At a recent trip to Uzbekistan, I was expecting to be treated as a visitor from the country that we have been regularly informed during last 10 years, is the “vishwaguru”. Sanjiv Krishan Sood (Retired Additional Director General, BSF) Caveat: I risk confirming the status of an ‘anti-national’, given to me by many of my friends… Read More In the Land of the Vishwaguru, We Are Frogs in a Well
NB: The phrase above is the title of a paper by Professor Julia Annas, published in 2005. Reference details are available here: Wickedness as Psychological Breakdown; those interested may obtain the full text via institutional channels. I post it as the title for a few reflections on the tidal wave of revengeful mania sweeping through… Read More Wickedness as Psychological Breakdown
Trump’s lewdly playful face now fills our screens as Biden’s frail visage recedes. Not forever; there will always be a Jekyll impersonator in America’s political repertory Mukul Kesavan Donald Trump’s triumph doesn’t show us a ‘polarised’ America. This lazy metaphor for division obscures America’s shapeshifting oneness. When pundits pointed out that Trump’s success in 2016… Read More Exit Jekyll, enter Hyde: America isn’t polarised; Trump victory shows US is bipolar
Platforms come and go, but this feels different: the final death of the idea that social media could ever be the internet’s town square, a global meeting place for ideas that would broaden all our horizons. Now, the future of social media looks increasingly segregated for users’ safety, like rival fans at football. X for… Read More The exodus from X to Bluesky has happened – the era of mass social media platforms is over
His self-defence on civil liberties was: ‘I gave so many people bail, from A to Z’, rather than the ‘law and process was applied consistently and fairly. Umar Khalid got the same consideration as Arnab Goswami’ Supreme Court justices demitting office are often subject to a legal scorecard. Assessments go through their rulings and catalogue… Read More Pratap Bhanu Mehta: D. Y. Chandrachud, a Chief Justice of his time
NB: Simply stated, the rulers of the ‘civilized’ Western powers and their Israeli proxy are genocidal butchers. For the victims of their slaughter, there’s no difference between various political factions. The funny thing is, they don’t even realize how racist they are. The Biden Administration has presided over the cold blooded murder of over fifty… Read More Israeli Forces Kill 78 More Palestinians in Gaza Over 48 Hours / The Great American Delusion
The answer lies in Germany’s history – but it is not, as many assume tied to efforts to atone for the Nazi Holocaust and ensure that it never happens again… Germany was never fully de-Nazified. It never attempted to come to terms with the politics that had led to the rise of Hitler. Tony Greenstein… Read More Why is Germany supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza?
All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory: Viet Thanh Nguyen ‘Americans liked seeing people eye to eye, the General had once told me, especially as they screwed them from behind’ – (From Chapter One of The Sympathizer) From the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The… Read More Nothing ever dies: Vietnam and the memory of war / Viet Thanh Nguyen and Michael Vann in conversation
Aditya Chakrabortty Since we’ll hear a lot, again, about “populism”, let’s remember, again, that 19th-century US populism had a healthy strain of leftwing politics. Defending workers, riling up bankers, decrying the “cross of gold” and economic conservatism: look past his Bible-bashing, and William Jennings Bryan was a precursor to Franklin Roosevelt. Yet for much of… Read More Why did voters abandon Kamala Harris? Because they feel trapped – and Trump offered a way out
First posted June 07, 2020 Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the… Read More President Eisenhower’s Speech on the American Military Industrial Complex, January 17, 1961
After the truth-shower 