Joe Sacco and I spent two years reporting from the poorest pockets of the United States for our book “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.” We went into our nation’s impoverished “sacrifice zones”—the first areas forced to kneel before the dictates of the marketplace—to show what happens when unfettered corporate capitalism and ceaseless economic expansion no longer have external impediments. We wanted to illustrate what unrestrained corporate exploitation does to families, communities and... Featured News
Has India lost the 21st centur...
With 65 percent of the population below the age of 35, India boasts of an unparalleled generational dividend, but are we turning this potential into a disaster? Avalok Langer spots a ticking time bombIt has been a comforting mantra: “The world is ageing, but India has youth on her side.” By the end of the decade, the average age of the Indian population will be 29. In comparison, in China and America it will be 37, 48 in Japan and 45 in western Europe. As a result of this “demographic dividend”, by 2040, a quarter of the globe’s incremental increase ...
May Day Highlights from the In...
This year, Dissent celebrates May Day by reflecting on the events of an action-packed year for labor. We wanted to highlight the work of a rising set of labor journalists who have been reporting on workers’ struggles across the country and internationally. There has been a surge in quality coverage of labor issues, often by younger people, which we hope indicates a continuing trend. As Micah Uetricht, author of this article on last week’s Chicago strikes, noted in an email, “Major news outlets are probably going to continue acting like workers confronting capital is not really a newsworthy issue; hopefully the ...
Bibliocide – They were m...
No civilised person is supposed to make bonfires of books.‘Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings,’ wrote the German poet Heinrich Heine in the century before Nazism. Burning books is a sacrilegious act, and the taboo against it particularly binds writers. So what was I doing in a Somerset field lighting a match under the 32 volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica? In my defence, this was more of a cremation than a burning at the stake. The books were already dead, terminally rotted after years of neglect. If I had committed a crime, it was ...
The Specter of No-Reform
The specter is hunting Indian ruling classes. That is the specter of no further reforms. This is what crossed my mind while I am gluing to the TV channels on the day the Honorable Prime Minister addressed the nation and the panel discussions that were followed the Address. After carefully following the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Address to the Nation, I felt that in the name of cautioning the people from getting carried away by misinformation campaign, the government itself unleashed such a campaign at the national level. The whole logic of the Prime Minister, well prepared by a team ...
Breaking the Silence
Why we don’t talk about inequality—and how to start again 1.The New Challenge of Inequality THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUALITY is having a revolutionary effect on life in contemporary India.” This was the considered assessment of the eminent American political scientist Myron Weiner, writing for Foreign Affairs in 1962. In a society still marked by egregiously obscene forms of inequality, the term “revolutionary” seems extravagant, even five decades after Weiner pronounced his judgment. But determining what constitutes “revolutionary” social change depends on how that change is measured—and in the second decade after Independence, the distance that India had travelled from its starting point ...
We, the Vast Underclass, Must Rise Up Against Global Mafia – or Die
Author Chris Hedges | Source http://truth-out.org | Click here to read | May 24th, 2013 04:47 AM | Articles(கட்டுரைகள்) | No Comment
Joe Sacco and I spent two years reporting from the poorest pockets of the United States for our book “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.” We went into our nation’s impoverished “sacrifice zones”—the first areas forced to kneel before the dictates of the marketplace—to show what happens when unfettered corporate capitalism and ceaseless economic expansion no longer have external impediments. We wanted to illustrate what unrestrained corporate exploitation does to families, communities and... Inside Man – The convenient opinions of Attorney General Goolam Vahanvati
Author KRISHN KAUSHIK | Source http://caravanmagazine.in | Click here to read | May 23rd, 2013 05:13 AM | Articles(கட்டுரைகள்) | No Comment
IN THE COSMOS of the Indian establishment, the Supreme Court is a central galaxy. Its brightest stars, the senior advocates, can be seen gliding across the plaza outside the chief justice’s courtroom with an imperial hauteur, in their distinctive robes and “monkey suits” (as lawyers call the waistcoat worn by judges and seniors of the bar). Around each of these seniors orbits a small entourage: not only an assistant (usually carrying phones and bags), but... The world is rich. The rich are the problem.
