Kancha Ilaiaha Shepherd’s first book, Why I am not Hindu, published in 1996′ made waves both in India and abroad. Having read that book and his subsequent books,  Post Hindu India and Turning the Pot and Tilling  the Land, I quickly started reading his just released Autobiography, From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual–My Memoirs. Unlike other autobiographies, which normally tend to[Read More…]

Title: Suralakshmi Villa Author: Aruna Chakravarti Publisher: Pan Macmillan, 2020 Suralakshmi Villa (2020) is a novel based on a short story in a previous collection of short stories by Aruna Chakravarti. In the afterword to the novel, the author explains how the novel came about: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, on whose fiction Chakravarti had done her Ph.D thesis many years ago, commented[Read More…]

A Passage to India demolishes the racism that sustains imperialism; the novel exemplifies the power of literature to catalyse social progress Exploitation has a long history. Nations subjugate other nations and enslave peoples. Exploitation imposes psychological costs. Not just on the exploited. On the exploiters, too. How do exploiters handle these psychological costs, in order to keep exploiting? From Romans[Read More…]

Title: Unbecoming: A Memoir of Disobedience Author: Anuradha Bhagwati Publisher: Atria Books/ Simon & Schuster Inc. “After a lifetime of buckling to the demands of her strict Indian parents, Anuradha Bhagwati abandons grad school in the Ivy League to join the Marines—the fiercest, most violent, most masculine branch of the military—determined to prove herself there in ways, she couldn’t before.[Read More…]

   Robert Reich’s new work, The System, offers a wide-ranging critique of our nation’s contemporary political and economic ills. Reich does a brilliant job succinctly reminding us of the scale and scope of corporate corruption, economic inequality, and political spinelessness in America. Reich’s diagnosis is on point and there is not much to quibble with. Reich focuses the first half[Read More…]

A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book which presents evidence supporting the thesis that elimination of excessive economic inequality makes societies happier and better. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link: http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Benefits-of-Equality-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf Ideals of the Enlightenment The Age of Reason, or the Enlightenment was an intellectual and[Read More…]

Book Name- I Could Not be a Hindu – A Story of Dalit in RSS Author- Bhanwar Meghawanshi Publication & Year- Navayana 2020 Bhanwar Meghwanshi, a renowned Ambedkarite activist, writer, and journalist from Rajasthan does not need much introduction. His work in the field of Dalit activism and the Ambedkarite movement in Rajasthan is admired nationally by many scholars and[Read More…]

Passion for Freedom: The Story of Kisanin Jaggi Devi by Deepti Priya Mehrotra Published by Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts, New Delhi, pp. 72 The story of the militant Awadh Kisan movement of 1920’s & 30’s, led by the Awadh Kisan Sabha,under the leadership of the legendary Baba Ram Chandra, remains incomplete without the story of its Women’s[Read More…]

                                                      This book “Towards Water Wisdom Limits, Justice, Harmony” has been written by Ramaswamy R. Iyer is really a path-breaking exercise. There are several books in his account which has been written on water[Read More…]

Title: Sita Under the Crescent Moon Author: Annie Ali Khan Publisher: Simon & Schuster India, 2019 There is a poignant tale to this book. Before the manuscript could see the light of the day, its author Annie Ali Khan died in an accident in Karachi. Annie was merely thirty years at the time of death. A brilliant journalist with a master’s[Read More…]

by Mahboob A. Khawaja, Lambert Academic Publishing Germany: 12/2019:  537 Pages Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD in interdisciplinary Social Science (Syracuse University, New York, USA), an academia and international scholar believes in One Global Humanity living peacefully on One Earth and shares new ideas and vision for change and critical thinking action to transform the obsolete global systems of thinking and[Read More…]

शिळेखाली हात होता, तरी नाही फोडला हंबरडा किती जन्मांची कैद, कुणी निर्मिला हा कोंडवाडा……’ -दया पवार The above lines taken from Daya Pawar’s poem ‘ kondwada’ essays the inner nuances of the struggle of Dalits to achieve their dream of the egalitarian society which shall be based on the edifice of Genderless, Casteless and Classless Society.It also potrays the hope[Read More…]

Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, Gyanendra Pandey, Delhi, oxford university Press, 1992, pp297, Price: Rs 100.10 The present epoch of Indian history is marked by its ‘decolonization’ through World Bank-IMF sponsored ‘developmental’ economic policies of ‘liberalization- privatization-globalization’ on the one hand and rising tides of communalism on the other. The communal historiography , claiming ‘hinduttva’ to be synonymous[Read More…]

Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back is a thoughtful, engaging book that ends in failure. But Mark O’Connell shouldn’t take that assessment too personally. His book fails in the way that his culture—the modern, cosmopolitan, left/liberal, individualist culture—routinely fails in the face of multiple, cascading ecological crises. That said, I’m still[Read More…]

Human history as cultural history We need to reform our teaching of history so that the emphasis will be placed on the gradual growth of human culture and knowledge, a growth to which all nations and ethnic groups have contributed. A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book which presents an historical anthology[Read More…]

House of Mirrors – Justin Trudeau’s Foreign Policy. Yves Engler. RED Publishing, Saskatoon/BlackRose Books, Montreal. 2020. Some book covers are better than others, and that of Yves Engler’s House of Mirrors is beautifully expressive of the contents of his latest work. It shows a very friendly faced and happy smiling Justin Trudeau in an iconic pose that says it all:[Read More…]

MODINAMA: ISSUES THAT DID NOT MATTER By Subhash Gatade Leftword Books, 2019, pp. 128 , Rs.195.00 HINDUTVA: EXPLORING THE IDEA OF HINDU NATIONALISM By Jyotirmaya Sharma Context, 2019, pp. 190, Rs.313.95 M.S. GOLWALKAR, THE RSS AND INDIA By Jyotirmaya Sharma Context, 2019, pp. 94, Rs.299.00 DECODING THE RSS: ITS TRADITIONS AND POLITICS By Raosaheb Kasbe Leftword Books, 2019, pp.174, Rs.250.00[Read More…]

Title: Silence between the Notes – Anthology of Partition Poetry Selected, edited and introduced by Aftab Husain and Sarita Jenamani Despite being more than seven decades old, Partition continues to be raw and unflinching. Endless books and movies have tried to capture its pain and enigma and yet there seems to be so much more that needs to be told[Read More…]

Circle in the Darkness – Memoir of a World Watcher. Diana Johnstone. Clarity Press, Atlanta Georgia. 2020. Diana Johnstone has done a masterful job of writing her autobiography, Circle in the Darkness, that provides many details of her life, her early influences, and the various stages of her career throughout the second half of the Twentieth Century and the first[Read More…]

In the Time of Covid-19 and runaway Global Warming, interest in science is no longer considered either passé or purely the realm of so-called nerds. Enhanced by the existence of high production-value television programs on science and a newfound love of celebrity scientists, interest in science is certainly on the rise. Of course, the counter-forces are powerful. An administration and[Read More…]

The book comprising of seven chapters gives a comprehensive but shuddery description of how during the intervening night of 23rd and 24th Feb. 1991 the district Kupwara’s twin villages, Kunan and Poshpora witnessed a midnight army operation which resulted the brutal torture of men and mass rape of women. It goes on to trace the roots and background of the[Read More…]

A Review   There are very few writers who have done more to try to open the public’s mind to the evil nature of the American empire than David Ray Griffin.  His series of books on the false flag attacks of September 11, 2001 will endure for a long time, and they will one day, when it is safe to do[Read More…]

A new freely-downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a new book, with the title, “Collected Essays, Volume V”. The book contains articles on the serious problems that are facing the world today. It may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link: http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Collected-Essays-by-John-Scales-Avery-Part-Five.pdf Other books and articles on global problems can be found on these[Read More…]

The Age of Illusions – How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory. Andrew J. Bacevich. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, NewYork, 2020. Another in his series of remarkable books, Andrew J.Bacevich has written an interesting, coherent, and timely work, The Age of Illusion. In a clear fashion it describes how Donald J. Trump is not the cause of current U.S.[Read More…]

A radical call to action has never been more vital than today, as the abomination of capitalism known as neoliberalism tears apart society from stem to stern, continuing the grand experiment that originated under the watchful eyes and vision of aristocratic plantation-owners like Washington and Jefferson as wealthy patriots. In honor of their hard fought war to avoid taxation as[Read More…]

These Chains Will be Broken – Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons. Ramzy Baroud. Clarity Press, Atlanta, Georgia, 2020. On first opening Ramzy Baroud’s new book, These Chains Will be Unbroken, there is a series of references from five distinguished activists praising, in different ways, the short anecdotes from those who have been or are imprisoned within[Read More…]

