The election of Cardinal Robert Prevost, photo Edgar Beltrán in The Pillar Wikimedia Commons BRICS will now view the Vatican as an arm of the US State Department by RICHARD STEINHARDT From the perspective of BRICS-aligned nations and their analytical institutions, the death of Pope Francis and the election of…
Barrow-in-Furness
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8. The Thatcher Years
Photograph, David Yip by Margaret Yip Thatcher came into power in 1979. In 1980, Martin’s friend opened a Chinese takeaway in Dalton-in-Furness. He asked Martin to join him and be the head chef. So Martin decides to leave his factory job, buys a cycle with a high interest loan, and…
Catalina Pérez Correa
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Literature and Cinema in the Face of the Stigma of the Criminal
Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959) Screenshot Public Domain by Ulises Paniagua One of the films that has had the greatest impact on me, both as a person and as a cinephile, is the one made by François Truffaut in 1959 under the title “The 400 Blows” (Les Quatre Cents Coups)….
रो-शायरी
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Lalaji and other Stories
‘After my father died, my mother Sarladevi, my sister Urmil, who was only seven days old, and I went to live with Lalaji and his large family in Jarnawala.’ by Sandeep Virmani They say if you look deep and long enough at the flowing waters of a river, they have…
Acción Democrática
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Venezuela is Not the Country You Are Looking For
Hugo Chavez in the military. Photograph Venezuelan Presidency Venezuela is a Populist Kleptocracy by Richard Steinhardt The phenomenon of Chávez in Venezuela had far more in common with populism, Peronism, and caudillismo than with the Cuban Revolution; any Latin American could attest to this. At root, the knowledge of Latin…
Anjana Neira Dev
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Nissim Ezekiel: Between Desire and Reason
Nissim Ezekiel, illustration A Tribute to the Herald of Modern Indian English Poetry by Anjana Neira Dev As we commemorated Nissim Ezekiel, the herald of modernity in Indian English poetry; on his hundredth birthday, and enter a season of heat and dust and of course the king of fruits, I…
FOUR GHAZALS
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Sudeep Sen: FOUR GHAZALS
Photo by Kaboompics.com Monsoon Apertures Each drop scripts a silence I cannot explain — the monsoon writes letters across my windowpane. Your absence is not void, but a humid breath — it stains my shirt-collar like turmeric or rain. Even the wind hesitates before touching me — a lover once…
Peter Cowlam
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Podcast: Follow Me Down
Photo by Alex Fu on Pexels.com by Peter Cowlam Words by Peter Cowlam; music composed by Jamie Roberts and released under CC0 licensing; effects curated by Jamie Roberts, and courtesy freesound.org. Original voice recording by Jeff Lowe, and studio production by Jamie Roberts. ‘Follow Me Down’ is a forty-eight-line poem….
George Fox
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Voltaire Among the Quakers
Voltaire, 19th century illustration “England has 42 religions and only two sauces” In Voltaire’s meeting with the Quakers, we experience a soft heavy thud as anti-religious Enlightenment values bump up against the spirituality of the English, recast in the philosophy of the Friends—seekers after truth. Catholicism was beached during the…
1950s
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The Emigrant’s Farewell
photo by Daniel Battersby, pexels by J. W. Wood The following extract is taken from J. W. Wood’s major long-form poem, The Emigrants Farewell. published in 2016 by The High Window and dedicated to Thomas and Sheena Smith, A Scottish-Canadian poet, Wood is the author of the collection The Anvil’s Prayer (2013) and…
Anders And & Co
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A CONVERSATION WITH PACO RODRIGUEZ
The Disney Universe is illustrated by Paco Rodríguez Interviewer: Paul Halas (with Phil Hall) Generations of children – and parents – have grown up reading the various Disney comics magazines, from the USA, to Europe, to Africa and to Asia. They’ve been a fondly-remembered part of childhood for many (for…
Arrow Collar
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11. Beating Around…
Prescott Sheldon Bush, Senator, photo Louis Fabian Bachrach Jr. – Bachrach Studios …the Bushes by Norman B. Schwartz They are one of America’s few dynastic clans, the first since the Adams family who can legitimately claim to have sent two presidents – George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George Walker Jr…
Barrow-in-Furness
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3. David Yip: Pressure!
David Yip looking back, photo David Yip My mum is back! After leaving our family home a year ago, my mum has moved back in. During the year she was away, my eldest sister, Suzanne, returned home, having quit the pub she had run in Manchester to run our house….
Arun Kapil
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Ayurveda in Boots: Beyond the Golden Milk Glow
Chai, Street side, on the road to Rajasthan, photo Arun Kapil When the seasons turn, true Ayurveda isn’t a latte – it’s a feast by Arun Kapil September smells of woodsmoke and wet earth, of damp, lung-filling air that makes you want to walk the long way home. It’s the…
Cartografía en fuga
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Yuleisy Cruz Lezcano: Cartografía en fuga / Cartography in Flight
Yuleisy Cruz Lezcano, photo Yuleisy Cruz Lezcano Yuleisy Cruz Lezcano, who participated in the Colloquium on Poetry and Philosophy organised by Ulises Paniagua, was born on the island of Cuba and currently lives in Italy, where she studied at the University of Bologna. A poet, writer, and translator, she has published numerous books….
