Bird thought to be extinct for 140 years has been rediscovered in the forests of Papua New Guinea

Zoe Sottile, CNN A bird thought to be extinct for 140 years has been rediscovered in the forests of Papua New Guinea. https://ebird.org/species/phepig1 The black-naped pheasant-pigeon\ was documented by scientists for the first and last time in 1882, according to a news release from nonprofit Re:wild, which helped fund the search effort. Rediscovering the bird required… Read More Bird thought to be extinct for 140 years has been rediscovered in the forests of Papua New Guinea

A matter of time

First posted Hiroshima Day, August 6, 2014 NB: This article was written for an edited volume on contemporary terrorism, more specifically, terror in the name of Hindutva. I disagree with the habit of approaching terrorism with a prefix, but nevertheless wrote it, in order precisely to make my point more explicitly. It was completed more than… Read More A matter of time

The Political Prophet Harvard Didn’t Want

In our age of global conflict, István Hont is finally having his moment Danielle Charette and William Selinger In 2001 a dispute over hiring in Harvard’s government department briefly became national news. The faculty had voted unanimously to offer a tenured position to the historian István Hont (1947-2013), a specialist in Enlightenment political thought at King’s College,… Read More The Political Prophet Harvard Didn’t Want

Iranian protesters set fire to Ayatollah Khomeini’s ancestral home

Protesters in Iran have set on fire the ancestral home of the Islamic republic’s founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as two months of anti-regime demonstrations show no let up. The house in the city of Khomein in the western Markazi province was shown ablaze late on Thursday with crowds of jubilant protesters marching past, according to images… Read More Iranian protesters set fire to Ayatollah Khomeini’s ancestral home

Cage in Search of a Bird

Michael Wood The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka; edited by Reiner Stach, translated by Shelley Frisch. In​ September 1917, having just discovered he had tuberculosis, Franz Kafka took a break from his work at an insurance company in Prague and spent eight months with his sister Ottla in the village of Zürau, now called Siřem. He also seemed… Read More Cage in Search of a Bird

Struggles for democracy and human rights in South Asia: Taking forward Asma Jahangir’s legacy

Ironically, the late Asma Jahangir’s last public appearance and speech were at a demonstration led by Pashteen in Islamabad, February 2018, against the extrajudicial killing of a Pashtun youth in a ‘police encounter’ in Karachi in January 2018. The protest marked the launch of the PTM. Jahangir passed away just days later at her home in Lahore. Since then,… Read More Struggles for democracy and human rights in South Asia: Taking forward Asma Jahangir’s legacy

Paul Krugman warns of collapse of crypto institutions after FTX debacle

 Alex Henderson Right-wing libertarians and socially conservative MAGA Republicans disagree about many things, but one thing they do have in common is an affection for cryptocurrencies. It isn’t hard to find people on the right who are unapologetically bullish on cryptocurrencies. But one person who doesn’t share their enthusiasm is liberal economist and New York… Read More Paul Krugman warns of collapse of crypto institutions after FTX debacle

The grotesque inequality embodied by Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg is a threat to democracy

Jeff Sparrow The higher the monkey climbs, the more he exposes his backside. So too with the super rich. Oxfam tells us that a mere 10 people now possess more wealth than the bottom 40% of humanity – and that the richest 20 tycoons collectively own more than the entire GDP of sub-Saharan Africa. You’d think that… Read More The grotesque inequality embodied by Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg is a threat to democracy