Kafka’s characters are almost always trapped – in a cage, a court case, an insect’s body, a false identity – and they share a feeling that the walls are closing in, and that a door, once there, is disappearing into the distance. This existential claustrophobia, at once vague and intense, resonates today, particularly under lockdown. … Read More Samuel Earle: Locking down with Kafka
One of the unfortunate temptations of the Trump era has been the rush to find radical breaks with the past where, in truth, the lines of continuity are strong. The themes of Trump’s speech were already well circulated among the Anglo-American elite, whether in the work of the political scientist Samuel Huntington or in the… Read More Book review: Pankaj Mishra’s Reckoning With Liberalism’s Bloody Past
NB: These books contain an exposure of contemporary nihilism at work. See also the links at the bottom of this post. DS Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says… Read More Goodbye Britannia – books reviewed
The following conversation took place in December 2020. On the occasion of Jairus Banaji’s latest publication, A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism, Sheetal Chhabria and Andrew B. Liu spoke to contextualize his work within a multi-decade trajectory of history, theory, and labor organization, across Europe and Asia. We noted the particular significance of an original intervention… Read More “Where is the working class? It’s all over the world today”: Jairus Banaji in conversation with Sheetal Chhabria and Andrew Liu
NB: Contemporary conservative thought has a tendency to equate all social control, or even the hint of such control, as ‘communism’. Hence the antipathy toward activists such as Greta Thunberg, who simply asked for urgent measures to control damage to the environment. Note this paragraph from the article below: “The fight against climate change in… Read More Roger Sollenberger: What caused the Texas disaster? Decades of Republican deregulation: "Laissez-faire run amok"
Like Gregor Samsa, the never-to-be-forgotten character in Franz Kafka’s story “The Metamorphosis,” we awoke on January 7th to discover that we, too, were “a giant insect” with “a domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments” and numerous “pitifully thin” legs that “waved helplessly” before our eyes. If you prefer, though, you can just say… Read More TOM ENGELHARDT: The American Century Ends Early
Since 2014, when “New India” was apparently inaugurated, we are in a remarkably similar phase of federalism as in the 1970s and early 1980s when the centre called the shots and state autonomy was constrained. With the “One Nation, One India” rhetoric now in the limelight, the era of “federalism without a centre” (Sáez 2002),… Read More K. K. Kailash: ‘One Nation’, New India and the Hollowing Out of the Federal Idea
NB: Those who have made capitalism into a religious cult, and who resist social regulation as an impingement on the freedom of the market (as if liberty is al about the liberty of corporates) may reflect on why the likes of Zuckerberg and Murdoch have acquired so much power. DS This is about more than… Read More Marina Hyde: The question every politician should be asking is, what does Mark Zuckerberg want with us?
In September 2021 the UN will hold a Food Systems Summit. The aim will be to reshape world agriculture and food production in the context of the Malthusian UN Agenda 2030 “sustainable agriculture” goals. The recent radical farm laws from the government of Narenda Modi in India are part of the same global agenda, and… Read More The WEF Agenda Behind Modi Farm Reform. By F. William Engdahl
Radical Islamism benefits from the silence of moderate Muslims who see no reason why their faith implies a responsibility to condemn its violence. But Islamism also stands to gain from the blurring of boundaries between genuine Islamophobia and criticism of Islam where it departs from democratic norms. After last year’s Islamist terror acts in France and… Read More Cinzia Sciuto: Break the silence!
