Yesterday I was driven to look at my wonderful collection of cookbooks. I did so because I was furious. I had something to prove, and I knew the answer would be in my kitchen on the shelf above my bread board, kettle and toaster. (I’ll tell you what made me angry later in this blog post – perhaps you’ll guess […]
The Shoah and the Confusions of Warring
Full Metal Jacket and the dualities of being a human The 1987 Kubrik film Full Metal Jacket stars Matthew Modine as Private Joker, an American soldier fighting in the Vietnam War. Netflix removed BORN TO KILL from his helmet and destroyed the film’s theme of the duality of human nature. Next to BORN TO KILL was the symbol of peace […]
Campus Sit-ins from 1968 Vietnam to 2024 Gaza
Campus Sit-ins 56 years ago I was late, as usual, for my sociology course at the London School of Economics because I had to take my 2-year-old child to the Infant Nursery School on Kingsway first. At the main entrance to the old building, I was invited to step under the rope that kept out the teaching staff and join […]
Humans and colonisation
Humans are colonisers. So are insects, viruses, fungi, plants, brambles and other animals. Humans are animals and like other animals, we ‘colonise’ the environment in which we find ourselves to make it into our habitat. It’s our nature to do so as it’s the nature of all living organisms. Ask online and you are told that the Oxford dictionary defines […]
Covent Garden Encounter
As I walked up from Covent Garden Tube to Neal’s Yard I saw my teenage son coming towards me. We had not planned or expected to see each other there or then. As we smiled at each other in recognition we both became aware that a small demonstration was taking place on the street between us. To my right was […]