Author Richard Mellor | Source http://climateandcapitalism.com | Click here to read | May 23rd, 2013 05:01 AM | Articles(கட்டுரைகள்) | No Comment
There’s no shortage of food, no shortage of wealth to solve social crises. The problem is a system that enriches a few and starves multitudes.
We hear day in day out about the massive poverty and hunger that exists in the world. NGO’s and various non-profits have been around for decades appealing for assistance in feeding the world’s poor. In the third world, water is as precious as gold. Sewage and water sources run parallel... India’s elites have a ferocious sense of entitlement
Author Urvashi Butalia | Source http://newint.org | Click here to read | May 23rd, 2013 04:53 AM | Articles(கட்டுரைகள்) | 1 Comment
My office is located in an urban village in the heart of Delhi. Originally surrounded by fields where people grew crops, these areas now house apartment blocks and shopping malls. All that’s left of the old village is the cluster of houses in which many of the erstwhile residents live, and where a few small traders have set up offices and shops. Some old practices remain though, and there’s a strong sense of community. Come... Forget about winning, Lefties
May 23rd, 2013 04:49 AM | Articles(கட்டுரைகள்) | No Comment
We won’t have social justice soon, and the day after May Day is a good day to explain why. National protectionist struggles against free trade are often a perfect example*. As long as labour unions and leftist activists say ‘let’s defend our national workers from competition with exploited overseas workers’, and do not say in addition: ‘Let’s unionize internationally to prevent exploitation everywhere, not only in our state’, we are bound to... Reflections on 40 years of scraping by and thriving
Author BRIARPATCH STAFF | Source http://briarpatchmagazine.com | Click here to read | May 23rd, 2013 04:46 AM | Articles(கட்டுரைகள்) | No Comment
A communications specialist and intrepid freelancer, Dave Mitchell worked asBriarpatch editor from 2005 to 2010. In the short time since his retirement from the magazine, Dave has co-edited the book Beautiful Trouble, spent time in Mexico City researching the political uses of the war on drugs, worked as director of communications and policy development for Ryan Meili’s recent campaign for leadership of the Saskatchewan NDP, and guest-edited an issue of Briarpatch. In between bouts of hyperactivity, you can find him calmly contemplating... THE BABY IN THE WELL – The case against empathy.
Author PAUL BLOOM | Source http://www.newyorker.com | Click here to read | May 23rd, 2013 04:39 AM | Articles(கட்டுரைகள்) | No Comment
In 2008, Karina Encarnacion, an eight year-old girl from Missouri, wrote to President-elect Barack Obama with some advice about what kind of dog he should get for his daughters. She also suggested that he enforce recycling and ban unnecessary wars. Obama wrote to thank her, and offered some advice of his own: “If you don’t already know what it means, I want you to look up the word ‘empathy’ in the dictionary. I believe... China’s Youth: Do They Dare to Care about Politics?
Author Alec Ash | Source http://www.dissentmagazine.org | Click here to read | May 23rd, 2013 04:34 AM | Articles(கட்டுரைகள்) | No Comment
At a teeming intersection of Shenzhen’s Dongmen shopping street, between KFC and McDonald’s, Liu Zhongqiu, twenty-one, sits on a white fold-up chair that looks as if it is about to break and clasps his hands together like a proselyte whenever a passerby drops money into his bucket.
His legs below the knee are swollen to the size of balloons, puckered and mottled with grey spots. His feet poke out below, useless and misshapen as if... On Amartya Sens Expose
Author Prabhat Patnaik | Source http://pd.cpim.org | Click here to read | May 16th, 2013 06:43 AM | Articles(கட்டுரைகள்) | No Comment
ON May 6, at a press conference in Delhi, Amartya Sen expressed displeasure at the prolonged disruption of parliament that had held up passage of the National Food Security Bill. He said that if the bill was not passed then several hundred children would go hungry or die from under-nutrition.
Sen himself has always favoured a universal public distribution system (PDS); the fact that he came out so strongly for the passing of the proposed bill... The Life and Death of Words, People, and Even Nature
Author Eduardo Galeano | Source http://www.towardfreedom.com | Click here to read | May 16th, 2013 06:26 AM | Articles(கட்டுரைகள்) | No Comment
Memory on Legs
(January 3)
On the third day of the year 47 BC, the most renowned library of antiquity burned to the ground.
