Sparsh

Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan  by William Dalrymple ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Highly Recommended Despite the significant failures experienced in Vietnam, the idea of American exceptionalism remained deeply ingrained in the U.S. national psyche till 2000. Then, 9/11 happened. A focused military-intelligence operation targeting the perpetrators of 9/11 could have addressed domestic demands for justice. Alas, Bush administration launched a large-scale ground invasion of Afghanistan.  USA withdrew ultimately from war scarred land of Afghanistan, marking the end of a twenty-year military presence. They couldn't capture and run a dummy Afghan government. Sounds familiar !  The aphorism “History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes” is evident in these events when the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, echoing past foreign interventions in the country. The rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s government and swift Taliban resurgence after the U.S. exit underscore the c...

1- Smokers’ Corner: Real revolutions by Nadeem F. Paracha. 2- The Night Shastri Died And Other Stories by Kuldip Nayar. 3- Why Elites Fail by Christopher Hayes. 4- The real wealth of nations - The Economist 5- Children of the Taliban - PBS Frontline 6- The wedges between productivity and median compensation growth By Lawrence Mishel 7- 'A Perfect and Beautiful Machine': What Darwin's Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence by Daniel C. Dennett. 8- Why so many communist philosophers? by Santiago Zabala 9- Destroying the commons by Noam Chomsky. 10 - Theories of Oppression and Another Dialogue of Cultures by Ashis Nandy Perspectives Jonathan Haidt: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend...

1- Media and mobs – Arundhati Roy versus the terrorists by Razarumi. 2- Fables of Nationalism by Razarumi. 3- Why Marxism Has Failed , And Why Zombie-Marxism Cannot Die & Zombie-Marxism : What Marx Got Right by Alex Knight. What Marx Got Right : Class Analysis, Base and Superstructure, Alienation of Labor, Need for Growth, Inevitability of Crisis and A Counter-Hegemonic World-view. What Marx Got Wrong: Linear March of History, Europe as Liberator, Mysticism of the Proletariat, The State and A Secular Dogma. 4- Copyleft and the theory of property : A bitter battle is underway between the supporters of intellectual property and those who defend the notion of the commons. Legal historian Mikhail Xifaras traces the history of the concept of "exclusive rights" and evaluates the emancipatory claims of the copyleft movement today. 5- Unlikely Stories, or the Making of an Afghan News Agency :Reporting is a challenge in Afghanistan, where power brokers are skill...