Is the US heading towards Fascism?
Joost Douma looks at recent political events in the United States and grapples with the question of whether Fascism will take hold or if we will witness a breakdown in government and the rule of law.
England is Anxious
Rather than comfort ourselves with nostalgia for monarchy, empire, church, and the ‘special relationship’, it’s time to embrace confusion – and optimism? – about what ‘England’ could mean in the modern world.
Sex and Charity
Regarding the massive scandal involving chief executives of big NGOs, the situation must be considered through the lens of how we have dealt with sexual abuse. But we must be wary of how this is used to justify budget cuts.
At the roots of the nationalism of the rich
If we take the cases of Catalonia, Flanders and northern Italy, the formation of the nationalism of the rich generally coincided with periods of prolonged fiscal strain.
Baudelaire’s Parisian Scenes
Charles Baudelaire’s poetic masterpiece, Les Fleurs du mal, underwent extensive reworking between 1857 and 1868, as did the French capital in which he was writing. Daniel Finch-Race explores the ecopoetic implications of such upheaval in ‘Le cygne’, a poem torn between antiquity and modernity.
Brazil’s Political Carnival
In the midst of the country’s haunting political crisis, more than ever before Carnival in Brazil has become an occasion for criticism, parody and political caricature.
The Syrian Kurds at a crossroad
The sharp regional and international alignments that have currently gripped the Middle East in general, and Syria in particular, have put the Syrian Kurds at a crossroads.
Statues are not safe in India
One cynic says that after every election, the new Government can spend its first year in uninstalling the statutes erected by the previous regime. One commentator is sure that streets named after Lenin will now be renamed to glorify some Hindu nationalist leader!
Crypto currencies don’t make sense
Cryptocurrencies are supposedly a new and superior form of money and investments – the way of the future. The author of this article, however, does not see the point of cryptocurrencies, finding them no better than existing fiat money or good investments.
Proust and Scott Moncrieff
Scott Moncrieff’s English translation of Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu is widely hailed as a masterpiece in its own right. William C. Carter explores the somewhat sticky issue of how the Shakespearean title missed the mark regarding Proust’s theory of memory.
The Desert of Forbidden Art
Docfilmfest
Wanted in Europe