An Investigation By The ABC's Four Corners Program Uncovers Previously Unknown Tax Haven Ties For Adani

Long Live the Legacy of Comrade Vemula Rohith Chakravarthy : Statement by New Socialist Initiative (NSI)

Long Live the Legacy of Comrade Vemula Rohith Chakravarthy : Statement by New Socialist Initiative (NSI)

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The tide at night, murmur of bare feet on the sand.

The tide, at dawn, opens the eyelids of the day.

The tide breathes in the deep night and, sleeping, speaks in dreams.

The tide that licks the corpses that the coast throws at it.

The tide rises, races, howls, knocks down the door, breaks the furniture, and     then, on the shore, softly weeps.

The tide, madwoman writing indecipherable signs on the rocks, signs of death.

The sand guards the secrets of the tide.

Who is the tide talking to, all night long?

—Octavio Paz, from “Target Practice” Art Credit Richard Diebenkorn.

Real life, life finally uncovered and clarified, the only life in consequence lived to the full, is literature. Life in this sense dwells within all ordinary people as much as in the artist. But they do not see it because they are not trying to shed light on it. And so their past is cluttered with countless photographic negatives, which continue to be useless because their intellect has never 'developed' them. Our lives; and the lives of other people, too; because style for a writer, like colour for a painter, is a question not of technique but of vision. It is the revelation, which would be impossible by direct or conscious means, of the qualitative difference in the ways we perceive the world, a difference which, if there were no art, would remain the eternal secret of each individual. It is only through art that we can escape from ourselves and know how another person sees a universe which is not the same as our own and whose landscapes would otherwise have remained as unknown as any there may be on the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing only a single world, our own, we see it multiplied, and have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, all more different one from another than those which revolve in infinity and which, centuries after the fire from which their rays emanated has gone out, whether it was called Rembrandt or Vermeer, still send us their special light. This labour of the artist, this attempt to see something different beneath the material, beneath experience, beneath words, is the exact inverse of that which is accomplished within us from minute to minute, as we live our lives heedless of ourselves, by vanity, passion, intellect and habit, when they overlay our true impressions, so as to hide them from us completely, with the repertoire of words, and the practical aims, which we wrongly call life. To put it briefly, this art, complicated though it be, is actually the only art that is alive. .... The work carried out by our vanity, our passion, our imitative faculties, our abstract intelligence, our habits, is the work that art undoes, making us follow a contrary path, in a return to the depths where whatever has really existed lies unrecognized within us. And of course it was very tempting to recreate real life and rejuvenate one's impressions in this way. But it called for all kinds of courage, including emotional courage.

Marcel Proust, 'Finding Time Again'. Translated by Ian Patterson.

Helen Levitt, Children with Soap Bubbles, New York City, c. 1945

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Helen Levitt’s photographs of everyday life in her own New York neighborhood have epitomized domestic urban life for over sixty years. This image of children - one of her most common subjects - demonstrates Levitt’s astute portrayal of gesture, praised as “lyrical” by James Agee in the introduction to her book, A Way of Seeing. As the viewer’s attention echoes the children’s glance toward the left of the scene, the picture poses a riddle as to the bubbles’ source, transforming this gritty city street into a magical metropolitan playground.

One of the most significant intellectual errors educated persons make is in underestimating the fallibility of science. The very best scientific theories containing our soundest, most reliable knowledge are certain to be superseded, recategorized from “right” to “wrong”; they are, as physicist ...

Beijie Village: a Land Grab Case, a Village Election, and a Microcosm of China

Beijie Village: a Land Grab Case, a Village Election, and a Microcosm of China

Originally posted on China Change:

By Yaqiu Wang, published: December 16, 2014

An election in a heartland Chinese village in Henan province, held on December 13th, attracted attention from Chinese scholars, netizens and activists. A 73-year-old man, Chen Ji’en (陈纪恩), was re-elected Chairman of the 8th Village Committee of Beijie Village (北街村) by fellow villagers in what was reported by…

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We Are Ruled By Wizards

Bending reality is as simple as bending people’s perception of reality. Throughout history, the mythology of civilizations around the world has been full of tales of men and women who mastere…

Bending reality is as simple as bending people’s perception of reality. Throughout history, the mythology of civilizations around the world has been full of tales of men and women who mastered a mysterious, esoteric art which enabled them to use language in a way that […]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSal-ms0vcI)

'अमृत' काल में विष

‘अमृत’ काल में विष प्रसन्न कुमार चौधरी 1. हिसाब-किताब की हिंसा सभी समुदाय इतिहास में अपने ऊपर हुए कथित अन्याय-अत्याचार का हिसाब-किताब चुकता करने लगे तो उसका अन्त मानवजाति की सामूहिक तबाही में होगा । इतिहास के विभिन्न कालखण्डों में और अलग-अलग क्षेत्रों में हम इस सामूहिक तबाही का साक्षात् कर चुके हैं, और आज भी कर रहे हैं । हजारो वर्षों के मानवजाति के इतिहास में प्रत्येक मानव-समुदाय के पास अपनी…

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