The aim of consumerism, which the rulers of these [socialist] economies had promoted, when they aspired to surpass the United States in the standard of life, conceived in terms of capitalist West, forced them to abandon their socialist objective. The consumerist standards of the Western world could be achieved only by providing very high incomes to a few in highly[Read More…]
A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book which presents the reasons why we urgently need immediate and drastic climate action The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link: http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/action.pdf Use of fossil fuels must stop! The IPCC Report The 4,000-page report by the International Panel on Climate Change[Read More…]
A note on ‘Indian Muslims’ by Ms Humra Quraishi Farid, the earth questioned the sky, Where are the mighty captains gone ? In their grave they rot, was the reply And rebuked for tasks Not done Baba Farid Shakarganj ( 1173- 1265) A video of a photographer jumping on the dead body of a hapless ‘encroacher’ from Assam has gone[Read More…]
Review of Amartya Sen’s Memoir “HOME IN THE WORLD”,Penguin Random House,2021 Amartya Sen is rightly regarded as the iconic liberal democrat of our time,combining as he does a deep-seated commitment to fundamental civil rights with an unwavering passion for social justice,advocated with serene rationality unfailingly courteous to people holding different views.The only condition he lays down is that such views[Read More…]
Finding soil’s soul and shadow is difficult, but not impossible. Science and farmer experience make it possible. The finding, found through science and labor, helps soil smile, and sustain life and economy. Building Soils for Better Crops discusses soil, solves that “riddle” that kills soil’s life, and finds that “magic” that brings on earth blooming crops in a sustainable manner.[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 many aspects of[Read More…]
Review of ‘ From ‘Nazneen to Naina’ “To get a name is one of the few things that cannot be bought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted.” – British writer Samuel Johnson ( 1709-1784) – poet, playwright, essayist, biographer, critic, editor The idea to be fascinated by individuals –[Read More…]
Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and the Lives of China’s Workers By Jenny Chan, Mark Selden, and Pun Ngai Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2020 ISBN: 978-1-64259-124-8 Paperback Like many of you, I use an iPhone. It is a technological wonder and allows me to do things unimaginable even a few years ago; it has more computer power than NASA had[Read More…]
Review of “Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State” by Samuel Stein. Verso, 2019. Real Estate is the world’s largest asset class. The numbers are staggering- globally, real estate in aggregate is worth approximately $230 trillion. Of this, residential real estate is the majority player, worth approximately $180 trillion. This far exceeds the value of all stocks and is[Read More…]
Respected journalist Mark Willacy’s Rogue Forces is imperative reading for its detonating exposé of Australian SAS war crimes in Afghanistan and the systematic cover-ups at varying levels of the Australian Defence Force operations. Willacy’s window on war crimes is narrow, focusing on three SAS members of Squadron 3; Soldier A, Soldier B and Soldier C who murdered in chilling bloodlust innocent Afghan farmers in 2012. It[Read More…]
From Nazneen to Naina: 20 years of Kareena Kapoor Khan in Bollywood and what that means for India and the rest of the world was officially launched on Tuesday, September 21 at the Press Club of the Union Territory. Authored by Canadian journalist Gurpreet Singh, the book is based on her film career so far, and what she has faced[Read More…]
Marx had famously said that the history of all existing societies is the history of class struggle. In this context, if one looks into the history of Himachal Pradesh then one can hardly disregard the fact that classes of several sorts had their struggles in the spatial dimensions of what is now known as Himachal. The homogeneity of society which[Read More…]
From Nazneen to Naina: 20 years of Kareena Kapoor Khan in Bollywood and what that means for India and the rest of the world, will be officially released at Chandigarh Press Club on Tuesday, September 21. Authored by Canadian journalist Gurpreet Singh, the book is based on the film career of the famous Bollywood diva, and what she has faced[Read More…]
A Review of Andrey Mir’s “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers.” While there are several books analyzing the impact of social media on society, Andrey Mir’s book “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers. The media after Trump: manufacturing anger and polarization” distinguishes itself by focusing on the impact of social media on traditional media. The defining analysis of traditional[Read More…]
A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book which discusses religious ethics and cosmology. The book may be downloaded and circulated free of charge from the following link: https://eacpe.org/content/uploads/2021/09/Who-is-my-Neighbor-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf One often hears the question: “Is there a conflict between science and religion?” In my opinion, there are two aspects to religion – ethics[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 the historical development[Read More…]
In a society built on inequities based on class, caste, gender, race – existence of constitutional legislations for benefit of oppressed does not by itself ensure their welfare. It requires a conscious collective action by the oppressed against exploitation. It requires a change in mindset from ‘fearful’ to ‘fearless minds’. The book by Vivek Pandit titled ‘Fearless Minds’ tries to[Read More…]
Except for Palestine – The Limits of Progressive Politics. Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell Plitnick. The New Press, New York. 2021. “Except for Palestine” is a remarkable little book. Within it, the authors Hill and Plitnick present the larger picture that the self proclaimed progressive “universal” values of the United States are argued for in many troubled spots of the[Read More…]
Vancouver-based broadcaster Gurpreet Singh has tried to expose the growing polarization of Indian society and cinema through the story of one of the most popular movie stars. From Nazneen to Naina: 20 years of Kareena Kapoor Khan in Bollywood and what that means for India and the rest of the world is based on her film career so far, and[Read More…]
India was ready for change with liberalisation and globalization. As the then Finance Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh had said in his historic budget speech, the country needed a comprehensive fiscal adjustment, but the poor would also have to be saved from it. On July 25, 1991, an editorial article in ‘The Hindu’ had called it ‘sparing the poor’. At[Read More…]
In the Shadows of the American Century – The Rise and Decline of US Global Power. ALfred W. McCoy. Haymarket Books, Chicago. 2017 Reading “In the Shadows of the American Century” is a bit of an up and down ride. The best part of the book for personal interest concerning the author is the Introduction. The author, Alfred McCoy, discusses[Read More…]
K.M. Seethi, Enduring Dilemma: Flashpoints in Kashmir and India-Pakistan Relations (KW Publishers Pvt Ltd New Delhi 2021) As India and Pakistan are set to celebrate the 75th Year of independence, the trauma of partition and the unsettled issues of the past continue to haunt the people of the subcontinent in diverse ways. The region of South Asia is not only[Read More…]
by Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen Many necessary everyday items that are produced as commodities are tied to a range of activities that are invisible during their purchase, consumption and use: the origin of raw materials used in household appliances, medical devices or transport; water and energy infrastructures; the working conditions under which materials are extracted or textiles and food[Read More…]
A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a collection of the articles and book announcements which I have written during the last two years. Almost all of these have been published in Countercurrents or in TMS Weekly Digest or both. I am extremely grateful to Editor Binu Mathew and to Editor Antonio C.S. Rosa[Read More…]
Author – Badri Narayan Publisher – Penguin Random House India, March 2021 ‘There is no exaggeration in saying that the entire destiny of a country depends upon its intellectual class’ – Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar In this recent book Professor Badri Narayan (Social Historian and Cultural Anthropologist) maps out the political grammar of Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) and its parent[Read More…]
Reviewer’s Note: I had the pleasure to review a proof of Stan Cox’s forthcoming book. I recommend it strongly and offer high praise, though caviled by a few nits. Please read on. Recent events have awakened even some typically passive people to the enormity of the synthetic disaster that is anthropogenic climate change. Though who “agreed with the Science” and[Read More…]
The world is on fire like never before: “Wildfires Have Erupted Across the Globe Scorching Places That Rarely Burned Before” (CNN headlines July 22, 2021) but not only is fire raging, Biblical floods are destroying entire communities, e.g. 9,000 homes swept away in central China (BBC News) as towns were nearly decimated in Germany, “Europe’s Deadly Floods Leave Scientists Stunned”[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…]
Lawrence in Arabia – War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Scott Anderson. Anchor Books, Random House LLC, New York, 2013. Every very seldom often a book comes along that greatly exceeds expectations. Lawrence in Arabia is one of those books. Scott Anderson’s writing is highly entertaining and highly informative at the same time. It[Read More…]