A new book by the name of MEAN GIRL AYN RAND AND THE CULTURE OF GREED  by Lisa Duggan speaks to this American problem today. Who was Ayn Rand? How did she become what she became? She was a powerful figure in the rise of American neo-liberalism. She was instrumental in the formation of the Reagan approach to the capitalist[Read More…]

The beautiful,  ancient and populous Iraqi city of Fallujah (the City of Mosques) in Iraq’s Anbar province suffered 13 years of US-enforced sanctions, and then 3 bloody sieges and 2 substantial demolitions or sackings at the hands of the genocidally racist, serial war criminal and child-killing American invaders.  This appalling atrocity cries out for justice and is documented in the[Read More…]

Orwell is best-known for his novel 1984.  His essays, invaluable for themselves, gain further interest as workshops where Orwell developed the ideas that he was to immortalise in his last and greatest novel.   2020 is the 70th anniversary of Shooting an Elephant And Other Essays: a collection of some of George Orwell’s nonfiction (Secker & Warburg, 1950).  Penguin republished[Read More…]

In the time of Trumpism, we need more people like Andrew Bacevich producing more books like “The Age of Illusions.” A self-labeled conservative, a military man, and a person of faith, Bacevich possesses two elemental qualities – a keen sense of history and a desire to understand and tell the truth- that make his voice both important and clear. In[Read More…]

Human history as cultural history At present, history is taught as though power struggles were its most important aspect. Furthermore, the present teaching of history is an indoctrination in nationalism. We need to reform our teaching of history so that the emphasis will be placed on the gradual growth of human culture and knowledge, a growth to which all nations[Read More…]

New Book Delivers Resistance Message from Palestinian Prisoners to the World On Monday, January  20, Clarity Press, Inc. of Atlanta announced the launch of These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons, by Palestinian author and journalist, Ramzy Baroud, and The Palestine Chronicle Editorial Team. Bookended by a Foreword by Khalida Jarrar Member of the[Read More…]

How to Hide an Empire – A History of the Greater United States. Daniel Immerwahr. Farrer, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2019. The Greater United States of the title is not just the contiguous states of the mainland plus insets for Alaska and Hawaii, but includes many of the smaller – and not small – territories and possessions held by[Read More…]

“it was true that there were two nations in this story, but unfortunately there was only one land, and that fact could not be altered by all the borders and fences and barriers and roadblocks in the world. ‘The land is the same land. And, Bazi, what was it you said once, remember? In the end all the rivers flow[Read More…]

Human history as cultural history At present, history is taught as though power struggles were its most important aspect. Furthermore, the present teaching of history is an indoctrination in nationalism. We need to reform our teaching of history so that the emphasis will be placed on the gradual growth of human culture and knowledge, a growth to which all nations[Read More…]

BOOK REVIEW – Islam and God-Centricity: A Theological Basis for Human Liberation (Book 1 and 2) By Shaykh Arif Abdul Hussain, Al-Mahdi Institute, Birmingham These volumes are a compilation of transcribed and edited talks of Shaykh Arif Abdul Hussain in which the essential message of Islam and Prophet Muhammad’s message of God-centricity is presented in a fresh reevaluation of religion[Read More…]

Is the threat of terrorism real? Or is it like the barking of a dog driving a herd? The threat of catastrophic climate change is very real indeed. The threat to future global food security is real too. Already 11 million children die every year from malnutrition and poverty-related causes. The threat to human civilization and the biosphere posed by[Read More…]

Loving care for our children We give our children loving care, but it makes no sense to do so unless we do everything in our power to give them a future world in which they can survive. We also have a duty to our grandchildren, and to all future generations. Today we are faced with the threat of an environmental[Read More…]

Ed. Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (Stop the Wall). November 09, 2019. A collection of essays concerning the boundaries being established by walls, Build Resistance not Walls centers its arguments on the walls of Palestine: the so called security fence that runs some 700 km through Palestinian lands of the West Bank, and the Gaza wall of various constructions that[Read More…]

Academician, writer and social activist Zaheer Ali in Conversation with SubhashGatade about his latest book ‘Romancing With Revolution : Life and Works of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’ (Aakar Books, Delhi, 2019) and why Faiz is ‘ extremely relevant in today’s India’ This is the hour of madness, this too the hour of chain and noose You may hold the cage in[Read More…]

Democratic institutions are in danger Today there is a deep split in public opinion in the United States. Democratic institutions are in danger from racism and neo-fascism. Progressives are fighting to save the values and institutions on which their country was founded. They are fighting to save America’s soul. Racism, discrimination and xenophobia Progressives today would like to eliminate all[Read More…]

Reformed teaching of history Human nature has two sides: It has a dark side, to which nationalism and militarism appeal; but our species also has a genius for cooperation, which we can see in the growth of culture. Our modern civilization has been built up by means of a worldwide exchange of ideas and inventions. It is built on the[Read More…]

  Part biography and part astute analysis of traditional fascism (1920s and 1940s) and of today’s version, US politician Madeleine Albright clarifies not just what fascism is but she also outlines the differences between it as a time-bound political movement and populism. Albright was the first female Secretary of State in US history, serving from 1997 to 2001 under Bill[Read More…]

“Homo Deus. A brief history of tomorrow” by secular Jewish Israeli historian Yuval Harari  is fascinating, well-organized  and best-selling,   but is also a Eurocentric and Anglocentric book with massive omissions e.g. the deadly  subjugation of the Palestinians and the Third World in general, existential threats to Humanity (Homo sapiens) from nuclear weapons and climate change, and the worsening Climate Genocide[Read More…]

While discussing the rise of the Hindu nationalism, a noted French scholar Christophe Jaffrelot has reminded in his recent study that the sole purpose of the RSS-BJP combine is to capture state power and transform the Indian democracy into the ‘Hindu Rashtra’ ( the Hindu Nation). After 2014 and more importantly in 2019 general elections, the dreams of building the[Read More…]

I am an  untouchable My whole body is filled with the scent of the earth My whole life’s filled with the sorrow of veTTi, My eyes are filled with the heat of the sun, My head is covered with dried braids Like the branches of a Banyan Hardened by sun and rain. You pushed me outside the village, You asked[Read More…]

कठीण आला काळ, मातीशी तुटे नाळ, युगाचा अंध खेळ, डोळेच केले गहाळ. सावात दिसे चोर, घुबडात दिसे मोर, लहानात दिसे थोर, थोरात दिसे पोर. –   Ballad from the movie ‘Court’ There is only one way to shorten and ease the convulsions of the old society and the bloody birth of new – revolutionary terror. Karl Marx   Justice has always[Read More…]

The Ancestor’s Tale (2nd ed.) (2016).  Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong.  Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Great Britain. The subject of Richard Dawkins’s popular-science books has always been ambitious: life itself.  The Ancestor’s Tale is an even more ambitious entry in his oeuvre.  It dives into the findings, challenges,and methods of evolutionary science using the frame narrative from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: a[Read More…]

 It is happy moment for all of us that Jamia Millia Islamic, a ‘lusty child’ of the non-cooperation and the Khilafat movement, is going to soon complete its 100 years in 2020. To celebrate birth contrary, several programmes, seminars and conferences are scheduled to be held in the next one year. Currently, Jamia fraternity is celebrating, 99th ‘Foundations Day’ on[Read More…]

INTRODUCTION ” कथा सुनो रे लोगों एक व्यथा सुनो रे लोगों  हम मजदूर की करून कहानी आओ करीब से जानो  खाने को खाना नही  पिने को पानी नही  पेहेनेको कपडा नही  ये कैसा राज हैं भाई ये झूठा राज है भाई ll”                         शाहीर विलास घोगरे   “कशाला झाली शिक्षणाची ओळख बरा तो ओहळयाचा गोटा गावची गुरे वळली असती[Read More…]

  The Case Against Free Speech: The First Amendment, Fascism, and the Future of Dissent by P. E. Moskowitz (Bold Type Books, 2019) In my last couple years of university teaching before retiring, I repeated two catch phrases as often as possible—“reasonable people can disagree” and “if two things are both true, then both are relevant.” The first assertion—which I[Read More…]

Kusumabale by D.Mahadeva  acts as Rastafarianism in the Dalit literature movement especially in Kannada Dalit literature movement which is marked by 2 strands i.e Navodaya movement and Navya movement as noted by Vivek Shanbhag in his classic introduction. It could be a work of fiction,nonfiction or even an autobiographical one woven in the form of mysticism and mythology that gives[Read More…]

A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book which discusses himan emotions from an evolutionary perspective. The book consists mainly of book chapters and articles that I have previously published, although some new material has been added. It can be frely downloaded and circulated from the following link: http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/The-Passions-of-Mankind-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf Human emotions: An evolutionary[Read More…]

The working pattern of the RSS has been better exposed by those who were part of it once upon a time. There were many people, who were part of it and got disgruntled with its mechanism of using divisions for the ulterior purpose of maintaining the Status Quo. One of the finest critique of RSS was Dr D R Goyal[Read More…]

