Pacal in the Mayan Underworld, in the World Tree. Tomb Lid. Illustration Madman2001 Wikimedia Commons The ancient astronaut theory is a racist escape fantasy by Phil Hall Erich von Däniken, who died on 10th of January this year at the age of 90, wrote a book called Chariots of the Gods in…
Category: Phil Hall
AI
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ESCAPING THE AI FARM
Experiments with AI September 2024. Phil Hall, using Bing. We Need Modular, Autonomous AI ‘They say, “Sing while you slave” and I just get boredI ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more’ Bob Dylan by Phil Hall Scanning the horizon carefully reveals a divergence in the application of artificial…
Phil Hall
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Save Our Souls: The Fight to Preserve Britain’s Churches, Meeting Houses and Temples
Photograph Phil Hall New data reveals a sharp increase in the number of historic churches, meeting houses and temples at risk, threatening the vital social and economic fabric of Great Britain. by Phil Hall The historical parallel is stark. The dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII did not just…
Alexander Bogdanov
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The Soul of the Human in the Age of Mercury
Statue of Mercury. Photograph by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels by Phil Hall In the spirit of Friedrich Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794) ‘At that first fair awakening of the powers of the mind, sense and intellect did not as yet rule over strictly separate domains; for no dissension…
Celibacy
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The Gnostic Blueprint
Detail from Gustave Moreau, The Apparition (1876) From Desert Scrolls to Modern Cults by Phil Hall Religions often begin with a core, a simple idea that becomes complicated as it unfolds through history. The art historian Kenneth Clark once observed that Islam was the simplest of the great religions invented…
Capitalism
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THE RIGHT TO PROPERTY IS NOT INALIENABLE
Enforcement of the duties of property ownership is the cornerstone of a good society by Phil Hall Rather than imagining they are powerful citizens, the ultra-rich prefer to believe that they are naturally unconstrained and owe little to individual states. They fantasise they roam the world like Captain Nemo, and…
Bacon
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IN DEFENCE OF THE UPSTART CROW
Writers have a voice: Francis Bacon’s voice is not Shakespeare’s by Philip R. Hall Shakespeare is the author of his own work, not anyone else. Why should people try to separate Shakespeare from his own work? My rationale for this is quite simple; it’s a miguided attempt to hoard intellectual…
Capitalism
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SOCIALIST ARGUMENTS AGAINST RELIGION
Joe Hill Will there be pie in the sky? by Phil Hall Socialist arguments against the use of religion are not always arguments against the idea of an ordering presence in the universe, or against an Earth and a cosmos full of meaning, or against a transcendent expansive all including…
Futurology
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OPEN LETTER TO NICK BOSTROM
Never mind existential risk, what are your politics? An open letter to Nick Bostrom, Director of The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University by Phil Hall Dear Nick, I think you should be using H. G. Wells’s version of futurology, the one he explores in his book Anticipations and…
Clare Short
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CAPITALISM RELIES ON PEOPLE LIKE KEIR STARMER
Strategic Betrayals Are Always Rewarded by Phil Hall . In the Middle Ages, in 1381, the mayor of London, William Walworth, killed Wat Tyler at a parley by stabbing him in the stomach with a knife and then cutting off his head. The mayor’s coat of arms then became the…
Altar de Muertos
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How to celebrate the Day of the Dead
… and a calavera for the selfish By Phil Hall So you have lived deep and extracted all the sweetness out of life, and you have had your last meal. But, what food and drink would you like people to remember you by? What wafting smell would have the power to…
1970s
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The USA broke Afghanistan, now it must own the mess.
The USA Bugs Out By Phil Hall and Tony Hall The decisive battle that the USA has lost is the battle to rebuild Afghanistan and win hearts and minds. Let’s start by injecting a little historical memory into these farcically simplistic and convenient narratives of invasion, counter invasion and withdrawal….
Americanization
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IRRITATING AMERICAN SPELL CHECKERS
Was Noah Webster right to ‘rationalise’ the spelling of English? by Phil Hall “Now is the time and this the country in which we may expect success in attempting changes to language, science, and government. Let us then seize the present moment and establish a national language as well as…
1980s
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My journey to the end of the Earth
Chichen Itza, Photo by Edgar Rodrigo, Pexels by Phil Hall . For most of the journey, I sat in a cramped seat on the long distance Estrella Blanca coach next to a secretary from Mexico City. It was a sweaty and close 36-hour drive. Occasionally, the bus stopped. We got…
Al Ula
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Extracts from Visions in the Rock*
A visit to Al ‘Ula and the tombs of the Nabateans Photo-essay of a lightning visit to Meda’in Saleh by Phil Hall Next day, at work, Dunstan had a proposal. He wanted to go on a road trip to Meda’in Saleh. Quickly, Peter invited me to go along too. ‘Meda’in…
Memoir
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Would you like a Bushbaby?