“Cruelty Or Humanity” by Stuart Rees is an important book that should be in every institutional and public library. Despite the Mainstream hiding or softening horrific crimes, we are all aware of global cruelties, from deadly Developing World poverty to equally deadly war atrocities. We utterly abhor cruel people of personal acquaintance, and my reading of this powerful book instructs[Read More…]
Matthew Ehret, with contributions from Cynthia Chung, has written a much-needed book about the early history of the United States of America. The title of the book is The Clash of Two Americas, the Unfinished Symphony. It is volume 1 of a planned series. This essay is based on the book. The “Clash of Two America” is a compendium of[Read More…]
What is degrowth? Degrowth is an ambiguous label used by different currents that have emerged or have been reconsidered as such since the 1960s when the contemporary environmentalist movement got underway. The bulk of these movements identify as Greens although it includes eco-anarchists (e.g. Trainer 2010; Australian Simplicity Institute) and others. The ambiguity of what degrowth stands for is a problem both for its[Read More…]
After the Apocalypse – America’s Role in a World Transformed. Andrew Bacevich. Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company. New York. 2021. The contemporary apocalypse as seen by Andrew Bacevich in his latest book, “After the Apocalypse”, consists of four different horsemen: first mentioned are the severe climate effects of global warming; Trump “toxic and divisive” presidency is mentioned next; followed[Read More…]
Economic history is not a truly scintillating read. However, to understand how our society is arranged economically as it is today, “Goliath” provides an interesting background into the people, policies, and the political rhetoric (propaganda) that shaped the power struggle between monopoly power and democracy. Without forcefully stating it, that is the theme of the book: monopoly power as it[Read More…]
Arguably No Marxist thinker or leader today in the World or in the last few decades has had such a profound grasp of the ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as Professor Joma Sison. Formally he was the Chairman of the Communist party of Phillipines who laid the base for the re-organisation of the party and the launching of the 2 line struggle[Read More…]
A common line of argument from the contemporary American left is that “socialism has never been tried.” It’s understandable that Western socialists would make this argument to members of the US proletariat, who have been deeply affected by years of red scare propaganda. This argument however, ignores the millions who have struggled and died in an effort to move beyond[Read More…]
‘Runaway climate change (1) is not just a technical term in climatology, but a profound reflection of the catastrophic crisis we have reached. In recent years, India is experiencing a series of extreme weather events and finally the Ministry of Earth Sciences has released its first Climate Assessment report. Although hundreds of books and scientific articles published daily on the[Read More…]
Recent incidence in IIT Kharagpur of the verbal assault mounted by the professor on the marginalised students with proclamation of impunity from penal Action of State directs us to innumerable paradoxes in 21st Century India.It also implies that not all is well in the country who seeks to achieve the goal of Superpower in International Arena but still lacks[Read More…]
[Prefatory Note: This is an edited text of Remarks on 30 June 2021 at the opening on the Book Launch of Timothy Brennan’s PLACES OF MIND: A LIFE OF EDWARD SAID (2021), an event under the auspices of the Cambridge Centre of Palestinian Studies, moderated by its director, Dr. Makram Khoury-Machool. Also participating in the discussion of Professor Brennan’s book[Read More…]
Set in an unnamed southern town amid lush plantations of pepper, bananas, coffee, rice, and narrated in soliloquy Annie Zaidi’s 184- page novel, Prelude to a Riot is a brilliant, bold, honest, critical commentary on contemporary India. “Abu doesn’t want to work the land. He says it’s pointless because we cannot take the land with us when we leave”. Abu,[Read More…]
Richard P. Mitchell’s book “The Society of Muslim Brothers” is one of first and most authentic book on the formation, Ideology and objectives of Muslim Brotherhood. Being a study conducted during most crucial period of Egypt, the time of Egypt revolution of 1952 and based on observance of true incidences and interviews of prominent personalities of Egypt (Brothers and non[Read More…]
“Anyone with a sense of history would have realized that the hubristic attempt to make the world into a frontier- and culture- free single market would end in tears”; this is how Robert Skidelsky, one of the leading economists of today, observes the present economic turmoil. The predictability of mathematical modeling of neoclassical economics began to be widely questioned with[Read More…]
War: How Conflict Shaped Us. Margaret MacMillan. Random House, New York. 2020. I almost did not finish reading “War: How Conflict Shaped Us”. It is not worth reading, but I worked through it anyway. Which is unfortunate as Margaret MacMillan can be an excellent writer of history. The two volumes of hers that I have read – “Paris 1919” and[Read More…]
A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book, which discusses the reasons why the institution of war continues to threaten human civilization and the biosphere, and the steps that might be taken to rid the world of war. The book may be downloaded and circulated free of charge from the following link: https://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Why-War-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf[Read More…]
Kate Elizabeth Russell dedicates her exemplary work, My Dark Vanessa to “the real life Dolores Hazes and Vanessa Wyes whose stories have not yet been heard, believed, or understood”. As I begin to read this, I already get a whiff of what I am in for. The existing scholarship around the realm of English Literature has already turned the predatory[Read More…]
A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book, which discusses the urgent changes that are needed to save our planet and our collective future. The book may be downloaded and circulated free of charge from the following link: http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/A-Critical-Decade-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf Humanity has reached a critical decade A new report, published on 14 March, 2021[Read More…]
Worldwide chemical emissions are six times global warming emissions. This hidden dilemma is fully exposed in a superbly researched new book by science writer Julian Cribb: Earth Detox, How and Why We Must Clean Up Our Planet, Cambridge University Press, scheduled for release August 2021. The planet has become a toxic soup of tested, untested, and inadequately tested chemicals that[Read More…]
Dr. Krishna Upadhyaya, a fellow traveller in the struggles for emancipation of bonded labourers in Nepal, in his latest Novel ‘The Ghosts in the Hills’ ventures to deep dive into the important but less narrated phase of Nepal’s recent history, the Maoist uprising. It falls within the genre of historical novels. It is not a factual narrative of the Maoist[Read More…]
The poetry of earth is never dead -John Keats This is Sanjiv Bhatla’s maiden collection of poems. He has several authoritative and scholarly works on religious and spiritual subjects also to his credit. His poems are equally brilliant and bear out the finer sensibilities in him. His anthology was originally published by Orient Longman (now Orient Black Swan).It has now[Read More…]
In her 2020 text Marxism and Intersectionality: Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality under Contemporary Capitalism, Ashley J. Bohrer sets out to demystify the erroneous conception that the traditions of Marxism and Intersectionality are incompatible. In finding that in academia the interactions between these two traditions have been “grounded more in caricature than in close reading,” Bohrer sets out to expose and[Read More…]
An acclaimed columnist wrote recently in one of his social media posts , “ I love to buy books written by our children . It gives me unique inner satisfaction .May Allah protect our children.” One such young boy is Aazib Manzoor who has come out with around three hundred page debut novel titled “The Sentiment in my Stone”. One[Read More…]
A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book which discusses the duty of scientists and engineers to try to prevent the catastrophes that currently threaten human society and the biosphere. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link: http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/The-Social-Responsibility-Of-Scientists-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf Three major threats to human society Science and technology have[Read More…]
Jason Stanley in the book titled ‘How fascism works: The politics of us and them’ describes fascist politics as characterized by ten aspects. The different headings under which it is discussed include: The mythic past, propaganda, anti-intellectual, unreality, hierarchy, victimhood, law and order, sexual anxiety, sodom and gomorrah and arbeit macht frei. The mythic past: Fascist politics seeks to build[Read More…]
In the time of aggressive neo-liberal Hindutva led by the RSS-BJP in the leadership of the Hindutva poster boy Modi poses serious political threats to the regional identity and caste based political parties and constitutional democracy. In current time, the Shudra and Ati-Shudras political parties like SP, BSP, RJD and others have failed to make any socio-cultural and political agenda[Read More…]
Moumita Alam’s debut poetry collection The Musings of the Dark is a powerful poetic assertion of dissent. Dissent against what? Against state sponsored violence against Kashmiris, violence against anti-CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) protesters at Shaheen Bagh, violence against migrant labourers, daily labourers during Covid 19 pandemic. She also voices her dissent against structural violence of casteism, fascism, violence against women[Read More…]
