Fossil plant stems from Omani desert. Permian fossil plant stems in Sultanate of Oman occur in desert areas. Formerly embedded in sandstones, now they are deflated by the air and accessible on the desert floor. They are unique for their permineralization by Fe oxides/hydroxides, SiO2, sometimes with an admixture of moganite, a metastable form of SiO2. The fossils probably prove semi-arid middle Permian climate in the area.
The Welsh literary and cultural theorist Raymond Williams was, together with Stuart Hall and Richard Hoggart, a founding figure of British Cultural Studies. He is known, among other things, for the unorthodox interpretation of Marxism he called “cultural materialism”. We present here a Czech translation of Williams’s reflections on Die Alternative (published in English as The Alternative in Eastern Europe) by Rudolf Bahro. Williams’s text first appeared in the New Left Review under the title “Beyond Actually Existing Socialism” (NLR I, no. 120, March/April 1980). Translated by Magdaléna Michlová and Jaroslav Michl, introduced by Jaroslav Michl.