NB: This book changed my life. I read it when I was seventeen. Along with Palestine, Vietnam’s valiant struggle against American imperialism was the epic of our generation. I will salute the Vietnamese people till the end of my days. DS “There are few parallels with the war in Vietnam. It has lasted nearly two… Read More Against the crime of silence: Bertrand Russell’s War Crimes in Vietnam (1967)
By Alfred McCoy / TomDispatch In his novel The Autumn of the Patriarch, which is eerily evocative of our current political plight, Gabriel Garcia Marquez described how a Latin American autocrat “discovered in the course of his uncountable years that a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth, [and] became convinced… Read More A Dying American Empire, ‘Rotten to the Heart?’
NB: I respect this writer and this film maker for speaking the truth as far as their resources allow. The term community of crime is something terrifying because it reflects the truth about the fragility of human consience; and the power that ideologies possess to pervert the conscience into its opposite; to literally create communities… Read More Two years after the massacre, I look back in disbelief. I, too, missed the October 8 surprise / ‘If 1948 was a war of Independence, the current war could be the one that ends Israel’
Itamar Katzir From his home in New York City, Peter Beinart watched in amazement as hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets during the first “day of disruption” in August. Peter Beinart – “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning” | The Daily Show The 54-year-old Jewish American journalist and commentator… Read More Peter Beinart: ‘What Israel Is Doing in the Name of the Jewish People Is a Desecration’
The truth never dies, but is made to live like a beggar: Yiddish proverb People all seek to know what they do not know yet / they ought rather seek to know what they know already : Zhuang Zhou (369-286 BC) What you run away from, runs after you: Roumanian proverb Raoul Wootliff There is a moment in 1948:… Read More October 7 War: Remember, Remember Not
NB: A beautiful and profound meditation on some of the deepest insights of Indian culture. Thank you Professor Mehta. DS Both reached the same uncomfortable truth — the moral exemplar often stands outside the logic of power This year, Gandhi Jayanti and Vijayadashami coincide. Gandhi Jayanti has long been marked by formal pieties, yet it… Read More Pratap Bhanu Mehta: The loneliness of Ram and Gandhi
NB: A very instructive book on Soviet history is named The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939; by, J. Arch Getty and Oleg Naumov (1999). I think the current period of American history will be known as the implosion of the USA. All the engineered coups, from Iran to Vietnam to… Read More Self-shafting America
Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters revives interest in British major shot in Bulgaria by Kristen Ghodsee When former Pink Floyd front man, Roger Waters, visited Bulgaria in August, one of his must-see sights was the grave of Major Frank Thompson, in the village of Litakovo outside of Botevgrad. If you are exiting from the Sofia Metro… Read More Who was Frank Thompson / A Very English Hero: The Making of Frank Thompson by Peter Conradi – review
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Wish You Were Here So, so you think you can tellHeaven from HellBlue skies from pain?Can you tell a green fieldFrom a cold steel rail?A smile from a veil?Do you think you can tell? And did they get you to tradeYour heroes for ghosts?Hot ashes for trees?Hot air for a cool breeze?Cold comfort for change?And… Read More Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here
After the truth-shower 