In the course of facing the ongoing challenge of the pandemic, a sad reality that has manifested itself time and again is that profit-driven health systems are unable to respond effectively to such crisis situations. There are several disturbing anecdotes of how the profit driven systems and the individuals running them behaved in a selfish and callous way towards[Read More…]
Without doubt Comrade Kobad Ghandy in book ‘Fractured Freedom” has taught us a lot about the weaknesses inherent in the Communist Movement ,giving all of us a great insight into it. Most pertinently it taps on issue of the individual subconscious. Kobad Ghandy proves the spiritual essence of a revolutionary. In it’s own right the work is a classic and[Read More…]
A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book which discusses the things that I have experienced during my 67 years of work in the peace movement. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link: https://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/67-years-in-the-peace-movement-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf Holger Terp’s invitation Seven years ago, Holger Terp, the founder and web editor of[Read More…]
The Crash of Flight 3804 – A Lost Spy, A Daughter’s Quest, and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil. Charlotte Dennett. Chelsea Green Publishing. London/White River Junction, VT. 2020. Titles can be deceptive – “The Crash of Flight 3804” meant nothing for all my readings of history and geopolitics. It was not about the crash that killed[Read More…]
A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book, which discusses the relationships between water and life. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link: http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Water-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf The United Nations’ World Water Day On its home-page for World Water Day the United Nations points out the following facts: “Today, 1 in[Read More…]
Unfinished History-A truly great Masterpiece highlighting how even after fifty years of Naxalbari and Seven decades after Independence Neo-fascism has penetrated India at an unprecedented magnitude I recommend everyone to read this classic book titled “India-50 after Naxalbari” by Bernard D’Mellow that most analytically assesses metamorphosis in India in post-naxalbari era of Naxalbari, Maoist movement and emergence of fascism in[Read More…]
“Revolutionary Dreaming Tramp” (On the occasion of Charlie’s Birthday- 16th April 1889) “I consider myself a citizen of the world, an internationalist… I just happen to have been born in London, England. It could have been Burma or China or Timbuktu, I’d still be the way I am. I’d keep my first citizenship because, being an accident of birth,[Read More…]
Why I am not a Hindu woman: a personal story by Wandana Sonalkar, New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2021, pp 169. Wandana Sonalkar is a self-proclaimed atheist and in this autobiographical account titled ‘Why I am not a Hindu Woman’, Sonalkar critically reflects on her position on why she has chosen to renounce her religion. This work adds to the[Read More…]
“My book has no thesis, and any conclusions to be found in it were reached only during the writing, perhaps the most meaningful being that Hitler was far more complex and contradictory than I had imagined. ‘The greatest saints,’ observes one of Graham Greene’s characters, ‘Have been men with a more than normal capacity for evil, and the most vicious[Read More…]
Mein Kampf (1925; 1926) is a rambling political manifesto, disguised as autobiography. This book offers an insight into the long roots and broad appeal of extreme ideas – and, given the persistence of nationalism, racism, religious extremism, and conspiracy theories – should be required reading for every citizen of a contemporary democracy. *** Mein Kampf is a political manifesto disguised as[Read More…]
Impacts of unjust systems manifest in many ways, but few are as poignant as independent , proud farmers being displaced from their farmland and forced to migrate to a distant and unknown place to seek work in uncertain conditions. We in India are all too familiar with this on-going , overwhelming reality of our times, our country and this is[Read More…]
Every time I had visited hill stations such as Ooty and Kodaikanal, I have greatly admired the breathtaking beauty of nature, though my admiration has found equal attention to the men’s world, who come in their cars and bikes, with cigarettes and beer tins in their hands, chatter and laugh heartily with their friends.The Indian society has no qualms with[Read More…]
Engaging the World: The making of Hamas’s foreign policy. Daud Abdullah. Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC), 2020. Hamas has been a strongly maligned actor within the western mainstream media. The concise and well written “Engaging the World” by Daud Abdullah presents a clear picture of Hamas’ attempts to act as an international state actor while at the same time continuing its[Read More…]
Covid pandemic will remain an important chapter in India’s history. This is not only for the public health challenge it caused but it also brought out the deeply hidden flaws, biases, prejudices of the state and society. It was a mirror reflection of the state and society we are living in. The book by Harsh Mander titled “Locking down the[Read More…]
A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a new book, in which I have tried to contrast the world that we experience today, filled with terrifying existential threats, such as catastrophic climate change, pandemics, all-destroying nuclear war, and the threat of large-scale famine, with the world that we would wish it to be. The[Read More…]
The Lion and the Eagle – The Interaction of the British and American Empires 1783-1972. Kathleen Burk. Bloomsbury, London/New York, 2018. The 200 year historical span of Kathleen Burk’s “The Lion and the Eagle” shows the changes in the interactions between the newly formed United States and its imperial drive and the ongoing imperial drive of the British. In general,[Read More…]
Eighty years after his death, Rabindranath Tagore continues to be written about. Any biographical or critical account of Tagore’s life and works — whether it is in Bengali, English or any other language — is noticeable and is received with reverence and respect. Rabindranath Tagore’s poem, ‘Where the Mind is Without Fear’, demonstrates the continuing universal appeal of the poet’s signature composition.[Read More…]
‘The Office of the President is an emergency light. It comes on automatically when there is a crisis and goes off automatically when the crisis passes,’ observed former President Ramaswamy Venkataraman in his book ‘My Presidential Years’. Whether present-day Presidents are any longer backup lights is difficult to say. Yet, diaries of past presidents sometimes give explicit account of the[Read More…]
A discussion by Candice Louisa Daquin based on reading Candace Owens’ book Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation According to the author, Candace Owens: Hilaría Baldwin is NOT Spanish. Rachel Dolezal will NEVER be black. A biological man is NOT a woman. A biological female will never be a man. These people are just ‘playing pretend’ and as[Read More…]
A Review article on the recently launched book edited by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd and Karthik Raja Karuppusamy “The Shudras–Vision For New Path” number one bestseller on Amazon India’s farmers have sustained the largest protests in modern Indian history since Mahatma Gandhi and the independence movement. While Gandhi’s Khadi dhoti appeared in media worldwide, the farmers received relatively scant attention until[Read More…]
Decolonizing Palestine – Hamas Between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial. Somdeep Sen. Cornell University Press, New York. 2020. A book that has a very narrowly defined title often fails to look at the larger context, either regional or global. In “Decolonizing Palestine – Hamas Between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial” Somdeep Sen succeeds surprisingly well in placing the struggles of[Read More…]
It is now 19 years when Gujarat 2002 riots happened. The public memory of the nation has forgotten the event. Until has come a book Under Cover My Journey into the Darkness of Hindutva by Ashish Khetan to bring back the memories of the calamity which had overtaken the Muslims of Gujarat. In fact to be exact it was like reading the riot[Read More…]
Title: Beyond Dharma – Dissent in the Ancient Sciences of Sex and Politics Author: Wendy Doniger Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books, 2020 When one of the world’s most acclaimed and charming scholars of Hinduism presents a trailblazing interpretation of ancient Indian texts and their historic influence on subversive resistance, the book ought to be of more than ordinary interest. Eminent Indologist Wendy[Read More…]
I have been teaching in MA Development program of Azim Premji University since 2010. I am also involved with conducting short trainings for people working in the development sector from the village to the state level for last 20 years. It is mainly in that context that I am commenting on Bharat Dogra’s three books published in 2019 : Book[Read More…]
Written by Sharad Yadav and Omprakash Mahato During the Emergency (1975–77), all socialist leaders came together on one platform and formed the Janata Party government in 1977. In its manifesto, the Janata Party promised to undertake measures for social and educational upliftment of people belonging to backward castes and communities. The social upliftment of backward castes once again became the[Read More…]
