NB: A much needed reminder: the loudspeakers for Lokpal fell silent after the AAP and BJP came to power in their respective bastions; the AAP’s own internal Lokpal was unceremoniously dismissed; and the party kept a safe distance from all issues of communal strife during the Delhi riots of 2020 (including opposing bail for Muslims… Read More Kejriwal Should Realise the Allure of Jantar Mantar is Misplaced
Alfred McCoy, author most recently of the history book Cold War on Five Continents, makes clear today, by now Donald Trump and decline have (or at least should have) become literal synonyms in his increasingly nightmarish second term in the Oval Office. In almost every imaginable way, he now seems intent on taking this country down… Read More America’s Date With Destiny
NB: Why ‘perfidy’? Take a look at the Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1964, a fake encounter fabricated by the American ‘defence’ establishment to use as a pretext to begin bombing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Or US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s fraudulent statement to the UNO in 2003 on Iraq’s possession of nuclear… Read More American perfidy replay
US president chooses to take the biggest gamble of his administration… The attack on Iran is a clear violation of the UN charter, in any absence of any credible, imminent Iranian threat to the US. Julian Borger The first war of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace era has begun – an unprovoked attempt at regime… Read More Trump’s unprovoked attack on Iran has no mandate – or legal basis
There is no end in sight to the pollution caused by a ‘broken’ system. Experts say it could even be getting worse Sandra Laville Sarah Lambert took her usual morning swim for 40 minutes off Exmouth town beach before her volunteer shift helping disabled people get access to the water. A wheelchair user herself, Lambert’s… Read More Dirty water, death and decline: the inside story of a privatisation scandal
Juan Cole Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Democratic National Committee is sitting on a report that demonstrated that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris lost significant support because of Joe Biden’s perceived “blank check” to the Netanyahu government to pursue its total war on little Gaza. This, according to Holly Otterbein at Axios. The analysis is certainly… Read More Biden delivered the Country to Trump, disbelieving Gaza Death Statistics; they were Underestimates / 17,000 Unaccompanied Orphans in Gaza, in World’s Biggest Orphan Crisis
The Captive Mind, Czesław Miłosz’s searing anatomy of authoritarianism, highlights the dangers of self-deception in the name of ‘realism’ The Captive Mind, Czesław Miłosz’s searing anatomy of authoritarianism, tells a story drawn from an older Polish novel by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Insatiability. Europe is about to be overrun by a Sino-Mongolian army that dominates from… Read More Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: From a book on authoritarianism, lessons on ‘realism’ for India
Isabel Jacobs “Be human, after all!” – “But I don’t want to be human!” Bertolt Brecht, Mahagonny, cited by Kojève Until 2025, the name “Alexandre Kojève” was a paradox. A philosopher often invoked yet rarely read – a famous enigma. For decades, Kojève’s mythical reputation rested on rumors and anecdotes orbiting his Hegel seminar of the 1930s.… Read More A Famous Enigma: On Alexandre Kojève: An Intellectual Biography and “The Life and Thought of Alexandre Kojève”
How a Washington Post columnist laundered the Sangh’s violent history Dhirendra K Jha THE RASHTRIYA SWAYAMSEVAK SANGH has been on a spree, celebrating a century of its existence. Over this period, it has demonstrated its ability to patiently expand, mobilise and grow. Thousands of people, including the former president Ram Nath Kovind, attended the hundredth… Read More Manufacturing Legitimacy
On personal liberty, the court underscored that pre-trial incarceration could not be treated lightly. “Liberty, once curtailed, cannot be meaningfully restored by a subsequent acquittal, nor can the passage of time compensate for the loss occasioned by unwarranted pre-trial detention,” the court said NB: Everyone interested in the horrifying assault on the Indian justice system… Read More शराब घोटाले में केजरीवाल-सिसोदिया बरी, कोई सबूत नहीं मिला, CBI की ही होगी जाँच / Judge says case entirely discredited and orders inquiry into the CBI
After the truth-shower 