“The New Enlightenment. On Steven Pinker & beyond” by Brian Ellis  argues that the 17th century onwards  Enlightenment that replaced superstition, dogma, subjugation and  subservience  with science,  reason, freedom and human rights has led to huge improvements in the human condition, but that  human rights must be accompanied by human social obligations and that a New Enlightenment  is urgently needed[Read More…]

“The Return. Fathers,  Sons and the Land in Between” by Hisham Matar is a beautifully written and moving account by an expatriate Libyan writer of his over 2 decade search to find out what happened to his father, Jaballa Matar, a leading opponent and a secret political prisoner of the Qaddafi regime in Libya. However there are some surprising total[Read More…]

Speaking for Israel – A Speechwriter Battle’s Anti-Israeli Opinions at the United Nations. Aviva Klompas. Skyhorse Publishing, New York, 2019. I expected much more from a book speaking for Israel, something to truly engage the mind and require some concerted thought. Unfortunately I was disappointed and found myself reading one person’s personal journal about endless speechwriting written and using only[Read More…]

I would like to announce the publication of a book, which reviews the history of medicine through the lives and thoughts of some of the women and men who have contributed importantly to the field.. The book covers developments from ancient times to the present, and modern topics, such as biosemiotics, cloning and theories of the origin of life are[Read More…]

Hetero loves are known for the complete imbalance of power within which they operate. Declarations of eternal love are not concrete enough to hold together relationships. Mostly, they work within the realm of male domination. Any woman who discovers its pitfalls is either a victim or someone able to surmount it in rare cases. Simantini (Boundless), a collection of nearly[Read More…]

I have just read a superb book by Mark Isaacs, an Australian who has documented several years of effort by a group of incredibly committed young people in Afghanistan to build peace in that war-torn country the only way it can be built: by learning, living and sharing peace. The book, titled The Kabul Peace House: How a Group of[Read More…]

Naomi Klein’s new book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, has one crippling flaw—it’s inspiring. At this moment in history, inspiring talk about solutions to multiple, cascading ecological crises is dangerous. At the conclusion of these 18 essays that bluntly outline the crises and explain a Green New Deal response, Klein bolsters readers searching for hope:[Read More…]

After reading this book “ The Tattooist of Auschwitz”, the first thought that came into my mind was that this novel based on the life of one man and his wife among others could be the fiction companion of Victor Frankl’s immortal work “ Man’s search for Meaning” written in similar circumstances in a concentration camp. But on deeper reflection,[Read More…]

“Enlightenment Now” by neoliberal, Canadian-American  One Percenter Steven Pinker argues that  the 17th century onwards European Enlightenment that promoted reason , science and humanism resulted in huge scientific, technological and moral advances with ultimately huge improvements in the human condition in many areas. However Pinker scoffs at Greens and leftists, supports the neoliberal capitalist order, and ignores horrendous realities from[Read More…]

     A noted Indian Muslim politician and Supreme Court Lawyer, Mr. Salman Khurshid has authored a book recently with the title “ Visible Muslims, Invisible citizenship: Understanding Islam in Indian democracy” (2019), he has been an ardent follower of Congress Party and its secular ideology throughout his political life. He has also served earlier in the Ministry of external[Read More…]

I would like to announce the publication of a new book, entitled “Fascism, Then and Now”. It  can be freely downloaded from the following link: http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Fascism-then-and-now-John-Scales-Avery.pdf Please circulate the link to your friends who might be interested. Parallels between fascism of the 1930’w and neo-fascism today There  are many extremely worrying similarities between fascism in Europe in the 1930’s and[Read More…]

Obama’s Unending Wars – Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State. Jeremy Kuzmarov. Clarity Press, Atlanta, GA, USA, 2019. Obama is a shining light in comparison to his two bookends, George Bush and Donald Trump. His manner is calm and focussed as he presents his ideas with well mannered rhetorical flourishes, speaking in terms of hope, peace, change,[Read More…]

  India after Modi: Populism and the Right by Ajay Gudavarthy; Delhi: Bloomsbury India; 2019; pages, 236; Rs 599 This book gives comprehensive and insightful understanding about the contemporary politics of India.  It is bereft from jargons, lucidly written, and author has attempted to make understand even the difficult terminologies. This is the first honest and comprehensive account about the[Read More…]

(Dying to Forget – Oil, Power, Palestine, & the Foundations of U.S. policy in the Middle East.  Irene L. Gendzier.  Columbia University Press, New York, 2017.) Many books discuss the transition of U.S. interest in Palestine/Israel mostly through the lens of Truman’s Christian Zionism, either as a part of the political history involving Truman or a more generalized history of[Read More…]

“This Land Is Our Land. An Immigrant’s Manifesto” by Gujarati Indian American author Suketu Mehta is an  important argument for the right of immigrants (creditors) to migrate  from the impoverished  Developing World to today’s  wealthy countries  of the former brutal colonizers (debtors). Mehta  argues cogently that the colonizers have run up an immense debt that must be met by their[Read More…]

Hindutva’s Second Coming by Subhas Gatade; published by Media House, Delhi; 2019; pages: 272; Rs 395 (US $ 18). The return of Modi to power with a huge margin in this 2019 election is a clear verdict for the Hindutva plank. Why and how it happened leave us, the secular billions, to ponder about the reality and its aftermath. And at that juncture[Read More…]

“A Fine Tapestry” by Mythili Lakshman is a  very readable novel about a large and traditional Hindu Tamil family and is set in a South Indian village in post-Independence India in circa 1960. The fine tapestry of this novel centres about 2 married sisters, one of whom is suffering a terminal illness. The novel is similar to the works of[Read More…]

In May 2019, the party of the Hindu Right, Bharatiya Janata Party, under Narendra Modi, won a spectacular electoral victory. The victory seemed to defy common sense – why did conversations of life and livelihood not dominate the election? Why did the thuggery of the Hindutva vigilantes seem inconsequential to vast numbers of ordinary, decent people? Why is an aggressive,[Read More…]

  “The most destructive object on the planet… is the human jawbone.” (Food or War, Cambridge University Press,2019) pg 177 Whether by sight, taste, touch, feel, or smell, it’s only too obvious that “food” affects every aspect of life and is key to crucial life-supporting ecosystems. Day-in, day-out,every living thing needs food. Perchance, ecosystems cease to function, the human jawbone[Read More…]

Review of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley Language creates, destroys, and maintains but not always in the fashion in which it was intended. When even well-intentioned people repeat a word or phrase too often, or use it in trivial or decontextualized ways, they create ironic and often portentous conditions. As with the stories of the[Read More…]

Prima facie, this piece is a reflection on the book – “Making News, Breaking News – Her way” edited by Latika Padgaonkar and Shubha Singh which chronicles the narratives of women media persons who have won the prestigious Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Media persons. In reality though, this is a tribute to journalists, particularly women journalists who[Read More…]

“Becoming” by Michelle Obama is an inspiring, feel-good story of how a working class African-American woman became a Harvard graduate,  corporate lawyer, perfect mother and thence  First Lady of the US. However “Becoming” has numerous  extraordinary  absences e.g. the Harvard Law School years, Black felony laws, the Israel Lobby, 130,000 US veteran suicides and 30 million preventable US deaths since[Read More…]

    Union steward and amateur sleuth Lenny Moss is back with a vengeance in One Foot in the Grave, the eighth novel in a series by Timothy Sheard (Hard Ball Press, 2019). This time, anti-worker technology takes center stage in a murder story set at the fictional James Madison Hospital of Philadelphia. But the real drama pits employer surveillance gadgets versus[Read More…]

The Management of Savagery – How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump. Max Blumenthal. Verso, London/New York, 2019. Even though the ending is known, Max Blumenthal’s book The Management of Savagery draws the reader through an intriguing tale of media management, political management, financial management all with the goal of achieving the management[Read More…]

The events of September 11, 2001, are still unexposed. Instead, the world has narrated a story within 13 minutes that Osama bin Laden was the supposed mastermind, and after 24 hours, the “facts” were set in stone by a congressional vote. At a lot of dissenting opinions about the attacks hushed, were silenced or ignored. The mainstream media behaved the[Read More…]

The Urdu Marxist poet HabeebJaalib once entreated with his fellow writers: Artists of this land/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light/Art ill suits the bed of Tyranny. /This doomed sorrow is our inheritance. The sentiment is certainly not new, as art has always found a way to write back to power. This sentiment has especially strengthened since the[Read More…]

What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché   “Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.” – Kabir, “To Be a Slave of Intensity” Strange how a man Can enter your life Just like that: a knock Out of nowhere And you’ve slipped away To a rendezvous with destiny That always[Read More…]