By Phil Hall Someone from the countryside was selling a young bush-baby in a corner of Dar-es-Salaam market. Mom was smitten. She bought it. Let’s see this creature sweet enough to melt Mom’s resolve. Look, boys. she said, coming in through the door. She was with with Josiah and his bodyguard. Mom…
North Downs Way
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A Shared Vision of the North Downs Way
At Kit’s Coty the Ancestors Spoke. They said: ‘We all belong’. By Phil Hall Well, 2007 was a bad year for me. I felt an enormous pressure. I started to look at maps to see where I could go. We live in South West London in a beautiful part of…
Languages
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So, you want to learn a new language?
Here’s my advice. by Philip Hall For 36 years I have been teaching people how to speak, write, read, and listen in English with some success. I was a Spanish teacher, too, for a while. Spanish is the language that I know best after English. First, I’ll talk about my…
Felipe Elvira
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Wake up in Uruapan
By Felipe Elvira Imagine waking up in Uruapan. Many thousands of Uruapenses who have crossed the border over into the USA dream of doing just that. They make films about it. Uruapan, with its orchards and breathtakingly beautiful national park built along river banks. Uruapan’s park has hundreds of fountains…
Culture
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Mandala
My march through the relative silence of nine years Has brought me to a small house With a green garden Two daughters A son and A wife. Where are my brothers? Where are my parents? Where are my uncles and cousins? Not to mention aunts? They are gone. Vanished. Transformed…
Capitalism
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Working Class Fascism
Plaque to the Battle of Cable Street, Wikimedia Commons Sections of the white working class in Europe are moving into an alliance with sinister, racialised right-wing nationalism by Phil Hall One of the dirty secrets of history is that fascists can also come from the working class. Marxists, communists, and…
Ecology
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Catastrophes are not for drama queens
For the bipolar British middle class global warming is the emotional equivalent to the death of Princess Diana. The debate about global warming parallels the debate about nuclear catastrophe. We are as close as we ever were to catastrophe, to the danger of bio-warfare, chemical warfare and nuclear warfare. To…
Ecology
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Born to Respect the Wild
We grew up up understanding that nature is wild and and dangerous. By Phil Hall In a film that hasn’t really stood the test of time, My Dinner with Andre, one of the characters played by Wallace Shawn says: I enjoy getting up in the morning and having the cold…
Ecology
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Born to Respect the Wild
We grew up up understanding that nature is wild and and dangerous. By Phil Hall In a film that hasn’t really stood the test of time, My Dinner with Andre, one of the characters played by Wallace Shawn says: I enjoy getting up in the morning and having the cold…
Food
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My Grandfather the Gourmet
Grandpa Richard Steinhardt carousing with friends at the New Year, Vienna (1929) by Phil Hall . Grandpa was an admirer of Napoleon, and this was partly why he chose to live in Golfe Juan in 1972. The other reason they both chose to live in Golfe was because they had…
Capitalism
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Overpopulation is NOT the problem!
Photo by Şeyhmus Çakırtaş, Pexels The Europeans did terrible things in the name of Malthus and Darwin by Phil Hall The caste system is inhuman. FGM seems impossibly cruel. Look at the Taliban: Malala got a bullet in the head just for going to school. Look at forced marriage, at…
Personal experience
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A Personal Vision of Richmond Park and Beyond
by Philip Hall Richmond Park is not far away from us. It’s easy to reach it and to walk in it. We enter by the Kingston Gate and from there walk to the Ham Gate. At the Ham gate there is a small pond. . . . When I begin…
Blitzkrieg
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IS TRUMP PREPARING FOR A BLITZKRIEG?
Hegseth with Army Rangers on June 6, 2025. Photograph by Alexander Kubitza The collapse of NATO in exchange for a Fortress Americas by PHIL HALL In the spring of 1939, the world saw the warning signs but dismissed the underlying logic. The world watched Hitler’s demands over Danzig, the relentless…
Fatteh
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FATTEH IS A PALESTINIAN DISH
Fatteh, photo Imran Family Kitchen by PHIL HALL It feels wrong to talk of food when Palestinians are starving and being killed by people behaving like bloodthirsty demons. All talk of food is almost obscene in this context, and yet… my grandson is being introduced to the wider family today,…
Chris Hedges
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WHOSE UTOPIA?
Shakers Dancing Paradise for a servant is not the happiness of her master by PHIL HALL To imagine a perfect society is revolutionary. It is to hold the flawed, often brutal, reality of the present world up to the light of an ideal and find it wanting. Conceiving of a…
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