Authorities in Sri Lanka have launched a massive security operation and imposed a curfew after a wave of bombs in churches and hotels in Sri Lankakilledmore than 150 people and injured hundreds.
The eight blasts, some of which officials said were suicide bomb attacks, appeared timed to cause maximum casualties among worshippers attending Easter services.
In one church, St. Sebastian’s in Katuwapitiya, north of the capital, Colombo, more than 50 people had been killed, a police official said. Much of the church roof was blown out in the explosion, with roof tiles and splintered wood littering the floor and pools of blood in between wounded worshippers.
In total, three churches and four hotels were targeted. The other explosion was in a house in Colombo, authorities said... read more:
Sunday, April 21, 2019
Srećko Horvat: ‘The current system is more violent than any revolution’
Up until the collapse
of Yugoslavia in 1991, foreigners were not allowed to visit the beautiful
Dalmatian island of Vis, then home to a major naval base. Two years ago it was
the location for Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, doubling as the fictional Greek
island of Kalokairi.
One way of looking at
the transformation from military redoubt to Hollywood idyll is as a triumph of
freedom of movement over draconian restrictions. But that’s not how the
Croatian philosopher Srećko Horvat sees the resulting media attention, rising
real estate prices and what he calls the “tourist occupation” of Vis, where he
now lives. “Where once there was
a sustainable local community,” he writes in his new book, Poetry from
the Future, “there are weekending easyJet tourists; where fishermen’s boats
once rode at anchor, now luxury yachts are moored.”
You probably haven’t
heard of Horvat, though you will have heard of plenty of people who have. He’s
friends with the former Greek finance minister Yanis
Varoufakis, with whom he set up the Democracy
in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25). He was a regular visitor to Julian
Assange, before he was extracted from the Ecuadorian embassy. He’s also in close contact
with Assange’s friend, the former Baywatch star Pamela
Anderson.
He is a staunch friend
of Slavoj
Žižek, the maverick Slovenian celebrity academic (they co-wrote a book in
2013 entitled What Does Europe Want?), as well as being on good
terms with one of Žižek’s most vituperative critics, the renowned American
academic Noam Chomsky. He also hangs out with the celebrated Mexican
film-maker Alfonso Cuarón.
But at 36, Horvat is
far from being some kind of right-on hanger-on. In fact he’s one of the busiest
leftwing political activists in Europe. Aside from DiEM25, which campaigns to
reform the EU into a “realm of shared prosperity, peace and solidarity”, and
for whom he’s standing in the European elections, he is a founder of the Subversive festival, an
annual jamboree in Zagreb of radical thought that has featured the likes of
Oliver Stone and Antonio Negri, he set up the Philosophical
theatre in the same city, whose contributors have included Adam
Curtis, Vanessa Redgrave and Thomas Piketty.
And he has been involved in everything from Occupy Wall Street to the World
Social Forum and protests about the 2017 G20 Hamburg summit... read more:
Saturday, April 20, 2019
Stephen Marche - The 'debate of the century': what happened when Jordan Peterson debated Slavoj Žižek
The controversial
thinkers debated happiness, capitalism and Marxism in Toronto. It was billed as
a meeting of titans – and that it was not. But it did reveal one telling
commonality. They needed enemies, needed combat, because in their solitudes, they had so little to offer. Both of these men know that they are explicitly throwbacks. They do not have an answer to the real problems that face us: the environment and the rise of China as a successful capitalist state without democracy. (China’s success makes a joke out of the whole premise of the debate: the old-fashioned distinction between communism and capitalism.) Neither can face the reality or the future. Therefore they retreat.
The event was billed as
“the debate of the century”, “The Rumble in the Realm of the Mind”, and it did
have the feel of a heavyweight boxing match: Jordan Peterson, local boy,
against the slapdash Slovenian Slavoj Žižek,
considering “Happiness: Capitalism vs Marxism” in Toronto. Peterson, in his
opening remarks, noted that scalped tickets were selling at higher prices than
the Maple Leafs playoff game happening on the other side of town. He couldn’t
believe it. Who could? Peterson and Žižek
represent a basic fact of intellectual life in the twenty-first century: we are
defined by our enemies.
Peterson has risen to
fame on the basis of his refusal
to pay the usual fealties to political correctness. The size and scope
of his
fame registers more or less exactly the loathing for identity politics
in the general populace, because it certainly isn’t on the quality of his books
that his reputation resides. Žižek is also defined, and has been for years, by
his contempt for postmodern theory and, by extension, the more academic
dimensions of political correctness. Peterson’s opening
remarks were disappointing even for his fans in the audience. They were a vague
and not particularly informed (by his own admission) reading of The Communist
Manifesto. His comments on one of the greatest feats of human rhetoric were
full of expressions like “You have to give the devil his due” and “This is a
weird one” and “Almost all ideas are wrong”.
I’ve been a professor,
so I know what it’s like to wake up with a class scheduled and no lecture
prepared. It felt like that. He wandered between the Paleolithic period and
small business management, appearing to know as little about the former as the
latter. Watching him, I was amazed that anyone had ever taken him seriously
enough to hate him.
Ravish Kumar: Why the Modi Voter Has Fallen Silent
The BJP’s 2019
election drive has shaken off every association with the 2014 poll campaign. To
put it baldly, 2019 is all about an excision of the memory of 2014. Seeing the
party’s campaign posters, one gets an unerring feeling that the very mention of
the last Lok Sabha campaign has it running scared.
The BJP has stuck new
posters over those of five years ago – new issues are being marketed and
the forced taglines are glaringly obvious. The analogy that comes to mind is of
a schoolboy who fails his exams and comes home saying that many students have
failed, because their answer sheets had not been properly evaluated. Similarly,
in Modi’s case, his residual political success comes from the fact that
opposition politicians and their parties too have nothing to show except
failure.
There is one more
thing – at home the schoolboy might dress up his failure by saying that other
students have also failed, but in the neighbourhood he tells everyone that he
has cleared his exams. Of course, he is careful not to show his report card to
anybody. This is the story of more than 50% of the students in the Indian
education system – and this is the story of Narendra Modi as well.
