Tag: History

The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan: Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan: Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,  President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser  Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998  Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter, Dies at 89 Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [“From the Shadows”], that American intelligence services began to aid… Read More The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan: Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

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Book review: Imperium by Ryszard Kapuściński (1993)

I thought about the terrible uselessness of suffering. Love leaves behind its creation-the next generation coming into the world; the continuation of humanity. But suffering? Such a great part of human experience, the most difficult and painful, passes leaving no trace. If one were to collect the energy of suffering emitted by the millions of… Read More Book review: Imperium by Ryszard Kapuściński (1993)

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Book review: Resistance, Rebellion & Writing. Albert Camus’s dispatches on the Algerian crisis

Algerian Chronicles by Albert CamusReviewed by George Scialabba The problem of revolutionary violence was perhaps the most fateful question of political morality in the twentieth century. Two texts are indispensable to anyone wanting to engage that question: Camus’s “Neither Victims nor Executioners” (1946) and Sartre’s introduction to The Wretched of the Earth (1961), written one… Read More Book review: Resistance, Rebellion & Writing. Albert Camus’s dispatches on the Algerian crisis

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High Court of Jammu & Kashmir upholds Sanjay Tickoo’s petition for protection of religious places and castigates communal versions of nationalism

First posted October 10, 2013 NB: The operative aspect of this case may be seen in the highlighted part of para 1 (emphasis added). It is well-known that a large number of temples all over the Kashmir Valley have been desecrated and/or abandoned. According to Sanjay Tickoo, President of the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti the figure runs into… Read More High Court of Jammu & Kashmir upholds Sanjay Tickoo’s petition for protection of religious places and castigates communal versions of nationalism

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Mukul Kesavan: Delhi’s roads tell the story of the republic

Driving down Prithviraj Road, one of New Delhi’s famously leafy avenues, I passed a lane that opened on to it. The street sign said “Aurangzeb Lane”. Aurangzeb Road might have morphed into A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Road, but the emperor lives on, if only in a little feeder lane. Of the roads that commemorate Mughal emperors, all… Read More Mukul Kesavan: Delhi’s roads tell the story of the republic

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Anil Nauriya, Against The Dying of The Light: Frontier Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988)

Against The Dying of The Light: Bharat Ratna Frontier Gandhi, Badshah Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988). This note is being circulated for the attention of the Presidential candidates in the forthcoming elections for the offices of President and Vice President of India and the electoral college in this election. Recently, taking advantage of Covid lockdowns,… Read More Anil Nauriya, Against The Dying of The Light: Frontier Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988)

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‘The Poets of Rapallo’ Review: Ezra Pound’s Fascist Paradise

If biology was the soil of fascism, history and aesthetics were the manure.. Percy Shelley called poets the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” No poet sought acknowledgment more enthusiastically than Ezra Pound. No poet legislated so ambitiously or disastrously, either. Pound was the impresario of Modernism. He stripped the Victorian padding from the verse of… Read More ‘The Poets of Rapallo’ Review: Ezra Pound’s Fascist Paradise

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Orhan Pamuk on Dayanita Singh’s mesmerising photos of India’s disintegrating archives

What has most drawn me to Singh’s work are the photographs collected in her books File Room and Museum of Chance. In these, we find black and white images of India’s vast state archives, storerooms and registry offices. As we leaf through these books, we become filled with an idea of poetic decrepitude and a… Read More Orhan Pamuk on Dayanita Singh’s mesmerising photos of India’s disintegrating archives

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