Tom Engelhardt ( Tom Engelhardt Substack) – I recently drove to a gas station in Massachusetts to fill my tank with regular gas, the cheapest around, and, to my surprise, given what’s going on, it was only $4.59 a gallon. Okay, okay, I take back that “only” and admit it. It’s not good to joke about the nightmare… Read More America’s Imperial Wars, from Korea to Iran
The World at First Light: A New History of the RenaissanceBernd Roeck Tom Verde Historians typically trace the birth of the Renaissance to fourteenth-century Florence. Then, after three centuries, that brilliant era of artistry eventually gave way to the Reformation, with its shift away from humanism, and the Enlightenment, which picked up (and ran) where… Read More Why the West?
From “The Burnout Society” to “The Tonality of Thought,” tech philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s ultra-short books reveal why online liberation has felt more like voluntary captivity. Matt Elmore Byung-Chul Han is one of Europe’s most widely read philosophers. His audience in the United States has grown considerably over the last decade, though mostly outside the academy;… Read More Why Is Digital Freedom Making Us Exhausted and Sad? The philosophy of Byung-Chul Han
As the bombing starts again, it’s clear the president has dragged the US into a limitless fiasco – and the world into an economic quagmire Simon Tisdall Feckless and clueless, Donald Trump is lost in Iran, unable to find a way out of the disastrous war he started. Once again, the US military is pummelling the… Read More Trump, not Iran, is the world’s greatest danger. He’s a one-man weapon of mass destruction
By defending devotees rather than attacking the temple, the Opposition is turning the Hindutva milestone of the temple’s construction into an emotive anti-corruption narrative.. While the RSS tirelessly preaches that public behaviour, conduct, and character (chaal, chalan aur charitra) should be spotless, their behaviour in Ayodhya has been derelict, their conduct malfeasant, and their character dishonourable. Bharat… Read More Devotion to Deception: Ram temple theft scandal could redraw UP politics
The environmentalist has had a tough year to say the least. He did not deserve to be preventively held under the NSA. He does not deserve to be ignored now. NB: Preventive detention was a colonial measure introduced as long ago as 1818. It was then named Bengal Regulation III of 1818. It was retained… Read More Sonam Wangchuk Does Not Deserve the Establishment’s Silence / This IIT professor died after a 111-day fast to save the Ganga
NB: An excellent commentary; except for one misnomer: when it comes to Western imperial establishments and their hangers-on, it’s not their moral stupidity, but their moral depravity that we are confronted with. The truth is as clear as crystal: they are irredeemably racist, as racist as the Nazi jurists who concocted the phrase ‘life not… Read More Gaza and the Problem of Moral Stupidity
The cultural fascination with the middle ages rarely acknowledges that power is still won and abused in the same wayIt makes a mockery of the idea that we use “medieval” as a term of abuse to fling at others, when really it’s a term that correctly defines enduring and deeply shameful characteristics of our own… Read More Our tendency to persecute others is as alive today as in medieval times
Saba Naqvi I am in a cab in the Awadh region of Uttar Pradesh, where our family village home is located. Ayodhya is 100 km away, the road signs say. The vehicle is clean, the driver courteous and clearly deeply religious. His telephone declares “Jai Shri Ram” a thousand times during our drive because it is set… Read More Ayodhya’s holy scandal
Gautam Bhatia The author has won the Ran Hirschl Prize for the Best Article in Constitutional Studies This essay argues that the relationship between constitutionalism and economic inequality must be understood in the context of the relationship between constitutionalism and political economy. In particular, the concept of the separation of the economic and the political—which… Read More Economic Inequality & Separation of the Economic & the Political in Modern Constitutionalism
After the truth-shower 