Tag: History

The Grand Inquisitor and the Holy Fool: Madhavan Palat’s lecture on Dostoevsky

First posted March 26, 2014 The Grand Inquisitor and the Holy Fool The Indian Council for Historical Research Foundation Day At the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library / 27 March 2014 at 5.30 pm Dostoevsky was a remarkably modern thinker who may seem to have laboured hard to obscure the fact. He grappled with the… Read More The Grand Inquisitor and the Holy Fool: Madhavan Palat’s lecture on Dostoevsky

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‘Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962’ – by Yang Jisheng

First posted September 23, 2016 Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962 – by Yang Jisheng Reviewed by Jonathan Mirsky ‘I call this book Tombstone. It is a tombstone for my father who died of starvation in 1959, for the thirty-six million Chinese who also starved to death, for the system that brought about their death, and perhaps for… Read More ‘Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962’ – by Yang Jisheng

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Modi says Congress committed ‘sin’ of partition / The Non-politics of the RSS

First posted November 10, 2013 NB: Fascist political speech may be summarised in three words: affirmation, repetition and contagion. They spread lies and practice deceit as a matter of habit. Truth is whatever is convenient for serving their interests. More than anything else, it is the onslaught on the human mind that is the most dangerous feature of totalitarian… Read More Modi says Congress committed ‘sin’ of partition / The Non-politics of the RSS

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The Decreationist

Simone Weil’s thoughts on the unmaking of the self.. the postwar publication of the great bulk of her writings, including The Need for Roots, was overseen by one of her greatest admirers, Albert Camus. By Robert Zaretsky Eighty years ago on this date, one of the 20th century’s most unusual and unsettling thinkers died at… Read More The Decreationist

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They Shall Not Grow Old – Peter Jackson’s electrifying journey into the trenches of the Great War

First posted January 06, 2019 To mark the centenary of the first world war’s end, Peter Jackson has created a visually staggering thought experiment; an immersive deep-dive into what it was like for ordinary British soldiers on the western front. This he has done using state-of-the-art digital technology to restore flickery old black-and-white archive footage of the servicemen’s… Read More They Shall Not Grow Old – Peter Jackson’s electrifying journey into the trenches of the Great War

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Endless fallout: the Pacific idyll still facing nuclear blight 77 years on

You do not grow crops, you do not eat coconut, you do not drink the water: Stephen Palumbi, marine scientist The film Oppenheimer has shone a spotlight on the dawn of US nuclear weapons tests. In the Marshall Islands, where 23 of those earth-shattering blasts happened, people have never been able to forget Lucy Sherriff… Read More Endless fallout: the Pacific idyll still facing nuclear blight 77 years on

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The world is burning. Who can convince the comfortable classes of the radical sacrifices needed?

Simone Weil’s life illustrates the capacity to give up the things we feel we’re owed – such as a carbon-intensive consumer-driven lifestyle Justine Toh Nero fiddled while Rome burned. The saying takes on new meaning after the hottest July ever, devastating wildfires in Greece and Canada, and the declaration by the UN secretary general, António Guterres,… Read More The world is burning. Who can convince the comfortable classes of the radical sacrifices needed?

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‘Hi, Mom. I love you’: US man kidnapped as a baby in Pinochet’s Chile reunited with family

NB: This story is heartbreaking as well as wondrous, it leaves me speechless. Nothing can be said aside from wonderment at the joy and tragedy of human life. God bless you María Angélica, God bless you Jimmy Lippert Thyden, enjoy the miracle of finding each other after four decades. We all love you too. DS… Read More ‘Hi, Mom. I love you’: US man kidnapped as a baby in Pinochet’s Chile reunited with family

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