It is astonishing that
the BJPs campaign posters have no mention whatsoever of the slogans of 2014;
one wonders where they have vanished. Moreover, in the previous Lok Sabha
election, people took it upon themselves to promote the party’s campaign, make
the slogans their own. This time around, if not for playing politics over the
army or the anti-satellite weapon programme led by the Defence Research and
Development Organisation and the Indian Space Research Organisation, Modi would
not have had a single issue to put up on his election poster.
As the man who has
ostensibly hounded terrorism out, he stares out from the posters with a stern
gaze. In Hajipur, on the way to the Digha Bridge, one comes across a poster
lauding him for the successful anti-satellite missile test. The image that
springs to mind is of a student who comes home and shows his mother not his
bare exercise book but the full notebook of a classmate.
In 2014, Modi sold the
people a dream. In 2019, he is hawking his failure... read more:
Friday, April 19, 2019
MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ: The End of the End of History
What does it mean to live in a world in which history has rusted under the monstrous weight of the permanent now? It is no coincidence that the Trump-led
right has harnessed this history-resistant style of politics to launch an
all-out assault on history as we know it. From Trump’s never-ending lies and
attacks on the media to the GOP’s ramped-up war on academia, from white
supremacist rallies defending Confederate monuments to conservative pundits
discounting the role of slavery in the Civil War, there is, indeed, a war going
on over the terrain of remembrance..
Among the prizes at stake in the endless war of politics is history itself. The battle for power is always a battle to determine who gets remembered, how they will be recalled, where and in what forms their memories will be preserved. In this battle, there is no room for neutral parties: every history and counter-history must fight and scrap and claw and spread and lodge itself in the world, lest it be forgotten or forcibly erased. All history, in this sense, is the history of empire - a bid for control of that greatest expanse of territory, the past.
see also
Articles on ideology in East Europe
Among the prizes at stake in the endless war of politics is history itself. The battle for power is always a battle to determine who gets remembered, how they will be recalled, where and in what forms their memories will be preserved. In this battle, there is no room for neutral parties: every history and counter-history must fight and scrap and claw and spread and lodge itself in the world, lest it be forgotten or forcibly erased. All history, in this sense, is the history of empire - a bid for control of that greatest expanse of territory, the past.
All history is the
history of empire - a bid for control of that greatest expanse of territory, the
past.
The greatest act of
empire, of course, is to declare the whole messy, brutal process finished, to
climb to the top of the trash heap and trumpet one’s reign as the culmination
of all history. The greatest act of history, on the other hand, is to reveal
such declarations to be always premature. Seneca’s Pax Romana announced a
history stilled by the glorious rise of Augustus, the “sun that never set”
shone on the image of time frozen at the height of the British Empire—and the
world spun madly on.
Nearly thirty years
ago, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously called the ball
game once more. In a 1989 essay, which he expanded into the 1992
book The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama prophesied that
the fall of communism signaled “the end of history as such: that is, the end
point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western
liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
Of course, the “end of
history” didn’t mean the end of military conflicts, social upheavals, or
economic booms and busts. It did mean, however, that all boats were ultimately
heading to the same shore; with no more serious contenders on the world stage,
all things were trending toward a global order in which the marriage of market
capitalism and liberal democracy would enjoy eternal dominance. Thus, in
Fukuyama’s view, the endless roil of intra- and international conflicts that
have continually punctured our world during the past three decades has nothing
to do with any world-historical battle between competing social orders. Rather,
it merely represents the thrashing of those parts of the world that are still
mired “in history” as they are compelled down the inevitable path to joining
the “posthistorical” world.
There is a
quasi-religious overtone to all of this - everything in the past has been moving
toward a telos, a predestined end... read more:
http://bostonreview.net/print-issues-politics/maximillian-alvarez-end-end-historysee also
Andrew Calcutt: The surprising origins of ‘post-truth’ – and how it was spawned by the liberal left
Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson - Revisiting Foucault and the Iranian Revolution
Farewell to reality
Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson - Revisiting Foucault and the Iranian Revolution
Farewell to reality
Articles on ideology in East Europe
Thursday, April 18, 2019
GEOFFREY WILDANGER: The Book on Marx That Arendt Never Finished
Hannah Arendt’s unfinished book on Marx offers a timely philosophical dialogue for our era of economic precarity.
The Modern Challenge to Tradition: Hannah Arendt: edited by Barbara Hahn and James McFarland, with Ingo Kieslich and Ingeborg Nordmann. Reviewed by GEOFFREY WILDANGER
In this era of economic precarity and resurgent authoritarianism, it is unsurprising that both Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt occupy a central place in many readers’ minds—and a lingering one on their nightstands. Sales of Capital boomed following the 2008 financial crisis, and Donald Trump offers good reason to read The Origins of Totalitarianism. It is fitting, then, that the new Critical Edition of Arendt’s complete works begins with this, a volume of fragments from an unfinished book originally planned to be called Karl Marx and the Tradition of Political Thought. Sales of Capital boomed following the 2008 financial crisis, and Donald Trump offers good reason to read The Origins of Totalitarianism.
Seyla Benhabib: The Personal Is Not the Political. Arendt maintained that good politics was about the public interest and about the commitment to create a vibrant public life. Good politics should not invade the fragile domain of human attachments and friendships, nor should it force individuals to make public the shadowy and obscure recesses of the human heart
"Exile, Statelessness, and Migration" by Seyla Benhabib - Book Launch and Discussion
Born in Hanover in 1906, Arendt grew up primarily in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) in Eastern Prussia. Her parents were assimilated Jews of the upper middle class and dedicated activists in the Social Democratic Party. She studied philosophy at the University of Marburg under Martin Heidegger, with whom she had an infamous affair, and went on to receive a doctorate under Karl Jaspers at the University of Heidelberg in 1929. Although intensifying anti-Semitism in Germany and the surging influence of the Nazi party made pursuit of an academic post nearly impossible, Arendt received funding to write a habilitation thesis under Heidegger’s supervision. (German professors are traditionally required to write this second doctoral dissertation in order to receive a permanent post.)
