My beloved friend Ajay Singh’s book will be released today, April 20, 2022; at 6.30 pm at the Indian International Centre. Hon’ble Kunwar Natwar Singh will launch the book. Three other speakers will be Mr. K C Tyagi, Mr. Bhai Chand Patel and me. All are cordially invited. Ajay Singh (1950-2020). RIP Beloved comrade and… Read More Ajay Singh: Fiji – A Love Story
To the motives for war in human history, capitalism added another: profit. That motive drove technological advancement and created a genuine world economy. It also built new capitalist empires such as the Spanish, Dutch, British, French, Belgian, Russian, German, Japanese, and American empires. Each of these countries built its empire by various means including wars… Read More Richard Wolffe: The Role of Capitalism in the War in Ukraine
Margaret Thatcher hated the ‘British Bastard Corporation’, as her husband liked to call it. Coverage of the Falklands War was an inevitable flashpoint, with Thatcher raging against reporters’ references to ‘British’ forces rather than ‘our’ troops. The tabloid press sensed an opportunity to put the boot in, with the Sun wheeling out the tiredest of tropes by… Read More Books reviewed: Beebology, or the history of the ‘British Bastard Corporation’
The same cabal of warmongering pundits, foreign policy specialists and government officials, year after year, debacle after debacle, smugly dodge responsibility for the military fiascos they orchestrate. They are protean, shifting adroitly with the political winds, moving from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party and then back again, mutating from cold warriors to neocons… Read More Chris Hedges: The Pimps of War
Whatever else the Second World War was about, it was, on both sides, a war for empire. Taking a global view leads to a different picture of the war. For example, when did it begin? Most English speakers would say 1939, with Germany’s invasion of Poland. But by then Japan had already been at continuous war… Read More A New History of the Second World War
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
