Bharat Bhushan Merely calling a special session of the Manipur Legislative Assembly, a demand by both Meitei civil society organisations and the Opposition Congress Party, is unlikely to chart a path to peace in Manipur. The frailty of the legislative process, problems in the government’s proposed resettlement programme and its failure to discipline armed Meiti… Read More Why peace and stability remain elusive in Manipur
First posted January 06, 2019 To mark the centenary of the first world war’s end, Peter Jackson has created a visually staggering thought experiment; an immersive deep-dive into what it was like for ordinary British soldiers on the western front. This he has done using state-of-the-art digital technology to restore flickery old black-and-white archive footage of the servicemen’s… Read More They Shall Not Grow Old – Peter Jackson’s electrifying journey into the trenches of the Great War
You do not grow crops, you do not eat coconut, you do not drink the water: Stephen Palumbi, marine scientist The film Oppenheimer has shone a spotlight on the dawn of US nuclear weapons tests. In the Marshall Islands, where 23 of those earth-shattering blasts happened, people have never been able to forget Lucy Sherriff… Read More Endless fallout: the Pacific idyll still facing nuclear blight 77 years on
NB: This story is heartbreaking as well as wondrous, it leaves me speechless. Nothing can be said aside from wonderment at the joy and tragedy of human life. God bless you María Angélica, God bless you Jimmy Lippert Thyden, enjoy the miracle of finding each other after four decades. We all love you too. DS… Read More ‘Hi, Mom. I love you’: US man kidnapped as a baby in Pinochet’s Chile reunited with family
By Frank Gardner Ever since he led a mutinous march on Moscow in late June Yevgeny Prigozhin was described by Russia watchers as “a dead man walking”. Commenting recently on the mercenary boss’s life expectancy the CIA Director William Burns even said: “If I were Prigozhin I wouldn’t fire my food taster”. If it is… Read More Was Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin a dead man walking?
Sounds of gunfire keep Modina Khatun awake every night in Cox’s Bazaar Bangladesh – the world’s largest refugee camp. She fears that spiralling gang violence there will make a widow of another Rohingya woman like herself, with young children to feed. By Anbarasan Ethirajan Ms Khatun’s husband, Bashir Ullah, became a grim statistic last June… Read More Rohingya: Gang violence stalks world’s largest refugee camp
NB: This is one of the most moving tributes to Albert Camus that I have read. It is also crystal clear. DS He had succeeded in saying in his fevered way and in an argument as taut as a bow why, despite the fury and horror of history, man is an absolute; and he had… Read More ALBERT CAMUS: by Nicola Chiaromonte
In the wake of the July 26 coup in Niger, the world’s spotlight has once again turned to the expansion of private military and security companies (PMSCs) across Africa. Following the removal of the relatively pro-Western government, Niger’s new military rulers asked Russian PMSC Wagner to help defend against a possible military intervention by the Economic Community of… Read More Private military companies continue to expand in Africa
Tim Adams A few days after he announced he would sell his Nobel peace prize medal at auction – and give the millions of dollars raised to Ukrainian refugees – the Russian newspaper editor Dmitry Muratov was sitting on a train bound for the city of Samara. Just before the train pulled away from Kazansky station in… Read More Nobel peace laureate Dmitry Muratov won’t be silenced by Putin
With the new Netanyahu government, the anti-Palestinian violence (the pogrom in Huwara, the attacks on the Stella Maris Monastery in Haifa, etc.) is no longer even formally condemned by the state. To a Western European with a vague knowledge of Italian, “Manipur” automatically associates with “mani pulite” (pure hands), the big anti-corruption campaign in the… Read More Slavoj Žizek: Manipur is not only in India