Her experience of anti-Semitism drove her to explicit political commitments, and she began to work with Zionist organizations conducting research on the dire state of Germany's Jews. This work made her an enemy of the Nazis, forcing her into exile in 1933 in France. In 1940, she fled to the United States, where she remained for the rest of her life, maintaining a prominent career as a public intellectual and political philosopher.
The first volume of the Critical Edition presents significant new material, previously available only to those willing to sift through manuscripts and typescripts in the Library of Congress. Presenting texts (in both German and English) written between 1951 and 1954, it is a formidable task of intellectual historical reconstruction. It fills in two lacunae in Arendt’s work: the intellectual labor connecting The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) with later books such as The Human Condition (1958), and the development of Arendt’s thought across the 1950s through a series of fragmented engagements with the writings of Marx and through polemics with American and German peers. It is hard to imagine a timelier dialogue. Some of Arendt’s ideas on Marx are incorporated into volumes published during her lifetime, including The Human Condition, and others have since appeared in posthumous volumes edited by Jerome Kohn. What makes this volume unique and rich is that it not only includes previously unpublished texts, but also, by documenting the process of revision, tracks, in detail, her evolving response to Marx’s thought... read more:
The Modern Challenge to Tradition: Hannah Arendt: edited by Barbara Hahn and James McFarland, with Ingo Kieslich and Ingeborg Nordmann. Reviewed by GEOFFREY WILDANGER
In this era of economic precarity and resurgent authoritarianism, it is unsurprising that both Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt occupy a central place in many readers’ minds—and a lingering one on their nightstands. Sales of Capital boomed following the 2008 financial crisis, and Donald Trump offers good reason to read The Origins of Totalitarianism. It is fitting, then, that the new Critical Edition of Arendt’s complete works begins with this, a volume of fragments from an unfinished book originally planned to be called Karl Marx and the Tradition of Political Thought. Sales of Capital boomed following the 2008 financial crisis, and Donald Trump offers good reason to read The Origins of Totalitarianism.
Seyla Benhabib: The Personal Is Not the Political. Arendt maintained that good politics was about the public interest and about the commitment to create a vibrant public life. Good politics should not invade the fragile domain of human attachments and friendships, nor should it force individuals to make public the shadowy and obscure recesses of the human heart
"Exile, Statelessness, and Migration" by Seyla Benhabib - Book Launch and Discussion
Born in Hanover in 1906, Arendt grew up primarily in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) in Eastern Prussia. Her parents were assimilated Jews of the upper middle class and dedicated activists in the Social Democratic Party. She studied philosophy at the University of Marburg under Martin Heidegger, with whom she had an infamous affair, and went on to receive a doctorate under Karl Jaspers at the University of Heidelberg in 1929. Although intensifying anti-Semitism in Germany and the surging influence of the Nazi party made pursuit of an academic post nearly impossible, Arendt received funding to write a habilitation thesis under Heidegger’s supervision. (German professors are traditionally required to write this second doctoral dissertation in order to receive a permanent post.)
Her experience of anti-Semitism drove her to explicit political commitments, and she began to work with Zionist organizations conducting research on the dire state of Germany's Jews. This work made her an enemy of the Nazis, forcing her into exile in 1933 in France. In 1940, she fled to the United States, where she remained for the rest of her life, maintaining a prominent career as a public intellectual and political philosopher.
The first volume of the Critical Edition presents significant new material, previously available only to those willing to sift through manuscripts and typescripts in the Library of Congress. Presenting texts (in both German and English) written between 1951 and 1954, it is a formidable task of intellectual historical reconstruction. It fills in two lacunae in Arendt’s work: the intellectual labor connecting The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) with later books such as The Human Condition (1958), and the development of Arendt’s thought across the 1950s through a series of fragmented engagements with the writings of Marx and through polemics with American and German peers. It is hard to imagine a timelier dialogue. Some of Arendt’s ideas on Marx are incorporated into volumes published during her lifetime, including The Human Condition, and others have since appeared in posthumous volumes edited by Jerome Kohn. What makes this volume unique and rich is that it not only includes previously unpublished texts, but also, by documenting the process of revision, tracks, in detail, her evolving response to Marx’s thought... read more:
Tim Adams - How our capacity for wonder was challenged by the black hole image
It says something
about our historical moment – or about the intrinsic limits of our capacity for
wonder – that the image of this physical reality is so effortlessly normalised.
We probably do less stargazing, as a species, than at any previous moment in
human history, but the old reflex to anthropomorphise the universe, to insist
on ourselves in the centre of it, persists...As TS Eliot observed
in his meditation on Einstein’s space-time continuum in Burnt Norton,
“humankind cannot bear too much reality”. The science proves the black hole is
way beyond most of our understanding, but the evidence now in front of our eyes
reminds us that the simplest principle of the universe remains the hardest for
us to grasp: it’s not about us.
A few years ago, during a period of insomnia, I briefly got into the habit of contributing to the online project Galaxy Zoo. I would log on to a website that presented, one after another, singular images of tens of thousands of galaxies observed by the Hubble telescope, each billions of light years away. There were so many of these images that cosmologists had opened them up to thousands of amateur volunteers to help narrow down the field of those galaxies that warranted closer study.
Peering at my dimmed
computer screen in the early hours, at catherine wheels of stars that perhaps
no human eye had ever seen, I ticked the relevant boxes that would assist in
classifying them – “elliptical or spiral?”; “smooth or fuzzy?” – and then
paused for a while over the open-ended final question: “Is there anything odd
in this image?” (An inquiry that always seemed to beg the reply: “You mean,
beyond the fact that it is a rotating mass of incalculable solar systems that
likely expired untold millions of years ago?”)... read more:
Priyanka Sacheti - 'A pen can change the world': the duo behind the 'world's largest public library'
There are thousands of
street food carts in New Delhi. But only one has the opening lines of Riyazat
Ullah Khan’s poem Wazoodiyat on the side:
Where can the
pauper keep his pain of existence?
