Dilip Simeon's blog

Several shots ring out in quick succession, cutting through a clear, blue spring morning in Jenin, in the West Bank. Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack. The cameraman filming the scene scrambles backwards to take cover behind a low concrete wall. Then a man cries out in Arabic: "Injured! Shireen, Shireen, oh man, Shireen! Ambulance!" When the camera operator pans around the corner, Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh can be seen lying motionless, face down on the ground as another Palestinian reporter, Shatha Hanaysha, crouches down beside her, using a tree trunk for cover. Hanaysha reaches out and tries to rouse her as gunshots continue.  There's no response. Both women are wearing helmets and blue protective vests marked "Press." In the moments that follow, a man in a white T-shirt makes several attempts to move Abu Akleh, but is forced back repeatedly by gunfire. Finally, after a few long minutes, he manages to drag her body from the street....

The second US mass shooting in 10 days, which left 18 young children and three adults dead at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday, led to an outpouring of disbelief and potent rage at America’s persistent failure to tackle its epidemic of gun violence.... Donald Trump will be addressing a conference held by National Rifle Association (NRA) in Houston, Texas, on Friday. The event will be strictly gun-controlled in ways the NRA and Trump routinely oppose for any other setting. “Guns won’t be allowed in spaces where Donald Trump and NRA executives are speaking,” Watts said , “because someone might try to kill them.”... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/24/texas-school-shooting-uvalde-gun-violence ********************  America's gun culture - in seven charts In 2020 alone, more than 45,000 Americans died at the end of a barrel of a gun, whether by homicide or suicide, more than any other year on record. The figure represents a 25% increase from five years prior, and a 43% ...

More than 70 years ago, Allied victory in the Second World War brought with it a powerful wave of hatred for all things German. Since the end of the war, the Germans repeatedly accepted responsibility for their actions. They made reparations to the Allied nations and lifelong compensation payments to concentration camp survivors. Nevertheless, it took decades for the hatred to subside in countries that had suffered under their occupation. Today, Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine, committed in the name of of ‘denazification’ and ‘protecting Russian speakers’, have inspired many Ukrainians to reject everything Russian: to try to forget the Russian language and erase all Russian classical literature – with its imperial flavour and patronising of conquered peoples – from memory. How and in what form Ukrainian culture will retain its Russian-speaking component will become clear only when the war ends. But the longer the war continues, the more Russian-speaking culture will suffer in Ukrain...

The primary vote both for the conservative Liberal party and the shapeshifting, slightly self-embarrassed Labor party was down. Both parties were hurt in this case because leaders parachuted candidates into plum seats over the intentions of locals. They were heavily punished for it. The voters also wanted more movement on climate change now that individual Australians know the exorbitant impact fire, drought, flood and ocean surges have had on our huge continent. \Scott Morrison, our prime minister, was going to fool around with coal and gas and carbon capture , and uttered the normal “let the market look after climate” phrases in true neoliberal fashion. The Australians woke up to him, and not only moved the goalposts but dragged them off the paddock. They chose the idea of depending not on gas and coal and carbon capture but voted for a swifter transition. Though a fairly conservative people, they could nonetheless read the signs in the sky.... https://www.theguardian.com/austra...

This article is directed at the Indian diaspora worldwide. Read the article to find out why.     Fifty years ago a young girl selling flowers on a city street in India wasn’t going to be a candidate for the civil services or even graduate from high school. At best, she’d become domestic help. That was then. This is now: Girl who sold flowers on the street in Mumbai with her father, is in a Ph.D. program at JNU and headed to the University of California. One of my recent mentees from a hard-scrabble background has a job at WIPRO as a software engineer Another person, an 8th-grade dropout, works as pharmacist-in-training at one of the top hospitals in India. ( https://feaindia.org/vikram-rai/ ) The new generation, those who are 17 to 25 represent the largest demographic group In India. Their material and intellectual success is India’s future. Their failures will be India’s too. The rich and the privileged alone cannot make the country succeed. They can help to incr...

Decades ago, America’s monied interests bankrolled a Republican establishment that believed in fiscal conservatism, anti-communism and constitutional democracy. Today’s billionaire class is pushing a radically anti-democratic agenda for America – backing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, calling for restrictions on voting and even questioning the value of democracy. Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech financier who is among those leading the charge,  once wrote,  “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Thiel is using his fortune to squelch democracy. He donated $15m to the successful Republican Ohio senatorial primary campaign of JD Vance, who alleges that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden’s immigration policy has meant “ more Democrat voters pouring into this country .” Thiel has donated at least $10m to the Arizona Republican primary race of Blake Masters, who also claims Trump won the 2020 election and  admires  Lee ...

NB: A timely tribute to a great intellectual. I will add something to this account: Ranajit Guha was always a political activist as well as a historian. This article mentions his affiliation with the CPI, and his disaffection with the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956; but it passes over his return to communist politics in the period of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, and his proximity to Naxalism (as Indian Maoism was then called) in the period following 1969. The article carries a passing reference to Ranajit Guha's stay in Delhi in 1970-71 as an academic episode. However, it was also the phase of his association with Naxalite students in the University of Delhi. There is much to be said about that period, not least that it was the seeding period of his decision to found the historiographical school known as  Subaltern Studies . His book  Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India; and his  essay, Domination without Hegemony , in SS...