Don't miss Terry Glavin tonight at 7:00 PM

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Tonight! Terry Glavin's Book Launch! October 12, 2011 The Free Thinking Film Society Presents Terry Glavin launches his new book Come From The Shadows: The Long and Lonely Road to Peace in Afghanistan Wednesday October 12th, 2011 Come From The Shadows: The Long and Lonely Road to Peace in Afghanistan by Terry Glavin October 12, 2011, 7:00 PM Army Officer's Mess 149 Somerset Admission: $15.00 (students $10.00) Please note: NO JEANS! I hope to see everybody tonight at the Army Officer's mess for this important event. I believe that Terry Glavin is one of Canada's finest journalists, and no one in Canada knows more about Afghanistan than Terry. His new book, "Come From The Shadows" is terrific. It not only provides a good overview of what has happened in Afghanistan, but it also analyzes the anti-war left and how it has hurt the chances for peace. Last Saturday, the Ottawa Citizen printed an excerpt called "Getting Lost in Absurdistan".... "Borrowed from anthropology, the politics of cultural relativism is a jumble of white guilt, identity politics and a weird insistence on a kind of equivalence among cultures and their various claims to truth. If you can't criticize or even properly comprehend "other" cultures by applying universal criteria, you will hardly be allowed to offer so much as a low opinion of fascist cultures that celebrate the public stoning of women or religious belief systems that nurture the death cults of suicide bombers. But you don't need to trouble yourself with any of that anyway, because to qualify for membership in the latter-day left, Nick Cohen writes, it had come to this: "All you must be is against your own government and against America." The result is a distressing spectacle. "Democrats, feminists and socialists in the poor world who are suffering at the hands of the extreme right turn for support to the home of democracy, feminism and socialism in the west," writes Cohen, "only to find that the democrats, feminists and socialists of the rich world won't help them or acknowledge their existence." With the bedrock of universalism corroded, the bonds of solidarity can only break down. No one owes a solemn duty of any kind to anyone else. Writes Cohen: "You couldn't have found a more lethal way to kill left-wing politics if you tried." Thus, by the morning of September 11, 2001, across the liberal left, people had lost their ability to comprehend any enemy more foul than the United States. When the planes plunged into the Twin Towers, the Euro-American left, Cohen writes, simply went "berserk." So, here is your chance to learn more about "Absurdistan". Don't miss Terry Glavin tonight! Tickets will be available at the door...or you can still buy tickets at Compact Music (785 Bank, 190 Bank) and Collected Works (1242 Wellington). And, don't forget to buy your Festival Pass to the 2nd Annual Free Thinking Film Festival... Frederick Litwin Free Thinking Film Society