He has no container but a heart.
The sticker bearing the couplet is from a campaign called StickLit, which seeks to make literature more accessible by placing quotes in public spaces. Nidhin Kundathil and Manoj Pandey had the idea for the project while contemplating the advertisements, posters and billboards that are consumed almost subliminally on Indian streets. “We thought of turning this [visual] experience on its head to create a completely new and refreshing alternative for passersby – [one] which was not just selling something, for a change,” says Pandey, 32, a freelance writer in Darjeeling.
The idea subsequently
evolved: they would make what they call the world’s largest library – “the
largest repository of good literature in public spaces: a library that’s free
for all”. So they hit the
streets, putting up free-format stickers, posters and wall murals. “Doing
anything on the street is tricky as there are multiple factors to consider,
like police or permissions,” Pandey says. “It’s ironic how we have to run away
for trying to do some good for society.” After starting in
Bengaluru and Delhi in 2017, the project has spread all over India, with volunteers in
various cities taking it up. The stickers are available from the StickLit
website and the founders encourage people to download them and use them freely.... read more:
Libraries
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Ahed Tamimi - After my imprisonment, my little brother has been jailed in Israel. Who will speak up for Palestinian kids like us?
A year ago I was in an
Israeli prison, denied my basic rights and stripped of my childhood. The crime
that led to eight months of incarceration was not mine, but that of Israel’s continued
occupation of Palestine. As with so many child
prisoners who are subjected to the horrors of Israeli military detention, one
of the toughest daily struggles was being separated from my family. Last week,
my family was torn apart once again: this time, Israeli forces came and took
away my 15-year-old brother Mohammed.
This is the price we
pay for Israel’s occupation. Every mother and father is forced to live in fear
of their children being the next target. Palestinians in the West Bank are
subjected to military law, which is used as a tool to repress, silence, and
prevent our resistance to occupation. We do not have equal
rights to the Israeli settlers who live on stolen land in our neighbourhoods.
This prevents us from living normal lives and threatens our existence, but it
is protected by Israel's legal system. Across the West Bank
exists a framework of dual legal systems: Jewish settlers are afforded rights
under Israeli civilian law, while we Palestinians have ours taken away by
military law – two very different processes and outcomes implemented on grounds
of ethnicity. Experts say this meets the definition
of apartheid, and children are not immune from this suffering.
There are currently more
than 200 Palestinian children, including my brother, in Israeli jails. Each
year, Israel arrests and prosecutes around 700 children, some as young as 12.
They are usually accused of throwing stones. After being separated from their
families, exposed to physical, psychological, and emotional abuse, a number
of children are coerced into signing confessions put in front of them by
Israeli interrogators – often in a language they do not understand. Very few
children are granted access to a lawyer or allowed a family member present
during interrogation. With 99 per cent of court cases against Palestinians
resulting in conviction, signing a confession and making a plea bargain is
often presented as the fastest way of being released and reunited with family.
read more:
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/israel-ahed-tamimi-palestine-brother-mohammed-prison-netanyahu-a8872771.htmlCaste Struggle and Colonialism dropped from NCERT school textbooks
NCERT had drawn widespread criticism in March for its decision to delete a chapter on the Channar Revolt, the 19th-century agitation by lower-caste Nadar women in the erstwhile kingdom of Travancore from the Class 9 history textbook in Kerala. The Channar Revolt, or the upper cloth movement, which took place between 1813 and 1859, saw Nadar women defying diktats imposed by the upper castes that lower caste men and women must not clothe their upper bodies.
In the
guise of lessening the student’s burden, caste struggles, farm labour and
colonialism were dropped from students textbooks in the second textbook review
by the current government. In the latest textbook review, the NCERT has removed three chapters from ‘India
and the Contemporary World – II’ history textbook of class 10 beginning
this academic year. Since the current government came to power, this is the
second textbook revision on the basis of the curriculum rationalisation
exercise undertaken by the HRD Minister Prakash Javedkar as reported by the Indian Express. News of this happening had been circulating since March.
The report further says that the book is now 72 pages thinner with three fewer chapters. The deleted chapters are- ‘The Nationalist Movement in Indo-China’ which spoke about the rising nationalism in the Indo-China region, its basis for colonialism and the women’s role in the anti-imperialist movement in Vietnam. The second chapter, titled ‘Work Life and Leisure’, talks about the cities of London and Bombay; their growth and its environmental challenges, rising joblessness, increasing makeshift shelters among other things. The last chapter ‘Novels, Society and History’ explains how novels influenced the modern ways of thinking in the West and in India.
The report further says that the book is now 72 pages thinner with three fewer chapters. The deleted chapters are- ‘The Nationalist Movement in Indo-China’ which spoke about the rising nationalism in the Indo-China region, its basis for colonialism and the women’s role in the anti-imperialist movement in Vietnam. The second chapter, titled ‘Work Life and Leisure’, talks about the cities of London and Bombay; their growth and its environmental challenges, rising joblessness, increasing makeshift shelters among other things. The last chapter ‘Novels, Society and History’ explains how novels influenced the modern ways of thinking in the West and in India.
Dominic Rushe - ‘People are finally talking about class’: Astra Taylor on US democracy, socialism and revolution
Astra Taylor hasn’t
always been interested in democracy. “There was this vagueness about the word
that just seemed to be not just corruptible but almost inherently corrupt,”
says the writer, film-maker and activist. “I was attracted to words like
liberation, emancipation, equality, revolution, socialism. Any other word would
get my pulse going more than democracy.” For her, democracy was a word imperial
America used to sell free markets and push its agenda.
Yet Taylor, a lifelong
activist, says that she also always felt there was “a contradiction” inherent
in democracy that puzzled her. For all the cynicism the word attracted, she
could see there was power in an idea meant to strengthen the people, a power
that she explores in her new documentary, What Is Democracy?, and her upcoming
book, Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone.