Most recent works on the United States accept that it is an empire, perhaps not in the traditional landholding sense, but in the extent of its power and control of others. In “American Empire – Global History,” A. G. Hopkins accepts the idea of empire with several qualifications and with a precise focus on certain aspects of that empire. His[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 the lives and[Read More…]
Originally written and published in 2012 in the Telugu language, Nirjana Vaaradhi, is a memoir by Kondapalli Koteswaramma. Sowmya V.B. translated this book in English, and ‘The Sharp Knife of Memory’ was published and released in 2015 by Zubaan books, to reach a much wider circle of readers, beyond the boundaries of the two Telugu speaking states of India. Koteswaramma[Read More…]
A Review: JFK vs. Allen Dulles by Greg Poulgrain Before I digress slightly, let me state from the outset that the book by Greg Poulgrain that I am about to review is extraordinary by any measure. The story he tells is one you will read nowhere else, especially in the way he links the assassination of President Kennedy to former CIA Director[Read More…]
A socialist, a believer in equal opportunities, a defender of civil liberties, a deeply involved citizen of India and a humanist, the late Justice Rajindar Sachar (1923–2018) was a celebrated jurist. One who believed in standing for the last man in the line and was armed with a moral remit that never wavered, his life was momentous. Few jurists in[Read More…]
During the late 60s, when the US war on Viet Nam was going strong and people were questioning capitalism, I drove from Eugene to Berkeley where my sister was living. I ran into folks who invited me to a discussion about starting a commune. There, everyone talked about dropping out of consumer society and buying land to get away from[Read More…]
India has witnessed a sea change in its social structure and political culture since Independence. Despite the progressive developmental model that the country has followed, we are witness to fissiparous tendencies that is on the path of dividing the Indian masses based on religion, ethnicity and caste ladder. Unquestionably, there is a need to develop a fresh approach to dismantling[Read More…]
Aakar Patel starts his timely and well-researched book Our Hindu Rashtra: What It Is. How We Got Here with a sentence “Majoritarianism is primitive and easy to do”. He surmises that establishment of Hindu Rashtra, which has only one meaning, that a Kshatriya king should rule the Hindu Rashtra under the supervision of a Brahmin head priest. Such a Hindu[Read More…]
A Review of The Plot to Kill King by William Pepper Very few Americans are aware of the truth behind the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Few books have been written about it, unlike other significant assassinations, especially JFK’s. For almost fifty years there has been a media blackout supported by government deception to hide the truth. And[Read More…]
An aspect of freedom movement of India which deserves to be better known in India, particularly among youth, is that various streams of freedom movement in India often supported and complemented each other. This is particularly true of the two most important streams, one identified mainly with Mahatma Gandhi and the other predominantly with Shahid Bhagat Singh. In a very[Read More…]
Rakhi Dalal reviews translated short stories of Nabendu Ghosh, which not only bring to life history as cited in his Bangiya Sahitya Parishad Lifetime Achievement award but also highlights his ‘love for humanity‘ Title: Mistress of Melodies: Stories of Courtesans and Prostituted Women Author: Nabendu Ghosh Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books, 2020 Mistress of Melodies: Stories of Courtesans and Prostituted Women is acollection of six[Read More…]
Man over Machine: A Path towards Peace is the kind of book you might want to preserve and return to, every once in a while. Author Bharat Dogra has worked for long years as a freelance journalist – never taking on a full-time journalism job in order to be completely free, and writing a prodigious number of articles, many of[Read More…]
Jharkhand Me Mere Samkaaleen by Vir Bhrat Talwar, 2019, 2020, Delhi, Anugya Books, pp 213, Rs. 250/- On the surface, this book is in the form of a memoir about five persons who played an important role in the cultural, literary and political trends in the Jharkhand movement in the period 1970-2010. But they do not remain mere personal memoirs;[Read More…]
A Review of by Gaither Stewart’s Short Story Collection, “Signs of the Times” Gaither Stewart is an expatriate American writer who lives in Rome and knows Europe well. Mr. Stewart’s agile intellect and life-tuned, refined aesthetic sensibilities will most interest those who refuse to be confined in a single identity, preferring rather to cross at will between the[Read More…]
Autobiographies by bureaucrats every so often raise curiosity for the reason that they hide more than they reveal, even as the sequestered information and the behind the scene camaraderie in day to day governmental functioning is a lot sensational. In recent years, India’s top civil servants have been writing their memoirs. But they have only been penned only after being[Read More…]
A recently penned autobiography by eminent economist Devaki Jain, written based on a suggestion made by Doris Lessings in 1958, with a forward by Amartya Sen and reviewed by Bhaskar Parichha. This is an unusual memoir. Unusual because it isn’t archetypal, not old-fashioned nor even written in a sequential order. The autobiography is set apart into personal and professional years,[Read More…]
Famed anti-racist Jewish American journalist I.F. Stone opined “Governments lie” and those 2 words summarize the message of “The Most Dangerous Book Ever Published: Deadly Deception Exposed!” This iconoclastic 766-page book contains a total of 78 essays contributed by 7 prominent Alternative writers who variously take a sledgehammer to the monolithic lies of Big Government that are uncritically forced on[Read More…]
This collection of short stories by Gaither Stewart takes readers on a journey of the human drama; those questions that take us into and out of ourselves; those reflections that question time, history, our interactions with them and energetic influences that run between us and them and our actions within the resulting context. This collection is being released in the[Read More…]
Tragic happenings of the 1980s continue to perturb the Sikhs. Most of them want to know what actually took place behind the smokescreen erected by the power of the day. In this context, the new arrival ‘The Khalistan Conspiracy’-A Former R&AW Officer Unravels the Path to 1984” (2020) authored by GBS Sidhu, who retired as Special Secretary of India’s Intelligence[Read More…]
On the first anniversary of a movement that seems to be a reaffirmation of democratic processes in a nation torn with angst, Meenakshi Malhotra reviews Shaheen Bagh and the Idea of India Title: Shaheen Bagh and the Idea of India: Writings on a Movement for Justice, Liberty and Equality Editor: Seema Mustafa Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books, 2020 Shaheen Bagh is a compendium[Read More…]
Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution by Don Fitz Monthly Review Press, 2020 ISBN: 978-158367-860-2 (paper) –Reviewed by Kim Scipes Don Fitz has written a fascinating account of the development of the Cuban health care system. Placing developments in their historical context—and emphasizing Cuban internationalism throughout—Fitz has illuminated how the Cubans have developed a health care system that is[Read More…]
The International Movement for a JUST World (JUST) has published an ebook. “Exploring the Coronavirus Crisis”, a collection of articles contributed by the President, the Vice President, some members or the Executive Committee, some individuals within the general membership and certain staff of JUST. They run through the pandemic looking at the socio-economic consequences of the lockdowns and the persistence[Read More…]
When an international arms historian discovers the famous Indian firearms in a book with a focus on the legendary Jodhpur collection, it ought to be stimulating. Jodhpur was one of the most important military states in Rajasthan, playing a major role in the subcontinent’s history. During the reign of Maharaja Ajit Singh (1678-1724), large of numbers of guns were purchased[Read More…]
Cultural evolution In all terrestrial organisms, information is transmitted between generations by means of the genetic code; and genetic evolution takes place through natural selection acting on modifications of this code. In human cultural evolution, information is also transmitted between generations by means of language and writing. This second mode of evolution gave our species enormous adaptive advantages. While genetic[Read More…]
“The house at Number 45 Shyambazar Street had its date of construction engraved right at the top of its façade. From this, it could be learnt that the house was not built in this century. If not a hundred, it was close to eighty-five years old. Thanks to the moist winds from the holy Ganges in its close proximity and[Read More…]
Political religion has become a dominant feature of our democracy particularly in the last few years. Different proponents of Hindutva groups freely distort religion to further political ideologies. They disregard some of the fundamental teachings of Hinduism to achieve their objective of gaining political power by winning elections. They generate hate and demonization of other faiths. They routinely invent history[Read More…]
Mass extinctions due to human activities According to a recent United Nations report, more than a million species of plants and animals are currently threatened with extinction because of human activities. Rates of extinction today are as much as 1,000 times greater than the normal background rate. As the greenhouse gas emissions of human society push the earth towards catastrophic[Read More…]
The term tribe or tribal is not defined anywhere in the Indian Constitution. According to Article 342, Scheduled Tribes (ST) are ethnic communities that are notified by the President of India. India’s tribes are not part of the traditional Hindu caste structure. They are more similar to the “indigenous” or “native people” in other parts of the world. Tribal communities[Read More…]
