article - that was first published upon his moonwalking back to the neverland in the skies. ***** I find much of what is being said in the British media about Michael Jackson to be, generally, analytically superficial and shallow at best, and which tends to feed the pervasive culture of ignorance, and celebrity-worship cum self-diminution. I was expecting more from them given their 'professional' status, but I suppose having a queen would tend to compromise their ability to appreciate the thorns founding the crown. This article is a response to their celebrity-worshipping nonsense. “Michael Jackson's art was astonishingly innovative. No one could dance like him, until he showed them how, and then they were never as good as he was. His concept of the dance was utterly 20th century, extravagantly multi-dimensional, and not in the least middle class.” – Germaine Greer , Guardian ...

“ The relative prominence of any celebrity indicates the relative predominance of a singular facet of an otherwise multifarious human persona. The question is, what is being brought to the fore at the expense of what is thus relegated its diminished position in the background of the human persona. ~ ed “For all Michael Jackson's flaws he was the greatest entertainer of his age. Richard Williams , The Guardian. Nonsense. Michael Jackson was the greatest entertainer of the Juvenile Age. That is, he appealed to the juvenile amongst and within us in his juvenile vibrancy, self-assertion, arrogance, self-absorption, animation, youthfulness – not all bad, but not all good either. But the bad and good of it all is determined by the degree we might be inclined to view him as ‘the greatest entertainer of his age.’ I’m sure Mickey Mouse might be the greatest entertainer of those of a particular perspectival age, but who might be confused for ‘the greatest entertainer of his age’ amongst ...

Let’s get one thing clear about the ‘left’. They aren’t. There are, generally, two forces determining the relativity of the ‘left’. One, the contemporary position of the ‘right’, and, Two, the overarching geopolitical framework wherein it does its very best to carry on whatever traditions that it is allowed to by the ‘right’. It is in this sense that the ‘left’ can, generally, be referred to as the ‘relative left’. * For all those whom are critical of the ‘left’, remember this, the ‘rights’ that you support is one of the achievements of the ‘left’. Wresting power from the patricians, the monarchy, the colonialists, the neither ‘Holy’ nor ‘Roman’ empire, the Act of Supremacy, the Magna Carta, the ousting of British colonial pirates, women's rights, racial equality, et cetera, were left in spirit, but right in perspective. What I mean by ‘right in perspective’ is that whenever power is usurped from the last tyrant-that-be, the principle of relative relief [author’s term], amongst oth...

"As controversy builds around British National Party leader Nick Griffin's  imminent appearance on BBC1's Question Time , Channel 4 is set to stoke the race debate by giving airtime to two professors who believe black people are less intelligent than white people. The documentary, fronted by former BBC reporter  Rageh Omaar , will explore what the broadcaster describes as "science's last taboo". In the documentary,  Race  and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo, Psychology professor Richard Lynn will say there is a global "league table", using evidence from IQ tests, to claim that intelligence is based on race, with north-east Asians in the top tier and Australian aborigines at the bottom." - guardian   In the run up to the impending appearance of the ultra-right honourable Nick Griffin on BBC’s ‘Question Time’, Channel 4 is getting in on the act with their John the Baptist by way of featuring two professors who belie...

"Didn’t, for instance, India, which was deemed to be the ‘Jewel in the Crown’, contribute more than a metaphor to the riches and treasures of the United Kingdom?" ~ ed When can we call ourselves an indigenous people, or indigenous to a country? To the BNP, an indigenous person is a ‘white’ person who is indigenous to the United Kingdom. In other words, a person who originates or ‘naturally occurs’ in the United Kingdom. But that would be quite inaccurate given that the ‘white’ Britisher has ethnic strains of various origins – German, Gallic, French, Viking, Roman,…… And given the colonial experience, some would also have strains of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Malay, African,….. Some might argue and say that it is the historical experience within this land that counts. If so, then can we deny that with the advent of British colonialism, that their historical experience in the United Kingdom was tied with their fortunes and cultural experiences elsewhere? But most importantly,...

I recall refusing to join in the ‘millennium’ celebrations 9 years ago for a few reasons. Firstly, I saw this as a subconscious global acknowledgment of the relative insignificance of alternative timelines that had contained and attributed meaning to quite a few non-Gregorian cultures. Secondly, it just wasn’t the millennium and wasn’t going to be so till 2001 - read 'astronomyBoy's' insightful views on this. Thirdly, what was being celebrated was the relegation of the significance of alternative histories and perspectives to the dustbin of history by this celebratory shrugging off of the vestments of cultural pasts antithetical to the spirit of capitalism. So I couldn’t help shaking my head in disbelief in the face of people of so-called different cultures adorned in their respective cultural costumes whilst simultaneously shrugging off the possible global significance and relevance of their own timelines and the perspectives that gave life to it. Quite a paradoxical...