In the US, the
election of Donald Trump in 2016 sundered the body politic, while that same
year, the Brexit referendum split the UK. Trump has used his office to
undermine the media, the legal system, the electoral process itself and anyone
who questions his will – all while praising dictators and suggesting the US may
one day have “a president for life”.
Russia has shown how
foreign powers can use technology to hack democracy, the economic success of
China’s one-party capitalism has demonstrated a different model, and the
seemingly unstoppable rise of the 1% has laid bare how big money skews the
system. The D word really
started to grip Taylor while she was writing her previous book, The People’s
Platform, a critique of Silicon Valley’s self-interested “utopianism”,
published in 2014. “I wanted to look at what a ‘democratic internet’ would look
like,” she says. “Not an empty, Silicon Valley-type democracy, but a real one.”..
read more:
Critically endangered kākāpō – the world's fattest parrot – has record breeding season
The world’s fattest
species of parrot has had a record-breaking breeding season in New Zealand, with
scientists saying the fortunes of the critically-endangered bird are finally
turning around.
There are only 147
adult kākāpō alive today, although a few hundred years ago they were one of New
Zealand’s most common birds, before being hunted to the brink of extinction,
killed by introduced pests, and losing their forest homes to farming. The nocturnal,
flightless parrot is one of New Zealanders favourite birds, and is known for
its charismatic nature and owl-like face.
Because the population
is so small every kākāpō has a name – including Ruth, Hoki, Suzanne and Zephyr
– and is subject to one of the most intensive management programmes of any
species in the world. Infertility and in-breeding have been long-term issues for
the birds’ reproductive efforts.
But this year 76
kākāpō chicks have hatched and 60 are expected to make it to adulthood, the
result of heavy seeding in the New Zealand bush that has produced an abundance
of the bird’s favourite food: fruit from the Rimu tree, a southern species of
conifer.
Forty-nine out of 50
breeding females laid eggs this year. The
last record-breaking breeding season was in 2016, when 37 chicks fledged... read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/17/critically-endangered-kakapo-the-worlds-fattest-parrot-has-record-breeding-season
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
India witnesses one of the highest female infanticide incidents in the world: study
India has one of the
highest female foeticide incidents in the world. The female child
population in the age group of 0-6 years declined from 78.83 million in 2001 to
75.84 million in 2011. During the period 1991-2011, the child sex ratio (0-6
years) declined from 945 to 914. Apart from Pre-natal
Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994 (PNDT
Act) to address the issue of sex-selective abortion, India also enacted the
Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act in 1971 to regulate access to safe
abortions. The MTP Act of 1971, amended in 2002, allows abortion up to 20 weeks
of pregnancy in cases where “the continuance of the pregnancy would involve a
risk to the life of the pregnant woman or of grave injury to her physical or
mental health”.
The Ministry of Health
and Family Welfare has acknowledged that illegal abortions still outnumber
legal abortions and thousands of women die every year due to complications
resulting from unsafe abortions. According to the Population Research
Institute, at least 12,771,043 sex-selective abortions had taken place in India
between 2000 and 2014. It takes the daily average of sex-selective abortion to
2,332. The under-reporting under the MTP Act has also been a problem
In a first ever global
study on female infanticide by Asian Centre for Human Rights, a Delhi-based NGO
dedicated to protection of human rights, it has been revealed that preference
of son over daughter is a major reason for female infanticide in many countries
around the world. Dowry system in South Asia, which makes daughters “an
unaffordable economic burden”, also contributes to female infanticide.
Titled “Female Infanticide Worldwide: The case for action by the UN
Human Rights Council”, the report makes a continent-wise analysis of
infanticide patterns. It sets the tone by stating that 117 million girls
demographically go “missing” due to sex-selective abortions, as claimed by the
United Nations Population Fund.
Prevailing laws:
Apart from the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Maternal and Infant
Health Care of 1994, Beijing also has the Population and Family Planning Law of
the People’s Republic of China of 2002 that prohibits sex identification of
foetus and sex-selective abortions. In India, the Pre-conception and Prenatal
Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994 (amended in
2003) prohibits sex-selection or disclosure of the sex of the foetus. It also
prohibits sale of “any ultrasound machine or any other equipment capable of
detecting sex of foetus” to persons, laboratories and clinics not registered
under the Act.
Notre Dame through the ages – in pictures
From a
15th-century coronation of an English king, to the liberation of Paris in 1944
and this year’s yellow vest protests, the 850-year old cathedral has stood witness to the sweep of history. For many Parisians, Notre Dame is the very
heart of their city. Thousands of them looked on on Monday night as a fire ravaged the Gothic monument.. see photos and images:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2019/apr/16/notre-dame-through-the-ages-in-pictures
https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2019/apr/16/notre-dame-through-the-ages-in-pictures
Sunday, April 14, 2019
'Stop Parties From Using Armed Forces For Political Gain': Over 150 Veterans Write To President
NB: We owe thanks to these retired officers for maintaining the dignity and secular values of the Indian Armed Forces. The Armed Forces are not the political mascots of the Sangh Parivar, and it is time the shameless misbehaviour of the RSS and its front organisations - of which the BJP is one - is called out. Hopefully the President and the Election Commission India will take note. Sad to say the previous President did not cover himself with glory. DS
In an unprecedented
move, over 150 veterans of India’s armed forces wrote to the President on the
eve of the first phase of the Lok Sabha election urging him to stop parties
from politicising the military and its symbols. The letter, which was
almost marked to the Chief Election Commission, was signed by three former Army
chiefs (General Sunith Francis Rodrigues, General Shankar Roychowdhury, General
Deepak Kapoor), four former Navy chiefs (Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas, Admiral
Vishnu Bhagwat, Admiral Arun Prakash, Admiral Suresh Mehta) and former Air
Force chief, Air Chief Marshal NC Suri.
In the letter, the
veterans call out the “unusual and completely unacceptable practice of
political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border
strikes.” They refer to UP CM Yogi
Adityanath’s speech in which he called the armed forces “Modi ji ki Sena” and
say that the Election Commission’s order “do not appear to have resulted in any
substantive change of behaviour and practice on the ground.” The letter reprimands
party workers “seen wearing military uniforms” and the display of “posters and
images with pictures of soldiers and especially of Indian Air Force Wing
Commander Abhinandan Varthaman”.
