Dilip Simeon's blog

Cobrapost exposes how social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and others are coming in handy for politicians to artificially boost their popularity, and malign their opponents, with help of IT companies across India which specialize in providing customized online reputation management services, for a fee. About two dozen such companies have been uncovered.  There is little social about social media. This is what Operation Blue Virus, an undercover investigation by Cobrapost, shows, uncovering how IT companies across the country are engaged in a racket of reputation management, offering fake fan-following on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, and negative publicity to sully the reputation of a political leader, or a corporate house, for money. Among their clients are corporate houses, big or small, NGOs, scam-tainted senior government officials, individual politicians and political parties. Posing as a front man for an imagined politician from an oppo...

The populist general helped tip Pakistan into dangerous paranoia. Pakistan's "India-centric" army chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, retires on November 29. He has been a popular chief, sworn to non-interference in the civilian system of governance (sic). He espoused this populism till August 14, 2012, when he unaccountably and dangerously — because of the possible reaction from within the army — announced from Kakul in Abbottabad that the war against terrorism was Pakistan's war and that Pakistan's trouble was internal, caused by religious intolerance. Had he remained populist, he would have embraced the universally accepted agitprop saying "it's not our war". As a former ISI boss, he went against the intelligence agency's own line, given to politicians and TV anchors. Populism forced him to be India-centric and anti-US, and in both respects, he hurt Pakistan and made its civilian governance difficult. For 20 years, in various capacities, he ...

The young reporter who has accused Tehelka founder Tarun Tejpal of sexually assaulting her in Goa earlier this month today refuted allegations that the case against him is politically motivated .   Here is her statement: I am heartened by the broad support I have received over the past fortnight. However, I am deeply concerned and very disturbed by insinuations that my complaint is part of a pre-election political conspiracy.  I categorically refute such insinuations and put forward the following arguments: The struggle for women to assert control over their lives and their bodies is most certainly a political one, but feminist politics and its concerns are wider than the narrow universe of our political parties. Thus, I call upon our political parties to resist the temptation to turn a very important discussion about gender, power and violence into a conversation about themselves. Suggestions that I am acting on someone else's behest are only the latest depressing indications...

Nearly 9 million people were mobilized to serve in Britain ’s military during World War I. By the time photographer  Giles Price  started seeking veterans of the war in 2005, there were just 23 left. Even fewer lived long enough to have their portrait taken. “I was aware that very few were still alive and wanted to document them while they were alive,” Price said via email. His series, “The Old Guard,” features portraits of the last 12 veterans of the war, which broke out 100 years ago next summer. At the project’s start, Price wrote letters to each of the veterans requesting to take their photo. Thus commenced a race against time. “I was 20 minutes from taking one sitter when the home rang me to say he had passed that morning. He was 106,” Price said. Price built a small studio in each of the homes he visited and used a studio flash to light the portraits. He shot the centenarians looking upward and ahead, in an effort to place less emphasis on their extreme age and m...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is unlikely to face charges in the US for publishing top secret documents. The Justice Department concluded it will not bring charges against Assange for publishing classified documents. The move comes as government lawyers said they could not do so   without also prosecuting US news organizations and journalists, US officials said. According to the Washington Post, the officials stressed a formal decision has not been made, and a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks remains impaneled. They added there is little possibility of bringing a case against Assange, unless he is implicated in criminal activity other than releasing military and diplomatic documents.  The Obama administration has charged government employees Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning for leaking classified documents with violations of the Espionage Act.  But officials said although Assange published classified documents, he did not leak them. http://www.hindusta...

"I want a piece of land where I can build a home," says Jagan Turi, a tribal based in Purnia, who ekes out a living by doing odd jobs as a labourer.  Last Independence Day, he along with hundreds of other landless tribals stormed a vacant tract of private land running into hundreds of acres, 12km from Purnia town.  The occupants christened the site "August Kranti Nagar", an allusion to what they preferred to describe as a "revolution" in the month of August. Five more attempts were made by landless people to grab land on the same day, but were foiled by the administration, giving rise to a perception that the area, known for its large estates owned by landowners, was witnessing a repeat of the land tussles of the 1960s and 1990s.  In 1967, 14 tribal sharecroppers were massacred at Rupuspur Chandwa in Purnia. It was Bihar's first big massacre and the region has been volatile since. On May 24 this year, a group of tribals burnt alive one Jai Na...

This is the Preface to Susan Neiman's acclaimed study in moral philosophy, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (2002). Links to reviews are available at the bottom of the page The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something - because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his inquiry do not strike a person at all. And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful .  Wittgenstein , Philosophical Investigations , #129 'Every time we make the judgment this ought not to have happened, we are stepping onto a path that leads straight to the problem of evil. Note that it is as little a moral problem, strictly speaking, as it is a theological one. One can call it the point at which ethics and metaphysics, epistemology and aesthetics meet, collide, and throw up their hands. At issue are questi...