Lastbench is an anthology written in the time of Trump and Covid-19, acting as a voice for those who are frustrated with the news cycle, wishing for something more visceral. It is unapologetically against Trump and considers his Presidency to be the terror that began the downfall. Whether true or not, this is the slant of this publication and it will[Read More…]
In lieu of writing reviews of their own books – with the exception of Walt Whitman, who did that with Leaves of Grass – writers often write introductions or prefaces. The purpose of such introductions is to give the prospective readers a sense of what to expect in the pages that follow, as if the author knew exactly what[Read More…]
The cover of the book says it all. The multi-colored umbrella in traditional applique on the cover of Bhaskar Parichha’s book ‘No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha’, in a way, beautifully portrays what is there inside. The book is a panoramic view of Odisha as it has evolved in the last two decades. It is a compendium of commentaries[Read More…]
A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a new book, in which I have tried to sketch human history, from earliest times until the present, against a cosmic backdrop. The book may be downloaded and circulated free of charge from the following link: http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/A-History-of-the-Earth-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf The place of humans in nature According to modern cosmology,[Read More…]
“Gaan Chhadiba nahin, jami chaddiba nahin”[i] a prominent war cry, echoed in the sacred mountains, rivers, and streams of various districts at different space and times, captures the essence of people’s resistance to land dispossession in Odisha. Ranjana Padhi and Nigamananda Sadangi’s latest book ‘Resisting Dispossession: The Odisha Story’ stands as a distinct repository of diverse lived experience, everyday struggles[Read More…]
‘The spectacular victory of Narendra Modi and the BJP in 2014 and again in 2019 demands a nuanced exploration of the factors that led to it. Though the role of the middle class and the media in the making of what is called the ‘Modi Wave’ is often talked about, a clear-eyed and unbiased look at how they transformed[Read More…]
‘What lies ahead? Reimagining the world. Only that.’ With these above lines, Arundhati Roy ended her introduction and they reflect what Roy set out to do in the book ‘Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction’. In the nine essays in this book, most of which are previously published or given as lectures between 2018 and 2020, Roy explores the important events of[Read More…]
A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a new book. It discusses the role of what might be called decision trees in science, in linguistics, in philosophy and literature, and in our daily lives. The book may be downloaded and circulated free of charge from the following link: http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/The-Road-Not-Taken-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf Decision trees During each human[Read More…]
…the nine essays are a fitting tribute to the inventive beauty of Gandhiji and its wide-ranging applicability in present-day society… As India celebrated the sesquicentennial of MK Gandhi last year, Marg had come out with a special issue on the lesser-known aspects of Gandhi’s engagement with aesthetics. Gandhiji’s aesthetics was two-fold: one, it was a quest for exquisiteness and two; it was a[Read More…]
Book Review – Economyths: 11 Ways Economics Gets it Wrong By David Orrel At the beginning of the year, Bloomberg.com predicted that 2008 would be a year of prosperity, based on forecasts by financial pundits. The growth rate for the year was forecast at 11 percent. No one had even a hint of the impending massive economic collapse. By the[Read More…]
INTRODUCTION My warmest salutes to Alpa Shah for writing her book ‘Night March’ of the Guerrillas. I hardly have an adjective to express my admiration for such a scholastic and creative work which is a vivid firsthand experience of her most penetrative travels in Jharkhand. Above all she was a very witness to the crusaders of liberation, living like one[Read More…]
Caste plays a role at every stage of an Indian’s economic life: in school, university, the labor market, and into old age. The influence of caste extends beyond private economic activity into the public sphere, where caste politics determines access to public resources. Sure, there has been a convergence in education, occupations, income, and access to public resources across caste[Read More…]
Title: India Dissents — 3,000 Years of Difference, Doubt and Argument Editor: Ashok Vajpeyi Publisher: Speaking Tiger, 2020 Every man loves liberty and freedom. Do not interfere with another’s freedom. – Gautam Buddha They say inside the heart of a black hole there is a point of singularity. A point of singularity is where no laws of nature exist, like[Read More…]
Political scientists Alan Chong and Quang Min Pham bring with their edited volume, Critical Reflections on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020), originality as well as dimensions and perspectives to the discussion about the Belt and Road that are highly relevant but often either unrecognized or underemphasized. The book is about much more than the material aspects of China’s Belt[Read More…]
A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a new book, which discusses the question of how oligarchs maintain their grasp on an excessive share of wealth and power when, as Shelley pointed out, the have-nots are many, while the power-holders are few. http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Ye-are-Many-They-are-Few-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf The Peterloo Massacre Rise, like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number![Read More…]
India has roughly five crore incapacitated people. Persons with Disabilities (PwD) could in fact be as high as 5 – 6% of the total population. Almost half of them are uneducated and a significant number of that populace lives in rural areas. Differently-abled people deserve to progress in all facets of life- whether it is physical, economic, or social. They[Read More…]
Review of “PolyTicks, DeMocKrazy & Mumbo Jumbo: Babus, Mantras, & Netas (Un) Making Our Nation” By Avay Shukla|Forward by Shashi Tharoor. Pippa Rann books & media The public sphere in India- and India’s entire body politic- is virused. Though in the short-term, it suffers from a particularly virulent and persistent strain of neo-liberal Hindutva, the longer-term effects on the surviving[Read More…]
Review of “Dispatches from the Race War” by Tim Wise. City Lights Publishers, forthcoming December 2020 In a few short weeks- achingly painful weeks- the US will hold what is likely the most important Presidential election in its short and violent history. The choices before the populace are telling; the choice we are to make- and its clear which one[Read More…]
Title: Beyond the Fields Author: Aysha Baqir Publisher: Marshall Cavendish International, 2019 Recently, an instagram handle questioned women: “No Men for One day — What if there were no men for 24 hours?” Majority of the women replied that they would go for a walk alone. And this is the year 2020. We are living in a so called modern[Read More…]
Review of Bit Tyrants by Rob Larson. Haymarket Books. Big Tech is in the news daily. In fact, Big Tech makes the news, is the news, and owns the news. To live in the 3rd decade of the 21st century is to be subsumed by the all-encompassing reality that is Tech, whether as a consumer, customer, employee, beneficiary, victim, or[Read More…]
Review of ‘Religious Nationalism – Social Perceptions and Violence : Sectarianism on Political Chessboard‘ by Ram Puniyani, Media House 2020 “Blatant dictatorship – in the form of fascism, communism, or military rule – has disappeared across much of the world. Military coups and other violent seizures of power are rare. Most countries hold regular elections. Democracies still die, but by[Read More…]
Hatemonger – Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda. Jean Guerrero. William Morrow/HarperCollins, New York, 2020. While browsing the History/Politics section of a local bookstore the number of works devoted to the many aspects of Donald Trump was quite amazing, but considering his impact on current events domestically and globally probably not truly surprising. Unable to decide which[Read More…]
Book Review The Future We Choose: Surviving the climate crisis Authors: Christiania Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac Published: February 2020 Never before have I come across a book that literally screams out to the reader to be the change that you wish to see. And that also with practical imperatives. This is an essential read for all those who wish to[Read More…]
Based on remarks at the RSIS book launch of Alan Chong and Quang Minh Pham (eds), Critical Reflections on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Palgrave MacMillan, 2020 Political scientists Alan Chong and Quang Min Pham bring with their edited volume originality as well as dimensions and perspectives to the discussion about the Belt and Road that are highly relevant but[Read More…]
By the end of September 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic registered 34 million infection cases with one million deaths globally. Notwithstanding Donald Trump’s ultra-nationalistic “America Frist” policy, the USA had, for weeks on end, taken the lead when it came to total deaths with 210,000 deaths and by the end of September it had a total of seven million Coronavirus cases.[Read More…]
Review of “Azadi” by Arundhati Roy In approximately 5 weeks the United States will hold the most important Presidential election in its short and violent history. Bookmakers and Psephologists alike think of it as a 50-50 proposition. The incumbent Donald Trump has been hinting that the election, whatever the result, will be tainted, rigged and that, as such, he would[Read More…]
