Month: January 2018

Source: The Guardian

We live in one of the darkest moments in American history – a bleak time of spiritual blackout and imperial meltdown. Exactly 25 years ago, in my book Race Matters, I tried to lay bare the realities and challenges to American democracy in light of the doings and sufferings of black people. Back then, I reached heartbreaking yet hopeful conclusions. Now, the heartbreak cuts much deeper and the hope has nearly run out.

The nihilism in black America has become a massive spiritual blackout in America. The undeniable collapse of integrity, honesty and decency in our public and private life has fueled even more racial hatred and contempt. read more

Source: Alternet

This is a community threatened with extinction for the past seven decades.

Relief workers for International agencies sit with me in Dhaka (Bangladesh). They are talking about the difficulties faced by the Rohingya people who have fled Myanmar for Bangladesh over the past several months. Over 650,000 people from the Rohingya community came into Bangladesh since August 25 of last year. This is a torrent of desperate people, a community threatened with extinction for the past seven decades. The refugee camps near Cox’s Bazaar are overcrowded and dangerously unhygienic. Already there is an outbreak of diphtheria, with indications of severe health challenges to come. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), half of the refugees are malnourished and anaemic, while a quarter of the children suffer from acute malnutrition. A logistical worker for a relief agency tells me that in his three decades in this work he has never seen anything like this. read more

Source: Boston Review

Editor’s Note: Writing about China Miéville in the Guardian, fantasy luminary Ursula K. Le Guin opined, “You can’t talk about Miéville without using the word ‘brilliant.’” Miéville is a rare sort of polyglot, an acclaimed novelist—he has won nearly every award for fantasy and science fiction that there is, often multiple times—who is equally comfortable in the worlds of politics and academia. Combining his skills as a storyteller and Marxist theorist, his most recent book, October, regales readers with the key events of the Russian Revolution. In this interview, Miéville discusses the intersections between his creative oeuvre and the political projects of utopia and dystopia. read more