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Environment
Limitations of Several Approaches to Environment Protection
Bharat Dogra | January 27, 2021
After earth, is human body a dumping ground to microplastics?
Eva Badola | January 22, 2021
Biden on Biodiversity: The Silence and the Promise
Subhankar Banerjee | January 20, 2021
Featured Stories
World
Switzerland’s Dangerous Turn to the Far Right
On 25 September 2020, the Swiss Parliament passed a revision of the federal anti-terrorism law. This new law provoked many protests, some quite vehement, including the launch of a national referendum. One of the main instruments of direct democracy as practised in Switzerland, the people’s referendum allows the citizenry to vote to approve or nullify laws voted by Parliament. To[Read More…]
India
Opportunities Lost, Expectations Denied–Why the Union Budget is Disappointing
The Union Budget this year presented a huge opportunity for the government to break a new ground in terms of equality based path out of economic crisis. After all it is well known that inequalities have grown greatly during recent times with a further accelerating trend in 2020, in particular there have been huge gains for several billionaires and also[Read More…]
Globalisation
Dispossession and Imperialism Repackaged as ‘Feeding the World’
The world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of rich and powerful land speculators and agribusiness corporations. Smallholder farmers are being criminalised and even made to disappear when it comes to the struggle for land. They are constantly exposed to systematic expulsion. In 2014, the Oakland Institute found that institutional investors, including[Read More…]
Human Rights
Condemn the arrest of journalist Mandeep Punia by the Delhi Police!
Campaign Against State Repression demands the immediate release of Mandeep Punia and cessation of targeting of journalists! On January 30th, Mandeep Punia, a freelance journalist who worked for The Caravan magazine and Junputh, was dragged across the police barricades at Singhu Border and arrested by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police. While his whereabouts were unknown for a long[Read More…]
Imperialism
Been There, Done That (Not!) – The Imperial Presidency Comes Home to Roost
Joe Biden’s got a problem — and so do I. And so, in fact, do we. At 76 years old, you’d think I’d experienced it all when it comes to this country and its presidencies. Or most of it, anyway. I’ve been around since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. Born on July 20, 1944, I’m a little “young” to remember[Read More…]
Communal Harmony
Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan: Muslims for Composite Indian Nationalism
As per the recent communiqué from Chief Minister of Haryana M.L. Khattar’s, the Government of Haryana has decided to change the name of Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan Hospital in Faridabad to Atal Bihari Vajpayee Hospital. So far we have witnessed the name changes by present ruling dispensation aplenty. Most of these changes involved the changing of names of roads/cities, which[Read More…]
Climate Change
Earth’s ice melting at record rate, finds study
The world’s ice is melting so fast that sea level rise predictions cannot keep up. The ice melting is faster today than in the mid-1990s, new research suggests, as climate crisis nudges global temperatures ever higher. In the 1990s, the Earth’s ice was melting at a rate of about 760 billion tons per year. That has surged 60 percent to[Read More…]
Environmental Protection
Limitations of Several Approaches to Environment Protection
When we see all around that so much is being said and done in the name of environment protection, it seems very surprising that on the whole environment protection is not really progressing and environmental conditions are in fact deteriorating from the point of view of most indicators. This situation can be better understood if we see clearly the different[Read More…]
Counter Solutions
Majority Report
There is something at the very core about us that needs to change. This cannot be emphasized often enough. We need to change how we think. How we think of ourselves, our place in creation, how we think of how we live, how we think of our relationships to the diversity of planetary life, to structures, elements, systems of nature[Read More…]
Resource Crisis
Fossil Fuel Production Is Reaching Limits in a Strange Way
Strangely enough, the limit we seem to be reaching with respect to fossil fuel extraction comes from low prices. At low prices, the extraction of oil, coal, and natural gas becomes unprofitable. Producers go bankrupt, or they voluntarily cut back production in an attempt to force prices higher. As the result of these forces, production tends to fall. This limit comes long[Read More…]
Alternative Energy
Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’, confirms IEA
The world’s best solar power schemes now offer the “cheapest…electricity in history” with the technology cheaper than coal and gas in most major countries. That is according to the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2020. The 464-page outlook, published today by the IEA, also outlines the “extraordinarily turbulent” impact of coronavirus and the “highly uncertain” future of global energy use[Read More…]
Patriarchy
Freedomwashing
We make equipment, we give it to our so-called allies[in the Middle East], who we don’t even know who the hell they are… 2,300 Humvees sent over. A couple of shots are fired and these guys run like a bunch of thieves, which they are. Our allies. Our allies. And ISIS picks up the weapons, the Humvees, the this. It’s[Read More…]
Palestine
If US Foreign Policy Toward Palestine is any Indication, Trump is Here to Stay
As I watch the unfolding political drama of the impeachment trial in the US Senate, the glimmer of hope for change I had following the incredible scenes at the Capitol on Jan 6 is being dimmed. The question in my mind now is whether it is even possible, with the tools being used by Joe Biden, to turn the tide[Read More…]
South Asia
United States of South Asia
In more ways than one, South Asia has been pushed back to the 1940’s. If we were to take stock of the situation in the entire subcontinent, we can easily find out that we have made little progress and have got stuck in the status-quo mud for the past three-quarters of a century. Besides providing a binding social order, the[Read More…]
Annihilate Caste
State And Annihilation Of Caste
Indian state is part of Indian society and Indian society is built on caste based social order. That way state or the government can do very little to destroy the caste system because as the state is built on the caste and the caste society is controlled by the top castes – the state cannot go against the system[Read More…]
Life/Philosophy
Population Problem Today
ABSTRACT Today no one is talking of controlling population any more. Fertility rates are falling all over the world and many governments are encouraging births; giving monetary support and withdrawing free contraceptives and free vasectomy operations. The new problem is that of ageing. No one is prepared to talk of decreasing the longevity. Increasing longevity has long been a marker[Read More…]
Arts/Literature
First, They Came For Our Masks
First, they came for our masks! Then they came for our muzzles! But… we’d been masked for so long We all felt naked without them! We’d been muzzled for so long, We couldn’t find our voices! Naked and voiceless, we wandered in darkness. “Didn’t there used to be a sun?” someone wondered, Pointing…. “Didn’t there used to be a moon?”[Read More…]
Book Review
Is This Revolution Truly Rinky-Dink?
During the late 60s, when the US war on Viet Nam was going strong and people were questioning capitalism, I drove from Eugene to Berkeley where my sister was living. I ran into folks who invited me to a discussion about starting a commune. There, everyone talked about dropping out of consumer society and buying land to get away from[Read More…]
