Ashis Nandy

Five years after 9/11, there has been a narrowing of cognitive and emotional range all around. The global culture of common sense has concluded that hard-headed, interest-based terror—favoured by mainstream international relations and exemplified by the CIA’s repeated attempts to assassinate recalcitrant rulers hostile to the US—is now not terror. Terror now involves the defiance of rationality and abrogation of self-interest and is, hence, ‘cultural’. As if to prove the mainstream right, the rage of those who feel let down by the present global system and see no future within it often don’t have a specific target and are looking for one. Regimes that latch on to that free-floating anger can go far. Indeed, sometimes their targets too have the same need to search for, and find, enemies, thus establishing a psychological bond that binds them in lethal mutual hatred.

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Liocichla bugunorum

NEW DELHI, Sept. 12 — A new bird species has been found in India, the first such discovery here in more than 50 years, the amateur ornithologist who first spotted the bird said Tuesday.
The multicolored bird, Liocichla bugunorum, was first sighted in May in the remote Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh, a northeastern state near the border with China, by Ramana Athreya, an astronomer as well as amateur ornithologist.
Mr. Athreya said he named it after the Bugun tribe, which lives in the area. The bird has a black cap, a bright yellow patch around the eyes and yellow, crimson, black and white patches on the wings.

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P.S. Uma provides a link to this short-story by Ben Fountain about endangered species.