NB: India’s rulers have invented several bits of political abuse over the years, including tukde-tukde gang, and urban Naxals. Some years ago during the wave of violent ‘actions’ undertaken by the CPI (Maoist) I was often asked to join TV programs debating the issue. I was invited because having been a Naxalite cadre myself in the first phase… Read More Some uncomfortable thoughts on 'urban naxals'
The appearance within a few months of each other of two books about the same four women is a bit startling, but on reflection the topic is so natural and interesting that one might even wonder why it hasn’t been treated before. Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot (née Bosanquet), Mary Midgley (née Scrutton) and Iris Murdoch all matriculated… Read More Book review: What is rude?
It is tempting to harness Civilization and Its Discontents as a guide to our contemporary political morass, but doing so may obscure its most valuable message. Civilization and Its Discontents; translated by James Strachey and edited by Samuel Moyn Sigmund Freud was an ambivalent man, especially when it came to politics. He often held conflicting… Read More Udi Greenberg: Freud and the Miseries of Politics
It is rare and often uncomfortable to discuss the relationship between race and capitalism. Attributing certain economic systems to race relations and even discrimination are generally seen as reductive and even racist. Yet it is important to recognise that capitalism has a racial origin in the West – which knowingly placed white populations, and in… Read More Chandran Nair: White privilege and global capitalism have roots in private property rights
At the height of the tense second phase of the cold war, a group of Stasi majors, propaganda officers and border guards convened at a heavily fortified compound in socialist east Berlin. From spring 1982 until winter 1989, they gathered once every four weeks, from 4pm until 6pm, at the House of Culture inside the… Read More Philip Oltermann – Red poets’ society: the secret history of the Stasi’s book club for spies
Imagine that several state legislators decide that Yellowstone National Park is too big. Also imagine that, working with federal politicians, they change the law to downsize the park by a million acres, which they sell in a private auction. Outrageous? Yes. Unheard of? No. It happens routinely and with increasing frequency in the Brazilian Amazon. The most… Read More The great Amazon land grab: how Brazil’s government is turning public land private
The Mafia hires good accountants (permalink) High-profile leaks like the Pandora Papers and financial collapses like Carillion have shone a spotlight on the role that “the professions” play in enabling international finance crimes, which include both money-laundering and the underlying (ghastly, violent) crimes that produce the money to be laundered. For example, the Sackler… Read More Cory Doctorow: The Mafia hires good accountants
NB: The debate on the Holocaust unleashed by Whoopi Goldberg‘s comments about race could be about her ignorance; but it could also arise from a linguistic misunderstanding around the concept of race. An issue related to this one is the origin of Nazi race legislation, the study of which may be found in this book… Read More Racism, the Nazis and American media
The IITs have been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons. This time it is not about the fat pay packets their students have got in the institute placements, but about ghosts and steppe people invading, or rather not invading, Bharatvarsh. First, the ghosts. The director of an IIT posted a video on… Read More Shobhit Mahajan: Peddling of anti-scientific beliefs by academia must worry us
A chill is blowing through Chinese civil society as activists, journalists and academics report receiving police warnings and censorship of their social media platforms in recent weeks as Beijing prepares to host the Winter Olympics beginning on Friday. In mid-January, the Beijing-based human rights activist Hu Jia said in a tweet that China’s state security… Read More ‘Nobody can say anything’: China cracks down on dissent ahead of Olympics
