2021

MUSINGS
14 April 2021
Signs of fascism are spreading out, yet as mute spectators we sit all too quiet and subdued. In fact, one of the prominent signs is exactly this. That is, the masses will be rendered so fragile and helpless that they wouldn’t be able to combat the disasters and tyrannies heaped on them by the political rulers.
Another significant sign is the attack on books and libraries and the written word. News reports of the proposed or upcoming demolition of one particular (…)

April 14, 2021
The human race is a fallen one,
And cannot be improved;
Shades of evil thus inform
Its best, better, and good.
The best are reason-infected,
The better sometimes converse;
The good follow instruction
That most suits their purse.
The best have no religion,
The better have a moral notion;
The good are honest followers
Of godman who promises promotion.
Capitalism is successful because
It addresses the good;
The good know what is best for them,
They see the (…)

by James M. Dorsey *
April 14, 2021
Sports governance worldwide has had the legs knocked out from under it. Yet, national and international sports administrators are slow in realizing the magnitude of what has hit them.
Tectonic plates underlying sports’ guiding principle that sports and politics are unrelated have shifted, driven by a struggle against racism and a quest for human rights and social justice.
The principle was repeatedly challenged over the last year by athletes as (…)

April 15, 2021
The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has set up a hotline for people to report each other to the authorities for failing to toe the party’s freshly revised line on matters of history.
The Cyberspace Administration said in a post to its official Weibo account on April 9 that people should use the number "to report erroneous online remarks relating to historical nihilism."
The move is to "create a good public opinion environment" regarding China’s history since the CCP (…)

Le Droit à la paresse par Paul Lafargue (1880)
[From English translation by Charles H. Kerr]
CHAPTER III
THE CONSEQUENCES OF OVER-PRODUCTION
A Greek poet of Cicero’s time, Antiparos, thus sang of the invention of the water-mill (for grinding grain), which was to free the slave women and bring back the Golden Age: “Spare the arm which turns the mill, O, millers, and sleep peacefully. Let the cock warn you in vain that day is breaking. Demeter has imposed upon the nymphs the labor of (…)

* Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, April 10, 2021
* Kerala: Changing Criteria for Tickets in Assembly Elections | Jos Chathukulam, Manasi Joseph & Rekha V
* Book Review: Dietrich on D’Mello’s India After Naxalbari

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, April 10, 2021
Over the past seventy years the United Nations officialdom came to provide the space and place for debate and helped international and global commitments by the nations of the world to a more just world. A vast array of databases and statistical resources and indicators have been drawn up and managed by the UN agencies as social and economic benchmarks for the world. But the UN is now getting increasingly corporatized. Private firms & (…)

by Jos Chathukulam, Manasi Joseph and Rekha V*
Abstract
The candidate selection process and the issues that erupt within the political parties concerned as part of this can serve as a harbinger of the election outcomes, character, and style of the upcoming political regime in Kerala including the stability and longevity of the newly elected government. Despite a generational shift in the candidate profile in all the three major political fronts in the state, the representation of women (…)

Part-1 Prime Minister’s pilgrimage to a shrine of untouchables
Prime Minister Narendra Damodar Modi paid on March 27, 2021 his cherished visit to Orakandi, the seat of spiritual as also social reform movement of Harichand Thakur (1812-1877) and his son Guruchand (1846-1937) in district Gopalganj, Bangladesh. Since over a century, this village located deep in a marshy country was the nerve centre of their activities, focusing principally on access to education, social reform and progress of (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Suddenly the Bengalis, both Hindus and Muslims, have started rallying behind Mamata Banerjee. Even till April 1, the day Nandigram went to the polls, the Bengalis did not share a common perception about the role and policies of Mamata. But what happened on that day has suddenly altered the political and electoral scene and equation in the state. The BJP leadership which has been confident of reaping a good harvest are at a loss to comprehend this sudden change in the (…)