In the wake of the July 26 coup in Niger, the world’s spotlight has once again turned to the expansion of private military and security companies (PMSCs) across Africa. Following the removal of the relatively pro-Western government, Niger’s new military rulers asked Russian PMSC Wagner to help defend against a possible military intervention by the Economic Community of… Read More Private military companies continue to expand in Africa
NB: Is coruption merely a financial matter? Or does it mean perversion from fidelity. Institutions can also be corrupted, justice can also be corrupted, so can political speech. And all this is not merely a function of this or that party. It is endemic, rooted in society, hence corrupt people will run from one party… Read More Economic Disaster & Modi: ’24 तक छुपायेंगे.. / 70 साल के घोटालों को पीछे छोड़ा मोदी सरकार ने
NB: A recurring bad dream.. Here’s relevant correspondence from the time a senior scholar was forced out of Ashoka University in 2021. University authorities should protect their faculty from ideologically motivated attacks, not undermine them. If you dont stand up to such bullying there will never be an end to it. You may as well… Read More Significance of Ashoka University’s Teachers Calling for a Strike Over Academic Freedom / Solidarity with faculty of Ashoka University by the international academic community
Tim Adams A few days after he announced he would sell his Nobel peace prize medal at auction – and give the millions of dollars raised to Ukrainian refugees – the Russian newspaper editor Dmitry Muratov was sitting on a train bound for the city of Samara. Just before the train pulled away from Kazansky station in… Read More Nobel peace laureate Dmitry Muratov won’t be silenced by Putin
Jawhar Sircar There is no doubt that the increasing politicisation of the bureaucracy has been corroding, for quite some time, the pillars on which fair and efficient administration rest. The pains taken by the founding fathers of our constitution to protect and insulate the civil service from political interference had ensured a large degree of… Read More Modi is hell bent on building an administrative system that treats him as King
With the new Netanyahu government, the anti-Palestinian violence (the pogrom in Huwara, the attacks on the Stella Maris Monastery in Haifa, etc.) is no longer even formally condemned by the state. To a Western European with a vague knowledge of Italian, “Manipur” automatically associates with “mani pulite” (pure hands), the big anti-corruption campaign in the… Read More Slavoj Žizek: Manipur is not only in India
Saudi border guards are accused of the mass killing of migrants along the Yemeni border in a new report by Human Rights Watch. By Paul Adams The report says hundreds of people, many of them Ethiopians who cross war-torn Yemen to reach Saudi Arabia, have been shot dead. Migrants have told the BBC they had… Read More Hundreds of migrants killed by Saudi border guards – report
Chris Armstrong ; Antje Scharenberg Treasure trove or rubbish dump? In either case, oceans are being spoiled. Concepts from ‘mare liberum’ to ‘common heritage’ don’t safeguard the blue planet’s largest frontier from escalated seabed mining, industrialised fishing and waste disposal, nor global inequality and racialized violence. Could a democratic World Ocean Authority be the answer?… Read More Ocean justice
Talk delivered to the Creighton Philosophical Club at Syracuse University in April 1940 Introductory remark Both the intellectual glory and the political misery of the Germans may be traced back to one and the same cause: German civilisation is considerably younger than the civilisation of the West. The Germans are, strictly speaking, less civilized than the English… Read More Leo Strauss: The Living Issues of German postwar Philosophy (1940)
With the publication of the Auditor General’s report, the incorruptibility of the Modi government has been called into question. Massive leakages of funds have taken place, including in the Ministry of Home Affairs. Calling in the CBI at this point is equally fraudulent, as the ministers concerned should have known something was wrong long ago.… Read More Modi Internal Crises: अच्छे दिन खत्म..अब अपनो को भी दिखने लगा है अंत ! /Amit Shah के मंत्रालय में इतना भ्रष्टाचार ?
After the truth-shower 