The blurb reads – a collection of essays by an ordinary Indian doctor , written during the most extraordinary times which the country saw…….. The author Prof. Shah alam Khan a ortho-oncologist , multifaceted a prolific writer , dauntless . His second book asks a few straight simple questions , each essay nudging the neurons in the brain to create[Read More…]

  Co-Written by Thomas Klikauer & Kathleen Webb Tunney Undoubtedly we live in the age of neoliberalism. There might also be a link between Neoliberalism and fascism. If one agrees with the rather enticing idea that Hayek’s ideology pamphlet The Road to Serfdomis the ur-texts of neoliberalism, then neoliberalism was indeed invented during the dying days of German Nazism and[Read More…]

As a doctor because of it, I understood and looked upon mental health issues purely from a clinically detached fashion. I understood the basic facts, that India had one of the largest number of people suffering from depression and is in fact according to India today, the most depressed country in the world today according to a recent India Today[Read More…]

Amidst a global renaissance of xenophobia and antiscientific fundamentalism, Jared Diamond’s book is a valuable reminder that man is after all an animal shaped by his ecology                        When The Third Chimpanzee appeared in 1992, the claim that humans should be classified with the common and the pygmy chimpanzee was novel.  TTC is the first of a series of popular[Read More…]

Preventing Palestine – A Political History From Camp David to Oslo. Seth Anziska. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2018. In all my recent readings of history and current events, Preventing Palestine stands out as being one of the best written – if not the best – and one of the most essential for understanding the overall historical process of Israeli[Read More…]

“No Friend but the Mountains. Writing from Manus Prison” by Behrouz Boochani  is a powerful and moving account of the  Kurdish Iranian poet, writer and  film  maker’s 5 year incarceration without charge or trial  in Australia’s Manus Island Prison (Manus Regional Processing Centre, Manus Island  Concentration Camp) for having sought asylum as a refugee in Australia and having arrived by[Read More…]

A Quasi-Review of A Lie Too Big To Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy by Lisa Pease “ ‘We’re all puppets,’ the suspect [Sirhan Sirhan] replied, with more truth than he could have understood at that moment.” – Lisa Pease, quoting from the LAPD questioning ofSirhan When Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated on June 5,[Read More…]

The End of the Myth – From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. Greg Grandin. Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt & Co., New York, 2019. Much of current political news swirls around President Trump and his persistent and somewhat pathological prevarications about the Mexico-U.S. border and the need to build a border wall. While Greg Grandin’s[Read More…]

It is crucial to note that after the rise of the Hindu nationalist forces and under the new leadership of Shah-PM Modi, the contours and forms of communalism have now taken a different shape. It has to be noted that everyday forms of communalism and violence like mob-violence, lynching, hate crimes, in the name of cow protection, against minorities and[Read More…]

“Sapiens. A brief history of humankind” by Jewish Israeli historian Dr Yuval Noah Harari from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Al Quds to Indigenous Arab Palestinians)  is a well-written,  interesting, entertaining, and thought-provoking book that challenges and suggests many ideas. However for all its radical and progressive pretensions it involves a Eurocentric, Anglocentric, Zionocentric and neoliberal narrative  that is most[Read More…]

Shadow Wars – The Secret Struggle for the Middle East by Christopher Davidson. Oneworld Publishing, U.K., 2016. Written in response to the ‘Arab Spring’ initiated in Tunisia in 2011, Shadow Wars – The Secret Struggle for the Middle East, is a powerful indictment of the western neoliberal economic/political order. Christopher Davidson has gathered a huge amount of information from many[Read More…]

            Samir Amin (1931-2018) was one of the great organic intellectuals of our time. He synthesized theory and practice; Marxism and developmentalism; comradeship and critique, like no other. Only People Make Their Own History is the first ever posthumous publication of Amin’s work. It includes ten of Amin’s most important essays published in the 21st century, and an introduction by[Read More…]

The Plot to Attack Iran – How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Iran. Dan Kovalik. Skyhorse Publishing, New York, 2018. Western mainstream media (MSM) typically present Iran as a degenerate and impoverished society under the sway of Islamic terrorist fundamentalists. Alternate media and seriously investigated works present a much different picture. Dan Kovalik’s The Plot[Read More…]

I first started reading Andre Vltchek on the website CounterPunch, which is a truly great leftist website… even though I will probably never get published on there, even if I was relaying the cure for cancer: CounterPunch appears totally opposed to working with any state media, and I work for Iran’s PressTV. Rather anarchist and ivory-tower, but… whatever. Reporters have[Read More…]

“A History of the Global Economy. The Inevitable Accident” by Colin White describes the history of the global economy through its successive stages of foraging, the Agrarian Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and the presently expanding Service Revolution economy. Ambitious and full of ideas, it will provoke lots of discussion, and in that sense this scholarly work should be in every[Read More…]

 Just few days back, a book titled ‘Denial and Deprivation: Indian Muslims after the Sachar Committee and Ranganath Mishra Commission reports’, authored by Mr. Abdur Rahman who is currently civil servant (IPS) of Maharashtra cadre, was released by the Prof. Manoj Kumar Jha, a renowned academician and currently Member of Parliament Rajya Sabha from RJD at the Indian Islamic culture[Read More…]

You and I have a responsibility to create a world where, you, me, and our grandchildren can live without apprehensions. No matter where we go, we should feel secure about our faith, race, ethnicity and our political and sexual orientation. Would this book bring attitudinal change among Muslims? Yes, it will, it’s akin to planting a seed and nurturing it[Read More…]

Palestine – A Four Thousand Year History. Nur Masalha. Zec Books, London, 2018. The Israeli narrative of a nation/state returning to its homeland after a fifteen hundred year exile requires ongoing deft work by the David Ben-Gurion initiated Governmental Names Committee (Va’adat Hashemot Hamimshaltit, 1949). The Hebraization of Palestine is described in Nur Masalha’s “Palestine – A Four Thousand Year[Read More…]

REVIEW of “From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectuals–My Memoirs by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd Sage/Samya/Select. PP 360 by Back in the early 2000s when I was a university student in Delhi, Kancha Ilaiah was all the rage. His book, Why I am not a Hindu, had come out and it was extensively read and widely discussed among the students. The[Read More…]

The Russians are Coming, Again – The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce. Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano. Monthly Review Press, New York, 2018. The mainstream media continues to harvest all the disinformation it can concerning the relationship between Trump and Putin and the character of Putin himself, not to mention the overall generalizations about the state[Read More…]

(Images by- José Fernando Real, Wikimedia commons) Book: Ingram, S, Kent, L. &Mcwilliam, A. (Eds.). (2015). A New Era?: Timor-Leste after the UN. The Australian National University. (Free to downloadfrom https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/series/state-society-and-governance-melanesia/new-era) “A New Era?: Timor-Leste after the UN” is an edited book which looks into the status of a newer country – that of Timor-Leste (East Timor). The book answers[Read More…]

The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World. Robert Kagan. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2018. It is always an interesting ride to read a Robert Kagan book as it is a journey into wonderland where things aren’t really what they seem. His most recent work, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World, is a mish mash[Read More…]

War on Peace – The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Power. Ronan Farrow. W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., New York, 2018. Members of the political corps of the U.S. writing about U.S. foreign policy have a particular insider viewpoint that can provide some good insights into how their diplomacy works along with the personal peculiarities of[Read More…]

I teach a course here on Jurisprudence where I lecture upon the differences between Conservativism and Neo-Conservativism. Towards that end, I just read Roger Scruton’s new book on “Conservativism” that was published in Great Britain by Profile Books Ltd. in 2017. Scruton is supposed to be one of the leading Conservative Theorists in the West and certainly in Britain and[Read More…]

Whether you consider yourself already well educated on the U.S. empire or are looking for a starting place, “How the US Creates “Sh*thole” Countries” is a strong read. Cynthia McKinney has gathered together a series of essays examining features of the empire as well as a list of some the more seriously affected victims. The histories have been covered elsewhere,[Read More…]

And the Silence Whispered, a remarkable debut collection of poems, by Wani Nazir, an educator, poet and reviewer, is not only beautiful as for the diction and form is concerned, but stands unparalleled in terms of numerous perspectives. The book has a foreword and an introduction written by two distinguished contemporary poets, Santosh Bakaya and Lopa Banerjee, of India, who[Read More…]

Survive prison I must, for when I come out I would hold no grudges, or hate, or resentment. My belief system tells me that whatever comes upon me is a matter already decreed by Allah. He knows better.   Shukri Abu-Baker, HLF5 Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five is about a grave and cruel injustice wielded by both[Read More…]

“Akh Daur”, a novel by Kashmiri author Bansi Nirdosh (translated by Qaisar Bashir as “Once Upon a Time”), is a historical fiction: it takes readers to an era which there was once, but is now seen no more. The novel can be divided into two parts: one, that depicts the beauty of Bandipora (fraternity, solidarity, love, peace, care) in general[Read More…]

