By Rob Hamilton Does God exist? What is consciousness? How can we know what is real? Questions such as these have always perplexed humanity and despite the great advances made over recent centuries in understanding the behaviour of the world around us, we seem to be no closer to answering these core questions about the nature of existence. In my new book Anything Goes – A Philosophical Approach to Answering the God Question, I argue that, paradoxically, answers to these questions can be obtained – but only once we recognise that no knowledge of the true structure of reality is possi ..read more

  'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'   Posted by Martin Cohen   I remember reading about Nazi Germany, which is truly the only comparison that makes sense when looking at Israel's genocidal hatred of all things Palestinian. The ordinary German people used to line the streets and toss bread to Jews in the wagons as they went past on their way to concentration camps.  They did this for AMUSEMENT - they laughed at the people scrabbling for the scraps, li ..read more

Children playing amidst the rubble of damaged buildings in a camp for Palestinian refugees By Martin Cohen Palestine Wail and Other Bittersweet Ballads is a collection of poems by Yahia Lababidi. Yahia, as he recalls, has a personal connection to the conflict in Palestine, because his grandmother, Rabiha Dajani, was, eighty years ago, forced to flee her ancestral home in Palestine at gunpoint. She went on to become a remarkable educator, activist and social worker. The collection starts with an apt quotation. Mahmoud Darwish’s aphorism that:   «Every beautiful poem is an act of resis ..read more

By Shoidur Rahman French Martinique: no marionette martinet then, or nightingale. Thus begins this tail, as all tails do, quietly and decently, but rising to prenominal elaboration. The jackdaw may crakkajack alone, but listens to the earth call of toucan. Now the toucan’s brow is so heavily, crossly drawn, a look of ineffable concentration is there like beetlebrow. But it's also endearingly light and playful as well. Wait, my bird, ‘til I get to the bottom of this tail. Wait, ‘til I end my song. His crumpled orange beak is sharp, not yet for this world – nor so flash that he could start ..read more

The ancient Chinese poet Qu Yuan to in conversation with the contemporary novelist Mo Yan, Courtesy AI. By Chengde Chen Oh, AI, are you the Southern Gate between the known and unknown Or the Monkey King of humanoid capabilities, unparalleled and bold? You, on my behalf, think, write, design, and program, Responding effortlessly, seeking widely, and chatting with ease. Your literary prowess is like galloping from Qu Yuan* to Mo Yan**, Your profound knowledge spans from Thales’ to Musk’s domain. Your ‘deep learning’ leaves me trailing in the dust, While your ‘algorithmic’ s ..read more

How to Slay the Nuclear Zombie?  By Martin Cohen Review article on the occasion of the publication of ‘Chernobyl’ by Emin Altan Now here's a coffee table debate starting book with a difference. Emin Altan’s photographic tale of the nuclear power station that exploded on 26 April 1986 is both a grim journey and yet somehow a poetic one. Page after page of evocative images black and whites with just a hint of lost colour, speak not only about the folly of nuclear power, but of the greater folly of human conceit. The images in the book for the most part fall into two categories. There ..read more

Palestine is being ‘ethnically clensed’ in plain sight - yet the West seems indifferent By Martin Cohen Palestine is being ‘ethnically cleansed’ in plain sight - yet the West seems indifferent. Why is this? Wherever you start, the trail soon leads back to US politics. How close is the current U.S. President, Joe Biden to Israel and how much influence does the US have over Israeli policy? The answer is “very” and “not much”. In 2010, in the middle of the then-vice president’s trip to Israel, the ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu government embarrassed Biden by announcing 1,600 new homes for Jews i ..read more

Philosophy is a sailboat that deftly catches the fair breeze… By Andrew Porter We live in a time in which most people, were you to ask them ‘Do you think you’re wise?’, would look askance or confused and not answer straightforwardly. They are not prepared for the question by long anticipation and living in that habitat. But you might hear answers such as, ‘I’m wise about some things’ or ‘I’m pretty savvy when it comes to how to handle people’. But your question would remain unanswered. Maybe it’s the circles I run in, but it seems that there's little to no hankering for wisdom; i ..read more

Picture “for a school project” By Martin Cohen  There’s a plan afoot to change the way you eat. Meat is destroying the land, fish and chips destroys the sea and dairy is  just immoral. Open the paper and you'll see a piece on how new biotechnologies are coming to the rescue. It's all presented as a fait accompli with the result that today, we are sleepwalking to not only a "meat-free" future, but one in which there are no farm animals, no milk, no cheese, no butter - no real food in short. And that's not in our interests, nor (less obviously) in the interest of biodiversity and t ..read more

By Keith Tidman   Imagine you are looking at a ‘heap’ of wheat comprising some several million grains and just one grain is removed. Surely you would agree with everyone that afterward you are still staring at a heap. And that the onlookers were right to continue concluding ‘the heap’ remains reality if another grain were to be removed — and then another and another. But as the pile shrinks, the situation eventually gets trickier.   If grains continue to be removed one at a time, in incremental fashion, when does the heap no longer qualify, in the minds of the onlookers, as a ..read more