Alcohol addiction
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The High Wire Paradox of Alcohol Consumption
“Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the draught, and as he drank it pledged the dead man.” Illustration for “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1927 Illustration Joseph Sullivan by Richard Steinhardt Alcohol is a great enhancer and destroyer of…
addiction
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BOOZE
Booze, photo by Cottonbro Studio pexels How does someone who’s adequately intelligent, and too aware of the risks, fall into alcohol addiction? by Paul Halas Beneath it all alcohol is another drug. The drug of preference for much of the world – bar the quarter of the global population who…
Alexander Mckay
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Open Letter to Alexander Mckay of the CPGB-ML
Stalin and his close associates Anastas Mikoyan and Sergo Ordzhonikidze in Tbilisi, 1925 The human dictates the theory; the theory doesn’t dictate to the human Dear Alex, Humane Socialism can be extremely radical because it appeals not to some abstract, reductionist pseudo-scientific analysis of the ‘mechanisms’ that determine the way people and societies behave, but…
3I/ATLAS
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Decolonise the Language of Space Exploration
Colonialist is a reference to an interloper; someone who needs to be dislodged, removed, or absorbed by Philip Hall I was born in South Africa. The great grandson of colonialists: Arthur Lewis Hall and Rosalie Powell. My great-grandfather was one of Kitchener’s babes. He was a geologist brought out to…
Boris Yeltsin
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John Mearsheimer’s Offensive Realism: In the Land of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King
John Mearsheimer, photo John Mearsheimer, Wikimedia Commons by Philip Hall John Mearsheimer’s view, a development of the work of Kenneth Waltz, is that states seek to maximise power, defined primarily in military and territorial terms. Economics is a component of power, but it is secondary to the security dilemma in…
3I/ATLAS
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Gradience, Marginal Cases, and the Problem of 3I/ATLAS
“Naturgemälde” illustration. Bonpland, Aimé and Alexander von Humboldt The Danger of Categorising to the Norm by Phil Hall Human cognition relies on prototypes—idealised examples that define categories (Rosch 1975). A prototypical comet, for instance, exhibits outgassing, a dusty coma, and a visible tail. But when an object deviates from this…
Amazon
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We are Orphans: the Grown-Ups are not in Charge
photo Dipak Chattri Pexels Elites in our Societies are Ruthless, Spoiled & Deranged by Philip Hall When we see the heads of Europe and European Union act like apologists for Israeli genocide egging us on to World War Three and Mark Rutte sucking up to Donald Trump sarcastically calling Trump…
Germany
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The Schiller Institute & German Revanchism
Otto Von Bismarck. Illustration Evert Duykinck A mature, unified Europe must embrace its German-French core by Philip Hall German revanchism is quite justifiable. Europe must unite under German-French leadership to achieve true independence and strength. The Schiller Institute’s core proposition—though marred by bitterness and a personality cult—correctly identifies Germany as…
Agents Provocateur
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Mobilise, don’t alienate!
Palestine Solidarity Campaign march, photo Phil Hall Palestine Action is Leading Activists into a Dangerous Backwater by Richard Steinhardt The streets of Britain are full of outrage about Israel’s genocidal actions; crimes of a magnitude unseen since the German fascists destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto, and attempted to exterminate all the…
Black Jack
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10. Gracious, Salacious & Rapacious?
Jacqueline Kennedy, photo Toni Frissell Library of Congress 1957 Jackie Kennedy, Before and After by Norman B. Schwartz Jacqueline Kennedy, the First Lady in the land, and the novelist and essayist Gore Vidal, shared one thing in common – a stepfather. Both Jackie’s mother and Gore’s mother were married to…
Martín Tonalméyotl
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Martín Tonalméyotl in Náhuatl, Spanish & English
Dentro de los ecos del Coloquio Internacional de Poesía & Filosofía, compartimos dos poemas de Martín Tonalméyotl, en náhuatl y en su traducción al español (en la versión del propio autor). Los poemas pertenecen a la antología “Otro mundo en la Tierra”, compilada por Ulises Paniagua (Corazón de Diablo Ediciones, 2023)….
Celerina Patricia Sánchez Santiago
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Celerina Patricia Sánchez Santiago in Mixteco, Spanish & English
Dentro de los ecos del Coloquio Internacional de Poesía & Filosofía, compartimos dos poemas de Celerina Sánchez en idioma tu’un ñuu savi (mixteco) y en su traducción al español (en la versión de la propia autora). Los poemas pertenecen a la antología “Otro mundo en la Tierra”, compilada por Ulises Paniagua…
David Yip
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2. Out Of The Fryer
David Yip at 16, photo David Yip by David Yip It’s 1986—the year of the Chernobyl disaster, the Iran-Contra affair, and Halley’s Comet passing through the inner solar system. It is also the year I drop out of school, aged 15, leaving with no exam results. Not so much a…
Canada
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The Broken Banker
Man in a Blue Suit, Photo by Nicola Barts Pexels by Charles Dean For me, writing is therapy. It’s comfort. Freedom. I can write about anything—everything. I can create, destroy, rebuild. I can make my characters laugh, cry, dream. It’s something I can’t always do in real life. Writing is…
Amal Chatterjee
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Hengshan Park
by Amal Chatterjee The windows shudder as another train roars past. Through the grey-streaked glass, he sees the city growing, cranes yellow against the sky, towering over the already giant blocks that have risen while he’s been at his desk. Or so it feels, each day stepping out into a…
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