Bibi – The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu. Anshell Pfeffer. Signal/McClelland & Stewart (Penguin Random House), Toronto, 2018. This morning I read online the current problems Benjamin Netanyahu is having within the Knesset and within his own political party, “Now, Netanyahu’s once stable coalition is hanging by a thread, with the support of only 61 members in the[Read More…]

Twilight of the American Century. Andrew J. Bacevich. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, 2018. The histories of empires and the histories of war are generally written by the winner to put themselves in a positive light. It has been difficult for the U.S. empire to maintain their facade of goodness for their endeavours after World War II,[Read More…]

In her novel, “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness”, published in 2017, Arundhati Roy traverses the borderline between political and aesthetic in very vivid terms. When writing fiction of historical and political kind, writers often appear to be grappled by the binary of ‘topicality’ and ‘literariness’. However, critics often seem to overplay this debate. What is essential in fiction in general[Read More…]

The working class, if it decides to win in class struggle, has to assess the power of capital. Without this assessment, the struggles the working class carries on against capital turn to adventurism or capitulation or puerile disorder. Consequently, the struggle lurches in a political wilderness, or, resorts to individual heroism, formulating programs that reach the level of utopia, produce[Read More…]

Co-Written by Badre Alam Khan & Sanjay Kumar The historians of modern India have been consistently arguing for many decades about India’s colonial legacy, like elsewhere, of communal consciousness evoked by colonial census. While doing so, historians and social anthropologists have emphasized as to how colonial state had become ‘ethnographic state’. Communalism versus secularism has been fiercely debated and discussed[Read More…]

What has the working class achieved so far in its war for emancipation? Are not the exploited of the earth encountering unfinished work in their struggles against the most experienced and resource-rich class the world has witnessed till today? These questions are apposite while examining the class struggle on the world stage. Michael D. Yates has probed the questions in[Read More…]

Again, Professor Michael D. Yates raises critical questions in chapter 3 of his recently released book Can the Working Class Change the World? (Monthly Review Press, New York, October 2018): “How much has the working class changed the world so far? Can it go further and bring about a global transition in which capitalism is superseded by a radically democratic[Read More…]

  “Capitalism is a hegemonic social order. Capital seeks to dominate as many aspects of our lives as possible and to control every institution, from state to schools. Very little escapes its dom­ination, including our thoughts. Its two essential underpinnings are exploitation of wage labor and the expropriation of nature, the non-market labor of women, and the bodies of black[Read More…]

The Working Class has millions of tales. These are narrations of contradictions; these are descriptions of deprivations; these are tales of toil and torture; and most of these tales are untold and unknown. However, stories of success are built with the toil of the working class, a class exploited, a class in chains. Michael D. Yates, director of Monthly Review[Read More…]

Can the Working Class Change the World? It’s a fundamental political question in every economy and society, relevant to all concerned with and aware of class interests tangled in exploitative production relations. Politics in countries has centered around this question of class power. At times, the question has shaped geopolitics on the world stage. Michael D. Yates re-examines the question[Read More…]

Review of ‘Truth in Fetters : Broken Promises and Shattered Unity’ “Change is in the air”! A retired academic who had his last assignment as Vice Chancellor of a leading university said to me the other day, while we were discussing the contemporary political scenario. Frankly admitting that he had supported Modi’s candidature then and had even discreetly campaigned for[Read More…]

Can the Working Class Change the World? Michael D Yates, 2018, Monthly Review Press, New York This book is divided into six chapters and focus is on the role of working class in social transformation or revolution. Michael D Yates is Marxist and is associate editor of most respected international Marxist journal Monthly Review. With the fall of Soviet Union,[Read More…]

Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century by John Smith, Monthly Review Press, 2016. Even in the days of Brexit and Donald Trump, the dominant theme of the corporate media remains that the rising tide of ‘globalisation’ will lift all boats. Some go so far as to claim that the UK and the US are not for globalisation because it  favours the developing nations.[Read More…]

A review by Reem Wasay Andre Vltchek is tired. He is tired of the cunning complexities in modern society’s fight for the human soul. In his new book, Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, he takes on a new revolution: today’s foe – a counter culture of vulgarity, war and brutality where his battlefield isn’t the romance of radical zeal but the[Read More…]

Joseph E. Schwartzberg. Transforming the United Nations System: Designs for a Workable World (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2013, 364pp.) In Memory of Joseph Schwartzberg who died on 19 September 2018 There have been a number of periods when proposals for new or different United Nations structures were proposed. The first period was in 1944-1945 when the U.N. Charter was[Read More…]

“Silent invasion. China’s Influence in Australia” by Clive Hamilton (professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University, Canberra) explores increasing Chinese influence in Australia but does so in an excited, polemical  fashion that crosses the boundary between critical academic discourse and xenophobia, paranoia, jingoism and Sinophobia. Of course Australia should be concerned about its sovereignty and security but  China is[Read More…]

The Biggest Prison on Earth – A History of the Occupied Territories. Ilan Pappe. Oneworld Publications, London, 2018. The history of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine is continued with Ilan Pappe’s recent work, The Biggest Prison on Earth. For those who have read Pappe’s earlier histories, it is clear the original Zionists recognized the existence of the Palestinian population and[Read More…]

Richard Hardigan, The Other Side of the Wall. An Eyewitness Account of the Occupation of Palestine, Cune Press, Seattle 2018, 185 pp, $ 19.95. This book is a personal account of a US American professor about his volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) against the Israeli occupation in Palestine in the summer of 2014. His eyewitness report tells the[Read More…]

September   17,  2018  was  the  sixty-eighth  birthday  of  the  Indian  Prime  Minister   Narendra  Modi,  on  which  occasion  a  new  edition  of  a  670  page  coffee  table  biography  was  released.  Entitled  ‘Narendra  Modi  –   A  Charismatic   and  Visionary   Statesman,’   it  is  co-authored  by  an  Indian,   Dr.  Adish  C.  Aggarwala,   and  an  English  woman,  Sarah  J.  Marchington.  It  was  first  published  in [Read More…]

A Review of David Ray Griffin’s The American Trajectory: Divine or Demonic? The past is not dead; it is people who are sleeping.  The current night and daymares that we are having arise out of murders lodged deep in our past that have continued into the present.  No amount of feigned amnesia will erase the bloody truth of American history,[Read More…]

The sensation this week is Bob Woodward’s book on the Trump White House titled, “Fear:  Trump in the White House.”  It shows a President Trump universally disparaging his own White House staff, even cabinet members.  His first Chief of Staff Reince Priebus is likened to a rat, “He just scurries around.”  Attorney General Jeff Sessions is, “mentally retarded.  He’s this[Read More…]

“Our earliest memories shape us as people . We might add a new layer of learning on a foundation of grainy ideals , but at our core we hold on to the beliefs and ideas we absorbed as children . The ones our mother taught us . Mothers are our bridges between the inner and outer worlds . I believe[Read More…]

Developing the tradition charted by C. Wright Mills in his 1956 classic The Power Elite, in his latest book, Professor Peter Phillips starts by reviewing the transition from the nation state power elites described by authors such as Mills to a transnational power elite centralized on the control of global capital. Thus, in his just-released study Giants: The Global Power[Read More…]

American progressives have been desperate lately that their cries merely echo through a wilderness, but now comes Andre Vltchek’s latest book, Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism to magnify our voices. As a Russian born but Western raised ‘professional expat’, Vltchek has spent his life covering the world’s tragedies, in film and word, until he can no longer bear the pain. As[Read More…]

Left, Right – Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada. Yves Engler. Black Rose Books, Montreal. 2019. This short work is another in a wonderful series by Canadian author Yves Engler that examines much of the foreign policy actions and policies of Canadian politics. In Left, Right, Engler examines the positions of many of the institutions and organizations of the[Read More…]

Zinnophobia:  The Battle over History in Education, Politics and Scholarship by David DetmerWashington, DC:  Zero Books, 2018.  ISBN: 978-1-78535-678-0 (pbk) It is rare to get an intelligent, well-sourced and coherent discussion of issuestodaysuch as the role of history in education, politics and scholarship, but David Detmer of Purdue University Northwest has provided such with this book.  Detmer has very carefully[Read More…]

B R Ambedkar: India and Communism, introduction Anand Teltumbde, Left Word Delhi, 2017 ed., pages 156, price 225/ Rupees Dr. B R Ambedkar was in constant dialogue with Communist thought, at least at ideological level, throughout his writings. Some vested sections among both sides-Ambedkarits and Marxists have tried to put both sides more in conflict than in agreement on many[Read More…]

अवध का किसान विद्रोह, सुभाष चन्द्र कुशवाहा ,२०१८, राजकमल प्रकाशन दिल्ली, प्रष्ठ 328, मूल्य 299/ रुपए This is Subhash Kuhwaha’s second book “Awadh ka kisan vidroh” on history of people’s movements, he earned laurels with his first book on Chauri Chaura and now he has come up with peasant revolts in Awadh region during 20th century in British colonial period.[Read More…]

