It feels right that it would be here in a post on my blog Minus Plato that I would launch my new book No Philosopher King: An Everyday Guide to Art and Life under Trump (Published by AC Books and available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the WexStore). This is where it all […]
I remember that day. Neighborhood seemed a little empty. We were out with my brother playing. The air and the sun felt sharp, we enjoyed it. This (sic) is a photo of a scientist, a “liquidator.” I would like to believe that it is Vladimir Shevchenko, the director who filmed Chernobyl some days after the […]
A twelve-year-old girl is walking home from school. She is in uniform and wears black, pointed shoes. She lets herself in with a key, hangs up her coat (drops it?), and turns on the TV. Some time later, her mother gets home from work. The girl says: – I’m not going back there. I’m not […]
January 29, 1987, was an ordinary day in history but a very important day for me: it was on that day that I first emerged from collective life. I went to Hainan Island off Haikou, where I saw the ocean for the first time, realized my country was about to experience huge changes, and began […]
This day marks the beginning of the ongoing Kashmiri Insurgency, rooted in the separatist movement that demands autonomy from India. India continues to use military force to curb the issue, much to its failure. The Kashmir Valley remains one of the most volatile places in the world, with regular clashes between stone-pelting youth and the […]
On August 28, 1990, during Canada’s Oka Crisis, a convoy of seventy-five cars carrying Mohawk women, children, and elders were evacuated from the Kahnawake reserve in fear of an advance by the Canadian army. The path to safety meant driving through a highway underpass, where from above, Canadian citizens were able to bombard them with […]
Though he never had a political orientation, my father worked in Iraq as a propaganda calligrapher. Each time an event or reform happened, he would receive an assignment. He delivered without delay, and the banners would then be hung in the streets of Sulaymaniyah. Sometimes I had the feeling he only held the brush and […]
On August 20, 21 and 22, 2017, I posted three posts on Minus Plato about the sound piece Medea by Soundwalk Collective. Here they are to refresh your memory: The first post is just the cover of the book Medea, the second a link to the sound piece (with a video by Vincent Moon), while […]
“The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come.” From Nelson Mandela’s inaugural speech, Pretoria, May 10, 1994.
On November 4, 1995, Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a man opposed to the peace treaty with Palestine. The aftermath was defined by incitement by the opposition: withdrawal from “Jewish” land amounted to heresy. This moment brought about a fracture. “Jamal, who is working on his doctorate in mathematics, is struck by […]