On February 27th, Reuters headlined “Trump seeks ‘historic’ increase of 9 percent in U.S. military’s budget” and reported that “Trump will ask Congress to boost Pentagon spending in the next fiscal year by $54 billion in his first budget proposal and slash the same amount from non-defense spending.” The U.S. Department of Defense is one of the 15 U.S. Cabinet departments, the others[Read More…]
It is already clearly apparent, as many predicted, that Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States would signal the start of what might be the final monumental assault on much of what is good in our world. Whatever our collective gains to date to create a world in which peace, social justice and environmental sustainability ultimately prevail for[Read More…]
I ran into my friend Rick the other day in a small town near our homes in northern Vermont. He was just coming out of the bookstore, holding a pink plastic bag that, I would soon learn, contained a dozen eggs from his flock of free range hens. After a bit of small talk, Rick asked, “you don’t by any[Read More…]
A new publication by The Great Transition Initiative provides an inspiring vision of a more equal, vibrant and sustainable civilisation. From STWR’s perspective, all that it lacks is a sufficient focus on the critical needs of the very poorest citizens—which could ultimately forge the global solidarity needed to bring that new world into being. ‘Journey to Earthland’ is a recently[Read More…]
What follows is a summary of this article, ‘A System of Food Production for Human Need, Not Corporate Greed’, and is a preamble to something that was recently forwarded to me by Emeritus Professor Stuart B. Hill, Foundation Chair of Social Ecology, School of Education, Western Sydney University. In 2007, as part of a requested submission to the International Assessment of Agricultural[Read More…]
The senseless and brutal gunning down of an Indian engineer, Srinivas Kuchibhotla by an angry Caucasian American, Adam Purinton at a Kansas bar shocked the Indians both in USA and India. The 32-year-old engineer’s murder is ghastly and his family’s grief and loss is unimaginable. The issue brings to fore several complex dynamics. First, undoubtedly, this was a hate crime[Read More…]
A huge uproar sprang over social media after the new station between Jogeshwari and Goregaon, two suburban stations of Mumbai, was named Ram Mandir, popularly known as Oshiwara. The progressive and liberal forces smashed the reactionary decision of the BPJ led Maharashtra Government for its decision to name the platform as Ram Mandir as it was a representation of not[Read More…]
We, the faculty members of the English Department, Lady Shri Ram College unequivocally and strongly support our student Gurmehar Kaur and her right to express her opinion on issues that embroil our university. It is immensely gratifying to us as her teachers that she has responded sensitively, creatively and bravely to events in her immediate context rather than seek the[Read More…]
Many things have been said and done about Kashmir. Its political situation is over exploited by all sides to utilize its name elsewhere. Kashmir is a victim of constant sufferings, unrest, human rights violations, violence and also has been made as a tool to ‘curse’. India and Pakistan, since their separation in 1947 are still in conflict with each other[Read More…]
How important is it to communicate the importance of human nature relationship on the earth planet? In other words: is it important to communicatehow man should communicate with nature? Or, howbetter with other living things of different species? Edited by ArunBandopadhyay, the book: Nature, Knowledge and Development: Critical Essays on the Environmental History of India has dealt with all of[Read More…]
Quoting Derek O’brein, “Burhan Wani has proved more dangerous in his grave than in his living room”. An according statement defining the prevalence of Wani among the emotional mush of Kashmiris, peculiarly youth. After the endemic police claimed to trace Wani’s phone calls, which lead them to his highly frisked location. A gullibly ridding statement, “He would have been spared[Read More…]
To label or classify things is one of the basic human desires. And media, whose role is not only to understand complex issues but simplify them for the masses to understand, this desire becomes almost a necessity. Therefore, media’s search for binaries like ABVP v/s AISA, Right v/s Left, Nationalists v/s Anti-nationalists etc. is understandable. It simplifies things for them[Read More…]
All media focus currently is on whether the BJP or the Shiv Sena will have its Mayor in Mumbai following a hung house after the recent civic election. Real issues usually remain buried, unexplored. Look at the neglect of public spaces despite the increasingly poisonous air . Mumbai city’s deterioration can be understood in the context of the concern[Read More…]
