NB: Our Great Leader specialises in inventing abusive epithets for anyone critical of him or his government. The epithets include desh drohi (anti-national traitors), Khan Market gang, urban Naxals etc. Now he has come up with a new phrase, dimagi naxals – meaning intellectual Maoists. India’s Maoist movement began in 1967, and originated in a… Read More Devdutt Pattanaik on ‘dimagi Naxals’
German General Reinhard Gehlen set up an anti-Soviet espionage ring in 1945 and used it to the grief of both sides during the Cold War. This article appears in: October 2004 By Peter Kross By 1944, many top generals in Adolf Hitler’s army understood the war was lost and that they had better make arrangements to… Read More The extraordinary career of German General Reinhard Gehlen
It is not enough now for war to kill, it must eradicate a people’s cherished and precious heritage too Simon Jenkins Wars may not take summer holidays, but they do sometimes see exhaustion. As drones race back and forth across Ukraine and the strait of Hormuz, a grim stalemate seems to have invaded the earth beneath. Aerial… Read More Ukrainian cathedrals, Gaza’s archives, Iranian squares – modern war is systematically erasing human history
Sumit Sarkar, one of India’s most reputed historians of modern times, talks of breaking the mould NB: Sumit Sarkar was a stalwart of historical scholarship and a great teacher. Hundreds of students have sat in his classes and learned at his feet. I am grateful to have been one of them, in my MA days… Read More Sumit Sarkar (1939-2026): A historian muses on forty years of scholarship
NB: A timely and inspiring speech by Ashok Kumar Pandey Modi सरकार का टाइम पूरा हो गया, हिन्दू-मुसलमान का खेल नहीं चल रहा? || Ashok Kumar Pandey The Credible History 3.7m subscribers @sarlapurohit1216: बी जे पी और आर एस एस भारत को 1947 का भारत बनाना चाहती है ।भारत की सबसे बड़ी ताकत है विविधता… Read More Modi सरकार का टाइम पूरा हो गया, हिन्दू-मुसलमान का खेल नहीं चल रहा ? : Ashok Kumar Pandey
New secrets from our past have been coming out in droves. By Ross Andersen Some 50,000 years ago, modern humans wandered into Ice Age Europe. The continent was new to us Homo sapiens, but not for beings of our general kind. Neanderthals and their ancestors had been living among Eurasia’s glaciers for ages, and in ways that… Read More The Human-Origin Story Is Being Radically Revised
NB: August 9 is the 81st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki Henry Giroux: Remembering Hiroshima Hiroshima: Why The Bomb Was Dropped – ABC News (1995) By Alex Wellerstein | August 10, 2025 – Author’s observations + Q & A on Reddit Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists When it comes to marking anniversaries of the atomic… Read More Truman never ordered the use of the atomic bombs — but he did order atomic bombings to be stopped
The Ram Mandir donations theft and Modi’s men who should answer for it ‘Aham Brahmasmi’ – The Grandiose Self Dhirendra K Jha, Amrita Singh August 1, 2026 FIVE MONTHS AFTER Narendra Modi began his second term as prime minister, the Supreme Court delivered his government a momentous gift. On 9 November 2019, it settled a land dispute in… Read More Trust Issues
The life of the hugely influential ‘people’s historian’ is explored in a wide-ranging new book that brings in everything from wars to civil rights to Matt Damon When times got tough for Zinn: “… he was able to live through these times when he was also able to lecture in the classroom, about all sorts… Read More The incredible life of historian Howard Zinn (1922-2010)
Unpacking Trump’s End Game in Latin America with William Callison and Verónica Gago Source: PATTERNS by Naomi Klein Naomi Klein, William Callison, and Verónica Gago Jul 30, 2026 Several readers of this newsletter have asked us to cover the attacks on democracy in Latin America. With that in mind, this week, I am thrilled to share Patterns’ first… Read More The Goal is a Fascist Continent
After the truth-shower 