While not usually susceptible to the sway and spell of portends, serious doubts settled uncomfortably comfortably in my mind. The airline we chartered to take us to our destination was called SMAC, an irrelevant acronym for an airline perhaps, yet worryingly apt given our destination was the province of Aceh. Hampered by forces natural and [...]
19th September 2004: Sometimes it appears that the Raison d’tre of the George W. Bush presidency is simply to whet the appetite of the otherwise silent majority of commentators typing away on their personal websites. This is part of his speech at last month’s Republican GOP: I am running for president with a clear and [...]
9th September 2004: The problem is that there is no such thing as global terrorism. Terrorism occurs on a global scale – that much is evident, and has been the case since at least the turn of the last century – but the misnomer “Global Terrorism”, a rent-a-concept to subsume all aspects of supranational violence, [...]
3rd August 2004: The Butler report’s “Review of intelligence on Weapons of mass destruction” – available for download here – was published when I was in London. Given the nature of the (24-hour news) beast – Iraq is already off the news agenda – it seems churlish (not to mention incongruently untopical) to prolong the [...]
pep talk time While loathe to kick anyone (even politicians) when they are down, some individuals richly deserve a good kicking. The International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS, www.iiss.org) fashions itself as “the world’s leading authority on political-military conflict”. This past week, delegates from 20 countries convened in Singapore to discuss geo-political issues related to [...]
David Wood, Chair of Warwick’s philosophy department in the early 90s, is one of the few within academia to have entered, engaged and extended Heidegger without the trappings of Being’s self-revelation; his Thinking after Heidegger is no disappointment. He once wrote (in The Deconstruction of Time, I think?) that philosophers will eventually write about time. [...]
Days from from Christmas and the time for judgement draws near: what do these people, friends and relations, deserve? Under these conditions, how can it be anything but a less than joyous event? As for you sad souls who would imagine a religious dimension to this, recall Schelling’s phrasing: God becomes Man not to complete [...]
One of the perils of modernity is that charity is taken out of the streets and packaged into isolated, decontextualised moments, as components of the holiday season, or reduced to a monthly automated GIRO payment, etc. Barely perceived, charity’s newest mode, with a twist of schadenfreude, is otherwise known as tourism.
He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone (John 8:7) Tradition dictates that a moral lesson be drawn. We are all identified as sinners before God: judgement ought thereby be suspended lest its exercise leads to hypocrisy. But hypocrisy is not sufficient sanction against judgement: practical reason runs subservient to [...]