Title: Love is not a word: The Culture and Politics of Desire Editor: Debotri Dhar Publisher: Speaking Tiger, 2020 Love is not a word: The Culture and Politics of Desire edited by Debotri Dhar is a timely and illuminating book. It asks the right questions, sets up the debate on issues which need to be debated in order to bring the many[Read More…]
Chris Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance: Politics and The Promise of Bhagat Singh, 2019, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, Pages 282 Chris Moffat has been a British researcher doing research on Bhagat Singh since years and spent quite a lot of time in Delhi and Punjab on both sides of the Indo-Pak border. This book is result of his rigorously academic,[Read More…]
Despite its publication and release in 2012, both the book entitled, Disenchanting India: Organized Rationalism and criticism of Religion in India, and the theme it attempts to capture stand understated today. Johannes Quack, ethnologist of Religion Studies from Frankfurt, began work on the book as his Master’s thesis project in 2009, which was released in the market as a published[Read More…]
A state-owned initiative in India is called a public sector undertaking or a public sector enterprise. These establishments are owned by the union government or one of the many state governments or both. The company stock needs to be majority-owned by the government to be a PSU. Public sector enterprises in India have now and always been the whipping boys[Read More…]
Noam Chomsky. 2004. Hegemony or Survival. Australia. Penguin Books. 301 pages, ISBN: 978-0I4I-03734-9. A$9.95rrp “Either you are with us or against us” Noam Chomsky has written one of the boldest pieces in the form of Hegemony or Survival. It aims to dissect the grand strategy of Imperialism of United States since the beginning of 20th Century. The very word hegemony[Read More…]
There can be, and have been, countless books on Kashmir and Kashmiris. Given its geopolitical importance in the Indian subcontinent and the constant needling by Pakistan, Kashmir has been a boiling point in the relationship between the two disagreeing neighbors. It has now been a year since the Indian government changed the status of Kashmir by making amendments to Articles[Read More…]
Black Wave – Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unravelled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East. Kim Ghattas. Henry Holt & Company, NewYork, 2020. Among the many books analyzing the Middle East, Kim Ghattas’ Black Wave is outstanding – that not necessarily being a good thing. It is very good as it presents what the[Read More…]
Shimla Diary is a literary-cultural chronicle and a documentation of its times and society, with a keen focus on the world of Hindi journalism. Well-known poet and journalist Pramod Kaunswal, who has seen Hindi journalism in Shimla, Chandigarh and Punjab at close quarters, pens his impressions of the book. This is not just a book review but a brief and[Read More…]
Don Fitz’s new book Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution was going to press at Monthly Review in early spring, as the pandemic was ramping up, so he had just barely enough time to slip in a postscript teasingly titled, “How Che Guevara Taught Cuba to Confront COVID-19.” The postscript puts an exclamation mark on the medical history of Cuba[Read More…]
Few years back, at a book release function, Prof. Abdul Gani Bhat remarked , “I have not read the book but the author.” I have been reading the author Mushtaque Barq , the author , columnist, short story writer, poet , translator and what not. He has now joined the group of novelists and come up with a novel titled[Read More…]
There couldn’t be a better audience than the youngsters for a book on the environment. If the youth are the harbingers of change, it is they who will have to care more about the earth and the environment. This new book on India’s environmental history is a commendable work simply for the reason that it is written for children. ‘Unearthed:[Read More…]
Book Review Oral History of Indian Freedom Movement By Dr Licy Bharucha; Pp240; Rs 300; Published by National Museum of Indian Freedom Movement The Congress has won political freedom, but it has yet to win economic freedom, social and moral freedom. These freedoms are harder than the political, if only because they are constructive, less exciting and not spectacular. -Mahatma[Read More…]
Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies – Critical and Lyrical Essays. Edward Curtin. Clarity Press, Atlanta, Georgia. 2020. In the introduction to “Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies – Critical and Lyrical Essays” Edward Curtin writes, “…We live in the era of massive fraud where the transnational wealthy elites, led by the American war and propaganda machine, continue[Read More…]
A review of Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies: Critical and Lyrical Essays, by Edward Curtin. (Atlanta, GA, Clarity Press, Inc. 349 pp. 2020.) “There’s something happening here What it is ain’t exactly clear.” –Buffalo Springfield, “For What It’s Worth.” Happily receiving my review copy of Edward Curtin’s new book, the first thing I noticed, naturally enough,[Read More…]
Biochemist, writer, humanitarian activist, and artist, Gideon Polya has had a selection of his essays gathered into a compendium titled US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide (Korsgaard Publishing, 2020). The compendium is important because it brings to the forefront, for anyone who cares an iota for peace and social justice, the horrible crimes of the “mendacious and politically dominant[Read More…]
America commemorates the 19th anniversary of 9/11. The BBC broadcasted live from Somerset County, Pennsylvania, that President Donald Trump and the First Lady Melania attended. The mainstream U. S. media just showed clips of the bells, which ring after every name of the victims from the plane cash in Shanksville was read. Didn’t they report because Trump attended the[Read More…]
Lessons for today from the 1960’s Everyone agrees that the 1960’s were very special. Those of us who lived through that era remember it as a time when the danger of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union was very real indeed. The world came extremely close to disaster during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In[Read More…]
A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book entitled “Some Aspects of Quantum Theory”. The book may be downloaded and circulated free of charge from the following link: http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Some-Aspects-of-Quantum-Theory-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf What readers may expect to find in the book I hope that this book will be of interest to students and researchers in mathematics,[Read More…]
On the Trail of Buddha—A Journey to the East is ‘a unique sojourn in the search of the spiritual, philosophical, and cultural linkages that bind India to the East Asian civilizations. From the wandering monks of Asia to the temples and monasteries they visited; from the statues and frescoes in grottoes to those in the museums; from the diverse ethnicities[Read More…]
Self-deprecating humour is a survival strategy of human beings, and coping mechanism of the society during the dark times. That is true to the letter as well as to the spirit when it comes to Avay Shukla’s book ‘PolyTicks, DeMocKrazy & MumboJumbo’. It is an insider masterpiece of political satire on Indian society and politics from 2014 to 2020. The[Read More…]
Like the wandering and rascally Odysseus upon whom he models his life, Oliver Stone is “double-minded” in the most profound and illuminating ways. The title of his fantastic new memoir is a case in point. “One of the first basic lessons in filming,” he writes, “is chasing the light. Without it, you have nothing – no exposure that can be[Read More…]
On August 6, 1945, at 8.15 am, an atom bomb was dropped at Hiroshima to end World War II. Archana Mohan takes us on a journey through a novel which gives the story of before and after the bombing & currently lauded and promoted by the United Nations for peacekeeping. Title: The Last Cherry Blossom Author: Kathleen Burkinshaw When a book opens with[Read More…]
Understanding the War Industry. Christian Sorensen. Clarity Press, Atlanta, Georgia. 2020. For reader’s wondering about the state of the U.S. economy this work by Christian Sorensen provides a small encyclopedic compendium of information relating the war industry to the overall U.S. economy and U.S. foreign and domestic policies in many spheres. He states his main ideas clearly and plainly and[Read More…]
Title: Dara Shukoh: The Man who would be King Author: Avik Chanda Publisher: Harper Collins, 2019 Scanning the list of books already written on Dara Shukoh, I wondered why the author had chosen to write yet another book about Dara Shukoh, but that was before I came across Avik Chanda’s impressive work. A magnificent tome, it is richly palimpsestic and[Read More…]
What do we expect from an author who is a story teller, an international development strategist and a gender policy specialist? A lot to be sure. A Master’s degree holder in Public Administration from Harvard University, an equal grade in International Relations from the University of Warwick, a policymaker Health, Nutrition and Gender portfolios with the Government of India[Read More…]
Cruelty or Humanity by Em.Prof. Stuart Rees, is essential reading in our present tumult and bedlam of human cruelty. Rees is a stalwart man of peace; he is the founder of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney and of the prestigious Sydney Peace Foundation and Cruelty or Humanity is his unflinching Summa Pax propelled[Read More…]
In a haunting memoir, Piera Sonnino has narrated her devastating experience as a twenty-two-year Italian Jewish woman. She lost her parents and three brothers in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. She is the only holocaust survivor in her family. Her memoir, ‘This has happened: An Italian Family in Auschwitz’ provides a moving account of unspeakable evils of Nazism. The[Read More…]
