First posted August 06, 2019 NB: An insightful essay. In the ideas contained in Weber’s inaugural lecture on his appointment to the chair in political economy at Freiburg (1895) he comes across as an economic nationalist in favour of colonial expansion; and the closure of Germany’s eastern border to ‘cheap’ Polish labour migrants. He also used… Read More Pratap Bhanu Mehta: Reading 1919 in 2019
PRAVEEN SWAMI Erased from our memory by high-rise buildings and malls, Gurugram, and the Mewat region that sprawled to its south, imploded into a macabre carnival of killing during Partition. “Whole villages were razed; scores of mosques desecrated; thousands killed or forced on pain of death to convert to Hinduism”, historian Ian Copland writes, “and many… Read More Gurugram’s is a hard-won economic gain. But Nuh violence shows it’s imploding
By NORMAN SOLOMON In 1980, when I asked the press office at the U.S. Department of Energy to send me a listing of nuclear bomb test explosions, the agency mailed me an official booklet with the title “Announced United States Nuclear Tests, July 1945 Through December 1979.” As you’d expect, the Trinity test in New Mexico… Read More Were the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings “nuclear tests”? The U.S. government said so
Japan has marked the 78th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima where the mayor urged the abolition of nuclear weapons and called the G7 leaders’ notion of nuclear deterrence a “folly”. On Sunday a peace bell tolled at 8.15am, the time the bomb was dropped. About 50,000 participants in the outdoor memorial ceremony… Read More On 78th anniversary of atomic bomb, Hiroshima mayor says nuclear deterrence ‘folly’
First posted November 19, 2011 NB: The historic significance of this document should be apparent to those who take the time to read it. I have cited it in an essay on the history of Indian fascism written in 2013, so I will not repeat myself here. I will make just two observations: 1/ Pakistan’s… Read More Pakistan’s First Law & Labour Minister, Jogendra Nath Mandal’s Resignation Letter, October 1950
the early U.S. was a settlers’ empire, a political and military force with the main goal to provide farm families (and speculators) with more land. So it went for generations. Jason Opal The indictment of former United States president Donald Trump on charges he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election is the most… Read More America is on the brink of another civil war, this one fuelled by Donald Trump / Trump has lost control of his own image
Julian Zelizer, CNN By refusing to accept the results of an election that was proven to be legitimate and actively trying to overturn the results, Trump put our democracy in grave danger. By seeking this indictment, as well as the one involving Trump’s handling of classified documents, the Department of Justice has broken with the precedent… Read More Trump’s indictment reverses a 50-year precedent
John P. Ruehl One of the underlying principles of the UN Charter is the protection of the sovereign rights of states. Yet since 1945, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (Soviet Union/Russia, France, UK, U.S., and China) have consistently used military force to undermine this notion. And while acts of seizing territory… Read More A brief neocolonial history of the five UN Security Council permanent members
First posted April 17, 2012 “In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war,… Read More The Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955
“The United States of America v. Donald J. Trump” instantly became one of the most consequential documents in American history. Special counsel Jack Smith unveiled his case alleging that former President Donald Trump broke several laws in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, with a grand jury indictment returned Tuesday that illustrated the depth and breadth of the federal criminal… Read More Donald Trump indicted for efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat / Trump’s latest indictment will reverberate for years to come
After the truth-shower 