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Archiving the Present: The Power of the Poster

All I’m really interested in at the moment is trying to say to people, ‘Look, one of the great problems of our time is that there seems to be no other alternative to the political ideas of our time.” - Adam Curtis, British Filmmaker, Chris Darke, Interview: Adam Curtis, July 17, 2012 How do we…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Burden of History: Genocide, Catastrophe, Resistance, and Gaza’s Cycles of Impasse

“Before the war, I used to feel that Gaza was my second mother. Its ground was the warm chest I could lay on, and its sky was my dreams… without limits. The sea would wash away my worries. But today I feel it’s an exile, I stopped feeling it’s the city of my dreams.” …

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Muslims Don’t Matter

BOOK REVIEW: "Muslims Don’t Matter: Sayeeda Warsi’s Candid Dissection of Britain’s Relationship with Islam", Bridge Street Press, London, 3 Oct 2024 Barely in the two decades since the infamous 9/11 marker, Muslims are right at the centre of the political discourse of assertive liberalism and more evident. Caught between the rampant Islamophobia in everyday…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

One Year After Gaza: Reckoning with a Genocide Ignored

“At the dawn of decolonization, Palestine was colonized. I recall my utter confusion at this irony of history.” — Eqbal Ahmad, 1994 One year after the relentless bombardment of Gaza that followed the horrific events of October 7th, as Hamas launched an attack, we are compelled to confront an unsettling truth: Is this the…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

“It’s Bisan from Gaza, and I’m Still Alive”

“The assassination of a journalist is not only the murder of a voice, but an attempt to annihilate the right of the world to know, to understand, and to bear witness to suffering.” – Shireen Abu Akleh, Al Jazeera’s Palestinian-American journalist, killed by Israeli sniper on 11 May 2022 The 25-year-old Palestinian journalist…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

The author with Pankaj Mishra

A Kidnapped West in the Times of Genocide

"How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.” — Karl Kraus in Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit (The Last Days of Mankind), 1919 One of the most widespread diseases is diagnosis. —Karl Kraus, in Harry Zohn (ed.), Half-Truths & One-and-a-Half Truths -…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Macron Lives Up to ‘Le Disrupteur’ Title

(This is the Second Part of the French Politics and Elections essay. Read the first part here) "The issue of the whole was that what with opposition, and what with success, a violent and malignant zeal, of a kind hitherto unknown in the world, had taken an entire possession of their minds and rendered their…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Rescuing Western Politics Under Gaza’s Moral Burden

By Narendra Pachkhédé "The attempt to politicize everything is the destruction of politics. When everything is seen as relevant to politics, than politics has in fact become totalitarian." ― Bernard Crick, In Defence of Politics, (Second Edition), 1981 In these fraught times, with the 2024 Democratic National…

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

Uncategorized POLITICS

From Paris With Chaos: Western Politics’ Future Unfolds

"We feel nostalgia for a place simply because we've lived there; whether we lived well or badly scarcely matters. The past is always beautiful. So, for that matter, is the future. Only the present hurts, and we carry it around like an abscess of suffering, our companion between two infinities of happiness and peace." …

ByNarendra Pachkhédé

POLITICS Fiction Uncategorized

Larry the cat

Dave the Rave has all the moves. Verily, is he the Lord of the Dance. Yet no one or their cat noticed the sky turning black upon his return. Only I saw the devil on his back as he leads us towards post-Brexit temptation. But something is afoot. Mark my words. These tea-guzzling-biscuit-gobbling Fat Cats…

ByMiranda Husain