The veterans say
political parties and candidates seem to be acting in total disregard of model
code of conduct in place during elections. “We fear that such incidents may
only increase as polling day draws near,” the letter says. They urge President
Ram Nath Kovind to take steps to “urgently direct all political parties” to
stop using “the military, military uniforms or symbols, and any actions by
military formations or personnel” for political purposes or agendas.
Thursday, April 11, 2019
Magnus Fiskesjö: China's Thousandfold Guantánamos
With China's assault on scores of leading academics and intellectuals, business as usual is no longer possible. The recent mass arrests of scores of leading academics and intellectuals in
western China is one of many indications that the Chinese regime's current
campaign against the native Uighur, Kazakh and other peoples is already a
genocide. It is now clearly engaged in "acts committed with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,
as such," as defined in the 1948 international Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The Uighur Human
Rights Project recently counted 386 targeted academics, artists and other prominent
intellectuals as having been arrested by the regime. They probably are
all, if still alive, in the concentration camps in the Xinjiang region, built
there since 2017. The Chinese regime is
clearly carrying out such mass arrests of famous figures, alongside hundreds of
thousands of "ordinary people," to destroy the dignity and very
identity of these indigenous peoples. To achieve this goal, the regime goes after
the most admired artists, writers, academics, poets, clerics, athletes and so
on.
These proud icons are all being sent to lawless brainwashing camps. There,
according to numerous eyewitness testimonies, they are forced to
denounce themselves, their very professional and personal dignity, and bow to
prefabricated verdicts of being "two-faced" secret radicals -- even
though they are long-established, decent, proud leaders of their people. The detainees
are all there on the say-so of the Communist bosses, who are in some cases even
filling the camps by quotas.
Perhaps the most
famous Uighur singer and troubadour of all, Sanubar Tursun, was to have
performed at an international music festival in France in February. Her
cancellation was announced from the stage -- she "disappeared" last
December. The reason can be
nothing other than the great respect for her among her own people. She's also
internationally famous and has performed alongside her Chinese colleague
the pipa artist Wu Man.
But as with the others dragged off, most likely to the camps, we do not know
where she is or what she would be accused of.
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
First ever black hole image released. By Pallab Ghosh
Astronomers have
taken the first ever image of a black hole, which is located in a distant
galaxy.
It measures 40 billion
km across - three million times the size of the Earth - and has been described
by scientists as "a monster". The black hole is 500
million trillion km away and was photographed by a network of eight telescopes
across the world. Details have been
published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters. It was captured by the
Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of eight linked telescopes. Prof Heino Falcke, of
Radboud University in the Netherlands, who proposed the experiment, told BBC
News that the black hole was found in a galaxy called M87.
"What we see is
larger than the size of our entire Solar System," he said. "It has a mass
6.5 billion times that of the Sun. And it is one of the heaviest black holes
that we think exists. It is an absolute monster, the heavyweight champion of
black holes in the Universe."
The image shows an intensely bright
"ring of fire", as Prof Falcke describes it, surrounding a perfectly
circular dark hole. The bright halo is caused by superheated gas falling into
the hole. The light is brighter than all the billions of other stars in the
galaxy combined - which is why it can be seen at such distance from Earth. The edge of the dark
circle at the centre is the point at which the gas enters the black hole, which
is an object that has such a large gravitational pull, not even light can
escape. The image matches what
theoretical physicists and indeed, Hollywood directors, imagined black holes
would look like, according to Dr Ziri Younsi, of University College London -
who is part of the EHT collaboration.
Hannah Devlin: New species of ancient human discovered in Philippines cave
Homo
luzonensis fossils
found in Luzon island cave, dating back up to 67,000 years
World's 'oldest figurative painting' discovered in Borneo cave
A new species of
ancient human, thought to have been under 4ft tall and adapted to climbing
trees, has been discovered in the Philippines, providing
a twist in the story of human evolution.
The specimen,
named Homo luzonensis, was excavated from Callao cave on Luzon
island in the northern Philippines and has been dated to 50,000-67,000 years
ago – when our own ancestors and the Neanderthals were
spreading across Europe and into Asia.
Florent Détroit, of
the Natural History Museum in Paris and the paper’s first author, said the
discovery provided the latest challenge to the fairly straightforward prevalent
narrative of human evolution. It was once thought
that no humans left Africa until about 1.5 million years ago, when a
large-bodied ancient human called Homo erectus set off on a
dispersal that ultimately allowed it to occupy territory spanning Africa and
Spain, China and Indonesia.
Then, according to the
traditional narrative, after a few hundred-thousand years of not much
happening, our own ancestors dispersed from Africa about 50,000 years ago. “We now know that it
was a much more complex evolutionary history, with several distinct species
contemporaneous with Homo sapiens, interbreeding events,
extinctions,” said Détroit. “Homo luzonensis is one of those
species and we will [increasingly see] that a few thousand years back in
time, Homo sapiens was definitely not alone on Earth.”... read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/apr/10/new-species-of-ancient-human-homo-luzonensis-discovered-in-philippines-caveWorld's 'oldest figurative painting' discovered in Borneo cave
Bharat Bhushan: Polls on, but Modi still seeking a grand theme
As voters in 20 states
prepare to cast their ballots for 91 Lok Sabha seats in the first of seven
phases of the general election on April 11, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s
desperation is evident. In this make or break election, he is virtually begging
for votes in the name of the Balakot airstrike and the Pulwama martyrs. It is
as if the Indian Air Force fighter pilots and the Central Reserve Police Force
martyrs were contesting the election on his behalf.
Appealing to an
estimated 15 million first-time voters, he said in Aurangabad: “When you earn
your first salary usually you don’t keep it for yourself. You want to dedicate
it to your mother or sister. Similarly, you can dedicate your vote for the
Balakot airstrike, for the Pulwama attack victims… Will you dedicate your vote
to the brave men who conducted the Balakot strikes, to the CRPF men who lost
their lives in the Pulwama attack?” Prime Minister Modi’s attempt to leverage the death and bravery of the security forces is nothing short of
scandalous.
