One of Adolf Hitler’s most cherished dreams was to build the largest monument ever created. With the guidance of “the chief architect of the Reich” Albert Speer, he planned to remake Berlin around what he saw as the future core of the Germanic empire: the People’s Hall (Volkshalle), a dome that was to be 290… Read More Gastón Gordillo: Nazi Architecture As Affective Weapon
NB: The word ‘mistake’ is so ugly in the midst of corpses of children and piles of rubble. Led by the US, the western powers have an unofficial and flexible algebra for the numbers of Palestinian civilians killed, hospitals and schools in Gaza destroyed, before they call for a cease-fire. This is not a mistake… Read More Akbar S. Ahmed: Gaza Tests Biden Foreign Policy Team’s Promise To Learn From past Mistakes / Chomsky: Without US Aid, Israel Wouldn’t Be Killing Palestinians En Masse / Photo essay on the suffering of children
Why governments in London, Paris and Washington back Israel’s Occupation of 5 million stateless Palestinians and its slow ethnic cleansing of them is not so hard to figure out. Israel represents itself as a Western aircraft carrier in a strategically crucial part of the world full of energy resources. It gathers and shares intelligence on… Read More Why do Americans turn a Blind eye to Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians? / Children are on the frontline of Israel’s war on Gaza – again / How the United States helps to kill Palestinians
NB: This thoughtful essay appeared a year ago. I planned to post it then, but it seems much more appropriate to be read now. It reads like a prophesy. DS The Mandate of Heaven is an ancient Chinese philosophical doctrine evolved during the Zhou dynasty in the first millennium BCE, to confer on an… Read More Ravi Bhoothalingam: Coronavirus and the Mandate of Heaven (March 13, 2020)
Last week, Brazil’s total death toll from COVID-19 passed 400,000. In India, the pandemic is taking around 3,500 lives every day and has prompted a global response, with offers of oxygen, ventilators, intensive-care beds and more. Although these two countries are thousands of miles apart, the crises in both are the result of political failings:… Read More India, Brazil and the human cost of sidelining science
England is due to host the next football World Cup, and in preparation for this most prestigious of sporting events, the stadium in Wembley has undergone a makeover. The refurbished stadium is ready a year before the tournament is scheduled to kick off. The Football Association’s chief executive boasts that this is now the largest… Read More Ramachandra Guha: The unmaking of India
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – A forum of scientific advisers set up by the government warned Indian officials in early March of a new and more contagious variant of the coronavirus taking hold in the country, five scientists who are part of the forum told Reuters. Despite the warning, four of the scientists said the federal… Read More Devjyot Ghoshal, Krishna Das. Exclusive: Scientists say India government ignored warnings amid coronavirus surge // Kapil Komireddi: Modi Fiddles While India Burns
In the ‘cancel culture’ era, universities should remember that the original purpose of free speech was to empower the weak, not to shelter them. Universities in the US and the UK have become a battleground in the war between safe speech and free speech. I believe that this is a false dilemma – and understanding… Read More Albena Azmanova: Safe speech vs free speech: higher education’s false dilemma
America’s defeat in Afghanistan is one in a string of catastrophic military blunders that herald the death of the American empire. With the exception of the first Gulf War, fought largely by mechanized units in the open desert that did not – wisely – attempt to occupy Iraq, the United States political and military leadership… Read More Chris Hedges: The real tragedy behind the collapse of the American empire
NB: This article is a clear-headed analysis of the crucial change wrought in the Indian polity by the current government. Sahay is also forthright about the axial role of the RSS, the patron-in-chief of the BJP. For all their talk of moral purity and ‘maryada‘ it clear that this band of ideological fanatics has only one aim… Read More Anand K. Sahay: The idea behind capturing power in any kind of way: fair or foul
