Why Chinese Keffiyuhs are not destroying the Palestinian Economy

Almost anytime the topic of keffiyuhs is brought up, someone mentions Chinese keffiyuh production as the cause of the shutdown of Palestinian keffiyuh factories, and the precarious situation of the last remaining plant: the Hirbawi textile factory in Hebron. The argument runs something like this: Chinese keffiyehs, which have printed patterns rather than woven ones, […]

Religions and Secular Ethics as Psycho-Technologies

In A Preface to Morals, Walter Lippman makes the point that religion doesn’t merely give people an ethical theory which describes how they ought to act, but also creates the motivational structures which elicit them to act according to the theory. In other words, religion is not merely a how-to manuel on how to act, to be […]

Massacre and Memory – the 29th anniversary of Sabra and Shatila

Today is the 29th anniversary of the Maronite Phalange/IDF massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Other than the massacre at Deir Yassin, no other historical event seems to symbolize the Palestinian situation like what happened at Sabra and Shatila between september 16th and 18th, 1982. The event was brutal, this can’t be questioned. But […]

Palestinian “Statehood”: the UN bid, the Stages plan, and the rights of refugees

The Palestinian National authority is in the midst of a bid to acquire for the occupied Palestinian territories the status of “statehood” at the United Nations. How should we interpret this situation – who’s interests are served by the current plan, and how does it fit into the regional and historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli […]

Confirmation Bias and the Ultimate Attribution Error

Confirmation bias is the tendency to privilege content which affirms existing views over content which challenges them. The Ultimate Attribution error is the tendency to attribute personality based explanations to the negative behaviors of outgroup members, and situational based explanations to their positive behavior. And vice-versa, it is the tendency to attribute situational based explanations to […]

Ron Paul’s “Boos”: 9/11 or Palestine?

After tonight’s debate between candidates running for the republican nomination in the next presidential elections, many newspapers quickly published articles which highlight in their title the fact that Ron Paul was “booed” for his views on 9/11. I don’t have time to watch the entire debate, but I watched this compilation of Ron Paul’s answers, […]

The Value of Loyalty

Loyalty gets a bad wrap today amongst those who fancy themselves leftists. It sounds old-world, it is associated with Monarchism and maintaining the status quo at all costs. And it’s true that loyalty is a conservative value – if you want to keep things the same and maintain existing categories, it’s important not to turn […]

Secularism is a religion amongst others

I have problems with all religions. Why? Because any religion can be used to suppress free thought, progressive movements, new ideas – and as a philosopher I trade in these things. So, any religion appears as a potential danger to me. Also, I consider myself very progressive – on the vanguard of a new world, […]

Zizek on the specificity of anti-semitism

In Living in the End Times, Zizek argues that the radical left is wrong to ever express unease in its unambiguous condemnation of anti-semitism, “as if to do so would be playing into the hands of the Zionists”: There should be no compromise here: anti-Semitism is not just one amoung ideologies; it is ideology as […]

	Bradford McCormick on Abraham Lincoln on Freedom, Wa…
	northernsong on Chomsky on Veganism
	Asier on Chomsky on Veganism
	northernsong on Heidegger and Co-ops: Ever Lea…
	David on Heidegger and Co-ops: Ever Lea…