PRAGOTI

Pragoti editorial team's Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya starts off our new weekly feature of film reviews with his insightful review of the cult American film, Bonnie and Clyde. Each Monday we propose to upload a film review written from the perspective of radical left politics. Watch this space as you watch your movies!

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In the late summer of 2008, as the American political parties convene to produce a new president, it seems clear that Americans will continue to kill and die -- and suffer and inflict terrible injuries -- in the U.S. war in the Middle East, regardless of who is elected president, well into the next administration and beyond.

The Kosi river basin in Bihar is facing its biggest ever flood disaster ever, and that disaster has come about completely due to the neglect of the Government of India and the government of Bihar. It is a man made disaster which could have been avoided.

In his elegy 'For the Union Dead', the 20th Century American poet Robert Lowell raised from their mass graves the black soldiers who died in battle against slavery.

Democracy Now! Host Amy Goodman was arrested on September 1, 2008 while questioning police about the unlawful detention of Producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, who were arrested earlier while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul's. During the demonstration in which the Democracy Now! team was arrested, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force against protesters and journalists. Several dozen demonstrators were also arrested during this action, as was a photographer for the Associated Press. Amy Goodman writes about the crackdown on journalists.

Amidst all the journalistic brouhaha about a new cold war, most analysts are missing out on the real crisis that has been crystallized by Saakashvili's imprudent excursion into South Ossetia. The very existence of NATO has been put into question.

Kinjal Ghose brings out the politics of 'apolitics' and opportunist alliances that has characterised the opposition to the Tatas' project in Singur.

The man who founded the "Voice of Peace" pirate radio station and did jail time for visiting Yasser Arafat during his exile in Tunisia had plenty of critics, but even more fans. And as they were asked to speak about the man who some say was before his time in his brazen and often eccentric pursuit of peace, all of them spoke of someone who stood up for what he believed in and acted on what he thought was right.

An Israeli historian suggests the diaspora was the consequence, not of
the expulsion of the Hebrews from Palestine, but of proselytising across north Africa, southern Europe and the Middle East.