Through a Glass Darkly into a Future of Epochal Change By Alfred McCoy Some 2,000 years ago, an itinerant preacher, Saul of Tarsus, was writing to a wayward congregation in Corinth, Greece. Curiously enough, his words still capture the epochal change that may await us just over history’s horizon. “For now we see in a glass,… Read More The World’s Four Legacy Empires Going Down
Note: The author highlights very interesting aspects of the current situation of Israeli Zionism, the most relevant is the assimilation of the Zionist Jews of Israel within the nation-state model of the Western societies. Moreover, by negating the reality of the exile, a general condition of the people of the world, the essence of Judaism… Read More Giorgio Agamben on Zionism and Judaism (2024)
A decisive part of the trauma experienced by Palestinians in Germany comes not only from its being rendered taboo, but also from what Pierre Bourdieu calls symbolic violence. The term describes the violence of those discourses that normalize and legitimize systemic violence…. Symbolic violence justifies the expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians and the seizure of… Read More Oblivion Culture: Countering the German taboo on Palestinian trauma
By Thomas Friedman ; New York Times; December 17, 2024 I just spent a week in Beijing and Shanghai, meeting with Chinese officials, economists, and entrepreneurs, so let me get straight to the point: while we sleep, China has made tremendous leaps in high-tech manufacturing. If no one has told Donald Trump, then I will: his… Read More How Elon Musk and Taylor Swift Might Solve US-China Relations
NB: It could also be called the standardisation of thought; the co-option of history by ideology, and the elevation of outrage to an art form. DS Apoorvanand Historian Aparna Vaidik is under attack on social media. A controversy arose following a discussion on her new book at a lit fest in Kanpur. It was alleged that Vaidik… Read More Bhagat Singh, Kanpur lit fest, and the culture of hasty comment
ADAM TOOZE Conducted in the summer of 2024 in Shanghai this interview with Ding Xionfei is the most far-reaching public discussion I have had had about the development of my writing and thinking since Perry Anderson’s review of my work. I want to thank Ding Xiongfei for his remarkable engagement and for permission to republish part… Read More Adam Tooze on Polycrisis and technocratic complacency. Interview with Ding Xiongfei from the Shanghai Review of Books
Srinath Raghavan Vinayak Chaturvedi. Hindutva and Violence: V.D. Savarkar and the Politics of History Some years before his passing in 1966, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar wrote an essay titled “How Hindu organisers should read and write their national history.” Savarkar explained that he had long intended to write this essay, but political work had taken precedence. Now, in… Read More History in the Service of Hindutva
Letters and excerpts from Albert Einstein’s writings in which he repeatedly reiterated his opposition to the creation of a state for Jews, preferring the formation of a simple spiritual and cultural centre to serve the Jewish world and all humanity. Addresses on reconstruction in Palestine (1932) The crisis which the work of construction has had to… Read More Albert Einstein on Jews in Palestine (1932-49)
Fascism is the final stage in the state’s life cycle after the orgy of imperialism, and the American Empire couldn’t die soon enough. Nicky Reid This is not a sane universe. This is Babylon during the end times. Rome is burning, so Caligula gets a second term while Nero plays “Rhiannon” on the violin. The… Read More A Second Trump Term is the Beginning of the End and That’s Not All Bad
The Ministry of Truth, Part 1: How the Prime Minister’s Office has ordered a systemic operation to discredit and ‘fix’ global rankings which show the government in bad light. And, to home-cook some charitable replacements. Shreegireesh Jalihal New Delhi: In Hyderabad’s Taj Deccan last year, Smriti Irani, then India’s Women and Child Development Minister, took… Read More Inside Modi Govt’s War Room to Whitewash Global Indices
