Dilip Simeon's blog

When a group of  heavily  armed men on motorbikes  killed four American special ops soldiers in remote Niger last October, it was the first many had heard of the war the US was helping fight against a  local branch of Isis . But their involvement in that fight represents only a fraction of the US presence in the west African country, poor but strategically located in the middle of the Sahel, its borders crisscrossed by extremists and traffickers. And the 800 US defence personnel in  Niger  are not alone. They are one of four western armies that have installed themselves in the vast desert landscape, variously flying armed drones, hunting militants, building vast bases, controlling migration and collecting intelligence from the region. This is what the April protest was about. Ibrahim Diori was arrested at home, and Maïkou Zodi in his car, both charged with participation in a banned demonstration and destruction of public property, even though they ...

NB: These nuggets of wisdom have provided me much intellectual nourishment. I shall keep adding to them and hope that readers will enjoy them:  DS Bhagwadgita Ahara-nidra-bhaya-maithunam ca / samanyam etat pasubhir naranam dharmo hi tesam adhiko viseso / dharmena hinah pasubhih samanah Hunger, sleep, fear and sex are common to men and animals What distinguishes men from animals is the knowledge of right and wrong (Bhagwadgita ; Translated by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, 1948, 1971, p 79) Bhagwadgita Ahara-nidra-bhaya-maithunam ca / samanyam etat pasubhir naranam dharmo hi tesam adhiko viseso / dharmena hinah pasubhih samanah Hunger, sleep, fear and sex are common to men and animals What distinguishes men from animals is the knowledge of right and wrong (Bhagwadgita ; Translated by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, 1948, 1971, p 79) ****************** Lao-Tzu (601-531 BC): When a nation is filled with strife, then do patriots flourish Zhuang Zhi : ...

IN 1922, RABINDRANATH TAGORE published one of his most important works, the play  Mukta-Dhara . The story, rich in symbolism, is a simple yet powerful one. A child of mysterious birth is found abandoned by a mountain waterfall. He is adopted by the royal family and raised as the crown-prince, Abhijit. As he turns into a young man, Abhijit continues to feel close to the falls. He eventually learns that he is not a prince by birth. He discovers a spiritual kinship with the falls. He goes and sleeps below the waterfall at night. When asked by his father, King Ranjit, why he does something so outlandish, he replies, “In the sound of this water, I hear my mother’s voice.” The king has other designs on the mountain stream. He appoints an appropriately named figure, Yantraraj Bibhuti, a famous, pompous engineer, to construct ‘a machine’ to build a dam across it. Those building the dam sing an anthem to the machine, chanting,  ‘Namo yantra, namo yantra .’ When told about the da...

Hon’ble Shri. N. N. Vohra, His Excellency the Governor, State of Jammu and Kashmir, Raj Bhawan, Srinagar Subject : Seeking Solution for Delay, Negligence & Harassment faced by the Non-Migrant Kashmiri Pandits / Kashmiri Hindus for implementation of extension of PM’s Package for Jobs under Relief and Rehabilitation. “A Spark Neglected Burns The House” Esteemed Sir, With reference to the subject cited above, it is most humbly submitted as under: That ever since the amendment of SRO 412 dated 30.12.2009 to SRO 425 dated 10.10.2017 & Issuance of Order No. 96 – DMRR&R of 2017 dated 13.11.2017, wherein State Government in compliance to the Hon’ble High Court direction dated 31.05.2016 passed in OWP No. 1986/2013 titled Kashmiri Pandit Sangarash Samiti and ors Vs. Union of India and Ors reserved 500 posts for Kashmiri Pandit / Hindus educated unemployed youths presently living in the Kashmir Valley since aeons. But, unfortunately, it didn’t went well with others and Si...

D onald Trump’s anti-press rhetoric is “very close to incitement to violence” that would lead to  journalists censoring themselves or being attacked , the outgoing UN human rights commissioner has said. Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, a Jordanian prince and diplomat, is stepping down this month as UN high commissioner for human rights after deciding not to stand for a second four-year term, in the face of a waning commitment among world powers to fighting abuses. Zeid said the Trump administration’s lack of concern about human rights marked a distinct break with previous administrations, and that Trump’s own rhetoric aimed at minorities and at the press was redolent of two of the worst eras of the 20th century, the run-up to the two world wars. In an interview with the Guardian, he singled out the US president’s repeated designation of the press as  “the enemy of the people” . “We began to see a campaign against the media … that could have potentially, and still can, set ...

Ruslan Vakhapov recognised all the prison guards on trial last month for the brutal torture of an inmate in a Yaroslavl prison. They used to be his jailers too. Now free, the former inmate has turned activist, and said he had come to report from one of Russia’s most important prison torture cases in the past decade. His testimony to the Public Verdict Foundation, a Russian human rights NGO, about the brutality meted out inside the prison was later backed up by a 10-minute video of an inmate, Evgeny Makarov, being slowly beaten unconsciousness. “I know all these men, I know them all well,” Vakhapov said in a phone interview from Yaroslav, where he is following, as a representative of Public Verdict, the trial of those accused of beating Makarov. “Who did what, who beats prisoners, who doesn’t. During five and a half years inside, you learn these things.” Vakhapov had already made a name for himself as a whistleblower against rough treatment before he arrived at Yaroslavl’s IK...

Alan Jacobs: The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in An Age of Crisis Reviewed by Ross Douthat In the spring of 1946, W.H. Auden came to Harvard to read  a poem  to the university’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter. Titled “Under Which Lyre: A Reactionary Tract for the Times,” the poem envisioned a postwar world in which, the war-god Ares having quit the field, public life would be dominated by a renewed contest between “the sons of Hermes” and “Apollo’s children” — the motley humanists against the efficient technocrats, the aesthetes and poets and philosophers and theologians against the managers and scientists and financiers and bureaucrats. These two factions, Auden suggested, could ideally coexist: The Apollonian genius is for government and rule, and “the earth would soon, did Hermes run it,/Be like the Balkans.” But the Apollonian spirit, ever ambitious, cannot bear to leave the humanists to their poems and ideas and arguments, and so it seeks to expand its em...