A group of Afghan women activists staged a small protest in Taliban-controlled Kabul Friday calling for equal rights and full participation in political life, CNN has confirmed. In spite of the risk, a group called the Women’s Political Participation Network marched on the street in front of Afghanistan’s Finance Ministry, chanting slogans and holding signs… Read More Women stage protest in Taliban-controlled Kabul
Almost everyone knows the name of Einstein, but that of Lev Landau is familiar only to a few followers of the exact sciences. And yet, both of them share several common features: They occupy first-rank positions in the short list of the greatest geniuses of the past century. They distinguished themselves by their freedom of thought and… Read More Albert Einstein and Lev Landau: Scientific geniuses as well as anti-capitalists and anti-Stalinists
The Taliban’s victory is bad news for the progressives around the world. The victory is not a sign of peace but a message of perpetual civil war. The establishment of another religious fanatic state in South Asia will promote religious sectarianism throughout the region… Soviet forces stay lasted 10 years and failed. For 20 years,… Read More Farooq Tariq – The US occupation took only human lives: Taliban victory is not a sign of peace // The leader of the anti-Taliban resistance speaks out
All empires die. The end is usually unpleasant. The American empire, humiliated in Afghanistan, as it was in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, the Bay of Pigs and in Vietnam, is blind to its own declining strength, ineptitude and savagery. Its entire economy, a military Keynesianism, revolves around the war industry. Military spending and war are… Read More Go back to Afghanistan? Men like McMaster and Panetta are addicted to war / How the American empire dug its own grave / Let’s Take the Profit Out of War
NB: Saleem was a dear personal friend and colleague at Ramjas College, in the University of Delhi. Both of us were also alumni of St Stephens College, albeit separated by a couple of years. He was a gentleman to his core and a brilliant historian. On the rare occasions he spoke in Staff Council meetings,… Read More Goodbye Saleem / सबके मेंटर थे सलीम किदवई
The natural living barrier was described as “utterly impassable to man or beast”, and snaked across India from the Indus River to the Mahanadi. But why doesn’t anyone remember it? In a second-hand bookstore in London, in late 1994, author Roy Moxham made a discovery that would consume the next three years of his… Read More Kamala Thiagarajan: The mysterious disappearance of the world's longest shrubbery
NB: Will someone ask America’s spin-artists a simple question: who gave the American establishment the right to carry out ‘nation-building’ projects wherever and whenever they deem fit? Have they noticed that this ‘building’ more closely resembles a wrecking ball? DS During the Trump years, publications like the New York Times and Washington Post presented themselves… Read More Bhaskar Sunkara: The media is lambasting Biden over Afghanistan. He should stand firm
Trillions of metallic nodules on the sea floor could help stop global heating, but mining them may damage ocean ecology In a display cabinet in the recently opened Our Broken Planet exhibition in London’s Natural History Museum, curators have placed a small nugget of dark material covered with faint indentations. The blackened lump could easily be mistaken… Read More Robin McKie: Is deep-sea mining a cure for the climate crisis or a curse?
NB: For many decades now, the world has been held hostage by the American election cycle, and the criminal tendencies of American Presidents. Our short memories, our weakness in resisting propaganda; and the degeneration of journalism into op-ed commentary by spin-doctors have contributed to this. The rise of violent Islamist movements has a great deal to… Read More Thom Hartmann: Myths and lies about Afghanistan's role in 9/11 live on, Bush and Cheney escape justice / Karen Greenberg: The Endless Shadow of the War on Terror
Meet Madam Jeanne Louise Calment, who had the longest confirmed human lifespan: 122 years, 164 days. Apparently, fate strongly approved of the way she lived her life. She was born in Arles, France, on February 21, 1875. The Eiffel Tower was built when she was 14 years old. It was at this time she met… Read More Madam Jeanne Louise Calment (1875-1997)
After the truth-shower 