In 2014, he had mesmerised voters with a
promise of delivering inclusive growth, corruption-free governance, employment
for youth, and the prospect of doubling the income of farmers. Five years
later, people have realised that the trailer was better than the film. Prime Minister Modi could not deliver on
any of his economic promises. Instead, his maverick policies such a
demonetisation destroyed jobs and small businesses. Markets turned chaotic with
the hastily-introduced Goods and Services Tax, which was so badly framed that
it had to be modified a record 376 times within 10 months of its inception... read more:
Le Jardin de Lorixa: The Story of a Forgotten Herbal. Talk by Prof. Kapil Raj Friday April 12, 2019
The Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art and Ardha Matra Collective are happy to invite you to:
Le Jardin de Lorixa: The Story of a
Forgotten Herbal
A talk by Prof. Kapil Raj, moderated by
Samuel Berthet
6:30 pm | Friday, 12 April 2019 | FICA
Reading Room
at FICA Reading Room
F-213/E-2, 2nd Floor,
Old Mehrauli-Badarpur Road,
Lado Sarai, New Delhi 110030
Location pin
FREE ENTRY
Prof. Kapil Raj will present a botanical
treaty composed in Odisha and Bengal between the end of the 17th and the
beginning of the 18th century.
For the European nations that were engaged
in the conquest of the world in the early modern era, making inventories of
local flora was held in priority. Voluminous herbals were prepared by the
Portuguese, the Dutch and the English.
A French surgeon based in Orissa and then
in Chandernagore at the turn of the 18th Century also spent more than three
decades, and a personal fortune, to complete a similar project, resulting in a
14-volume folio herbal, 12 volumes of which contain 725 double-folio
gouache-and-aquarelle paintings of 722 plant species. However, his work was
ignored by Parisian savants. Why?
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Censorship (and organised crime) thrive in Modi's India. Demonetisation Scam Unravelled, media houses impose blackout
Kapil Sibal's press conference today was apparently blanked out by major TV channels. It seems NDTV began showing it and immediately took it off air. Some reports may be seen here. The original sting videos, in which the first claims to be a collaboration by journalists fed up of their organisations' refusal to criticise the government, are lengthy and show the entire scam in a series of parts.
That is available here: https://tnn.world/tsunami-of-
Kapil Sibal of the Congress today showed a video,
claiming it was an expose on currency exchange conducted by the BJP government
after demonetisation. The Congress have also alleged that the Election
Commission is not taking any action against the ruling BJP despite the many
cases of poll code violation reported against them. Sibal has directly
attacked BJP Chief mentioning that the exchange was conducted by a special team
drawn from officials from all departments and it was headed by none other than Amit
Shah himself. Under it, currency from various ministers and business
houses were brought in planes to Hindon Air Base from
where it was taken to the Reserve Bank – at a charge of 35 to
40 per cent. Mr Sibal referred at
the series of investigations and raids that have been taking place over the
last weeks and quoted:
“The biggest scam
in India’s history is demonetisation… It is sad that our agencies will
investigate the opposition, but not those in power.” He also claimed that
despite the existence of many such sting videos, no agency was ready to
undertake any investigation on the ruling government. Sibal did not even
exclude alleging the Election Commission for turning a blind eye. “We have given them
(the Election Commission) so many complaints. They are not acting and we don’t
have the time to go to court since there is hardly any time.”
While calling Demonetisation the
biggest scam in India, Sibal has released a video via his press conference,
where he has named a RAW official, Rahul Shrirang Ratharekar whose Field
Assistant – Cabinet Secretary ID card is visible in the video. Others
named and shown in the video who are allegedly a part of the currency exchange
scam are Sanjay Channe, Indusind Bank Manager from Mumbai
Fort Branch, Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) and others.
UK government accused of 'putting profit before lives' in case aimed at stopping arms exports to Saudi Arabia
The government has
been accused of “putting profit before people’s lives” ahead of the start of a
High Court case aimed at stopping the UK from exporting arms to Saudi Arabia. The case is being
brought by the group Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), which claims there
is “overwhelming evidence” that British-made jets and bombs are being used by
Saudi-led forces to violate international humanitarian law in Yemen.
CAAT says more than
10,000 people have been killed since a Saudi-led coalition began fighting
Houthi rebels in 2015, and UK-made weapons have helped create “a
humanitarian catastrophe”.
CAAT is being backed
by other groups being represented at the hearing, including Human Rights Watch,
Oxfam and Amnesty International, whose strategic litigation director Lucy
Claridge said outside court: “It is time for the UK Government to stop putting
profit before people's lives.
“By selling billions
of pounds worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, ministers are signing a death warrant
for the people of Yemen. "Across Europe,
several countries have stopped selling arms to Saudi Arabia because they know
it goes against their legal obligations and have seen the devastation they are
causing.” CAAT is seeking to
overturn a 2017 High Court ruling in which it was denied a
judicial review of the weapons exports. CAAT had argued the
government was breaching its own export licensing rules, which prevent sales
when there is “a clear risk that the arms might be used in the commission of a
serious violation of international humanitarian law”.
Posts on Khashoggi murder
But the 2017 judges
said the issue of arms sales to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen “was the subject
of intense, genuine concern and debate” by government officials who had better
access to information than NGOs. Secret evidence played
a significant part in the 2017 case and the court delivered a closed judgment
as well as a public ruling. In their public ruling, the judges acknowledged that in
one February 2016 email, senior civil servant Edward Bell said he had
briefed Sajid Javid, then the minister in charge of trade, to
the effect that: “My gut tells me we should suspend [the arms sales]. This
would be prudent and cautious given the acknowledged gaps in knowledge about
Saudi operations.”.. read more:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-arms-sales-saudi-arabia-yemen-legal-case-high-court-bombing-weapons-trade-human-rights-violations-a8861471.htmlsee also
Rod Austin: Mongolian herders who took on a corporate behemoth
Displaced from their
land by multinational mining companies, nomadic herders defied the odds to
preserve their heritage for future generations.
