NB: Apes of Satan speak as representatives of God. The Ayatollahs’ regime is brutal and shameless. Global protests are needed to save the life of this young man and thousands like him. DS According to the UN, an estimated 14,000 people, including children, have been detained by the regime since the protests began more than… Read More Rapper who protested over death of Mahsa Amini faces execution in Iran
First posted January 24, 2017 Jerzy Krzyżanowski The Captive Mind (1953) has been compared to the two most revealing and penetrating works on the same subject previously published – Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon (1940) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Milosz was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980. Read an interview with him in 2003, the year before he… Read More The Captive Mind revisited
NB: This government misuses the law to keep people in detention indefinitely, delaying the trial so that the guilt or innocence of the accused can never be decided. This is what happened to Fr Stan Swamy, an 84 year old priest who suffered from deafness and Parkinson’s disease, and who died in custody in July… Read More Corrupt are destroying country: SC alludes to Telangana incident while hearing Navlakha’s plea for house arrest
Polly Toynbee NB: The planet needs no saving, Ms Polly, it’s not in danger. Its the environment that we need to save, from ourselves. DS Just Stop Oil protesters this week are climbing gantries on the M25, blocking the Dartford tunnel, causing long delays and getting arrested in droves. Meanwhile the public order bill that would crack down… Read More To those who sneer at activists blocking roads: what are you doing to save the planet?
First posted January 18, 2017 Venu Madhav Govindu & Deepak Malghan In November 1933, following his fast against a separate electorate on caste lines and the subsequent political settlement known as the Poona Pact, (Mohandas Karamchand) Gandhi embarked on a year-long nationwide campaign against untouchability. Thanks to his extensive travels across the country, he got… Read More Defying capitalism and socialism, Kumarappa and Gandhi had imagined a decentralised Indian economy
First posted August 04, 2015 Sheldon Wolin is one of the most highly respected political thinkers in Western academia. He is emeritus professor at Princeton, now aged 93. Wolin was a bomber pilot in the Pacific region with the USAF during the Second World War. He is known for coining the term inverted totalitarianism. His most… Read More Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? Chris Hedges interviews political philosopher Sheldon Wolin
First posted February 16, 2018 There are innumerable versions of the birth of the modern era. Historians do not even agree about the date of this event. Some make modernity begin in the 15th and 16th centuries, with the so-called Renaissance (a concept invented in the 19th century by Jules Michelet, as the French historian… Read More Robert Kurz: The destructive origins of capitalism. The ‘military revolution’ in 16th century Europe
The Christmas truce, 1914 – Steven Johns A short history of the widespread but unofficial truce between British and German troops on the Western front over Christmas, 1914 during World War I. Despite the mass slaughter orchestrated by European governments, rank-and-file soldiers during World War I often attempted to resist the war effort and refuse… Read More The Soldiers’ Christmas Truce 1914 / Armistice Day, November 11, 1918: In Pictures
George Monbiot Budleigh Salterton, on the south coast of Devon, sits above the most frightening cliffs on Earth. They are not particularly high. Though you don’t want to stand beneath them, they are not especially prone to collapse. The horror takes another form. It is contained in the story they tell. For they capture the… Read More Fossil fuel burning once caused a mass extinction – now we’re risking another
Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – Iranian authorities have escalated their assault against widespread dissent and protests through dubious national security charges against detained activists and grossly unfair trials, Human Rights Watch said today. On October 31, 2022, the head of Tehran Province’s judiciary said that it had issued around 1,000 indictments against those arrested related to protests. On October… Read More Iran: Thousands of Detained Protesters and Activists in Peril (HRW)
After the truth-shower 