First posted October 01, 2016 Debora Mackenzie Try, for a moment, to envisage a world without countries. Imagine a map not divided into neat, coloured patches, each with clear borders, governments, laws. Try to describe anything our society does – trade, travel, science, sport, maintaining peace and security – without mentioning countries. Try to describe… Read More End of nations: is there an alternative to countries?
First posted February 16, 2018 There are innumerable versions of the birth of the modern era. Historians do not even agree about the date of this event. Some make modernity begin in the 15th and 16th centuries, with the so-called Renaissance (a concept invented in the 19th century by Jules Michelet, as the French historian… Read More Robert Kurz: The destructive origins of capitalism. The ‘military revolution’ in 16th century Europe
The Christmas truce, 1914 – Steven Johns A short history of the widespread but unofficial truce between British and German troops on the Western front over Christmas, 1914 during World War I. Despite the mass slaughter orchestrated by European governments, rank-and-file soldiers during World War I often attempted to resist the war effort and refuse… Read More The Soldiers’ Christmas Truce 1914 / Armistice Day, November 11, 1918: In Pictures
MATTHIJS KRONEMEIJER Toronto (Special to Informed Comment) – The November edition of First Things, a magazine of the Christian Right, features a lengthy statement from a group of theologians called Evangelicals and Catholics Together. The church friend who spontaneously sent me a link indicated that the statement is about Christian citizenship and that he is proud to be… Read More The American Christian Right’s Flirtation with Political Violence and Far-Right Extremism
Jonathan Steele NB: While I appreciate Steele’s evocation of moderation and restraint, there’s just one big problem with this article. One man alone saved the world from nuclear war in 1962, and his name was Vasili Arkhipov, one of three senior officers in the Soviet nuclear-weapon equipped submarine, the B-59, off the Cuban coast, which… Read More Sixty years ago, true statecraft avoided a nuclear war. We need that again over Ukraine
RITESH KUMAR JAISWAL Sri Lanka was just about recovering from a devastating civil war and its aftermath when it plummeted into an unprecedented economic and political crisis. Mass protests beginning in March, in response to alarming inflation and shortages of food, fuel, medicines, fertilisers, and other essential items, forced President Gotabaya Rajapaksa into brief exile. His replacement, Ranil Wickremesinghe is… Read More Migrants and Minorities in Ceylon: Lessons for the Present
First posted August1, 2020 Vanessa Thorpe The hidden role of a British secret service officer who led the coup that permanently altered the Middle East is to be revealed for the first time since an Observer news story was suppressed in 1985. The report, headlined “How MI6 and CIA joined forces to plot Iran coup”, appeared… Read More The joint CIA – MI-6 instigated coup in Iran that changed the Middle East, and the cover-up
Presented at Across the Black Waters One-Day Symposium at the Imperial War Museum, London, November 7, 1998 Don’t go don’t goStay back my friend. Crazy people are packing up,Flowers are withering and friendships are breaking.Stay back my friend. Allah gives bread and workYou won’t find soothing shade anywhere else.Don’t go my friend don’t go. –… Read More Amarjit Chandan: The Great War & its Impact on Punjabis
Review: ‘The End of Tsarist Russia’ by Dominic Lieven By Serge Schmemann Aug. 30, 2015 Dominic Lieven’s stated reason for this contribution to the centenary literature on World War I is to place Russia “where it belongs, at the very center” of the war’s history. Certainly the war proved to be at the center of Russian… Read More Towards the Flame
Dilip Simeon Permanent spring: Seminar # 607, March 2010 ON 30 April 1908, two young men, Prafulla Chaki and Khudiram Bose, entered the boundary of the Muzaffarpur Club in Bihar and waited for the hated judge Douglas Kingsford to appear. They were members of Jugantar, the foremost nationalist-revolutionary group to emerge during the Swadeshi movement… Read More Permanent Spring: Indian Maoism and the Philosophy of Insurrection
After the truth-shower 