Rebelling against the world

Book Review: Alex Butterworth, 'The World that Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, and Secret Agents'. New York: Pantheon Press, 2010.

Rebelling against the world
“THE TERRORIST IS NOBLE, irresistibly fascinating, for he combines in himself the two sublimates of human grandeur: the martyr and the hero” (127). The man who spoke these words was Sergei Kravchinsky, the Tsarist officer turned anarchist who went on to assassinate the chief of the Russia’s secret police and expose that country’s autocracy before the world in the best-selling book Underground Russia. Terrorism was not restricted to Russia’s early revolutionary movement. [Read More]

Nothing Left to say

A critique of the Guardian's coverage of the 2008 Mumbai attacks

Nothing Left to say
This article has been reprinted in Mainstream Weekly. Deep historical precedents HOWEVER SINCERE ITS BACKERS or belligerent its enemies, the “War on Terror” is not and cannot become anti-Islamist. This is not because, as some think, there is no Islamist or Taliban-style fascism on the receiving end of America’s War on Terror. Far from it. The reason is that the prosecutors of the war are only half committed to the selective elimination of certain religious reactionaries. [Read More]