(NB: An interesting letter and an interesting archive. The comment “The Western view, undoubtedly biased by the Soviet contribution to the Allied victory in 1945, has undoubtedly minimized the terrible dictatorship that Stalin imposed on Russia” is misleading – Churchill began using the phrase ‘Iron Curtain’ as early as 1946; and the animosity was demonstrated… Read More Rare archival materials from the Stalin era
“Just an old man in a loincloth in distant India: Yet when he died, humanity wept.” The most punctual man in India…of Mahatma Gandhi’s few possessions, his watches were the most beloved. His watch stopped at 5.12 pm on January 30, 1948 First posted February 06, 2015 The watch never left his side. It was the… Read More Nina Martyris on the trustee of time
Bharat Bhushan A nationwide curfew imposed by the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh on Friday, 19 July, may not be enough to quell the student protests that began on 1 July. Already over 100 protestors have been killed in police firing and 25,000 protestors injured. Prime Minister Hasina imposed the curfew after a massive breakdown of law and… Read More Bangladesh: Students Have Often Led Protests That Have Transformed the Country
Two examples from mediaeval Odisha’s bhakti tradition show how debates and differences about the sacred were part of devotional practice, and not forced onto us after the institutionalisation of modern, secular, and democratic visions… Each bhakt’s quest toward their own self, or own language, was a gesture to a universal appeal. ABINASH DASH CHOUDHURY Over… Read More Encountering the Bhakt: Transformation in Religious Thought
Incensed crowd facing riot police set BTV building on fire as students demand end to discriminatory job quotas NB: What is needed now is international democratic solidarity, across frontiers, age, language and religion. Solidarity for justice, peace, and renewed communication. Stand up for the embattled students of Bangladesh. In 1971, General Yahya Khan sent tanks… Read More Fierce anti-government protests in Bangladesh, 39 dead; thousands injured
By Nicky Reid / CounterPunch Every single American war has been bullshit. They all come with different excuses and some of them are pretty goddamn convincing but every major conflict that this country has ever engaged in has been motivated by greed and power, and every single war we’ve fought has ended the exact same way, with… Read More Exposing the Myth of the ‘Good War’
Older Cubans are struggling to make ends meet on tiny pensions as the country pivots towards private enterprise Ruaridh Nicoll and Eileen Sosin in Havana In central Havana, Martha Ortega has been queueing for mince. She has both osteo- and rheumatoid arthritis causing her foot to drag, but she remains stylish, a checked shirt and… Read More Members of Cuba’s revolutionary generation feel abandoned by the society they created
First posted October 06, 2012 Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan. Edited by Noel Malcolm. Oxford University Press; 2,355 pages WHEN Thomas Hobbes was maths tutor to the future English king, Charles II, in Paris in 1646, his young charge reportedly found Britain’s first great modern philosopher to be “the oddest fellow he ever met with”. That was one of… Read More After more than 350 years, the first critical edition of Hobbes’s ‘Leviathan’
Husserl’s well-tended archive has given him a rich afterlife, while Nietzsche’s was distorted by his axe-grinding sister Peter Salmon I have a terrible fear that I shall one day be pronounced holy: from Ecce Homo; by Friedrich Nietzsche On the morning of 24 September 1938, a Franciscan priest by the name of Herman Van Breda… Read More Paper trails
First posted October 19, 2020 Fascism has awakened a sleeping world to the realities of the irrational, mystical character structure of the people of the world: Wilhelm Reich… .. the concept of ideology makes sense only in relation to the truth or untruth of what it refers to. There can be no talk of socially necessary delusions… Read More Ralph Dumain: Paranoia Papers Bibliography. The (Un)Natural History of Social Paranoia
