It’s not just screen time: the problem with children’s media is that it has become relentlessly hectic, loud and bright Natalia Kucirkova Iam at the airport gate waiting to depart, watching passengers hurry past with rolling suitcases and paper cups of coffee. A small boy sits very still beside his mother. He holds an iPad… Read More The bombarding of childhood
‘The truth never dies, but is made to live as a beggar’: Yiddish proverb “The Gaza documentary has elicited a nationwide uproar. After years of repression, denial and lies, apathy and indifference, the pus has burst forth in a mighty stream. This is a healthy process, even if it includes ugly manifestations” – Gideon Levy… Read More Thanks to ‘NAZA’ Hysteria, Israel Is Finally Talking About Gaza
Kabir Deb Women in power have always been a threat to patriarchy because their presence challenges the very structure that has taught society to associate authority, leadership and decision-making with men. This is not only about the social dilemma or cultural conditioning that we usually discuss when we talk about feminism. It is also about… Read More The witch-hunting we all witnessed, listened to, and chose to remain silent
The Cockroach movement protesters used memes, mockery and collective action to cut through mainstream media’s refusal to tackle problems plaguing the country’s politics Niha Masih Hello! Welcome to This Is India from the Guardian. I’m Niha Masih and I’ll be writing to you every week about the stories, ideas and news makers of modern India. I’ll do… Read More How gen Z exposed India’s prime-time propaganda machine
NB: Listen to Arvind Anjum’s interviews with the new arrivals at the protest site. Pakistani youth express their admiration and solidarity with struggling Indian students: BBC report. DS The protest has convincingly established not just the irrelevance of legacy TV channels but also their continued abandonment of basic journalistic norms Kalpana Sharma There were broken… Read More The media missed the biggest story: How a generation fed on consumerism and hate found its voice
From “The Burnout Society” to “The Tonality of Thought,” tech philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s ultra-short books reveal why online liberation has felt more like voluntary captivity. Matt Elmore Byung-Chul Han is one of Europe’s most widely read philosophers. His audience in the United States has grown considerably over the last decade, though mostly outside the academy;… Read More Why Is Digital Freedom Making Us Exhausted and Sad? The philosophy of Byung-Chul Han
NB: An excellent commentary; except for one misnomer: when it comes to Western imperial establishments and their hangers-on, it’s not their moral stupidity, but their moral depravity that we are confronted with. The truth is as clear as crystal: they are irredeemably racist, as racist as the Nazi jurists who concocted the phrase ‘life not… Read More Gaza and the Problem of Moral Stupidity
The retreat into satirical attacks on Trump and his supporters fuels the solidification of fascism When satire is the end point, it is deleterious. It masks what is coming. It must be, as Niebuhr pointed out, the entry point. It must push us, as Gramsci understood, into hard analysis and the organization of mass movements… Read More The Joke Is on Us
NB: An instructive essay on our current dispensation. I would sum up this regime’s method as a confusion of wisdom with cunning; its speech as unending sophistry (लफ़्फ़ाज़ी); and its goal as the eradication of simple human decency from public life. DS India’s current regime rests on three interwoven factors: Hindutva, a captured civil society,… Read More Suhas Palshikar: Anatomy of India’s New Regime
Ron Srigley Universities, in the interest of increasing enrollments (= money), are willing to flatter you and your children so shamelessly … “During one class a couple of years ago, I dimmed the lights in order to show a clip of an interview. The moment the lights went down I saw dozens and dozens of… Read More Dear Parents: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University But Don’t