Fire-weapons have been used from ancient times.  Napalm-like weapons were used by and against the Romans and Greeks.  One term used for them was “wildfire”; another was “Greek fire”, as incendiaries were widely used by the Greeks.  Some ships were equipped to shoot other vessels with flaming oils emitted from tubes in their bows.  Individual soldiers were equipped with flaming[Read More…]

A story unfolds .. A carpet of time unrolls … the story- fiction married to fact , the two intrinsically interwoven with the legacy of tresspasses of brutality across the length and breadth of the worlds largest so called secular democratic country and the daily mundane lives of its inhabitants ! The most recent significant massacres such as the sikh[Read More…]

A Book Review and Commentary on Andre Vltchek’s new book: “Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism”, by David William Pear How can I write a review of Andre Vltchek’s new book Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism?  I am damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.  Andre himself says that: “There is nothing to add to the writing of maverick revolutionary philosophers. [Read More…]

First, I thank Kim Scipes for his review of a recent book of mine- Practical Utopia – and for the many kind things he had to say about it. While I might enjoy rehashing our agreements on strategy, underlying ideas, vision, and the motives and methods of writing, I will only comment on his disagreements. Scipes notes that regarding goals,[Read More…]

This is an important book.  It’s important because it asks questions that rarely if ever get asked, and it tries to provide coherent answers to them.  However, whether you agree or not with Michael Albert’s answers, engaging with this book will help each of us further think out what we want to see in the future.  For as Noam Chomsky[Read More…]

Some twelve years back, Farooq Abdullah, senior scion of the Abdullah family told me  he was writing a book that will tell many inside stories, never told before. The information as a student of contemporary Kashmir politics had come to me as good tidings. My belief has been that  the stories of politicians, who are on the other side of[Read More…]

Humko Batlau to kiya Matlab hai Pakistan ka Jis jagah is waqt hain, najis hai kya who jagah Nesh e Tohmat se tere , Chisti ka Sina chak hai Jald batla kya Zameen Ajmer ki Na-Pak hai (Shamim Karhani, PakistanChahne walo se, To those who ask for Pakistan) Acknowledge me, what Pakistan means? Do the land where Muslims lives are[Read More…]

When Mohammad Akhlakh was lynched in Dadri in 2015 on the suspicion of possessing beef, first in a series of dozens of such lynchings since then, Prof. Shah Alam Khan an Orthopaedics surgen in the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) wrote a short article in Countercurrents.org. The title of the article was arresting “The Color Of Human[Read More…]

I will join Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, authors of ‘Untold History of the United States in saying that ‘Ambassador Akbar S Ahmed is a treasure.’‘His insight, wisdom,and experience are desperately needed right now when so much US and European policy towards Muslim world is guided by fear, ignorance,and greed.’ Those, who have been reading him;  one of topmost  anthropologist[Read More…]

On August 17, 1988, the then President of Pakistan General Zi-Ul Haq died in an air crash. It was termed as an accident then. But was it really an accident? A very important person of the time Johan Gunther Dean, the then Ambassador of US to India did not agree. Is he suggesting that Zia was killed? Who killed Zia[Read More…]

Of the several reviews of Khalid Bashir Ahmad’s – by now – well-known book, KASHMIR- Exposing the Myth Behind the Narrative that one had occasion to go through, two [Chitralekha Zutshi: This book claims to expose the myths behind Kashmir’s history. It exposes its own biases instead, Scroll.in, October 24, 2017, and Reapan Tikoo: Building a Flawed and Divisive Narrative,[Read More…]

                      Noted river protection activist and ecologist, Dr.A.Latha who passed away in November 2017 left behind a special collection of essays and writings on a even more special subject related to the right of the river to flow and fulfill its ecological niche along with the rights of human communities with deep links to a life dependent on the[Read More…]

Book: Shadow Armies: Fringe organizations and Foot soldiers of Hindutva Author: Dhirendra K. Jha Publisher: Juggernaut Year of Publication: 2017   While Hindutva is usually associated with Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) and its associated organizations, there are a range of Hindutva groups operating across the country. There is no recorded data on number of such groups. About 175 of[Read More…]

One of the more fascinating readings of Mirza Waheed’s acclaimed The Collaborator is its critical intervention on one of the more integral facets of the conflict in Kashmir—the role of media as a potent instrument of state treachery. The work offers us a subtle critique of the language of media propaganda particularly when it comes to the armed conflict in[Read More…]

When a bookas fascinating, truthful, beautifully written, and politically significant as American Values:Lessons I Learned from My Family, written by a very well-known author by the name of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and published by aprominent publisher (HarperCollins),is boycotted by mainstream book reviewers, you know it is an important book and has touched a nerve that the corporate mainstream media[Read More…]

The use of technology to gather data of people across India was one of the biggest political shenanigans of Modi’s rise. When Modi started campaigning after winning Gujrat Chief Ministerial berth third time, his government started working on his bigger role and used the technology to ensure his obvious win in India’s polity. Fetching data by means of the ruse[Read More…]

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform Pages: 402 Genre: Political Thriller A new band of writers has emerged from the valley, in recent times. Young Kashmiris have been writing evocative poetry and fiction. It proves that there is ample talent in the youth who don’t fear to experiment with their time by pursuing their passions. The political turmoil, reflection of cultural[Read More…]

Pakistan’s former spy chief, General Asad Durrani, is facing flak. His former colleagues in the army are fuming for his latest endeavour – writing a book in collaboration with Amar Singh Dulat, former head of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the premier Indian intelligence agency. General Asif Ghafoor, head of the ISPR, Pakistan military’s public information arm, summoning Durrani[Read More…]

New Transnational Unionism: Review of ‘Choke Points’ eds. Alimahomed-Wilson & Ness (2018) Introduction At a time when rightwing nationalism appears increasingly to be the only voice for the embattled union movement in the global north. At a time when there is a widespread misconception of union obsolescence given the historic ebb in working class organization. At a time when the[Read More…]

Dima Al Samman, is a contemporary Jerusalemite Palestinian novelist.  She was born and raised in ancient Jerusalem and earned her bachelor’s degree in linguistics from Birzeit University.  She received a High Diploma in Television Direction and is currently the Director General of the Palestinian Ministry of Education.Writing about Jerusalem is not new to the Jerusalemite Dima who comes from a[Read More…]

Mahmoud Shukair is a Palestinian author, born in Jabal Mukaber, Jerusalem in 1941.  He has written short stories and novels for adults and teenagers.  His work has focused on the Palestinian cause, especially Jerusalem.Mr. Shukair has authored 45 books, six television series, and four plays, with his work translated from Arabic to English, French, German, Chinese, Mongolian, and Czech.  In[Read More…]

 Review of ‘The Struggle for Food Sovereignty’ eds. Herrera & Lau (2015)   Peasants produce 70% of the world’s food. They constitute over half the world’s population. Yet, in a world where 3500 calories of food gets produced, per person, per day. The majority of the one billion who go hungry nonetheless, are peasants, are the food producers themselves1. Capitalism[Read More…]

After the American Civil War, and largely because of it, the South was the poorest region of the United States. Even today, the states that had very large slave populations in 1860 tend to have low per capita incomes, with Mississippi perennially at the bottom. Segments of that South are so devoid of resources that some places can’t even treat[Read More…]

  “What to do?” (53). A short question with a very complex answer. In The World We Wish to See, Samir Amin delves into the contemporary political conjuncture with a succinctness and ease that belies the monuments scope of the topic he addresses – how do counter-hegemonic movements findconvergence in diversity, in an age when political lines are being redrawn[Read More…]

  Australia loudly boasts of its success as a multicultural society but this national narcissism hides huge deficiencies. The 2018 “Leading for Change” analysis shows that while Whites and non-Whites are 76% and 24%, respectively, of the population, they represent 94.9% and 5.1%, respectively of the senior leadership  of  Australian organizations and institutions. Australia is currently being rocked by huge[Read More…]

 “Why do so few educational institutions make use of authentically independent journalists who really risk their lives daily to provide us with details which are intentionally ignored by the mainstream media outlets?” — Richard Martin Oxman The Troubles of Northern Ireland lasted — by most accounts — about three decades. Another kind of “Troubles” was spread over approximately the same[Read More…]

  Dhawale, A., Sainath, P., Deshpande, S., Prashad, V.(2018). The Kisan Long March in Maharashtra. LeftWord Books. “Land reform is on the agenda of mankind”. So wrote William Hinton over five decades ago, in the preface to his agrarian classic – Fanshen. The events described in The Kisan Long March– 50,000 farmers marching over 200km, in a veritable sea of[Read More…]