U.S. President Donald Trump came into office promising to “drain the swamp” of corruption, and to restore the American people’s control over their government, but what he has been doing since he started his Presidency on January 20th is exactly the opposite: handing control of the U.S. government over to international corporations, and, really, over to the billionaires who[Read More…]
Be Careful In Selecting An Early Childhood Center For Your Children’s Care! They may look good on the outside — on the skin level. Yet many are rotten to the core! Recently I learned from TV channel seven news reports that 10,000 of the 70,000 early child care centers in Massachusetts, USA are under intense investigation at any given time[Read More…]
The Vale of Kashmir division, as the professional geographers mention, owes its political and linguistic unity to its isolation, due to its peculiar geographical position in the subcontinent.The narratives of chroniclers, though tell us a lot of its pleasant topo-geography-which resembles too much with that of Central Asia seen in the past. But having said that, with the passage of[Read More…]
Investigative journalist Amitt Bhatt is facing deportation to India and the likelihood of arrest and torture – possibly even death – for his work exposing corruption and human rights abuses in war-torn Kashmir. On March 14th, he has his last-chance appeal against deportation and there is a public meeting to support his case. Monday March 6, 6.30pm at the National[Read More…]
A recent episode of CBC Radio’s Day 6 featured an interview with David Levy, artificial intelligence expert and author of Love and Sex with Robots. Levy discussed a line of robotic sex dolls to be released in 2017 that can speak and respond to touch. He reaffirmed his 2007 prediction, in his book Love and Sex with Robots, that humans[Read More…]
Thousands of Nigerians have been displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said it was “very concerned” after 517 Nigerians were expelled, including 313 who had requested asylum. As of February 17, more than 61,000 Nigerian refugees were at the Minawao camp in northeast Cameroon, but there are many others outside the site. Boko Haram, a militant[Read More…]
An anti-foreigner mob of about 1,000 people rampaged across South Africa’s capital city on Friday, assaulting and looting, in the latest dangerous escalation of tensions over immigration. The march nearly turned disastrous when the mob entered a Pretoria neighbourhood dominated by Somali and Nigerian migrants. Hundreds of foreigners confronted the mob, the two sides separated by only a few metres, wielding[Read More…]
A disheveled, unkempt, unclean Steve Bannon finally emerged from his warren this week to claim outstanding success for this administration in its first month in office. Disheveled, unkempt, unclean is how Mr. Bannon always looks. The American Psychiatric Association Manual of disorders DSM-IV defines a mental disorder as a “clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern …”. Add Mr.[Read More…]
On February 20, President Trump appointed Lt. General Herbert Raymond “H.R.” McMaster to serve as the next National Security Advisor. The corporate media, along with numerous Congressional Republicans, praised the decision, calling McMaster a “soldier-scholar and creative thinker” (AP), a “straight-talking, military strategist” (BBC), a “military strategist” (New York Times), “…smart, intense and fiercely outspoken” (Washington Post), and a military[Read More…]
India is witnessing a drastic decline of farmer income in relation to its GDP. While over 60% in India is employed in agriculture, the contribution of Agriculture to GDP is merely 15%. The gradual declining share of Agriculture to GDP points to the upcoming situation. The declining income, farmer indebtedness and farmer suicides point to this emerging crisis. It is[Read More…]
Every day I write rhymes on Twitter. I get a kick out of reducing complicated ideas and events down to 140 characters. So yesterday I wrote: Powers That Be think it’s the end DAPL will now have much money to spend But Standing Rock is a rally cry Rebalance our world before we die And that is the story I[Read More…]
On Thursday, as North Dakota police moved in with a fleet of bulldozers, Humvees, and armored MRAP vehicles, Gov. Doug Burgum signed into law four bills that would bring harsher punishment for protest-related activity in the state. The bills, his press statement said, were meant to protect landowners’ rights. But for the 46 people arrested that day, their stand was[Read More…]
Vizhinjam International Deepwater Multipurpose Port, was awarded to the sole bidder Adani Ports & SEZ in 2015 by the previous Congress-led UDF government, almost half a century after the project was first mooted and 20 years after the proceedings started in 1995. The port is being developed as a Public Private Partnership (PPP) project on a design, build, finance, operate[Read More…]
