StephenKMackSD's Blog

Richard Holbrooke never walked away from a global hot spot which defied easy solution — he thrived on the hard, gritty diplomatic challenges that, to put it bluntly, either led to war or peace. Continue reading →

The many accolades coming out following the sudden death on Monday of veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke and his death bed conversion in opposing the Iraq war have overshadowed his rather sordid history of supporting dictators, war criminals and military solutions to complex political problems. Continue reading →

Neo-Conservativism is synonymous with murder on a small and large scale, and always heavily garnished with the indispensable American Exceptionalist political theology.Violence and sowing the seeds of its pernicious moral/political nihilism is the sum of its philosophical reach.

The Nation | El Espectador | Outlook India | Eurozine | London Review of Books | Magyar Narancs | Salon.com | Polityka | The Economist | Lettre International | openDemocracy | La regle du jeu | The New Yorker | Salon.eu.sk | The New Statesman | The New York Time Continue reading →

gtreality I liked this provocative paper discussing the implications of nonlocality from Nicolas Gisin http://arxiv.org/abs/101… 5 days ago reply

Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An essay on the necessity of contingency. Trans. Ray Brassier. London: Continuum, 2008

After Finitude by Quentin Meillassoux

This book written by a young French philosopher has been taken up with great enthusiasm by a small group of English language philosophers -notably Graham Harman, Iain Hamilton Grant and Ray Brassier members of the London-based “Speculative Realism” and Atlanta-based “Object-Oriented Ontology” movements. (See also Larval Subjects for an interesting discussion). Alain Badiou in his preface praises the book in glowing terms claiming that the author ‘has opened up a new path in the history of philosophy’. (p.vii) I wasn’t able to track down the French original on interlibrary loan, so I have read the book in English (a rather good translation by philosopher Ray Brassier I am happy to say). Continue reading →