A Quasi-Review of The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton by Hugh Turley & David Martin “Killing a man who says ‘No!’ is a risky business,” the priest replied, “because even a corpse can go on whispering ‘No! No! No! with a persistence and obstinacy that only certain corpses are capable of.  And how can you silence a corpse?”   Ignazio Silone, Bread and[Read More…]

  AMIN, S. (2017). OCTOBER 1917 REVOLUTION: A century later. S.l.: DARAJA PRESS. “[R]evolutions are ‘great’ precisely because they…are far ahead of…their time” (36). In the five essays presented inOctober 1917, renowned radical political economist, Samir Amin, pushes far beyond the immediate necessity of emphasizing the historical weight of October, and launches, into an ambitiously broad analysis of the trajectory[Read More…]

In The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy Lee and her 26 co-authors warn that the president is a clear and present danger because he is mentally ill. Their diagnosis? Trump has malignant narcissism. His symptoms? He is alienating our allies, taunting our enemies, threatening our democracy, and undermining our national security. And he’s in control of[Read More…]

Nabeel CKM’s Malayalam book on the stone quarries and the mining mafia in the Western Ghats of Kerala exposes the socio-political pathologies of our times. When Keraleeyam, an exceptional magazine that has set its standards in reporting environmental issues and human rights, comes up with a full length book, it does offer something original and unique. MurivettaMalayazham: Keralathile Paramadakal Srishtikkunna Samoohika[Read More…]

Tumultuous Rapids: Review of Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism by Samir Amin (2016) Theo Vynnychenko Kenji Amin, S. (2016). Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism. NYU Press. “History…is not a peacefully flowing river, but made up of different moments, separated by tumultuous rapids” (134). When the USSR broke apart in 1991, an unprecedented[Read More…]

“Barry Sanders’ book is a brilliant, disturbing reflection on the collapsing moral order of post-modern America. If literacy is the wellspring of selfhood, as Sanders makes clear, our aggressive, image-addicted society is unwittingly committing cultural suicide.” — Mike Davis When I was writing copy for McGraw-Hill Publishing and Random House more than twenty years ago, I wrote the following: “It is[Read More…]

 Saeed Naqvi is among the top most authorities of hard core journalism who has been a witness, reporter, writer and editor of the most seminal political events in the post-partition erain India, closely watched the rise and rise of dynastic centered party focused communally charged politics throughout the country that have direct bearings on the Indian Muslims from the day[Read More…]

  Self-Published by Barry Brown January 17th, 2017 · ISBN-10: 1773022253 · ISBN-13: 978-1773022253 322 Pages, Paperback [email protected] Genres: History, Culture, Society In this groundbreaking work, author Barry Brown has managed to definitively prove humankind’s natural tendencies to be peaceful, cooperative, and egalitarian. Brown’s work is the first ever to document the history of humankind before and after the advent[Read More…]

Review of : Cutting School:  Privatization, Segregation, and The End of Public Education   Author:  Noliwe Rooks If you care about Race and Class and their intersection with Public Education in the United States, then you won’t be the same person after reading Cutting School. In this chronicle of the historical (and ongoing) assault on public education, Rooks introduces a brilliant[Read More…]

The Doomsday Machine – Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Daniel Ellsberg. Bloomsbury, NY et al. 2017. …ten seconds to midnight. After reading Daniel Ellsberg’s history of his impact on the global nuclear war posture of the U.S., The Doomsday Machine, I would think that the the Doomsday Clock as maintained by the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic[Read More…]

Batla house encounter took palace on 19 September 2008 in Jamia Nagar Delhi.In the encounter two suspected terrorists Atif Amin and Sajad Mohmad were killed. Mohd Saif and Zeeshan were arrested and as per the reports one of the accused managed to escape. In this encounter inspector Mohan Chand Sharma who led the operation was killed. After the encounter the[Read More…]

  Dr Ramzy Baroud’s new book, The Last Earth: A People’s Story of Palestine is described simplistically as ‘non-fictional narrative of modern Palestinian history.’ It is much, much more; for us readers, it is an intimate encounter, chapter by chapter, wherein we are entertaining new friends; having the privilege of listening to, savouring and indeed cherishing the rarely heard Palestinian[Read More…]

The Balfour Declaration – Empire, the Mandate and Resistance in Palestine. Bernard Regan. Verso, London/NY, 2017. With the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, a number of books have been published covering the topic in different ways.Bernard Regan’s The Balfour Declaration adds to this library, tending to be within an academic political presentation. In his acknowledgements Regan writes that his[Read More…]

“A Nazi is a Nazi he be a Jew or otherwise, and it is a false sentiment of the Jewish people to condemn Nazism and condone Jewish fascism.” Hashomer Hatzair, 13th March, 1946 Thomas Suárez‘ State of Terror: How terrorism created modern Israel, in my opinion, belongs in the top 5 most invaluable books on the history of modern Palestine.[Read More…]

  The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has recently announced (25/1/18) that they have moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock to two minutes to mid-night. A few days before this announcement was made a statement by General Sir Nick Carter appeared in The Times in the United Kingdom: “Our ability to pre-empt or respond to threats will be eroded[Read More…]

  “The geologist takes up the history of the earth at the point where the archaeologist leaves it, and carries it further back into remote antiquity.”  — Bal Gangadahr Tilak, The Arctic Home in the Vedas In 1793 — the year Louis XVI is guillotined, George Washington holds his first Cabinet meeting and British troops invade Haiti — a canal digger[Read More…]

Fire and Fury. Inside the Trump White House, Little, Brown 2018. One wonders how the public got so thrilled by a book that combines all the D. C. gossip and tittle-tattle between two boards, which the tabloids published about Trump’s chaotic White House so far. The book was a media coup that only served the financial advantage of the author;[Read More…]

 As the BJP dipped below hundred seats in the recently concluded election in Gujarat, it was nervousness and not a sense of triumph that absorbed the party supporters at large. The word ‘vikas’ was wilfully abandoned during the campaigns and ‘Gujarat model’ was convincingly voted out in rural Gujarat.  A lot has been rightly said about the glaring limitations of[Read More…]

John Scales Avery is one of the most important voices of our times today. I had the honour of interviewing him last year. https://countercurrents.org/2017/03/15/interview-with-john-scales-avery-one-of-the-greatest-living-intellectuals-on-earth/ He cares so much for the health of the planet and worries about a calamity that’s facing humanity, and all other species on earth. He has written a lot for Countercurrents.org. He has collected all his[Read More…]

“Are we supposed to kill women and children?” “Kill everything that moves.” (2) In Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (Metropolitan Books. New York. 2013), Turse writes that the US military’s official position, and the popular understanding in the US, is that leadership “has never condoned wanton killing or disregard for human life.” (2) On the rare occasions[Read More…]

Global Peace, Security And Conflict Resolution: Approaches to Understand the Current Issues and Future-Making by Mahboob A. Khawaja. Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany, October 2017. Softcover with 433 pages. ISBN 978-3-659-58644-6 In a global worldfraught with individualistic politics and massive propaganda, increased violence is used as means to enforce change and militarism leading to global disorder.The author initiates a courageous reasoned[Read More…]

  Colonialism creates the patriotism of the colonized. Kept at the level of a beast by an oppressive system, the natives are given no rights, not even the right to live. Their condition worsens daily. And when a people has no choice but how it will die; when a people has received from its oppressors only the gift of despair,[Read More…]

The Canada-Israel Nexus. Eric Walberg. Clarity Press, Atlanta, Georgia. 2017. For a complex and critical examination of the relationship between Canada, Israel, Judaism, and Zionism, Eric Walberg’s new work The Canada-Israel Nexus provides a challenging perspective. It is challenging in several ways. Primarily, the most important ideas are the critical lines of thought towards the impact of Zionism within Canada.[Read More…]

   “But who really knows? Who can tell where all arose? For the Gods themselves came after Creation. Who then shall proclaim how Creation happened?” Nasadiya Sukta, Rig Veda Since Independence from colonial rule, India has emerged as a successful modern democracy,holding regular elections, with a functioning judiciary, smooth transitions of power and a very fine Constitution. It is even[Read More…]

I recently came across a wonderful introduction to Islam titled Islam Is Good: Muslims Should Follow It by Sanjiv Bhatla that compresses encyclopedic insights in a small volume. His study of the Prophet is primarily based on Martin Lings’ book. For the Quran’s interpretation, he relies on the translation by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan and supplements it with that of Abdullah Yusuf li.

