By Tom Engelhardt I grew up with a vision of a possible instant apocalypse, inspired (if, under the circumstances, such a word can even be used) by the nuclear obliteration of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II. It could happen at any moment, even if you were “ducking and covering”… Read More The President of No Return on a Hothouse Planet
As in The Iliad, the adoration of force has become “the true hero, the true subject” of our times. All the nightmares of our present are woven from its threads: genocide and oligarchy; thermobaric bombs and AI kill lists; fascist cults of masculinity and bare-knuckle machismo; masked men snatching children off American streets and narco-executions in… Read More The adoration of force
Stephen Harding on the Modernist Poet and His Fascist Politics By the spring of 1939, the widely acknowledged dean of Anglo-American Modernist poetry, fifty-three-year-old Ezra Pound, had lived in Europe for three decades. After leaving the United States in 1908 at the age of twenty- three, the poet had initially settled in London, then moved… Read More Literary Celebrity, Mussolini’s Mouthpiece, and American Traitor: Who Was Ezra Pound?
Hanin Majadli Israelis believe that Israel and the U.S. are fighting for democracy, freedom and human rights in Iran, but if human rights were their guiding principle, the state of affairs would not be as it is in the West Bank, and the Gaza war would not have reached the dimensions of genocide. There are… Read More It’s Astonishing How Israelis Can Identify Cruel, Evil Regimes, but Just Not Their Own
NB: The BJP/RSS rulers shout from the rooftops about their ‘deshbhakti’ (nation-worship); and the iron will of their leaders. But their foreign policy – unlike Nehruvian non-alignment – has always been guided by a hatred of socialism coupled with pro-Western alliances. They supported the American imperialist aggression in Vietnam as a ‘dharm-yuddha‘ or holy war.… Read More India’s strategic autonomy faces its acid test in West Asia / ये विषगुरू ने अमेरिका से इजाजत मांगी ही क्यों
By Dilip Simeon Ideology is the most devilish variation of the lie: Hannah Arendt To speak of reaction is to counterpose it with progress. This terminology is not helpful. Stable issues of political life, such as legitimate authority, justice, transparent government, clarity on the means vs ends problem; along with issues of character such as… Read More Domination and chaos: India’s radical conservatism
Alfred McCoy, author most recently of the history book Cold War on Five Continents, makes clear today, by now Donald Trump and decline have (or at least should have) become literal synonyms in his increasingly nightmarish second term in the Oval Office. In almost every imaginable way, he now seems intent on taking this country down… Read More America’s Date With Destiny
US president chooses to take the biggest gamble of his administration… The attack on Iran is a clear violation of the UN charter, in any absence of any credible, imminent Iranian threat to the US. Julian Borger The first war of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace era has begun – an unprovoked attempt at regime… Read More Trump’s unprovoked attack on Iran has no mandate – or legal basis
Juan Cole Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Democratic National Committee is sitting on a report that demonstrated that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris lost significant support because of Joe Biden’s perceived “blank check” to the Netanyahu government to pursue its total war on little Gaza. This, according to Holly Otterbein at Axios. The analysis is certainly… Read More Biden delivered the Country to Trump, disbelieving Gaza Death Statistics; they were Underestimates / 17,000 Unaccompanied Orphans in Gaza, in World’s Biggest Orphan Crisis
The Captive Mind, Czesław Miłosz’s searing anatomy of authoritarianism, highlights the dangers of self-deception in the name of ‘realism’ The Captive Mind, Czesław Miłosz’s searing anatomy of authoritarianism, tells a story drawn from an older Polish novel by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Insatiability. Europe is about to be overrun by a Sino-Mongolian army that dominates from… Read More Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: From a book on authoritarianism, lessons on ‘realism’ for India
After the truth-shower 