Just 10 years ago, the
district of Khanbogd, in southern Mongolia’s Omnogovi province, was a barely
known region of eastern Asia. That changed with
the discovery
of gold and copper deposits below the seemingly endless Gobi desert,
home to a community of herdsmen who had worked hard to make a living from this
barren land. So when their government forged an agreement that threatened to
deprive them of the land they had owned for generations, they fought back for
their way of life, taking the mining giant Rio Tinto and others to court in
order to safeguard their heritage.
“We hope the fight of
the eight of us can serve as an example all over Mongolia, and for others
who have the same problem with mining,” said Battsengel Lkhamdoorov, leader of
Gobi Soil, the collective that took the mine owners to court. The four-year fight
resulted in a landmark victory, a tripartite settlement that
allows for an equal, mutually sustainable coexistence between mine owners, the
town of Khanbogd and herders.
Mongolia, one of the
least densely populated countries on Earth, has only 1.9 people per sq km. Once
ruled by warlord Genghis Khan, its population consists mainly of herders living
in traditional “gers” – circular white, yurt-like structures, that infrequently
dot the desert landscape, surrounded by sheep, goats, camels and horses.
The construction of
the Oyu Tolgoi – meaning Turquoise Hill – gold and copper mine (pictured below)
was led by Rio Tinto Group, Ivanhoe Mines and the Mongolian government.
Construction began in 2011, displacing the herdsmen, who claim they were reduced
to collecting waste from the mine just to make a living. They soon decided they
had to fight back... read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/apr/08/mongolian-herders-corporate-behemoth
Monday, April 8, 2019
The knights of Bushido : a history of Japanese war crimes during World War II (1958, repub 2002)
The knights of Bushido : a history of Japanese war crimes during World War II
(click the title for an archived PDF)
By Baron Edward Frederick Langley Russell, 1895-1981
(click the title for an archived PDF)
By Baron Edward Frederick Langley Russell, 1895-1981
The war crimes trials at Nuremberg and
Tokyo meted out the Allies’ official justice; Lord Russell of Liverpool’s
sensational bestselling books on Germany’s and Japan’s war crimes decided the
public’s opinion. The Knights of Bushido, Russell’s account of
Japanese brutality in the Pacific in World War II, carefully compiles evidence
given at the trials themselves. Russell describes how the noble founding
principles of the Empire of Japan were perverted by the military into a
systematic campaign of torture, murder, starvation, rape, and destruction.
Notorious incidents like the Nanking Massacre and the Bataan Death March emerge
as merely part of a pattern.
The knights of Bushido
The scourge of the swastika: A short history of Nazi war crimes (1954)
With a new introduction for this edition, The Knights of Bushido details the horrors perpetrated by a military caught up in an ideological fervour. Often expecting death, the Japanese flouted the Geneva Convention (which they refused to ratify). They murdered aircrews, bayoneted prisoners, carried out arbitrary decapitations, and practised medical vivisection. Undoubtedly formidable soldiers, the Japanese were terrible conquerors. Their conduct in the Pacific is a harrowing example of the doctrine of mutual destruction carried to the extreme, and begs the question of what is acceptable -and unacceptable - in total war.
https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-knights-of-bushido-edward-frederick-langley-russell/prod9781510702264.html
The knights of Bushido
The scourge of the swastika: A short history of Nazi war crimes (1954)
With a new introduction for this edition, The Knights of Bushido details the horrors perpetrated by a military caught up in an ideological fervour. Often expecting death, the Japanese flouted the Geneva Convention (which they refused to ratify). They murdered aircrews, bayoneted prisoners, carried out arbitrary decapitations, and practised medical vivisection. Undoubtedly formidable soldiers, the Japanese were terrible conquerors. Their conduct in the Pacific is a harrowing example of the doctrine of mutual destruction carried to the extreme, and begs the question of what is acceptable -and unacceptable - in total war.
Amanda Ruggeri: Skara Brae, first settled 5,000 years ago, is the best-preserved prehistoric village in northern Europe // Ian Sample: Archaeologists discover 'exceptional' site at Lake Titicaca
Orkney’s number of Stone Age sites implies
that the remote Scottish islands once may have been at the centre of it all.
But why? An exciting new discovery could hold the clues.
When the owners
of Brodgar Farm ploughed up a
large notched stone in their field in 2003, they knew it was no normal rock.
Someone had altered it. And given the farm’s location, it wouldn’t have been
surprising if that someone had lived a very, very long time ago. Even so, no one had
any idea of the discovery that lay ahead. “I don’t think anyone
could have predicted what we found,” said head archaeologist Nick Card. “It’s
rewriting aspects of prehistory.”
Within a mile and a half, you’ll also find the Barnhouse Settlement, the remnants of a village inhabited 5,100 years ago; Maeshowe, the most spectacular chambered tomb of its kind in northwest Europe, built around 3,000 BC and forgotten until Vikings broke in in 1153, leaving runes in their wake; and more than a dozen other prehistoric burial mounds, as well as standing stones and slabs. (Before the 2003 discovery, Brodgar Farm already had two ancient standing stones in the front garden). Skara Brae, the best-preserved prehistoric village in all of northern Europe, lies just another five miles away... read more:
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20151210-were-these-remote-wild-islands-the-centre-of-everything
Archaeologists discover 'exceptional' site at Lake Titicaca
An ancient ceremonial
site described as exceptional has been discovered in the Andes by marine
archaeologists, who recovered ritual offerings and the remains of slaughtered
animals from a reef in the middle of Lake Titicaca. The remarkable haul
points to a history of highly charged ceremonies in which the elite of the
region’s Tiwanaku state boated out to the reef and sacrificed young llamas,
seemingly decorated for death, and made offerings of gold and exquisite stone
miniatures to a ray-faced deity, as incense billowed from pottery pumas.
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