NB: Here are two reviews of The Kashmir Files, with different interpretations. Readers are welcome to their own conclusions. Since this is a matter I have spoken and written about for many years, I attach below a selection of my posts beneath the reviews, without further comment. DS The Kashmir Files: Cinema As Testimony. Siddhartha Gigoo K-Files… Read More The Kashmir Files
German hostility to the Enlightenment – Let us consider the intellectual contribution to general culture made by the Germans of the first half of this century, and let us take first the German philosophers: they retreated to the first and oldest stage of speculation, for, like the thinkers of dreamy ages, they were content with… Read More Friedrich Nietzsche on German hostility to the Enlightenment (1881) / Zeev Sternhell on the price to be paid for cultural differentialism
Jawaharlal Nehru restlessly sought to provide Indian democracy with a firm and unshakeable base. The Constitution supplied the framework, Parliament and State legislatures stood as the superstructure, and adult suffrage ensured the possibility of universal participation. But this edifice lacked an institutional foundation in the villages. Should the top falter, the base would subside. That… Read More Madhavan Palat: Nehru talked of panchayats as if they were bureaucracies, imagining them as elected civil servants rather than political leaders
Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities presented its recent discoveries on Saturday which include five tombs belonging to a pharaonic necropolis complex at Saqqara, just outside the capital Cairo. The tombs, which are believed to have housed senior officials from the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate period of ancient Egypt, date back to as long ago… Read More Egyptian archaeologists discover five tombs at Saqqara
Julien Benda’s classic book on the toxic mix of intellectuals and power is its own paradox Treason of the Intellectuals by Julien Benda Reviewed by Gustav Jönsson The title of Julien Benda’s La Trahison des clercs – The Treason of the Intellectuals – has become a synecdoche for a tradition that upholds truth in the face of moral… Read More Treason of the Intellectuals
The bombing campaign targeting Baghdad, a civilian city of 6 million, constituted indiscriminate fire, which is a war crime. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died as a direct result of events kicked off by the US invasion. Millions were wounded. Four million lost their homes, with a million and a half exiled abroad… Brown University’s Costs of… Read More JUAN COLE: The US would be on firmer ground declaring Putin a War Criminal if George W. Bush had been Tried / Aditya Chakrabortty: Western values? They enthroned the monster who is shelling Ukrainians today
… like Ulysses, I drive myself forward,… but move, as before, backward – Joseph Brodsky, “I am like Ulysses” IT TOOK ODYSSEUS 20 years to return to Ithaca, and James Joyce’s Ulysses had to wait 67 years before reaching the Russian reader. In both instances, a war contributed to the delay. In the novel’s case, it was the… Read More José Vergara’s “All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature”
As its title suggests, The Dawn of Everything is an ambitious book. The authors, David Graeber and David Wengrow, (one whom passed away while the book was in press) survey the whole past life of biologically modern humans in an effort to broaden the ambit of modern social thought. They aim to thereby open up the possibility… Read More A False Dawn? A Review of The Dawn of Everything
Superbly clear images of the shipwreck Endurance, 3,000 metres below the ocean’s surface in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, were this week broadcast around the world. Found by the Endurance 22 Expedition using a state-of-the-art autonomous underwater vehicle, we now have images almost as iconic as those taken of the stricken ship by Australian photographer and expedition… Read More The wreck of Endurance is a bridge to a bygone age, and a reminder of Antarctica’s uncertain future
Primo Levi – Last Christmas of the War In more ways than one, Monowitz, a part of Auschwitz, was not a typical camp. The barrier that separated us from the world – symbolized by the double barbedwire fence – was not hermetic, as elsewhere. Our work brought us into daily contact with people who… Read More Primo Levi (1919-1987) – Last Christmas of the War
After the truth-shower 