President Donald Trump delivered a violent, ultra-right speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Friday, attacking the media and reprising many of the “America First” themes outlined in his inauguration address one month ago. The annual CPAC conference was a festival of political reaction. Trump boycotted the event during the election campaign last year, amidst sharp divisions within[Read More…]
Sir John Beddington is Senior Advisor and Professor of Natural Resources Management at the Oxford Martin School in Oxford, UK. He also belongs to the Central Team of the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations (OMC) and is former Chief Scientific Adviser to the British government and Head of the Government Office for Science. Bringing together international leaders from government, business and[Read More…]
Moral education is an important aspect that is much discussed in agent of academic capitalism.It is analysed as a way to recover the genuine spirit behind the education. This book is important for its critical readings of moral education in the context of sub-Saharan Africa.It traces the roots of moral education in African philosophies such as Ubuntu/Botho and in so[Read More…]
Bangkok, Thailand –The Indian authorities must end discrimination against people based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the formal justice system, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ)said in a report released today. The 60-paged report “Unnatural Offences”: Obstacles to Justice in India Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identitydocuments the challenges queer persons in India facewhile trying to access[Read More…]
Amartya Sen recently during his book launch ‘Collective Choice and Social Wefare’ very aptly pointed out, “India does not have world class universities and the climate of fear (in Indian Universities) is detrimental to Indian Democracy.” Sen’s statement comes at a time when Indian Universities are under threat to freedom of speech and expression. Coincidently, noble laureate Sen spoke about[Read More…]
On the subject of SDB’s lifelong allegiance and closeness to the folk traditions of Bengal, there is an excellent interview by SankarlalBhattacharjee (whose transcript is available at the link appended to the end of this essay)- titled The Case for Folk Music, the interview focuses primarily on his experiences in the Bombay film industry. In the interview, he points out[Read More…]
In what is believed to be a hate crime an Indian software engineer was shot dead in a Kansas bar. A man reported to have shouted “go back to your country” before opening fire. Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, and his friend Alok Madasani, both employees at tech company Garmin, were having a drink at a bar on Thursday when Adam Purinton,[Read More…]
Two days after rolling out a draconian immigration policy that threatens the deportation of millions of undocumented workers and their families, President Donald Trump described the unfolding crackdown as “a military operation.” Speaking to a White House gathering Thursday of top corporate bosses, including the CEOs of Dow Chemical, General Electric, Lockheed Martin and Caterpillar Inc., Trump hailed the escalation[Read More…]
Australian PM Turnbull has trashed Australia’s international reputation and isolated a pariah Australia from Humanity by making Australia second only to the US as a supporter of nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist-run, genocidally racist, grossly human rights-abusing, ultra-violently anti-Semitic, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel. Turnbull has embraced Apartheid Israel with praise, falsehood and racist exceptionalism on the occasion of the visit to[Read More…]
Debate around the words Hindu, Hinduism, Hindutva is not new. Recently the assertion by Mohan Bhagwat, the Sarsanghchalk (Supreme Dictator) of RSS that ‘everyone living in India is Hindu’ and that Muslims might be Muslim by religion but they are Hindus by nationality’, is yet another interpretation of Word Hindu. He said that this is Hindustan so all those living[Read More…]
Travesty of justicle scaled up the heights. It hurts, deeply. Pellets. Serious crimes. killings. Allegations. I wonder if we’ll ever live without this sense of fear – the fear that you or your loved one will never return as they step out of the house. There have been times when I’ve been struck by this anxiety and seized by apprehension.[Read More…]
In commercial farming, thestakes are high. Each season, farmers gamble on which crop will fetch the highest price or whichseed variety will reach the greatest yields. Sometimes the payoffs are big. But losses resulting from crop failure, a sudden drop in prices or scams by middlemen are just as frequent. Debt weighs heavily on the world’s farmers. Needless to[Read More…]
