Bharat Bhushan Some things do not quite add up in the case of eight ex-Indian Navy officers sentenced to death for spying by Qatar. The Indian government’s response and that of various commentators leave many questions unanswered. No one has so far claimed that the retired Navy officers are innocent – not even the Ministry… Read More Qatar espionage case: Unanswered questions
Ariel Bernstein On the morning of 7 October, I woke up in Tel Aviv to the sound of alarms. Soon after came a constant stream of horrific news. As we began to piece together the gruesome picture of Hamas’s atrocities that morning, it became apparent that Israel was facing another war in Gaza – this time on… Read More I fought house to house in Gaza … I know force alone won’t bring peace
First posted October 28, 2018 Today is my father’s birth centenary, he was born in Allahabad, the second child of his parents, J.J. Simeon and Florence Addy on October 29, 1918; just before the end of the First World War. He had two sisters, Sheila and Roma. He studied at St Joseph’s school, where he… Read More Lt Col Eric Simeon’s hundredth birthday: October 29, 2018
American politicians, the mainstream media, a powerful segment of academia – all have marginalized the faculty of critical thinking. The paradox is that modern academic disciplines claim to follow Socratic Method of inquiry but in reality, they blatantly follow Sophistic relativistic philosophy and seem unable to confront the corrupting influence of money in American politics… Read More Is the One-Sided US Response to the Gaza Crisis a Sign of Civilizational Decline?
By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV Over 5,000 dead. 12,000 wounded. Millions forcibly displaced. Tragic figures from Gaza? Think again: Those are the casualty figures after six months of fighting in Sudan between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), according to Amnesty International. In July, a mass grave was found containing the bodies… Read More The world is coming apart at the seams
NB: An excellent introduction to a complex issue. This interview with a scholar of Middle Eastern history is also worth listening to: Violence Is Bred by Occupation: Rashid Khalidi on Israel-Gaza. DS ROHINI HENSMAN On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a massive attack on Israeli territory, killing over 1300 people, many of… Read More Palestine and Israel: Historical, Legal and Moral Issues
On grasping human things in human terms Wilfred M. McClay Back in the 1980s, an editor at Harvard University Press had the bright idea of asking some of the leading lights of the day to write their own version of a philosophical dictionary, modelled on Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique (1764). The project petered out rather quickly, presumably because… Read More The burden of the humanities
Ibn Sina, known in the West as ‘Avicenna,’ and his contemporary Biruni set out to redefine law, medicine and philosophy in the 11th century The Genius of their Age: Ibn Sina, Biruni, and the Lost Enlightenment; By S. Frederick Starr Reviewed by Maxwell Carter I never realized quite how idle and inadequate I was until reading… Read More Central Asia’s Big Thinkers
Displacing and destroying peoples by colonisation is not just a historical Western evil but a global and contemporary one Lachlan McNamee In 1931, Japan invaded northeast China and established a client state called Manchukuo (Manchuria). To secure control over Manchuria, over the next 14 years, the Japanese government lured 270,000 settlers there by offering free… Read More Settler colonialism
NB: This essay brings us closer to the irredeemable racism of the rulers of the ‘free world’; and their habit of transferring their guilt and responsibility for mass crimes onto the shoulders of others. Here is another argument, directed at thoughtful Israelis (the AV is at this link). It is made by someone who is… Read More Michael Brenner: Europe-Jews-Muslims
