NB: Neither then (nor, I suspect today), do many people in the justice system pay attention to the fact that along with Graham Staines, his two sons, aged 6 and 10 were also burned to death by the mob led by Dara Singh. Even in the eyes of Dara Singh and his numerous admirers, could… Read More Could the man who murdered a Christian missionary and his sons walk free in India?
Kołakowski notes, “automatic thought is not really thought: it is the antithesis of thought. Thought, in the strict sense in which we are using the word here, means creative thought—precisely that activity which no automatic mechanism can replace.”…. His observations on “the enormity of material and spiritual desolation caused by the Stalinist system”; and his… Read More Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009): Modernity’s Patching Up
The Soviet-Jewish writer bore eternal witness to the crimes of totalitarianism by Gary Saul Morson Vasily Grossman, the Russian-Jewish writer best known for the 1959 novel titled Life and Fate, has that book’s protagonist, Viktor Shtrum, express the view that the USSR is remarkably similar to its mortal enemy, Nazi Germany. Both are one-party states; both use… Read More How Vasily Grossman Made Darkness Visible
George Monbiot: Murderous heat, an endangered food supply and no net zero: the life the radical right wants you to have Nepal’s flash floods expose something more fundamental: the problem is not the absence of a warning system – it is a climate crisis that is producing hazards that behave differently from those the systems… Read More Nepal-Tibet flood: this is the cost of not acting in the face of the climate crisis
Adam Tooze Chartbook 472 As I was contemplating the lily, a thin blue ray of light flashed on the vineyard road below and groped its way over the slopes. Then I heard an automobile stop at the main gate. Although we were not expecting guests, I went down to the gate … and there I… Read More Neo-Burgundian technocracy: Ernst Jünger’s reckoning with nihilism
To defend the ecology of the irreplaceable Western Ghats entails renewing our ties to the natural world. No trite nostrum along the lines of ‘sustainable development’ will suffice. Sustainability is about what we can go on taking from nature without finding the courage to face our organised, well-disguised greed By Aseem Shrivastava The canopy closes… Read More The dark forest of Katlekan: Why we must stop the plunder of the Western Ghats
War in the Middle East has morphed from the sterile narrative of fighting for freedom and democracy, to the more spectacular notion that US military force has been mobilized to serve Christian prophecy Phil Wilson Common Dreams Forget about Ancient Sparta, Attila the Hun, Hernán Cortés, Julius Ceasar, Alexander the Great, Adolf Hitler, and all of the conquerors that… Read More Thank Trump for This: He Has Exposed the Leaking Guts of the War Machine
Bharat Bhushan If criticism continues to overshadow RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s overseas visit, it will be a net negative for his stated aims, especially as more officials and civil society organisations abroad speak out against it Bharat Bhushan Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat’s three-nation global outreach tour comes at a difficult time for the organisation. International perception of… Read More Mohan Bhagwat’s costly global gambit: From under the radar to under fire
US Geological Survey says massive glacial collapse caused catastrophic flash floods in the Himalayan border region of Nepal and Tibet By Mark Saunokonoko, Nick Evershed, Mike Hohnen, Paul Scruton, Harvey Symons, Glenn Swann and Lucy Swan At 8.37am on Wednesday, an enormous section of a glacier in the Himalayas sheared free and crashed on to the valley floor in Nepal’s Langtang national park,… Read More How the deadly Nepal and Tibet flash flood unfolded – a visual guide
It’s clear here in Silicon Valley that AI is advancing faster than humans’ ability to control it. That means even sober prophecies seem optimistic Timothy Garton Ash Here in Silicon Valley, the experts think that within the next couple of years we’ll see an extraordinary takeoff for artificial intelligence. “Welcome to the foothills of the… Read More Would an AI disaster on the scale of Hiroshima be enough to make humankind protect itself? I fear not
After the truth-shower 