For Americans with means, Parenting has become pathology. In Class War, Megan Erickson explains this phenomenon with a combination of economic and sociological analysis coupled with enormous empathy. Drawing on broad-ranging knowledge, Erickson identifies causes of parents’ legitimate stress of which much is rooted in the Education System which itself derives its spirit not from notions of Citizenship but of[Read More…]

Gaither Stewart’s Babylon Falling is unusual in that the author has assembled a collection of twenty-four plus one essays, thought pieces and articles, which, taken together, form a step-by-step intellectual autobiography that reflects and relates the story of his own social-cultural-political development. In his proposal to the publisher the author in his usual manner of self-doubt expressed the hope that in this,[Read More…]

  “Inglorious Empire. What the British did to India”  by writer and celebrated Congress MP Shashi Tharoor is a must-read, powerful, 294-page excoriation of 200 years of rapacious British rule over India that should be in every library, and especially those in British Commonwealth countries. However Tharoor is iconoclast-lite and massively understates the horrendous mass murder of Indians through imposed[Read More…]

Review of You Have the Right to Remain Innocent- James Duane, Little A, New York, 2016 Much has been written about US rates of incarceration and of the Police’s and Legal System’s machinations and conspiracy in denying justice in the United States. Both the statistics and individual stories are heart-rending and frustrating. Entire communities have been devastated by basic attacks[Read More…]

Prasad Pannian (2016) Edward Said and the Politics of Subjectivity, United States: Palgrave Macmillan. Pg. XII, 205 Edward said, a towering intellectual and political philosopher of our times, was also a crusader of justice and human rights. He taught us to rethink the colonial enterprise in precise political terms by delineating the epistemological violence at its core. He underscored the[Read More…]

  “Rationalism. A critique of pure theory” by Brian Ellis contrasts the  scientifically and socially productive rationalism of mathematics and physics based on valid a priori assumptions with the social, economic, and environmental failure of neoliberalism (economic rationalism) that is based on flawed assumptions. Rather than discard a failed model, the politically dominant One Percenter beneficiaries of neoliberalism have destructively[Read More…]

Somehow, the new book of Arundhati Roy: The Ministry of Utmost  Happiness, does not seem to have received the reception it deserved. Partly this is understandable, because the fanfare, with which the first novel was celebrated when it received the Booker, could not be repeated. I saw only a few reviews of the new book. They were either written by[Read More…]

Particularly, in the US and some European States, the Israeli and Zionist versions of history are wide-spread. Israel’s narrative relies on a collection of myths aimed at bringing the moral right and the ethical behavior of the Palestinians into twilight and making their claim to their country appear as illegitimate. Israel’s negation of Palestinian existence in the Land of Palestine[Read More…]

‘Let alone China, India cannot win a war  against Pakistan. And this has nothing to do with possession of nuclear weapons-the roles of nuclear & conventional weapons are separate in the war planning of India, China and Pakistan.” These are the first three lines taken from ‘Prologue, of  the recently published book ‘Dragon on our doorstep’ by Pravin Sawhney &[Read More…]

The Six Day War – The Breaking of the Middle East. Guy Laron. Yale University Press, New Haven/London, 2017. Between a short Introduction that attempts to construct the underlying social science rationale for the outbreak of the Six Day War and a short epilogue that simply highlights the major trend of the Six Day War lies what appears to be[Read More…]

Hate speech, lynching, mob violence, ransacking public property etcetera have become a part and parcel of our daily lives. The right wing cultural brigade of the Sangh Parivar increasingly finds itself at the very centre of all such episodes. At the same time, there is little clarity among people about who exactly does the “dirty work” for a particular party[Read More…]

In this blistering, nuanced, and timely critique of work culture and society, Romi Mahajan argues in his new book ” Coporate Society And Its Perils” that young people can (and must) forge a career path based on freedom, creativity, and citizenship. Mahajan argues that the pressure from almost all quarters for young people to succumb to the blandishments and enticements[Read More…]

With the failure of the Democratic establishment, the crisis of liberal democracy is now seized by a new rise of power. The US empire with Trump as commander-in-chief has renewed its vow toward colonial domination. With nationalism and militarism in full swing, Trump’s America aims to radically alter the future of this country. His campaign slogan “make America great again”[Read More…]

What is important in life? The sages and wise women will tell you that the journey is important, not the destination. But ask veteran journalist and author Sheela Reddy and she will say both are important, the journey as much as the destination. She knows better, I guess, having both journeyed and having reached her destination of having published her[Read More…]

  Moral Injury and Nonviolent Resistance is not an easy train read. It is, however, a “Must Read” and very compelling. In a culture where war is taken for granted, whether it be on a foreign battleground or in a domestic arena, the Lynds offer their book as a plea for Peace. Peace through nonviolent actions. Peace through voices speaking[Read More…]

Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul by Clara Bingham is a valuable contribution to further understanding and popularizing the radical upsurge of the 1960s. The book is an oral history and we hear from well-known figures of the time such as Ericka Huggins, Tom Hayden and Robin[Read More…]

Books Reviewed in this Essay: Theodore W. Allen, The Invention of the White Race. London and New York: Verso, 2012. Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. New York: Basic Books, 2014. Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015. On a recent visit to[Read More…]

Moral education is an important aspect that is much discussed in agent of academic capitalism.It is analysed as a way to recover the genuine spirit behind the education. This book is important for its critical readings of moral education in the context of sub-Saharan Africa.It traces the roots of moral education in African philosophies such as Ubuntu/Botho and in so[Read More…]

Interview by Italian magazine Antidiplomatico with the author, Andre Vltchek Q: Please tell us about your recently published book, “Aurora”. A: Aurora is my latest novel. It is short, but emotionally charged and ‘outrageous’. It breaks many taboos, especially those regarding Western, particularly European culture. You know, so many people have this fetish about European culture being refined and superior[Read More…]

Earlier in Countercurrents, I reviewed Shashi Tharoor’s An Era of Darkness– very favorably.  In that review, I mentioned other books, including Madhusree Mukherjee’s Churchill’s Secret War and Mike Davis’s magisterial Late Victorian Holocausts.  All three books break with the mythology of Pax Britannica and describe its body-count.  A wasteland indeed called peace.  A Pox not a Pax. I wrote the[Read More…]

A visit to the bookstore provokes in me two opposite emotions- euphoria and anxiety. I get euphoric by the thought that the production and ingestion of knowledge is still an important thing for some segment of society. Snippets, lies, and fake news are not the only “data” that exists. I get euphoric also by the tantalizing thought that if given[Read More…]

Name of the Book: I am a Troll: Inside the secret world of the BJPs digital army Author: Swati Chaturvedi Publisher: Juggernaut Books An earlier article titled ‘Saffron heads with Neutral masks: Spreading disharmony through Social Media’ argued that the Social media spaces are being increasingly used by right wing groups to promote messages of hatred, bigotry and fanaticism. It[Read More…]

Many people in the United States- almost all in fact- have benefitted from the work Ralph Nader has done in promoting the rights of consumers while blunting the power, avarice, and mono-maniacal stress on profits that define the corporate world. Just as most of us have benefitted, so few of us realize the kind of planning, work, determination, and desire[Read More…]

William Carroll (with Elaine Coburn and J.P. Sapinski).2016. Expose, Oppose, Propose: Alternative Policy Groups and the Struggle for Global Justice. London: Zed Books. 2016. Introduction This is a book on such an important subject, carried out with such serious theoretical underpinnings and such an original methodology, that it might seem churlish to take issue with what it fails to deal[Read More…]

Best known as a post colonial theorist, Gayatri Spivak was born in 1942 Calcutta, West Bengal to a middle class family. Described as a  “para-disciplinary, ethical philosopher”– though her early career also included “applied deconstruction”, Spivak rose to fame after she wrote the preface and translated Derrida’s ‘Of Grammatology’ in 1976. Since then she has applied deconstructive strategies to various[Read More…]

It is obvious to most in the world that the U.S. and Israel are symbiotically linked to each other – each using the other for their own purposes, some of which are common, others that are not. In Obstacle to Peace Jeremy Hammond dissects current events and the relationships between the two countries demonstrating that the biggest obstacle to peace[Read More…]

Imagine Moscow being taken over by someinternational corporate cartel.By a monster which has its own factories and office buildings, security services, private prisons, re-education (‘training’) centers, and its obedient mass media outlets. Imagine that it also has detailed databases on almost everyone who really matters in the capital. Imagine that human lives suddenly don’t matter. People are only expected to[Read More…]

The advent of the Arab Spring marked a cataclysmic shift in the way Middle East was perceived across the globe. The Arabs living in the complex countries of this region suddenly saw their hitherto dormant lives brimming with new hopes and aspirations. Chaos, mayhem and bloodshed on an unimaginable scale had seen four dictators being ruthlessly toppled from their seat[Read More…]

“SPARTACUS“ is a powerful novel of ancient slave society with rich meaning for the liberation struggle of our day. It is brilliantly written, and in certain sections probably represents the high point in the development of Howard Fast’s superb craftsmanship. The story of Spartacus and his army of slave warriors is one of the great epics of history. Early in[Read More…]

As read and admired by political novelist Gaither Stewart