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International Women’s Day

 By Iranian filmmaker and photographer Mostafa Heravi
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The Society of the Spectacle Today

“ Poverty and healthcare assume   the appearance   of individual responsibility, the state assumes   the appearance   of an obstruction to open market circulation flows, the commodity assumes   the appearance   of base survival, a satiated proletariat assumes   the appearance   of a good credit score, a redistribution of wealth assumes   the appearance   of socialism, a megalomaniac assumes t he appearance of fascism, culture assumes   the appearance   of a mechanism of empowerment, the struggle against racism assumes   the appearance   of democratic leaders taking the knee in kente cloth, a healthy economy assumes   the appearance   of a healthy population, ad nauseum. Whether in the aftermath of a Biden victory, riddled as it is with vacuous appeals for unity, or even in the more superficial 2019 pseudo-debate between Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson, whose harmony of apparent disparities bespoke more abou...
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Massimo Campanini

 “ I remember that, when I taught history and institutions of the Islamic world at Urbino university in the late 1990s, sometimes my classes were literally empty. After 9/11 the classes were filled up of students (I was teaching in Milan at that time), but how much was their interest sincere? Actually, popular interest in Islam is strongly conditioned by contingent outward circumstances and today xenophobic  and Islamophobia propaganda does not help to develop the field.  Again: Italy is a parochial country. I believe to be a free-thinker, normally antagonist towards consolidate [sic] and mainstream positions, both in thinking and in politics. I am not comfortable with the Western society I live therein because I believe it is grounded on hypocrisy and false prejudices. The main one is the conviction that we Europeans and Americans (mostly white of course, WASP) are depositary of absolute and universal truths, eternal, out of history – we would be indeed the makers of the...
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Niqab Ban in Switzerland and Beyond

 A liberal argument. “ In Switzerland, population 8.5 million, that number is  estimated  between 21 and 37. These are fractions so small they barely register on a calculator.” In 2009, the French newspaper  Le Figaro  estimated that only 2,000 women in France–out of a total French population of 65 million–wear the burga in France. Targeting Muslims makes them even more visible, only contributing to an increase of racism and Islamophobia. The process is cyclical. Normalising anti-Muslim bigotry
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