2011

On November 7 this year falls the ninetyfourth anniversary of the historic October Revolution that changed the face of Russia and led to the birth of the USSR three years later. Remembering that Revolution we are reproducing excerpts from the chapter “Crisis of Socialism” in Prof Randhir Singh’s Five Lectures in Marxist Mode (published in 1993). These excerpts appeared fifteen years ago in Mainstream (November 9, 1996). Prof Randhir Singh is a distinguished teacher and a renowned Marxist (…)

Striking a course distinctly different from its pro-West orientation as well as US and Europe-centric approach during Boris Yeltsin’s steward-ship of the country, Russia today is paying considerable attention to participation in the Asia-Pacific multilateral fora, for example, the East Asian Summit (EAS), Asia-Pacific Economic Community (APEC), Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), Shangri-La Dialogue and ASEAN + Russia. International experts view this trend as (…)

Libyan strongman Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s gruesome end oustide Sirte in the morning of October 20 was the most noteworthy event on the international front in the last few days. While the precise manner of his killing is still shrouded in mystery and his wife’s demand for a UN investigation into her husband’s death appears reasonable, what cannot be overlooked is the NATO role in ensuring his capture and bringing about his death since it was a French Mirage of the NATO forces that struck (…)

Recently I read an extraordinary book on Afghanistan, Cables from Kabul: The Inside Story of the West’s Afghanistan Campaign by Sherard Cowper-Coles. Sir Sherard had everything going for him as a career diplomat in the British Foreign Service when he completed his term in Kabul and was appointed as the special representative of the British Prime Minister for AfPak. He was a close associate of late Richard Holbrooke, apparently had smooth working relationship with his American colleagues, (…)

COMMUNICATION
During the recent impeachment proceedings in the Rajya Sabha, some members did a little loud thinking about the mechanism for selection of judges of the High Courts. Decades ago, in course of an endowment lecture at the Ambedkar Law College of the Nagpur University, eminent jurist Upendra Baxi had recommended the adoption of the American system for such selection. The US President can make such appointment only after his nominee has been vetted by a bipartisan committee of (…)

by DILEEP PADGAONKAR
Nothing straight can ever emerge from the crooked timber of a parochial mind. Those responsible for the decision to drop A.K. Ramanujan’s essay on the Ramayana from Delhi University’s undergraduate Arts course argue in substance that from childhood these students are told about the sacred character of the epic. This is why it occupies a special place in the Indian psyche. Its characters are perceived to be divine creatures. To show them in a poor light is therefore (…)

The common man of the developed countries is agitated. Hundreds are camping in a park across the Wall Street which houses the New York Stock Exchange. People are holding demons-trations at City Square in Melbourne and in front of the Reserve Bank of Australia in Sydney. Similar demonstrations are taking place in Athens, Tokyo, Taipei and Seoul. The reason is unemployment and inequality. These youth believe the bankers have speculated, made huge losses and brought down the global economy (…)

FROM TAHRIR SQUARE TO TIMES SQUARE
The following piece appeared in ML Update, the weekly newsmagazine of the CPI-ML (Liberation), in its October 18-24, 2011 issue and is being reproduced from there with due acknowledgement.
Tens of thousands flooded the streets of global financial centres, capital cities and small towns on October 15.
After triumphing in a standoff with the authorities over the continued protest of Wall Street at Liberty Square in Manhattan’s financial district, the (…)

“Help! Thief! I´ve been robbed, I´ve been robbed by the capitalists and the government!” ‘’There aint but two sides, the workers side and the big bosses side.’’ —Woody Guthrie
This cry is being heard more and more around the cities and capitals of the United States and Western Europe today and even further around the globe.
Is there a genuine awakening among the American youth? The recent Occupy Wall Street Movement suggests that an awareness of the destructive and unethical nature of (…)

The striking aspect of the European financial crisis on the heels of the American was corroboration that the asymmetry which had erupted in the First World War was being played back. To some the causality of the periodic rises and falls of the global financial architecture is confined to tentative insights on cycles provided by the Russian economist, Nikolai Kondratiev (later a victim of the Stalinist purges). But the occurrence has remained a legacy of the liberal capitalist world inherited (…)