Dilip Simeon's blog

Everyone in the world knows by now that Ai Weiwei is a man of courage, a devastatingly effective political artist and campaigner. His new exhibition at Blenheim Palace, seat of the dukes of Marlborough and one of Europe’s great secular buildings, reveals that he also has a diabolical sense of humour. Who but a born joker would put on the most comprehensive British survey of his art at a stupendous stately home where it will mostly be seen by visitors who come for the Capability Brown gardens and the tea shop – and perhaps not for the conceptual art. The 88-year-old 11th Duke of Marlborough ambled into his front hall to open the exhibition, welcoming the press amid resounding pilastered grandeur to which Ai has added a colossal chandelier that looks from below like a time machine’s nuclear heart. It drips with magnificence, stealing the show even in these opulent surroundings. After the elderly duke’s benign welcome, one of his sons, Lord Edward Spencer-Churchill, explained why h...

'The bigger principal cause of the systemic failure is the US War Machine, which has been around longer than the debutante Fascist Business Model that made its introduction in 2002. Half the $17 trillion in US Govt debt comes from war spending..' Putin kicked out the Rothschild bankers from his country. Putin interrupted the USGovt heroin trade supply routes out of Afghanistan . Like Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago, the elite banker chambers wish to remove Putin and to suppress Russia , but the sprawling nation has joined at the hip with China . Thus Russia cannot be isolated any more than a bear can be bear hugged. The nation spans 12 time zones and is a top supplier of numerous important commodities. The Russia & China bond is growing and will result in a marriage, the consummation being a baby called the Gold Trade Standard. The King Dollar is being displaced, kicked off its throne. Its squire the Petro-Dollar is undergoing demise. The Ukraine War is the US Dollar W...

In a mass protest 15,000 Hindus, the majority of them Dalits, marched through the streets of Karachi to push for the provincial Government of Sindh in Pakistan to meet their demands for provisions to stop escalating discrimination against Hindus in the region. The protest was sparked by the murder of two Hindu traders in Umerkot, from the marginalised Malhi community. The murders followed a string of attacks on non-muslim communities in the form of murders, kidnappings, forced conversions and attacks on places of worship. The protest was led by Mr. Lal Malhi, a member of National Assembly of Pakistan on seats reserved for minorities.     Umerkot, where the non-Muslim population is in the majority, is increasingly becoming a hub of targeted attacks against the Hindu community. Frequent murders, kidnappings and forced conversion of Hindu women are leading to mass exodus of the local population from the area. During last year’s general elections, the Hindu Community ye...

In Johnathan Franzen’s 2001 novel, “The Corrections,” a disgraced academic named Chip Lambert, who has abandoned Marxist theory in favor of screenwriting, goes to the Strand Bookstore, in downtown Manhattan , to sell off his library of dialectical tomes. The works of Theodor W. Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, Fredric Jameson, and various others cost Chip nearly four thousand dollars to acquire; their resale value is sixty-five. “He turned away from their reproachful spines, remembering how each of them had called out in a bookstore with a promise of a radical critique of late-capitalist society,” Franzen writes. After several more book-selling expeditions, Chip enters a high-end grocery store and walks out with an overpriced filet of wild Norwegian salmon. Anyone who underwent a liberal-arts education in recent decades probably encountered the thorny theorists associated with the Institute for Social Research, better known as the Frankfurt School . Their minatory titles, filled with da...

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION NO.139 OF 2010 1. Dr. Ranjeet Suryakant Mohite, ) 2. Kishore Ramakant Nazare, and ) 3. Subhash Suryakant Ranaware. ).. Petitioners Vs 1.The Union of India, and ) 2.The State of Maharashtra.).. Respondents – Shri Surel S. Shah for the Petitioners. Shri Parag Vyas for Respondent No.1. Shri S.N. Patil, AGP for Respondent No.2. – CORAM : A.S. OKA & A.S.CHANDURKAR, JJ DATE ON WHICH SUBMISSIONS WERE HEARD : 22ND JULY 2014 DATE ON WHICH JUDGMENT IS PRONOUNCED: 23RD SEPTEMBER 2014 ( Signed judgment pronounced by Shri A.S. Oka, J in accordance with Rule 1 (i) of Chapter XI of the Appellate Side Rules as Shri A.S. Chandurkar, J is not available in Bombay and is sitting at Nagpur Bench.) JUDGMENT ( PER A.S. OKA, J ) Notice for final disposal at the admission stage was issued on 12th March 2014. A very interesting issue is raised by the Petitioners. The contention of the Petit...

A US court has ordered Prime Minister  Narendra Modi  to answer allegations that he failed to stop the communal riots in Gujarat in 2002, overshadowing his first trip to the United States in over a decade. The petitioner in the case is the American Justice Center , a non-profit human rights organisation, acting on behalf of two survivors of the 2002 riots in Gujarat . Mr Modi was serving his first term as Chief Minister of his home state when the riots erupted. More than 1,000 people were killed, most of them Muslims. The US court has given Mr Modi 21 days to respond. The civil case before a New York court seeks compensatory and punitive damages from Mr Modi for "crimes against humanity" and extrajudicial killings under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act. "There is evidence to support the conclusion that minister Modi committed both acts of intentional and malicious direction to authorities in India to kill and maim innocent ...

As we watch the fighters of the Islamic State (Isis) rampaging through the Middle East, tearing apart the modern nation-states of Syria and Iraq created by departing European colonialists, it may be difficult to believe we are living in the 21st century. The sight of throngs of  terrified refugees  and the savage and indiscriminate violence is all too reminiscent of barbarian tribes sweeping away the Roman empire, or the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan cutting a swath through China, Anatolia, Russia and eastern Europe, devastating entire cities and massacring their inhabitants. Only the wearily familiar pictures of  bombs falling yet again  on Middle Eastern cities and towns – this time dropped by the United States and a few Arab allies – and the gloomy predictions that this may become another Vietnam, remind us that this is indeed a very modern war. The ferocious cruelty of these jihadist fighters, quoting the Qur’an as they  behead their hapless victims , rai...