Over the past two centuries, most critiques of modernity have fallen into one of two camps. The first tends to see the modern age as the spawn of the tragic dissolution of Christian civilization, which had provided stable meaning and order for over a millennium, while the second emphasizes the failures of modernity to fulfill… Read More Book review: The Corruption of the Best – On Ivan Illich
Colourful onion-domed churches capped with sparkling snow, seductive spies in lavish mink coats, dancing bears, strong-willed revolutionaries…we see these tropes everywhere. They feature in Netflix shows such as Shadow and Bone, in Marvel blockbusters, gritty Cold War-inspired thrillers, and children’s animated films like Anastasia. Western pop-culture’s fascination with Russia – or, rather, with a simplified… Read More Olexandra Povoroznyk: Tsars, spies and colonialism
Suppression of democracy; brutal majoritarianism and minority extremism in Sri Lanka are worth noting by concerned Indians. The following is a transcript provided by the author of her talk at a recent panel discussion. The panel discussion may be viewed at: What’s Happening in Sri Lanka? [Why did these self-professed [Sri Lankan] left leaders betray socialist principles in… Read More Rohini Hensman: Political Dimensions of the Crisis in Sri Lanka
Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and the Socialist Alternative (SA) party have, for nearly a decade, waged one of the most effective battles against the city’s moneyed elites. She and the SA have adopted a series of unorthodox methods to fight the ruling oligarchs and, in that confrontation, exposed the Democratic Party leadership as craven… Read More Chris Hedges: How to Defeat the Billionaire Class
“BJP is saying that if anyone speaks against Veer Savarkar then he is an anti-national. Yes, I am saying I am speaking against him. If I am anti-national arrest me and put me behind bars,” he added. In a letter to the director of Salarjung museum in Hyderabad, Rao said that the name of former… Read More If speaking against Savarkar is antinational, then put me in jail: Congress leader V Hanumantha Rao
Farrukh Dhondy, who was Charles Sobhraj’s arm’s-length friend for much of his corpse-strewn career, leaves what the reader really wants to know for the epilogue: “How did he manage to seduce so many women ― is he really charismatic and charming?” Dhondy reports that he is “an average bloke”, but “there was something in his… Read More Book review: Charles Sobhraj, the Average and Slippery Bloke With Notions of Being a Super-Criminal
Yasin Malik’s life imprisonment in a ‘terror-funding’ case again displays the Narendra Modi government’s muscular Kashmir policy. Separatist leaders in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) are either locked up or dead. Following the downsizing of the erstwhile state, its mainstream political leaders are being pushed to the margins, and the dialogue with Pakistan on the Kashmir… Read More Bharat Bhushan – Stuffing separatists in jail: A muscular Kashmir policy will fail
The story behind the first line of The Sounds of Silence Adapted from Sandy Greenberg’s memoir: “Hello Darkness, My Old Friend: How Daring Dreams and Unyielding Friendship Turned One Man’s Blindness into an Extraordinary Vision for Life.”… Lyrics It began when Arthur “Art” Garfunkel, a Jewish kid from Queens, enrolled in Columbia University. During freshman… Read More “Hello darkness, my old friend…”
TalkTV is in trouble. Despite the millions Rupert Murdoch has invested in his newly launched television channel, and the supposedly magnetic presence of Piers Morgan, its numbers have sometimes been so low that the official broadcasting rating agency has not registered a single viewer. Last Wednesday, Piers Morgan Uncensored, the nightly showcase of debate and… Read More John Harris: Goodbye to the age of rage: why Piers Morgan’s outrage journalism is flopping
These are good times to be an arms maker. Not only are tens of billions of dollars in new military spending headed for the coffers of this country’s largest weapons contractors, but they’re being praised as defenders of freedom and democracy, thanks to their role in arming Ukraine to fight the Russians. The last time… Read More William Hartung: Arsenal of Autocracy? The Major Weapons Makers Cash in Worldwide, Not Just in Ukraine