After Roman legions invaded Egypt, during one of the battles waged by Julius Caesar against the brother of Cleopatra, fire devoured most of the thousands upon thousands of papyrus scrolls in the Library of Alexandria.
A pair of millennia later, after American legions invaded Iraq, during George W. Bush’s crusade against an imaginary enemy,... -
Science / அறிவியல்
Slaves to the algorithm
Author Steven Poole | May 23rd, 2013 05:16 AM | Science / அறிவியல் | No CommentIn central London this spring, eight of the world’s greatest minds performed on a dimly lit stage in a wood-panelled theatre. An audience of hundreds watched in hushed reverence. This was the closing stretch of the 14-round Candidates’ Tournament, to decide who would take on the current chess world...
Over 300 million Indians still defecate in the open: WHO-UNICEF report
Author Kundan Pandey | May 23rd, 2013 05:04 AM | Science / அறிவியல் | No Comment
Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan do much better in improving access to sanitationOne-third of the world’s population, about 2.4 billion people, will remain without access to improved sanitation in 2015, according to a report recently published jointly by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations International Children’s Education Fund...
Seeds Of Suicide
Author Vandana Shiva | April 16th, 2013 04:27 AM | Science / அறிவியல் | No CommentMonsanto’s talk of ‘technology’ tries to hide its real objectives of control over seed where genetic engineering is a means to control seed,
“Monsanto is an agricultural company. We apply innovation and technology to help farmers around the world \produce more while conserving more.” “Producing more, Conserving more, Improving farmers lives.”
These are...
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Audio & Video
Let us declare that a state of war exists
Author Shivam Vij | May 16th, 2013 06:20 AM | Audio & Video | No Comment
Tariq Ali speaks on Socialism, Capitalism and Democracy.
Author Tariq Ali speaks | May 15th, 2013 05:05 AM | Audio & Video | No CommentTariq Ali is a British Pakistani writer, journalist, and filmmaker. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and regularly contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books. He is the author of several books, including Pakistan: Military Rule...
Life after 1984 anti-Sikh riots: 29 years of struggle
Author tehelka | May 7th, 2013 05:49 AM | Audio & Video | No CommentSheeba Naaz talks to the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots about their lives since the riots and their struggle to regain a sense of normalcy. After Indria Gandhi was killed in 1984,anti-Sikh riots broke out across india.Delhi was worst hit.Thousand of Sikhs were killed across the country .Thr official...
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Books
செங்கொடி இயக்கத்தின் காலக்கண்ணாடி தோழர் பி.சுந்தரையா
May 2nd, 2012 04:15 AM | Books/புத்தகம் | No Comment
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Book Reviews
Socialism and Modernity
Author Ishay Landa | May 24th, 2013 04:49 AM | Book Review | No CommentPeter Beilharz Socialism and Modernity University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2009. 256pp., £15.50 pb ISBN 9780816660858
Does “socialism” still have a meaning in a post-communist era? This collection by the Australian socialist scholar, Peter Beilharz, contains 14 essays tackling this question from various angles with verve...
நெடுங்காலமாகத் தொடரும் அரண் – ராபர்ட்டோ பொலானோ
Author ரா.கிரிதரன் | May 24th, 2013 04:44 AM | Book Review | No Commentமுருகு, முருகன் எனும் வார்த்தைகளுக்கும் மொஹஞ்சதாரோ, ஹரப்பா நாகரிகத்துக்கும் இருக்கும் தொடர்பு பற்றி ஒரு ஆய்வுக் கட்டுரை படித்துக்கொண்டிருந்தேன். பண்டைய நாகரிகங்களில் பின்பற்றப்படும் பழக்கங்களில் சில இன்றும் நவீன இந்தியாவில் ஏதேனும் ஒரு வடிவில் எஞ்சியுள்ளன என்பது அந்த கட்டுரை ஆசிரியரின் கூற்று. இதை நிரூபிக்க பல ஆதாரங்களை முன்வைத்திருந்தார். வளைகாப்பு எனும் சடங்கு பற்றி இருந்த ஒரு குறிப்பு என் ஆர்வத்தை அதிகரித்தது. பெண்கள் கருவுற்ற ஏழாம்...
