Author: Dilip

I'm a scholar, writer and teacher; and my blog is designed for intellectual exploration. It carries no advertisements and requires no cash subscription

Jack Guy: Spectacular eight-mile frieze of Ice Age beasts found in Amazon rainforest

Thousands of rock art pictures depicting huge Ice Age creatures such as mastodons have been revealed by researchers in the Amazon rainforest. The paintings were probably made around 11,800 to 12,600 years ago, according to a press release from researchers at Britain’s University of Exeter. The paintings are set over three different rock shelters, with the largest, known… Read More Jack Guy: Spectacular eight-mile frieze of Ice Age beasts found in Amazon rainforest

Dilip

Indian police use violence as a shortcut to justice. It's the poorest who bear the scars. By Mohit Rao

It was minutes into India’s Independence Day when police stormed a slum in the western state of Gujarat where Hira Bajania, 65, was sleeping. In the black of night, he was dragged from his home, taken to a nearby police station and accused, with 11 other men, of stealing cell phones. As dawn broke on… Read More Indian police use violence as a shortcut to justice. It's the poorest who bear the scars. By Mohit Rao

Dilip

Tom Engelhardt: The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Empire Or What It Means to Fall on a Failing Planet

As in Election Campaign 2016, Donald Trump isn’t the cause but a symptom (though what a symptom!) of an American world going down. Then as now, he somehow gathered into his one-and-only self so many of the worst impulses of a country that, in this century, found itself eternally at war not just with Afghans… Read More Tom Engelhardt: The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Empire Or What It Means to Fall on a Failing Planet

Dilip

New book by Sumit Guha: History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200-2000

In this far-ranging and erudite exploration of the South Asian past, Sumit Guha discusses the shaping of social and historical memory in world-historical context. He presents memory as the result of both remembering and forgetting and of the preservation, recovery, and decay of records. By describing how these processes work through sociopolitical organizations, Guha delineates… Read More New book by Sumit Guha: History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200-2000

Dilip

Lynn Parramore: The perverted dreams of western modernity and capitalism may be exhausting themselves

Do you, inhabitant of the marvelous and menacing late-modern world, detect something missing – some kind of vitality, meaning, connectedness, love, beauty, or wonder? If so, you’ve likely searched for a story to explain it….  Critics of the disenchantment narrative have long noticed that if you look closely at western modernity, this ostensibly secular and… Read More Lynn Parramore: The perverted dreams of western modernity and capitalism may be exhausting themselves

Dilip

MATTHEW ROZSA: How humanity lost control of plastic pollution

Early in the pandemic, many scientists noticed an odd, incongruous side effect of business closures and widespread shelter-in-place orders: a concomitant reduction in air pollution. NASA saw significant drops in nitrogen dioxide levels in satellite data from April 2020. That raised an uneasy prospect for environmentalists, the possibility that the coronavirus pandemic — which has,… Read More MATTHEW ROZSA: How humanity lost control of plastic pollution

Dilip

Public Solidarity Statement: Greens With Farmers

Public Solidarity Statement: Greens With Farmers: #GreensWithFarmers   Youth environmental groups join Dilli Chalo and Nationwide General Strike on 26th November to withdraw the three Anti-Farmer Bills and Reverse the Dilution of Workers’ Protections. Stop destructive projects, reverse anti-Earth policies, abandon fossil fuels, and implement a People’s Green Recovery Agenda to safeguard future generations! Environmental groups… Read More Public Solidarity Statement: Greens With Farmers

Dilip

'The law related to Agricultural Produce marketing is a death warrant' / P Sainath: Farm Bills Will Create a Vacuum That May Result in Utter Chaos

“When protestors block a road or damage it, they are branded as criminals. What if governments do the same? Are they not what they call us?” asks 70-year-old Harinder Singh Lakha, a farmer from Mehna village in Punjab’s Moga district.  Lakha is referring to the 10-feet trenches dug in the roads by the authorities to… Read More 'The law related to Agricultural Produce marketing is a death warrant' / P Sainath: Farm Bills Will Create a Vacuum That May Result in Utter Chaos

Dilip