Adam Tooze Saddam’s attack on Iran in the early 1980s indicated his violent ambition, but as far as Iraq’s economy is concerned it was the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and the US-led riposte that delivered the first devastating shock. After a measure of recovery under the more relaxed sanctions regime of the late… Read More Iraq’s economic impasse twenty years after the invasion
Letter to the readers, Mainstream, March 25, 2023 India: Lurches Closer to “Opposition-Mukt Democracy”!? | Sukla Sen Budgets 2023-24 Punjab Haryana compared | Sher Singh Sangwan Upcoming 2023 Karnataka Assembly Elections | PS Jayaramu Regenerating The Forest Ecosystem: Few Concerns | Suranjita Ray Saffron Clad Babas in Odisha’s Politics | Radhakanta Barik A Discourse on State of India’s Democracy | Arup… Read More Mainstream, March 25, 2023
In the last two weeks, parliament has been witness to majoritarian bullying like never before. The Opposition’s demands for immediate discussion on the Adani scam were bludgeoned into submission by the Treasury benches, who instead demand an apology from Rahul Gandhi. Jawhar Sircar Seventy-three years may not be enough to pronounce a judgement on whether… Read More Disruption by the Ruling Party Signals a New Low for India’s Parliament
Bharat Bhushan The belligerence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s MPs against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is not letting Parliament function. This is unprecedented, and especially galling because Parliament needs to pass the Budget in this session, irrespective of whether Gandhi apologises for comments made in the United Kingdom on the erosion of democracy in India. Forget his… Read More Why the ‘Mother of Democracy’ brooks no criticism
NB: George Bush and Tony Blair are as culpable for war crimes as is Vladimir Putin. If we can’t see this and say it, we are at an advanced level of Orwellian doublespeak. DS Sinan Antoon In early 2003, I was living in Cairo and carrying out research for my doctoral dissertation on a famous… Read More A million lives later, I cannot forgive what American terrorism did to my country, Iraq
It may be an understatement to say this is a cataclysmic disaster that has befallen the Metropolitan police, the people it serves, the trust it has squandered and the bullied and overworked staff repeated leaders have let down. Lady Casey’s report details the fall of a British institution, tumbling harder than any organisation at the centre… Read More Downfall of a British institution: London Metropolitan police found to be racist, sexist and homophobic
Chameli Devi Jain Award 2023 – India International Centre The Lady Vanishes Gandhi’s Assassin. By Dhirendra K Jha Four Indian intellectuals who were murdered for their ideas (2013-2017) George Orwell: Ignorance is Strength; Freedom is Slavery; War is Peace George Orwell – Freedom of the Park (1945) George Orwell’s Final Warning: “If you want a picture of the… Read More 2023 B.G. Verghese Memorial Lecture: Nafrat se Itni Mohabbat Kyo? Why Do We Love to Hate?
Peter Beaumont n 20 March 2003, as bombs and missiles from the US-led coalition rained on Iraqi cities in the opening “shock and awe” campaign against Saddam Hussein, the tectonic plates of the post-Second World War international order shifted permanently. For those of us who covered the run-up to the war, the invasion and the long… Read More The invasion of Iraq was a turning point on to a path that led towards Ukraine
A major shift in global relations has recently transpired. To some in America, it may look like the second coming of the Evil Empire. Too much of the rest of the world, it’s a welcome chance for a renewed multipolar order, where the sovereign desires of nations are respected and new collaborations can be established.… Read More Juan Cole: The Meaning of Historic China-Brokered Deal Between Saudi Arabia and Iran
An examination of the internet age suggests that we should cultivate the heresies of secrets and silence Stuart Jeffries During a commercial break in the 1984 Super Bowl, Apple broadcast an ad directed by Ridley Scott. Glum, grey workers sat in a vast grey hall listening to Big Brother’s declamations on a huge screen. Then a… Read More Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism & New Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul Han. Review (2017)
After the truth-shower 