Contact Asle Toje
India’s growth can zero out all the world’s environmental measures Nigambodh Ghat is the place where the Hindu god Brahma bathed in the Yamuna River and regained his memory. Today the river runs thick as snot. Nigambodh is one of the busiest outdoor crematoriums in Delhi. Fifty pyres a day, every day. The ashes are…
Herder vs. Fichte and the fight for the soul of nationalism Imagine a time of globalization, modernization; of decadence and alienation. Imagine living in a country where the mother tongue is devalued at the university. Where elites pride themselves on declaring stronger loyalty to foreigners than to socially inferior compatriots. Where the universalisms of the…
The world is changing, as will international relations. The West was never so powerful nor so influential as it was in the years immediately after the Cold War. Over time, the western community had been woven together by institutions; given a central nervous system where technologies, trade and security were shared among states in a…
Ambassador Samantha Powers’s outburst against Russia at the UN is aptly symbolizes the decay of the American-led order “That, gentlemen is not just a sleeping man, it’s a sad metaphor. The second-most powerful man in what was once the most powerful country on earth.” President Eisenhower’s comment upon arriving for a meeting with British Foreign…
NEW DELHI – The yellow fog hangs close to the ground. It clings to the palate with a taste of exhaust gas and latrine. Lonely bike rickshaws emerge from the mist and are swallowed. It is one o’clock at night on GB Road, New Delhi’s infamous Red Light District. The street is teeming with activity.…
ASLE TOJE Daytona 500 is the highlight of the Nascar racing season. A glorification of bravery, speed and engine noise. Outside the stadium aspiring preachers stand ready with megaphones. The people waiting In line are warned against the dangers of liquor and sex. There is much talk of cheeses – which strikes me as odd,…
What the loss of a Chief of Staff means for the Brexit negotiations. The Brexit negotiation, whatever else it is, is a political drama of the score-settling type. So let’s imagine it, focusing on a crucial subset of the dramatis personae, as if it were a play about a game whose congealing theme is: What…
How a nation that loved ruins was itself reduced to rubble—and in its own ashes discovered new, impossible ideals. A life in a discarded shoe box. A while back, as I was struggling with a text at the Public Library in the hamlet of Bengtsfors, Sweden, I came across the donated remains from a childless…
The refugee crisis may not break the EU, but it will upend the postwar European political order. Each age has its own fears. Much like the specter of climate change haunts the imagination of many today, and the arms race kept people sleepless in the 1980s, the ‘population bomb’ was the doomsday scenario of choice…
Hailed as a prophet and reviled as a racist, Jean Raspail novelized Europe’s immigration crisis—forty years before it happened. George Orwell, which is to say Eric Arthur Blair, said and wrote many memorable things. One of them goes as follows: “Saints should always be judged guilty until proved innocent.” Flipping the ideal of justice enabled…