As the far right fulminates about who ‘belongs’ in Britain, let’s remember Fritz Lustig, who arrived here in 1939, just months before war broke out. Initially jailed as an ‘enemy alien’, he played a vital role in a top-secret military intelligence unit Robin Lustig When the Nazis came to power in Germany in January 1933, Fritz Lustig,… Read More My father, the German refugee who fought the Nazis as a ‘secret listener’
NB: The Chief Justice of India has declared he has no time to waste on video evidence of police brutality in Delhi; nor on considering the pleas of the student movement. At least fifteen major competitive examinations have been cancelled and re-held since 2022, affecting millions of students, causing massive mental stress and financial hardship.… Read More Unprecedented upsurge of Indian youth / State hooliganism on full display / Students में जबर्दस्त गुस्सा, सत्ता का घमंड ले डूबेगा Modi को ?
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
After the truth-shower 