Everywhere stars rise to power as charismatic demagogues and risk-takers, but these very qualities breed in them an implacable desire to control all power and push away all they see as worthy replacements. Mrinal Pande Somewhere one had come across a story about ageing penguins. It said that a sleepy penguin may float atop the… Read More Yayati Syndrome: The Unreasonable Power Hunger of Ageing Men
GAZA casualties, live statistics Lancet warns Gaza death toll could be over 186,000 Just say how many is Israel allowed to kill until it’s considered a crime in its own eyes? Where does the massacre stop? The answer is predetermined: “As many as necessary.” In other words: there’s no limit. Gideon Levy The trumpets of victory… Read More How Many Dead Children in Gaza Is Mohammed Deif Worth?
A song by Single Gun Theory a long time agoI picked flowers and sang on a hillside far awayI’m still singinga long long time agoI felt love for the first timeit’s still with me now through the years, through the years,carried pain and loss with my love a long long time agoyou and I swam… Read More Motherland
I was searching for meaning and purpose so I became an academic philosopher. Reader, you might guess what happened next Pranay Sanklecha Why did you decide to study philosophy?’ asked the Harvard professor, sitting in the park in his cream linen suit. ‘Because I want to find out how to live,’ I said. ‘I want… Read More Philosophy was once alive
Older Cubans are struggling to make ends meet on tiny pensions as the country pivots towards private enterprise Ruaridh Nicoll and Eileen Sosin in Havana In central Havana, Martha Ortega has been queueing for mince. She has both osteo- and rheumatoid arthritis causing her foot to drag, but she remains stylish, a checked shirt and… Read More Members of Cuba’s revolutionary generation feel abandoned by the society they created
The history of many centuries, including our own, shows that the default state of politics is not redistribution and general welfare, but a spiral of accumulation by the very rich, the extreme exploitation of labour, the seizure of common resources and exaction of rent for their use, extortion, coercion and violence. Normal is a society in which… Read More Things are not going to get better as long as oligarchs rule the roost in our democracies
Samar Abu Elouf’s harrowing work in Gaza has garnered critical acclaim. But that’s not why she does it GAZA casualties, live statistics Photographs by Samar Abu Elouf / Story by Alaa Elassar, CNN The first thing Samar Abu Elouf does before photographing a dead child is make sure it isn’t one of her own. Feelings… Read More ‘This is worth dying for’
Though I was never in the U.S. military, my life experience has been American wars, wars, wars, and more wars. I was born during World War II. I was in grade school when the Korean War took place. I still have a faint memory of a photo of a gleaming American soldier’s face from that… Read More Juan Cole, Another American War in the Middle East?
Readers who are parents might be forgiven for thinking that Alice Munro who blamed her abused daughter for her husband’s paedophilia was a sociopath whose condition might have a bearing on her books. (Alice Munro claimed her daughter was lying about being abused by stepfather) Mukul Kesavan A year and a half ago, while moving… Read More Life and Fiction
NB: The entire spectrum of Indian politics was represented at the Ambani wedding, – an obscene spectacle of wealth ongoing for several months in a country marked by extreme economic disparity. As the chart below shows, Indian big business has been at the forefront of spreading hatred to promote our ruling dispensation. This is untrammelled… Read More Money, politics, and hypocrisy
After the truth-shower 