Mother of Cities to me / For I was born in her gate,Between the palms and the sea / Where the world-end steamers wait Rudyard Kipling, To the City of Bombay “Few people who have criticized England from the inside have said bitterer things about her than this gutter patriot”: George Orwell IT WAS a pity that Mr.… Read More On Rudyard Kipling: by George Orwell (1942)
The failed coup by the Wagner Group has exposed the Russian president’s fatal weaknesses. By John Feffer | June 29, 2023 The former hotdog salesman rose about as high as he could. He became a caterer to the Russian elite and a confidante of the president. He led his country’s premier paramilitary force. He was one of… Read More The Beginning of the End for Putin?
NB: Is India an empire? The British Raj certainly was, and the RSS/BJP ideologues who constantly denouce the Macaulay tradition in education; don’t seem to mind the continuance of colonial police codes and the divide and rule method of governance. Do they imagine that a combination of communal ideology and colonial policing will keep them… Read More Modi preaching peace abroad as Manipur burns reinforces historical alienation of the North East
Last week, the Wall Street Journal’s Sabrina Siddiqui faced trolling after she asked Narendra Modi about discrimination against minorities in India. The White House on Monday said the online harassment of journalist Sabrina Siddiqui, who asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi a question at a press conference last week, was completely unacceptable. On June 23, Modi had taken… Read More White House condemns harassment of journalist who questioned PM Modi
By Richard Wolin Martin Heidegger’s influence has been enormous. Richard Rorty once justifiably claimed that it would be impossible to write the intellectual history of the 20th century without acknowledging Heidegger’s titanic impact. But these tributes to Heidegger’s prodigious achievements are question-begging in one crucial respect: they neglect to consider what we are actually reading when… Read More To Sanitize the Master’s Corpus: On the Heidegger Hoax
I myself have spent some time in the past trying to show “‘the lack of scientific certainty’” inherent in the construction of facts. I too made it a ‘primary issue.’ But I did not exactly aim at fooling the public by obscuring the certainty of a closed argument – or did I? After all, I… Read More Bruno Latour: Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? (2004)
Collected on the Internet, 2000 Source: http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/drlaura.asp#gCkiqQ1dEXDJYwra.99 In her radio show, Dr Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, written by a US man… Dear Dr. Laura: Thank… Read More “Homosexuality is wrong because the Bible says so” etc., etc.
Andrew Roth The extraordinary events of the past 48 hours – Prigozhin’s armed mutiny, Putin’s call for “brutal” reprisals, an 11th-hour peace deal – might appear to have resolved themselves. The leader of the Wagner mercenary group has halted his armed mutiny and march on the Russian capital, apparently in exchange for an amnesty and… Read More Putin and Prigozhin avert bloodshed, but their feud is not over /24 hours that shook Russia
Dilip Simeon NB: This work-in-progress paper was my contribution to a conference hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Bergen, Norway. The conference( May 31-June 2, 2023) was titled 200 Years of Socialism: Revisiting the Old Dilemmas: First Annual Global Research Programme on Inequality Lecture Abstract: The Bolshevik confiscation of the… Read More Militant capitalism, bad infinity, and the longing for total revolution
BY JULIA GLEDHILL AND WILLIAM D. HARTUNG While Republicans may now be “weaponizing” the political scene, the Pentagon’s weaponization story has lasted forever and a day. As TomDispatch regulars and Pentagon experts William Hartung and Julia Gledhill point out, when it comes to major purchases of weaponry (and the “investment” of taxpayer dollars in the giant weapons-making corporations that produce them),… Read More The Ultimate All-American Slush Fund
After the truth-shower 