Toward a Dialectic of Philosophy and Organization
Author Andy Blunden | May 23rd, 2013 04:30 AM | Book Review | No CommentEugene Gogol Toward a Dialectic of Philosophy and Organization Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2012. 416pp., €129.00 / $179.00 hb ISBN 9789004224681 Reviewed by Andy Blunden This book continues an unfinished project of Raya Dunayevskaya to elaborate a dialectic expressing the development of both Marxist philosophical thought and the...
This Is Your Brain, On
Author ERIC BANKS | May 16th, 2013 06:47 AM | Book Review | No Comment
Alienation: an introduction to Marxs theory
Author Soren Goard | May 15th, 2013 05:20 AM | Book Review | No CommentDaily experience can be pretty depressing. Whether it's the monotony of cleaning loos, the pride you're forced to take in your unrewarding job, the prospect of avoidable environmental collapse or even just the mindless depravity of the Kardashian family, life seems ever less connected to our own agency and...
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Latest On Movies/சினிமா
You Say You Want a Revolution
By admin - May 16 2013 06:16 AMGandhi taught us that while a political or public victory ...
Pinning Down Spartacus
By admin - May 7 2013 05:55 AMIn the entrance hall of a fairly ordinary house in ...
Marx Reloaded A Film By Jason Barker
By admin - April 29 2013 04:43 AMJason Barker's film, Marx Reloaded, was released in 2011. It ...
Tamil cinemas double act
By admin - April 29 2013 04:39 AMIn Tamil cinema, a band of directors has been quietly ...
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Latest On Obituary
There will never be another Asghar Ali
By admin - May 16 2013 06:36 AMScholarly, courageous and secular, Asghar Ali Engineer spent his life ...
Asghar Ali Engineer (1939-2013)
By admin - May 15 2013 04:53 AMAn obituary by ZAHIR JANMOHAMED: I first met Asghar Ali ...
The Back to the Future Life of Margaret Thatcher
By admin - April 18 2013 04:56 AMMargaret Thatcher, who played Jane to Ronald Reagan’s Tarzan in ...
Novelist Chinua Achebe dies, aged 82
By admin - March 27 2013 05:40 AMChinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist seen by millions as the ...
Radical Reading: The Progressive Dr. Seuss
By admin - March 12 2013 05:06 AM"Generations of progressive activists may not trace their political views ...
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Latest On Poems/கவிதைகள்
To Martin, Ilyich, Hani, Che
By admin - April 22 2013 06:46 AMMy love is a red red flag and a bright ...
Man of La Mancha
By admin - February 15 2013 06:54 PMALDONZA To dream the impossible dream, To fight the unbeatable foe, PADRE To bear ...
Let America Be America Again
By admin - February 6 2013 07:51 PMLet America be America again. Let it be the dream it ...
ஒரு ஆட்டுக்குட்டியின் பாடல்
By admin - February 6 2013 07:46 PMஒரு ஆட்டுக்குட்டியின் பாடல் கசாப்புக் கடையின் வெட்டுமரத்தோடு முடிந்துவிடும் என்று நீங்கள் வருத்தப்படவோ பகடி செய்யவோ ...
Shield of Barbarism
By admin - November 27 2012 03:37 AMNagarjun was an avant-garde poet of Resistance in Hindi. His poem, ...
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Latest On Literature/ இலக்கியம
Bibliocide – They were mouldy, unread and long out of date. So why did I feel so bad about burning my Britannicas?
By admin - March 12 2013 05:04 AMNo civilised person is supposed to make bonfires of books.‘Wherever ...
The poetry of Agostinho Neto bursts into the Book Fair once again
By admin - February 25 2013 04:01 PMTHE poetry of Agostinho Neto (1922-1979) is founded upon the ...
Returning Insight to Storytelling:Science, Stories, and Loren Eiseley
By admin - February 15 2013 06:51 PMOn the morning of 9-11, I was editing this essay ...
தோளில் சுமக்க வேண்டிய நாவல்கள்
By admin - December 21 2012 04:00 AMபத்து மாதம் சுமந்து பெற்ற வலியும்-பேறுகாலத்தில் பட்டவலியும்-உதிரத்தைக் கொடுத்து வளர்த்த வலியும் பிள்ளைகள் ...
