When religion and atheisim collide, at least in the columns of most newspapers and magazines, the arguments usually boil down to the essentials of faith vs reason; to whether religious belief has a place in secular society; to the supposed intolerance of the ‘new atheism’ or to whether atheism is in itself merely a sophisticated […]
When Professor Deborah E. Lipstadt first decided to study and write about the phenomenon of Holocaust denial, in the late 1980s, many of her colleagues counselled her against her decision. Holocaust denial was, in their eyes a fringe movement of no-importance, akin to the Flat Earth Society. She was, in short, warned against taking ‘these […]
“To create a democracy, blood must sometimes be spilled”. These would be wise words were it not for the fact that they were pronounced by Augusto Pinochet, one of the greatest mass-murderers of the 20th century. Pinochet’s seizure of power on September 11th 1973, an earlier 9/11 which produced a similarly catastrophic scene – that […]
“The mafia, in the strict sense of Cosa Nostra, the hierarchical criminal organization based in Sicily, does not ‘run Italy’ as you sometimes hear people rather glibly say,” explains John Dickie, senior lecturer in Italian at the University of London, and author of Cosa Nostra – a history of the Sicilian Mafia. It’s in response […]
“In the words of Archdeacon R.H.Charles in 1931, science may have ‘exposed many superstitions of the dark ages and laid bare the falsity of the religious and secular magic of the past and present, yet in their stead it has introduced legions of new alarms that beset our lives from the cradle to the grave’” […]
Collected essays from the celebrated and controversial Hitchens, ranging from responses to September 11th, through to literary criticism.
The Economic Models of Terrorism “I think there was a reluctance to accept a book like this because at that certain moment, after 9/11 what they wanted to push forward was the religious argument. That it was a bunch of religious fanatics, whereas this book is saying the opposite”. Loretta Napoleoni is talking about the […]
“I just hope they will not burn the school. The Taliban is back, and in recent months they have burnt down a dozen girls' schools.” Åsne Seierstad knows what she is talking about. The school she is concerned with is the one they are building in Afghanistan with the proceeds from her best-selling book, The […]
Sage Francis is full of contradictions – the introspective hip-hop artist (as shown on his album Personal Journals) coupled with off beat sense of humour, and outspoken politics. He's won Poetry competitions, and hip-hop slams. He's toured America independently, and sold records by the bucketload without any major label support. He's played with live bands, […]
Michael Moore’s documentary has set off both polemics and box office records, but when the fuss dies down, is the film any good?
