‘New Eastern Europe’ dedicates its summer issue to Ukraine, including: Russia’s underhand colonization of the Crimean peninsula; the geopolitics of gas; and Odessa’s urban mismanagement. In March 2020 a large part of Crimea acquired the status of Russian border territory by presidential decree, making it illegal for ‘foreigners’ to own houses and plots of land… Read More Wealth behind stealth: New Eastern Europe
The covid crisis has hit Turkey hard and made its mark on the government’s approval ratings. The country already has the highest number of police officers per capita in Europe and the regime is clamping down on dissent with increasing force – be it Pride marches or women’s protests for the Istanbul Convention. Thousands of women… Read More Tuğba Özer – Losing ground and doubling down: Police violence on increase in Turkey
Hundreds of thousands of farmers from Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan and Maharashtra gathered for a kisan mahapanchayat in Muzaffarnagar on Sunday, months ahead of assembly polls in the first three states, demanding that the central government roll back three contentious farm laws passed by Parliament a year ago. Addressing the event organised by… Read More Massive show of strength at farmers’ UP mahapanchayat
NB: ‘Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’ – Big Brother, in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. DS What is the purpose of remembrance? Revenge? Remorse? Restitution? Reconciliation? Rekindling the dying embers of mindless hate? Reapportioning blame? Remembering? Or, reminding oneself, “never again”? Before asking our prime minister to… Read More Mani Shankar Aiyar – Partition: What does the prime minister want us to remember?
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
