Page 2 - Zero Books News Today

HiggsIn philosophy we often travel with circular arguments at the start of which we have to make assumptions. The elasticity of these arguments make for the ebbs and flows of the questions that plague human nature and our busy-ness. We’re curious. But we don’t like not knowing.

In 2009, when I interviewed Christopher Hitchens in anticipation of his appearance at the inaugural Festival of Dangerous Ideas, I used our last 10 minutes together to ask his opinion of, among other things, Australian journalist John Pilger. “I remember thinking that his work from Vietnam was very good at the time,” Hitchens said. “I dare say if I went back and read it again, I’d probably still admire quite a lot of it.” He proceeded to describe Pilger as unthinkingly anti-American, b...

Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters

The Good Sex Awards has announced 45 finalists for its inaugural edition.

One year after the murder of George Floyd, the reckoning over race in America continues. The mass protests that followed the killing of Floyd included calls for the end of policing as we know it and demanded that we reexamine systemic inequities. Activists worked to turn public outcry into political power. Corporations, media companies and sports leagues prominently joined a cascade of anti-racist commitments. Even the NFL, notorious for its resistance to social justice efforts, declared themse...

Leo Zeilig has held academic positions at the University of Johannesburg, the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of the Western Cape. He has authored books on student politics in Africa, social movements, the African working class, and Patrice Lumumba, and is also a novelist. He has written extensively on African politics and history, including books on working-class struggle and the development of revolutionary movements and biographies on some of Africa’s most important poli...

December 11, 2020 —  Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Left Voice — More than a century ago, Eduard Bernstein claimed that it was time for socialists to abandon their revolutionary goal of overthrowing capitalism. He argued that the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) should adopt a reformist approach that strictly relied on legal channels, such as elections in which socialism could slowly be voted into power. To support his position, Bernstein cited th...