How the West Stole Democracy From the Arabs. Elizabeth F. Thomson. Atlantic Monthly Press, NewYork, 2020. Having just read The War That Ended Peace [https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-war-that-ended-peace-book-review/] the title How the West Stole Democracy From the Arabs appeared as an intriguing and fortuitous follow up. Its subtitle describes its more narrow focus: The Syrian-Arab Congress of 1920 and the Destruction of[Read More…]
There are two good reasons to read John Martinkus’ most recent book, The Road: Uprising in West Papua. First reason; as an act of defiant resistance to the censorship on the truth of the 50 years of Indonesia’s brutal occupation of West Papua endorsed by western governments mainly Australia, USA, the UN. Through his own experiences and those of his colleagues such[Read More…]
Title: The Other Side of the Divide – A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan Author: Sameer Arshad Khatlani Publisher: Penguin Random House, 2020 Journalist Sameer Arshad Khatlani’s maiden book, The Other Side of the Divide – A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan, published end February 2020, seemed to, at the outset, suffer the fate that the India- Pakistan relationship[Read More…]
When a defense researcher and an aggressive reporter takes us into the White House Situation Room, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s “Tank” in the Pentagon, and the gigantic chambers of Strategic Command to bring the myriad stories of how America’s presidents and generals have thought about, threatened, broached, and just about avoided nuclear war, it is bound to be an exceptional[Read More…]
I am a long-time Countercurrents correspondent and on 4 June 2020 published in Germany a large book entitled “US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” that is substantially based on articles I have published in Countercurrents as well as in other progressive media over the last 2 decades. Despite thousands of Mainstream journalists around the world being informed over the[Read More…]
Human nature as a central theme of philosophy What is human nature? Are we humans good or evil? To what extent is the character of a person produced by heredity, and to what extent by environment? Is competition more central to our existence than cooperation, or is it the other way around? How can a happy, peaceful and stable society[Read More…]
On a recent hiking trip I took along Margaret MacMillan’s pre World War I history, “The War That Ended Peace – The Road to 1914” (Penguin Canada, 2013). It is a well written history that I have read before – and may have formally reviewed although that is not of consequence now. It is a book I highly recommend as[Read More…]
“My father was working in his garden, like he always did, though he appeared calmer. But every time I saw him, I would feel a quiet panic. I lacked the vocabulary, the courage and the cruelty I needed to tell him that I was not the son he expected me to be. And if I did, would he understand?” The[Read More…]
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…]
I met Tony Joseph, the author of Early Indians – the History of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From[1], first in Jaipur Literature Festival in 2019 and next at Mathrubhoomi Literature Festival in January, 2020 at Thivanthapuram. I had a lengthy discussion about his understanding of goats, buffalos, cows and so on, caste and race relations in ancient India[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…]
Co-Written by Firdous Hameed Parey & Ishfaq Abdullah “Secrets of Kashmir Valley” is written by a well known and reputed Author Farhana Qazi. The Author is an American scholar with good reputation of writing on conflicts in the Islamic world. The book has 308 pages and its publication[Read More…]
A daughter still waits for her father to wed her off. A wife searches for her husband. And a mother still pines for her son and waits for him to be a pallbearer when she dies. Shahnaz Bashir The continuous conflictive conditions in Kashmir and its illegal occupation by the Indian military have caused a massive and unimaginable devastation mainly[Read More…]
Book Review of A Dictionary Of Foreign Dreams by Slovakian Poet Pavol Janik by Sarita Jenamani Fall of Berlin Wall thirty years ago had marked the end of an era in the European history: the division between capitalist West and the satellite states of Russia, that is, the East Europe. The cold war and the iron curtain had pushed the entire East Europe into[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…]
A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book, which discusses the most serious dangers which the world faces today. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link: http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Linked-Dangers-to-Civilization-John-Scales-Avery.pdf Contrasting rates of change Cultural evolution depends on the non-genetic storage, transmission, diffusion and utilization of information. The development of human[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…]
Climate change is a nagging issue for many people because it is so big, diverse, and overwhelming, as big as the planet itself. So, how to explain climate change? Sociologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and even anthropologists and economists have tackled the phenomenon of Climate Weltschmerz, meaning people experience angst as the enormity of climate change overrides sensibilities, and sanity, and sadly[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…]
I would like to announce the publication of a book, which reviews the lives and thoughts of some of the women and men who have addressed the crucial problems of ecology and sustainability that we are currently facing. I have tried to let them speak to us in their own words. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from[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…]
Reviewer: Abid Ahmad Shah Book: Kashmir-Rage and Reason Author: Gowhar Geelani Publisher: Rupa Publications Price: 395 Kashmir is glorified the world over as paradise on the earth, second to Switzerland in terms of scenic beauty, serene valleys, calm and fresh waters and colourful flora and fauna. But, beyond the gaze of this whole matrix lies a narrative of pains,[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…]
“We can never forget that everything that Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal,’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did was ‘illegal.’ It was ‘illegal’ to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany, but I am sure that if I lived in Germany during that time I would have comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal… we[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…]
The just-released autobiography of Prof. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a unique project of substance as it comprises the discourse of production and intellectuality. A discourse of this kind was/is nowhere figured in any autobiography written by notable Indian scholar or politician. In India, the autobiographies like ‘The Story of My Experiments with Truth’ of Mahatma Gandhi, ‘My Search of Truth’[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…]
Co-Written by Badre Alam Khan and Sanjay Kumar The Republic of Caste: Thinking equality in time of Neoliberal Hindutva by Anand Teltumbde, Delhi: Navayana, (2018), pp 432, Rs,600. Anand Teltumbde is a prominent public intellectual and civil rights activist. He is presently general secretary of the committee for protection of democratic rights. He is also associated with the All India forum for[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…]
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 9/11Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation by David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth If you want to fathom today’s world, absolutely nothing is more important than to understand the truth about the attacks of September 11, 2001. This is the definitive book on the subject. For seventeen years we have been subjected to an onslaught of U.S.[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…]
One of my first memories of watching TV during the early 1950s was ads promoting leaded gasoline for reducing engine knock. Little did I suspect the strange history of that gas. By the beginning of World War I, it became clear that the internal combustion automobile was edging out its rival steam cars and electric cars. Shortly afterwards, Thomas Midgley[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…]
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…]
With the escalating doom of climate change hovering over us, it is tempting to push nuclear horror to the back of our minds. To those of us who grew up in the 1950s, it was omnipresent. Nuclear war could not exist without nuclear power and on April 26, 1986 the world experienced a form of nuclear horror it will[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 Barry17@rogers.com 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…]
The Italian chemistry professor Ugo Bardi has written a book about the Seneca effect. He refers to the abrupt collapse of systems: observed in avalanches and balloons, but also in financial market bubbles and powerful empires. By Jantje Hannover When a balloon bursts or an avalanche takes place, it is a network structure that suddenly reorganizes. (image stock & people /[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…]
A review of a new book “Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival” by P. Carter, E. Woodworth and J. Hansen “We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet.”(Professor Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impacts). The extreme rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) since the onset of the industrial[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.
