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

When It Comes to Covering the Gaza War, ‘Israeli media is like a doctor hiding the patient’s condition’

London-based Israeli researcher Ayala Panievsky has been studying war coverage in Israel. Her findings explain why the country now seems out of touch with the rest of the world…‘People who view themselves as serious journalists have, for two years now, been accepting and repeating the notion that there are no innocents in Gaza, that all… Read More When It Comes to Covering the Gaza War, ‘Israeli media is like a doctor hiding the patient’s condition’

Dilip

Tony Blair just can’t kick the habit of imperial interference in the Middle East

NB: More self-serving bufoonery by a corrupt war criminal. Brittania rules – if not the waves, the graveyard of murdered Palestinians. Blair and Trump make a good circus. They and their chums among the Arab despots are the vultures of our time, circling scenes of human devastation caused by their ally Israel; and looking out… Read More Tony Blair just can’t kick the habit of imperial interference in the Middle East

Dilip

A Plane Crashed in the Desert. Thirty-Five Years Later, It Would Help Take Down Nicolas Sarkozy

The French presidential hopeful used clemency for the perpetrators of the UTA 772 bombing to secure campaign funding from Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi Diane de Vignemont The wreckage of the plane lay scattered across the ocher sand of Niger’s Tenere desert — twisted aluminum, scorched luggage, a lone shoe. There were no survivors. French investigators… Read More A Plane Crashed in the Desert. Thirty-Five Years Later, It Would Help Take Down Nicolas Sarkozy

Dilip

Against the crime of silence: Bertrand Russell’s War Crimes in Vietnam (1967)

NB: This book changed my life. I read it when I was seventeen. Along with Palestine, Vietnam’s valiant struggle against American imperialism was the epic of our generation. I will salute the Vietnamese people till the end of my days. DS “There are few parallels with the war in Vietnam. It has lasted nearly two… Read More Against the crime of silence: Bertrand Russell’s War Crimes in Vietnam (1967)

Dilip

A Dying American Empire, ‘Rotten to the Heart?’

By Alfred McCoy / TomDispatch In his novel The Autumn of the Patriarch, which is eerily evocative of our current political plight, Gabriel Garcia Marquez described how a Latin American autocrat “discovered in the course of his uncountable years that a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth, [and] became convinced… Read More A Dying American Empire, ‘Rotten to the Heart?’

Dilip

Two years after the massacre, I look back in disbelief. I, too, missed the October 8 surprise / ‘If 1948 was a war of Independence, the current war could be the one that ends Israel’

NB: I respect this writer and this film maker for speaking the truth as far as their resources allow. The term community of crime is something terrifying because it reflects the truth about the fragility of human conscience; and the power that ideologies possess to pervert the conscience into its opposite; to literally create communities… Read More Two years after the massacre, I look back in disbelief. I, too, missed the October 8 surprise / ‘If 1948 was a war of Independence, the current war could be the one that ends Israel’

Dilip

Heavy recoil

This idea that the world was increasingly being shaped by a freemasonry of Western majoritarians seems to have seduced Modi’s government into thinking of India as the West’s indispensable partner…. By mimicking the rhetoric and the practices of the West’s ‘savarna’ nations, Modi’s government thought it could deal at the world’s top table. This strategy… Read More Heavy recoil

Dilip

Himalayan Uprising

Shubhanga Pandey Friday 3 October 2025 When thousands of Nepalis in their teens and twenties descended on Kathmandu’s government district on 8 September, it was, for most, their first political experience. The immediate trigger for the protests, which had been gathering steam for several days, was a government ban on more than two dozen social-media… Read More Himalayan Uprising

Dilip

Peter Beinart: ‘What Israel Is Doing in the Name of the Jewish People Is a Desecration’

Itamar Katzir From his home in New York City, Peter Beinart watched in amazement as hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets during the first “day of disruption” in August. Peter Beinart – “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning” | The Daily Show The 54-year-old Jewish American journalist and commentator… Read More Peter Beinart: ‘What Israel Is Doing in the Name of the Jewish People Is a Desecration’

Dilip