In a public debate in Montreal, the famous historian Professor Arnold Toynbee defends his positions on Israel, from an Israeli diplomat, Dr. Yaacov Herzog, who unfortunately also chairs the meeting.
The debate was held on January 31, 1961 at the Bnei Brith Hillel House at McGill University, before an audience of students, faculty and news reporters.
Continue reading “Israel: Morality and History, Arnold J. Toynbee”
The Victorian period, often viewed in the West as a time of self-confident progress, was experienced by many Asians as a catastrophe. As the British gunned down the last heirs to the Mughal Empire, burned down the Summer Palace in Beijing, or humiliated the bankrupt rulers of the Ottoman Empire, it was clear that for Asia to recover, a vast intellectual effort would be required.
Pankaj Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire, explores the historical fallout of the end of the Qing, Ottoman and Mughal empires with historian and filmmaker Michael Wood. (See Pulse’s review of Mishra’s book)
Dan Snow travels to Syria, for the BBC’s This World series, to see how the country’s fascinating and tumultuous history is shaping the current civil war.
For more on this topic, you can listen to the audio lecture, by Paul Foot, titled The Haitian Slave Revolt or you can purchase a copy of the most famous scholarly work on the topic C.L.R. James’s Black Jacobins (more books on Haiti).
Greece: The Hidden War is a 1986 television documentary series about the background to the Greek Civil War. The series, which explores the contribution of British policy and actions to the civil war, gave rise to the biggest uproar in the history of British television: the series was banned, all but one copy destroyed, and letters were written to major newspapers in defence of Britain for months afterwards. Continue reading on Wikipedia.
Michael Parenti giving a talk on his, Pulitzer Prize nominated, book Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome. For an excellent Booknotes interview see here and for an audio lecture click here.
In the following interview, Peter Linebaugh speaks about his book, The Magna Carta Manifesto. Linebaugh explains how Magna Carta contained two charters: the Charter of Liberties and the Charter of the Forest. The most important aspect of Linebaugh’s book is that it brings new light to the largely forgotten Charter of the Forest. While the Charter of Liberties existed to protect people’s rights the Charter of the Forest existed to protect the commons, which guaranteed the subsistance of the people, against a tyrannical, privitising king.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=of3pDXFHJwA]Bruce Cumings, Chairman of the Department of History at the University of Chicago and author of The Korean War: A History, joins Dean Lawrence R. Velvel on Books of Our Time.
Sadly, the historian Eric Hobsbawm has passed away at 95. The following two interviews give a small flavour of his thinking.
Newsnight on ‘responsible capitalism’ January 2012
It occurs to me that I can’t address the issue of a Palestinian state without addressing my Anarchism. The national struggle is an issue of inevitable debate for many Anarchists who support the Palestinian struggle for liberation. Truth be told, as a local Anarchist, in a time when Palestine is still occupied territory, when asked about the Palestinian bid at the UN for a Palestinian state, I worry mostly about how more violent the Israeli army could get when we demonstrate with the villages. I worry about being denied entry into the occupied territory, in order to get to the demonstrations. I worry about not being able to see my friends, or being prosecuted for attempting to do so.
Many of us- “on the ground” as they say- Palestinians, Anarchists and allies, have been brushing off the reality of a Palestinian-state-positive vote in the UN , because we doubt it’ll change anything ”on the ground.” To those shot at, holding a flag or holding a stick is at best a semantic exercise.
That said, declaring a Palestinian state is not one of those small issues that can be brushed aside, especially because “state” is an internationally accepted legal term. As an Anarchist the idea of an international general assembly, in which whole populations have their say is remarkable to me. Had the United Nations been fashioned after a participatory society model, rather than a hierarchical, neo-liberal, democratic model, maybe it needn’t have had to hang its head in shame. But for now, one must hold the status of a “state”, in order to be recognized as a people- and consequently a person. So in a bid to understand the repercussions of next week, over our lives, more deeply, I’d like to delve into the legal opinions that have been published about the move.
Continue reading “The State of Palestine – A Hint of Liberation?”
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