After Arundhati Roy’s Booker Prize-winning novel “The God of Small Things” the world had been waiting for 20 years for her second novel. Arundhati Roy’s “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” has been well worth the wait – it is a marvellous feast of poetry, prose, characters, causes, good, evil, the expected and the unexpected by a master story-teller and truth-teller[Read More…]
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic (Jhon Kennedy). A myth is a story that survives till it is debunked & during the period of its currency it is more portent & powerful than history. Myth is what we call other people’s religion and[Read More…]
Book Review of Bruce Hoffman’s “Inside Terrorism” (Columbia University Press, 2006)The author, Bruce Hoffman, was for a long time a director at RAND Corporation in Washington, which he designates in his book as an “independent, objective, nonpartisan research institution” (p. xi).As an external observer, researcher and author, I have followed with keen interest for many years the debate surrounding the[Read More…]
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…]
The Betrayal of India, Pharos, New Delhi 2017, 905 pp. Perhaps the FBI needs guys like Elias Davidsson to solve the circumstances of the 9/11 attacks. Could he have been successful within such an organization? Usually, the FBI investigators can only go so far as their superiors want them to go. That’s why a highly qualified researcher such as Davidsson[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…]
“A People’s History of the World is an indispensable volume on my reference bookshelf.” — Howard Zinn Over the course of several months this year, I surveyed four-year college and university History departments at select academic institutions in the fifty United States. To determine whether or not professors thought slavery caused racism or racism caused slavery. I also addressed the same[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…]
The second book from Countercurrents.org publishing is out. It is a book on the cow politics in India and the resultant lynchings that’s happening around the country. It is titled “The Political Economy Of Beef Ban”. This volume contains 57 articles on beef and the politics around it, how it has affected the social fabric of India and the people,[Read More…]
Having just bought the novel, I read Sukamaran’s reluctantly negative review of Arundhati Roy’s, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and discovered for myself that I had not entered “The Ministry of Utmost Boredom” but a world intensely crammed, like India itself, with the vicissitudes and minutae of the human condition ranging from rapture to agony, from goodness and evil[Read More…]
Book Review: India & Communism by B R Ambedkar, Introduction by Anand Teltumbde, Left Word, New Delhi, 2017, p. 156 History repeats itself twice, not infrequently as tragedy for the masses of the people. All across the word, there is the emergence and rise to power of neofascism under various garbs and leaderships–from Hungary’s Viktor Orban to Greece’s Nikos Michaloliakos[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…]
The One Day Of The Year is an iconic play by Alan Seymour about Anzac Day, the Australian and New Zealand war dead remembrance day held on the anniversary of the unsuccessful invasion of Turkey at Gallipoli by the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) on 25 April 1915. Anti-war sentiment expressed on or about Anzac Day has[Read More…]
Arundhati Roy’s latest novel which is being released at Vancouver Summer Festival on June 26 gives voice to the most condemned groups in the world’s so called largest secular democracy. From the transgenders to the tribals and Dalits or the untouchables to the religious minorities, especially Muslims who are forced to live under constant threat in a country currently being[Read More…]
Naomi Klein understands that President Donald J. Trump is a problem, but he is not the problem. In her new book, “No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need”, Klein reminds us to pay attention not only to the style in which Trump governs (a multi-ring circus so routinely corrupt and corrosive that anti-democratic practices seem normal) but in[Read More…]
“NEWS Kashmir Guideline News Service Dozens of Cattle Cross Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri At least 33 cattle including 29 buffaloes have crossed over to Pakistan side in Nowshera sector of Rajouri district in Jammu and Kashmir. According to KGNS, the cattle crossed the LoC in Kalsian sub-sector. ‘The cattle which belong to Ram Saroop, Ashok Kumar, Charan[Read More…]
We are all star dust. From the searing hot liquid magma inside the earth to the dying polar bears in the arctic, from the rainbow in the sky to the enigmatic Mona Lisa, from the first microbe to the most powerful man on earth are made up of star dust. We are all connected. Human beings in their unbridled hubris[Read More…]
These days we rush from one media story to another, trying to keep up with the latest terrorist attack. Yesterday Paris; today London; tomorrow, who knows? These attacks are tragic enough when they are acts of violence by religious extremists who have outsmarted our police and intelligence agencies. But, of course, many of them are actually violent acts facilitated by[Read More…]
Is Israel and its infamous Wall of Separation representative of a modern evolving democratic state, based upon Biblical principles and teachings, as applied towards the original indigenous Palestinian peoples of Palestine, or is it an example of yet another ethnic-cleansing, apartheid state, possessive of the same genocidal-racist tendencies as those 19th century colonial-imperialistic powers – like the United States, Canada,[Read More…]
Climate Emergency Includes the Threat of ‘Nuclear Winter’ 
Assange in jeopardy: US extradition appeal hearing begins in London 
Sudanese PM Returns Home Under Tight Security, says PM’s Office 
Taliban Government gains traction 
Congress, Skulduggery and the Assange Case 
How U.S. Interference in Cuba Creates a False Picture of Its Society 
Despite Cutbacks, ExxonMobil Continues to Fund Climate Science Denial 
A destroyed Afghanistan has been an imperialist priority for 200 years 
Nuclear War is Being Planned! Henry George & Thorstein Veblen Warned War Is Capitalism’s End Game 
Canadian Imperialism 
Lakhbir Singh’s Murder Notwithstanding – A Wake-up Call for the Sikh Community 
An American Coup, A Recurring Nightmare? 
Telangana RTI Circular circumvents transparency mandate 
Israel outlaws six Palestinian human rights groups, branding them “terrorist organisations” 
Condemn The Solitary Confinement And Continuing Harassment Of Bhima Koregaon Prisoners 
Team India 
National Human Rights Commission – from a toothless tiger to a grovelling poodle 
A Historical Perspective of Iconoclasm 
Military Coup in Sudan Ignites Deadly Street Protests, Blow to Democratic Transition 
Biden’s Taiwan gaffe meant no harm 
Cancelling Cartoonists 
The Jadavpur Commune: Students takes on Covid challenge 
Christians on the ‘Hindutva Cross’ 
The Path to a Livable Future Or Will Rich Corporations Trash the Planet? 
Political Islam and Democracy Crisis in North Africa 
IMF Downgrades its Growth Forecast for Asia, says Covid Still ‘Ravaging’ the Region 
Why Is U.S. Military Spending Increasing to New, Outlandish Levels? 
Sinha’s Writing: An Alternative Vision of Socialism 
Ten Strong Reasons Why Ken-Betwa River Link Project Should Be Withdrawn Immediately 
As pandemic brings trade to a halt, Spiti valley farmers start local markets 
Covid woes of MP and UP’s bamboo basket making community 
Astride on a Winged Horse 
Press freedom groups call for charges against Assange to be dropped ahead of US appeal 
Now or Never: Will Glasgow’s COP26 Help Save the World From Disaster? 
The Socialist Cooperative Commonwealth 
Covid-19 vaccine distribution is a global disaster 
There is no escape for Israel from growing Palestinian power 
Yours is not to Reason Why 
A Local Rain-Check Before a Global Summit: What is India Busy with Pre-CoP26? Sacrilege or blasphemy: The dirty attempt to cover up the caste prejudices against Dalits 
This year there was international outrage when a frail 84-year-old Jesuit priest with Parkinson’s disease, Stan Swamy, died after being held in an Indian jail in inhumane conditions, on flimsy charges. When he was eventually moved to hospital, he tested positive for Covid and went on to suffer a cardiac arrest. He had devotedly served the poor and defended their[Read More…]
