By Robert Lipsyte | TomDispatch Is the Kingdom of Golf being used to sportswash the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Or is it the other way around? Here’s the big question in Jock Culture these days: Is the Kingdom of Golf being used to sportswash the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Or is it the other way around? After all, what other… Read More Sportswashing Saudi Arabia’s Bloody Crimes
By Andy Lee Roth / Project Censored Violence is the most basic and blunt form of press censorship. To kill or imprison a journalist is to silence the public’s source of news. To date, 33 journalists around the world have been killed this year and another 494 are currently imprisoned, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Put another… Read More The Deadly Business of Reporting Truth
On Salman Rushdie by Justin E. H. Smith “Never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things – childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves – that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers.” — Salman Rushdie The goring of Salman Rushdie… Read More The Fragile Bodies of Famous Men
Prem Shankar Jha Eight years into government by Narendra Modi, it is no longer possible to pretend that India’s multi-ethnic, multi-religious democracy is not in acute danger. The reason is the collapse of the judiciary, the only pillar of democracy that had remained standing after the second victory of the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)… Read More In Turning India into a Tyranny, Modi Has Made Economic ‘Crimes’ His Latest Weapon
By Omar Shakir | Israel and Palestine Director, Middle East and North Africa Division | @OmarSShakir | – ( Human Rights Watch ) – Three years ago, as the Israeli government prepared to deport me from Israel and Palestine over my human rights advocacy, I wrote in The Forward that, should the deportation proceed without sanction from the international community, it… Read More Israel’s All-Out Assault on Rights Defenders: Palestinian Groups Raided, Closed; Researcher for Israeli Group Detained
Reviewed by Brian Tanguay What factors contribute to the rise and fall of empires, and what characteristics distinguish an empire from a world order? In To Govern the Globe, American historian Alfred W. McCoy seeks to answer these questions by surveying seven hundred years of human history, from 1347 when the Black Death reached Europe and… Read More Alfred McCoy: To Govern the Globe – World Orders and Catastrophic Change
By Katherine Bullock “The clash of civilizations,” wrote the late American political scientist Samuel Huntington in a famous 1993 article, “will dominate global politics.” He predicted: “The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.” Picked apart by critics for conceptual and empirical errors, the tragedy of 9/11 breathed new life… Read More Ukraine war shows it’s time to do away with the racist ‘Clash of Civilizations’ theory
A standard narrative exists about the role of Muslims during the Partition in India, which talks about how the Muslim community, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his Muslim League, stood for the two-nation theory and demanded the Partition of India. Historical documents, however, suggest that a majority of the Muslims opposed the Partition and… Read More Adrija Roychowdhuri: Why a majority of Muslims opposed Partition and stayed on in India
NB: Today we learn the sad news of Janab Akhtar Balouch’s passing. I have not been able to find an obituary and am posting some of his writings as a tribute. This is the first article of his that I posted: Daya Ram Gidumal of Sindh. Here are some more, including a fascinating account of Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan’s assassination in… Read More Akhtar Balouch: Why did Qurratulain Hyder leave Pakistan for India?
Pakistan and National Unity is an important position paper of the Communist Party of India, and a far-reaching text in the history of the Indian communist movement. The resolution dated September 19, 1942 contains an outline of the CPI’s support for what it called the ‘just essence of the Pakistan demand’; and the Report by Gangadhar… Read More Communist Party of India’s resolution on Pakistan and National Unity, September 1942
After the truth-shower 