In Aeschylus’ ‘Persians’, Xerxes though defeated, was not dethroned. He went on to rule for another decade or more. But the spirit of freedom and democracy set alight by that struggle lived on for more than a century Vijay Tankha What could the earliest extant Greek tragedy have to say about the recent elections? Nothing… Read More Why an ancient Greek tragedy has resonance in politics today — in India and beyond
By Maggie Hicks This month, Raz Segal learned that he’d been offered a job to run the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota’s flagship. It was an exciting career move for Segal, an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University. Five days later, Minnesota withdrew the offer. The… Read More A Holocaust Scholar Called Israel’s Actions in Gaza ‘Genocide.’ It Cost Him a Job Offer
Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer’s film Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds (2020) takes viewers on an extraordinary journey to discover how shooting stars, meteorites, and deep space impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future. In Clive’s words (responding to Brother Guy Consolmagno of the… Read More ‘Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds’
Corine Pelluchon THE REVERSAL OF REASON INTO IRRATIONALITY AND THE SCHEME OF DOMINATIONThe COVID-19 pandemic and the threat of collapse due to climate change and the erosion of biodiversity point to the aberrations of a development model that is based on the unlimited exploitation of natural resources and other living beings. More than ever, it… Read More Ecology as new Enlightenment
NB: NATO, Russia, North Korea etc are all flexing nuclear muscles. The film referred to above was made sixty-one years ago, and is even more relevant, given the increase in the number of insane old men dreaming of mushroom clouds. And this is a link to the source of this article, the Cardiff University Philosophy… Read More Dr Strangelove: how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. Stanley Kubrick, 1963
Why did Japanese Confucians enthusiastically support Imperial Japan’s murderous conquest of China, the homeland of Confucius? Shaun O’Dwyer At the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1946-48), convened to try Japanese military and civilian leaders for war crimes, one defendant delivered a puzzling explanation for Japan’s 1937-45 war against China. The aim of the… Read More Chastising little brother
To return to the G7: what is it and why is India there? The G7 is a Cold War relic. It’s basically six rich, white, Atlanticist powers along with one rich, honorary-white, Pacific nation Mukul Kesavan The morning’s paper had a picture of the prime minister hugging the pope. Not all pictures of Narendra Modi… Read More Guest appearance
First posted November 14, 2011 In a minor replay of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Indian media have been gloating at the defeat of the Left Front in West Bengal especially and have repeatedly suggested that this signals the ’end of the Left in India’. Even at the best of times… Read More End of the Left in India?
Israel no longer has a genuine state comptroller, state prosecutor, Civil Service Commission or Justice Ministry department for investigating police misconduct. Netanyahu’s influence is everywhere (sounds familiar to Indians) GAZA casualties, live statistics Mordechai Gilat Here’s a question that no sane family in Israel can avoid asking: How did we get to the situation where… Read More Serial Criminals Rule Israel. That’s Where the Collapse Begins
Both winners referenced the conflict-clouded international situation, at a time when the arts world is grappling with divisions over the Israel-Hamas war and corporate sponsorship of the arts. LONDON : Author-activist Naomi Klein won the inaugural Women’s Prize for Nonfiction on Thursday with “Doppelganger,” a personal account of her plunge into the world of online… Read More Naomi Klein and V V Ganeshananthan win Women’s Prize literary awards
After the truth-shower 