The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, 1889 Edward J. Curtin, Jr. August 29, 2023 Originally published on Curtin’s homepage on August 11, 2023 Because there is so much personal anguish, unhappiness, and human mental and physical suffering in the world, many people often wonder how they might personally change to find happiness, contentment, or […]
J. Natasha Gooneratne* August 10, 2023 This article explores the discourse of the Ukraine crisis from the perspective of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), recalling some of the movement’s focal pillars that find their roots in the cultural and historical makeup of its member states. It looks at recent efforts of NAM members within the context […]
Ger van Elk, Symmetry of Diplomacy, 1975, Groninger Museum Alfred de Zayas July 31, 2023 The blaming game has always been counter-productive. In the UN Human Rights Council, the practice is known as “naming and shaming”, as if the States engaging in “naming” would possess a higher moral authority over those “named”, […]
Photo by Cherry Laithang on Unsplash Maria Popova August 3, 2023 “This is an extraordinary time full of vital, transformative movements that could not be foreseen. It’s also a nightmarish time. Full engagement requires the ability to perceive both.” “There is no love of life without despair of life,” wrote Albert Camus — a man who […]
A major peace publishing event across cultures: The cover story of the esteemed “China Investment” Magazine’s July 2023 edition Jan Oberg July 23, 2023 Can you imagine a leading economics, finance and investment magazine in the Western world publishing a 30 A4-page (10 000 words) article about the future peace and security world order – […]
Edward Curtin July 19, 2023 Social psychosis is widespread. In the words of the British psychiatrist, RD Laing, “The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man.” He was not referring to raving, drooling, hitting-your-head-against-the-wall lunacy but a taken-for-granted acceptance of a world […]
Alex Lo & Daniel Bell June 24, 2023 “It’s quite clear from recent policies that the US aims to curb China’s economic development and encircle the country with military bases in unfriendly (from China’s viewpoint) countries. Such demonisation only reinforces repressive trends in China and benefits security-obsessed hardliners in China’s political system. That’s why “de-demonisation” can help […]
Hein Berdinesen May 10, 2023 A fundamental thesis in Hans Jonas’ The Imperative of Responsibility – In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (1984) is that the golden promises of modern technology have turned into a threat, and that technology is inseparably linked with the threat. The thesis is a reminiscence of Heidegger’s diagnosis of […]
Christopher Quigley April 28, 2023 Very few people today know that between 1934 and 1961 the British historian Arnold Toynbee wrote A Study of History describing the rise and fall of the 23 civilizations he had identified in human history. In contrast to Oswald Spengler, who thought that the rise and fall of civilizations was […]
© Oberg PhotoGraphics 2022 Hussein Askary April 27, 2023 American political scientist Francis Fukuyama declared in his “End of History and The Last Man,” published in 1992,that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War era in 1991 marked “not just the passing of a particular period of post-war history, […]