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Environment
Featured Stories
India
Kashmiri Apple Needs Government Patronage
In a promising apple village of district Anantnag, Sirhama, the month of September was used to be a busy month. It used to be a month of dreams, aspirations, hope and the result of hardwork as it is the month in which the people start the apple harvesting. Throughout the year, the harvesting season is cherished and looked as source[Read More…]
COVID Response Watch
Trump’s Taj Mahal tour guide and others out of work since COVID lockdown
In late February last year Nitin Singh, a tourist guide at the famous Taj Mahal in Agra was on top of the world. He had been entrusted with the prestigious task of showing US President Donald Trump the Mughal monument to love during his tour of India as part of the ‘Namaste Trump’ event organised by the Modi government. He[Read More…]
World
The money that never arrives in Cuba
Cubans living abroad have been unable to send remittances to their loved ones on the island due to the unilateral coercive measure imposed by Donald Trump just before leaving office With the money she earns cleaning houses in the morning and an office at night, Virgen Elena Pupo, a 47-year-old Cuban migrant, has managed to raise her family in Washington,[Read More…]
Globalisation
Modi government’s economic policies pose an existential threat to backward communities that must be resisted
The present government’s aggressive push for privatisation, corporatisation and automation – deviously dubbed ‘economic reforms’ – is undoing the gains made backward communities in recent decades, and must be resisted at all costs. ‘Economic reforms’ – it’s a catchphrase that India’s media pundits have repeated for three decades like a mantra, a sleight of hand meant to suggest that these[Read More…]
Human Rights
Release Batakrushna Swain
The Hon. Naveen Patnaik Chief Minister, Odisha Sub: Request for the release of Upakuliya Jami o Jangala Surakhya Samiti member Mr. Batakrushna Swain Honorable Sir, We the undersigned people, regret to convey our dissatisfaction regarding the change in the definition of crime in our state. Though the drought situation is not new in the state, however, the increase in the[Read More…]
Imperialism
The Decline and Fall of the Roman… Whoops!… American Empire
They weren’t kidding when they called Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires.” Indeed, that cemetery has just taken another imperial body. And it wasn’t pretty, was it? Not that anyone should be surprised. Even after 20 years of preparation, a burial never is. In fact, the shock and awe(fulness) in Kabul and Washington over these last weeks shouldn’t have been surprising, given[Read More…]
Communal Harmony
Fraternity for direction in troubled times: The patriarchy-caste-religion poison
Complex society India is a diverse country. It has geo-climatic diversity and people who live in different geo-climatic regions have different ways of living and doing, with different cultures. India has been a socio-cultural entity with a civilizational identity for millennia. At Independence, India was a country of amazing complexity of cultures, languages, customs, religions, ethnicities, and an ancient caste[Read More…]
Climate Change
Climate Crisis: A Prescription from 200 Medical Journals
A momentous statement has just been published in the British medical journal The Lancet and in 200 other health journals. It is the global equivalent of the diagnosis you never want to hear in your own doctor’s office, complete with concurring second opinions from 200 other doctors. The statement’s authors are the editors of those journals, themselves doctors or highly trained health scientists,[Read More…]
Environmental Protection
Address the Global Public Health Crisis: Ban Glyphosate Now!
Environmentalist and campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason recently wrote an open letter to the head of the Pesticides Unit at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), Jose Tarazona. (Since this article was written, Jose Tarazona has stepped down from his position and the letter has been forwarded to his successors, Manuela Tiramani and Benedicte Vagenede.) Mason wrote to Tarazona because the[Read More…]
Counter Solutions
Enough for Everyone
Given the current climate emergency and the broader ecological breakdown that looms, there are few issues more pressing than that expressed by the single word: enough. Yet, it is possible to satisfy humanity’s universal needs fairly—and keep the world livable. What is enough? Put that question to any economist or politician, and you are likely to get a blank stare in return.[Read More…]
Resource Crisis
Solidarity with Resistance to Extraction
by Don Fitz and the Green Party of St. Louis People the world over are opposing fossil fuel extraction in an incalculable number of ways. It is now clear that burning fossil fuels threatens millions of Life forms and could be laying the foundation for the extermination of Humanity. But what about “alternative” energy? As progressives stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those[Read More…]
Patriarchy
Women on the verge defending life against the global patriarchy
What if, compañera and sister, we learn not only to scream out of pain, but to find the way, place, and time to scream a new world into being? Just think, sister and compañera, things are so bad that in order to stay alive we have to create another world.’ Coordinators of the Zapatista Women for the Second International Gathering of Women Who Struggle[Read More…]
Palestine
Hashtag ‘Untie_Our_Hands’: How Many More Palestinians Must Die for Israel’s ‘Security’?
A large Israeli army campaign is taking social media by storm. The unstated aim of what is known as the “#Untie_Our_Hands” initiative is the desire to kill, with no accountability, more Palestinian protesters at the Gaza fence. The campaign was motivated by the killing of an Israeli sniper, Barel Hadaria Shmueli, who was reportedly shot from the Palestinian side of[Read More…]
South Asia
Illusive unity and eroding the aspirations of the Tamils in Sri Lanka
There is no doubt that unity is the most uttered and much used and abused word by the Tamil politicians and leaders who took control of the political destiny of Tamils since independence in 1948. It is also a history that Tamil leaders and parties on various occasions moved to form united fronts like the Tamil United Liberation Front [TULF][Read More…]
Annihilate Caste
Conversation with Dr Manisha Bangar Part I
Phule-Ambedkarite ideology is the only alternative for Bahujans, says Dr Manisha Bangar, National Vice President, People’s Party of India, former National Vice President, BAMCEF in conversation with Vidya Bhushan Rawat Dr Manisha Bangar is a practicing Senior Consultant Gastroenterologist and Transplant Hepatologist, with around 20 years of clinical cum research and teaching experience. In terms of her medical qualification, she completed[Read More…]
Life/Philosophy
Keshav Desiraju Has Left Us When His Contributions Are Most Needed
Keshav Desiraju, India’s former health secretary who made a lasting contribution to public health in India, breathed his last on September 5. He died from ‘acute coronary syndrome’. He inherited the scholarly legacy of his grandfather, India’s much-admired second President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and contributed at least two very important books which reflected the diversity of his interests. He will be[Read More…]
Arts/Literature
‘Surveillance’ Monkey
A monkey came to our home. It saw plenty of space to roam! Elated, it went from room to room Looking nook and corner It saw my computer … The shining screen caught it’s eyes It sat on the table, looked here and there twice! Scanned the keyboard Began to type word after word. Finding the sounds odd, It went[Read More…]
Book Review
Lives in Biology
Human history as cultural history We need to reform our teaching of history so that the emphasis will be placed on the gradual growth of human culture and knowledge, a growth to which all nations and ethnic groups have contributed. A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book which presents the historical development[Read More…]
