Modi preaching peace abroad as Manipur burns reinforces historical alienation of the North East

NB: Is India an empire? The British Raj certainly was, and the RSS/BJP ideologues who constantly denouce the Macaulay tradition in education; don’t seem to mind the continuance of colonial police codes and the divide and rule method of governance. Do they imagine that a combination of communal ideology and colonial policing will keep them… Read More Modi preaching peace abroad as Manipur burns reinforces historical alienation of the North East

To Sanitize the Master’s Corpus: On the Heidegger Hoax

By Richard Wolin Martin Heidegger’s influence has been enormous. Richard Rorty once justifiably claimed that it would be impossible to write the intellectual history of the 20th century without acknowledging Heidegger’s titanic impact. But these tributes to Heidegger’s prodigious achievements are question-begging in one crucial respect: they neglect to consider what we are actually reading when… Read More To Sanitize the Master’s Corpus: On the Heidegger Hoax

Succession on the Tibetan plateau: what’s at stake in the battle over the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation?

John Powers In China, a group of atheists (the Chinese Communist Party) has long dictated how the country’s religious groups should practise their faiths. Chinese Christians are told to reject salvation by faith and the Resurrection; their core beliefs should be patriotism and love of the party. The party has also published several pamphlets detailing appropriate beliefs and practices… Read More Succession on the Tibetan plateau: what’s at stake in the battle over the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation?

Europe Ignoring Israeli War Crimes under Guise of Combating anti-Semitism: new report

( Middle East Monitor ) – The chilling repercussions of the highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism have been revealed in a recent report by the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC). Titled “Suppressing Palestinian Rights Advocacy through the IHRA Working Definition of Anti-Semitism”, the report by the independent Dutch-based organisation uncovered shocking examples of the IHRA’s… Read More Europe Ignoring Israeli War Crimes under Guise of Combating anti-Semitism: new report

A Hard Rain Falling: on the death of T. P. Chandrasekharan (EPW, June 2012)

First posted June 27, 2012 A Hard Rain Falling by Dilip Simeon He went to bed, turned on the BBC World News and switched it off again. Half-truths. Quarter-truths. What the world really knows about itself, it doesn’t dare say:  John le Carre, in Our Kind of Traitor A baleful feature of contemporary Indian politics is the subjugation… Read More A Hard Rain Falling: on the death of T. P. Chandrasekharan (EPW, June 2012)

Commodification: the essence of our time

First posted April 11, 2012 By Colin Leys and Barbara Harriss-White The dominant process underlying the transformation of life in all societies, since at least the mid-nineteenth century, is the conversion of things and activities into commodities, or commodification. In advanced capitalist countries this process is now outstripping our political and social capacity to adjust… Read More Commodification: the essence of our time

Americans are rejecting religion as the Christian right becomes more extreme

Chrissy Stroop For centuries, American evangelical Protestants have been obsessed with religious ‘revival’. Fear of ostensible societal, moral, and religious ‘decline’ is the other side of the same paranoid Christian coin. The United States, deeply influenced by early Puritan settlers and other assorted Christian fanatics, has been slow to secularise relative to European countries. In fact, the… Read More Americans are rejecting religion as the Christian right becomes more extreme