Dilip Simeon's blog

Ebrahim Moosa is a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Notre Dame; and the author of  “What Is a Madrasa?”   He has studied  at both  Deoband and Nadwa.  Here is the link to this article  < http://wpo.st/P7IW0 > When we studied together at a madrassa, Rashid Moosagie had a very low opinion of my politics. I was disenchanted by the academic, abstract nature of our curriculum at the Deoband seminary, some 100 miles from New Delhi, where I was enrolled in 1978; I desperately wanted the wisdom of my faith to help shape the world, and I had begun to lose myself in the writings of political Islam. Rashid had just arrived to apprentice under some scholars after completing his religious education elsewhere, and he thought my notion of “applied Islam” was nonsense. The ideas I loved offered heady rhetoric but little substance, he argued. And eventually  I came to agree  with him that the madrassa approach, focused on traditio...

BHOPAL:  When stopped and asked to pay toll, a BJP lawmaker and his supporters attacked the workers manning the toll plaza.  The assault, captured on security cameras, shows Kalu Singh Thakur of the BJP throwing a stone at one of the toll plaza employees. His posse attacks others with a stick. The attack took place on Monday evening in the Mhow district, around 200 kms from the state capital of Bhopal. "Why should I apologize," asked the BJP leader, insisting that he was attacked first. "I'm an MLA, we don't pay toll," he said. The police has accepted his complaint against the workers of the toll plaza. http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/wont-apologise-says-bjp-lawmaker-caught-vandalising-toll-plaza-1210781?pfrom=home-lateststories

One of the first pledges made by Narendra Modi’s government was that it would look to double the amount of coal India extracted, from the 565 million tons in 2014 to 1 billion tonnes by 2020. The government said it was a necessary measure to ensure development as well as provide power to the estimated 300 million Indians who don’t have access to electricity. In the year since, mining permits and environmental clearances have been granted at a rapid pace. The zeal for new mines has been matched by the crackdown on dissent, most notably on environmental groups such as Greenpeace. And communities in coal-rich belts in states like Chhattisgarh say they’re facing unprecedented pressure to give up their lands for mining. Laws empowering these communities have been placed under review. Even though it is India’s most abundant and easily accessible fuel, scientists say India’s decision to back coal will have devastating consequences on the health of the country’s population as well...

SEATTLE: On Monday mornings, fresh recruits line up for an orientation intended to catapult them into Amazon's singular way of working. They are told to forget the "poor habits" they learned at previous jobs, one employee recalled. When they "hit the wall" from the unrelenting pace, there is only one solution: "Climb the wall," others reported. To be the best Amazonians they can be, they should be guided by the leadership principles, 14 rules inscribed on handy laminated cards. When quizzed days later, those with perfect scores earn a virtual award proclaiming, "I'm Peculiar" - the company's proud phrase for overturning workplace conventions. At Amazon, workers are encouraged to tear apart one another's ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are "unreasonably high." The internal phon...

When you think of the globalized economy, you might not think of food. But capital mobility and the legal framework facilitating it have tremendously shaped the food system. It has transformed where and how our food is produced, who grows it, and how it affects the ecosystem. NAFTA’s agricultural provisions allowed American farmers to dump their products on the Mexican market while raising animals fed on cheap American corn. This transformed Mexico. Mexican pig farmers went out of business because pork prices dropped so low. In 1995 Mexico imported 30,000 tons of pork from the United States, and in 2010 it imported 811,000 tons. Mexican hog farmers had to leave their farms to make a living. Some migrated north, becoming undocumented immigrants in the United States. A group of those people found work in a Smithfield Foods processing plant in North Carolina. Smithfield used these immigrants to bust a union-organizing campaign in the plant. When some of those immigrants in turn joine...

NB - This beautifully written meditation on the contemporary human predicament demonstrates the nihilist quality of time as we live it today. Perhaps it has been with us longer than the writer believes, but that is immaterial. For as Hamid says,  we humans have built great superstructures of law, belief, politics and violence out of our fear of the Death we see reflected in ourselves. This is the reign of annihilation, or what he calls permawar. It is entirely up to us as to how long we allow this insane situation to continue.. DS These are anxious times. Terrorism seems an ever-present threat. We watch porn on computers. We are addicted to our phones. For some, religion offers answers … The novelist reflects on what bonds him with the rest of humanity Chapter one: fear of cannibals You occasionally think living in  Pakistan  is an advantage. Since so much is obviously unsayable, you have developed a heightened sensitivity to the ways in which power operates on s...

it makes no sense to sell off valuable assets in the middle of Europe’s worst depression in 70 years. I've just had sight of the  latest privatisation plan for Greece . It's been issued by something called the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund – the vehicle supervised by the European institutions, which has been tasked with selling off an eye-watering €50 billion of Greece's ‘valuable assets’. The fund was a real sticking point because the European institutions wanted to move it to Luxembourg, where they could keep a better eye on it. Anyhow, it's still in Athens, and this document, dated 30 July, details the goodies on sale to international investors who fancy buying up some of the country. We've  attached it to this blog  to give a flavour of what’s up for grabs at the moment. Fourteen regional airports, flying into top tourist hubs, have already gone to a German company, but don’t panic because stock in Athens airport is still on the table, as...