Manifestations of Artistic ExpressionFebruary 10, 2020Source: Ezega News / www.ezega.com / By Abel Merawi / February 7, 2020 (Ezega.com) — When archeologists and evolutionary biologists study the development of human beings, they look for cave drawings and other artistic expressions such as tool making. These are important since they are manifestations of mental progress. On …
Ivan Kral, Rocker With Patti Smith and Others, Is Dead at 71February 7, 2020Source: The New York Times / wwww.nytimes.com / By Jim Farber / A key figure in New York’s creative underground of the 1970s, he was also a filmmaker who chronicled the early days of the punk scene. Ivan Kral, a Czech-born musician whose integral role in the Patti Smith Group, …
The Downfall of the Republican PartyFebruary 5, 2020Source: The Atlantic / www.theatlantic.com / By Peter Wehner / To see men and women who had a positive vision beaten down and broken by Trump is a poignant thing. On Friday, Republicans in the United States Senate—with the exception of Mitt Romney and Susan Collins—voted to prevent John Bolton, …
Gandhi’s legacyJanuary 28, 2020Source: The Frederik News-Post / www.fredericknewspost.com / By Anadi Naik / For four decades, through nonviolent direct action and passive resistance, Mahatma Gandhi meticulously prepared his people for freedom. During a period when the civilized world was fighting one worldwide war after another, he was arming his people with no …
Yes, Putin cares about Trump’s impeachment trial — but not for the reason you might imagineJanuary 26, 2020Source: The Washington Post / www.washingtonpost.com / by Jessica Pisano / Some puzzles buried in the House’s articles of impeachment may not be solved during the Senate trial. For instance, why did Trump ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation of Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company on whose …
As Others See It: Roger Scruton was a philosopher of a ‘humane and moderate politics’January 18, 2020Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette / www.post-gazette.com / The British conservative died Sunday at 75 / In May 1968, visiting his girlfriend in Paris, Roger Scruton, age 24, watched from an apartment window as students overturned cars and lampposts and threw stones at police. For seven weeks the civil unrest raged, paralyzing …
How crowds toppled communism’s house of cards in 1989January 8, 2020Source: BBC News / www.bbc.com / By John Simpson / When the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe collapsed in the final months of 1989, I was sent to report on each of the revolutions that took place in the space of only six weeks: the fall of the Berlin Wall, …
In 2020, put people first: Protesters are not ‘urban naxals.’ Government needs to listen to themJanuary 8, 2020Source: The Times of India / www.timesofindia.com / By Sagarika Ghose / “Go to Pakistan,” a senior UP police officer was recently heard telling anti Citizenship (Amendment) Act protesters in Meerut. A supposedly neutral law enforcer uttered a shocking, outrageous threat, yet why blame the police officer alone? All through …
A Hit Man, a Detective Novelist and a Woman Who Fell From the SkyJanuary 8, 2020Source: The New York Times / www.nytimes.com / By Dan Bilefsky / One writer details 10 of his most memorable profiles in over a decade of his reporting. Hi, this is Dan Bilefsky, the Montreal-based Canada correspondent for The Times, filling in this week for Ian Austen. Happy New Year! …
Demands for democratic change may be spreading across Africa and the Middle East – but so is apathyDecember 28, 2019Source: Independent / www.independent.co.uk / By Borzou Daragahi / Some 41 years ago, Vaclav Havel wrote about the greengrocer who put up the sign, “Workers of the World Unite,” among the vegetables in his store display. Did he really believe in the slogan? “Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea …
How Kremlin Coups Led to Democratic RevolutionsDecember 19, 2019Source: The Algemeiner / www.algemeiner.com / By Jiri Valenta / In the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev was under pressure from the fundamentalist communist leaders of East Germany and Czechoslovakia to take action against the reform-minded leaders of Poland and Hungary. But he was also struggling with radical reformers in the USSR …
A History of Buddhism in the Czech RepublicDecember 13, 2019Source: Buddhistdoor global / www.buddhistdoor.net / By Alexandra Kallay / Buddhism was established in India more than 2,500 years ago. For a relatively small country that was only recently introduced to Buddhism—and mostly Diamond Way Buddhism—the Czech Republic has a vibrant community of Buddhists, with about 0.05 per cent of …
30 years after Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution, have we come full circle?December 11, 2019Source: History News Network / https://historynewsnetwork.org / By Gideon Remez / I’m dedicating these remarks to the memory of my dear friend and esteemed colleague Tatiana Hoffman, who might have been a much better speaker tonight were it not for her sudden and untimely death three years ago. She came …
Victims, not victors? The uniquely Czech debate over how to memorialise the Velvet RevolutionDecember 4, 2019Source: The Guardian / www.theguardian.com / By Paul Wilson / Prague has long an uneasy relationship with monuments to its history – but 30 years since the fall of the communist regime, that could be about to change I used to think the saddest place in Prague was a prospect …