As the Army Corps of Engineers forcibly evicted the last of the remaining water protectors from the Oceti Sakowin protest camp on Thursday, Indigenous opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) made it clear that their expulsion would not be the end of the fight. “Our hearts are not defeated. The closing of the camp is not the end of[Read More…]
The hunger with which US officials pursue copyright or general intellectual property violations is insatiably manic. The degree of that hunger is expressed by the now suspended, and most likely defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership, an attempt to further globalise the policing of IP laws in favour of corporate and copyright control. Then come the vigilantes and those singing different, discordant tunes[Read More…]
Hundreds of Ahwazi Arabs led a demonstration in front of the European Union headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday in solidarity with the Arab people of Ahwaz currently experiencing the worst brutality to date in another crackdown by the Iranian regime. The protesters, originally from the Arab Ahwaz region, which has been brutally occupied by successive Iranian regimes for almost a[Read More…]
I had just finished reading Anita Nair’s recent novel, “ Chain of Custody” which gives a glimpse into the dark, convoluted business of child trafficking, when I also came across a video of Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher talking about the same issue at the US Senate. Kutcher talks about a horrifying video clipthat has been doing the rounds on the[Read More…]
His apparent estrangement from the Tagorean epoch As with many other frontiers, the Bengal renaissance flowered mellifluously in the domain of music as well. An exhaustive account of this creative flowering would of course require the space of several books, suffice it to say that the overarching contributor to this renaissance was none other than the greatest symbol of the[Read More…]
When we talk about the issues of the campus we don’t want to be stuck in the binaries of left and right. Because the issues are not about these binaries. The issues that have recently gripped the AMU campus, particularly the hue and cry against Shehla Rashid’s visit to the university in a “All India Student Leader’s Meet” and the[Read More…]
Riot police began violently arresting the remaining Dakota Access Pipeline protesters in the Oceti Sakowin Camp, following yesterday’s eviction deadline set by North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. The first arrests occurred a few hours after the 2:00 pm deadline. Police rushed and tackled unarmed protesters and independent journalists, then retreated down the road, only to rush at protesters again. Eric[Read More…]
The English Language gave birth to William Shakespeare, John Keats, and James Joyce, to name but a few of the many bright stars. It also spawned the likes of Donald J. Trump, a kind of genetically-modified product grown in a hothouse; a man who not only stumbles over every word he utters but coins new and bizarre phraseology to convey[Read More…]
Give women more opportunity to realize the world of tomorrow, because male dominance has not brought the promised Kingdom so far, and has not brought the Paradise on Earth, which is truly around us, but simply not seen. There is currently no world peace, which every sensible person strives for and desires. Remarkable is the crucial role of the man.[Read More…]
The recent controversy between JNUSU and AMUSU has become one of the burning topic in the academic circles. The whole controversy started cooking up around “ALL INDIA STUDENTS LEADERS MEET” which was scheduled to be held on 18th Feb 2017 at Kennedy Auditorium, AMU. AMUSU has a precedence of hosting Students’ leaders meet periodically, wherein student leaders from campuses across[Read More…]
“Rape” the word carries with it a host of meanings and in East or Orient cultural baggage too. The term signifies violence, anger, atrocity, patriarchy, imposition and coercive submission. It is particularly used by men against women or children, though in rare cases men can be victim of rape too in particular sodomy. Rapes have been happening in the past[Read More…]
The Trump administration officially adopted new immigration enforcement policies yesterday that place all undocumented immigrants living in the US at risk of deportation. The new policies were outlined in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memos leaked over the weekend. These memos were subjected to only minor changes before DHS Secretary John Kelly made them official on Monday. Press Secretary Sean[Read More…]
Some 200 headstones at a Jewish cemetery in University City, Missouri, in the suburbs of St. Louis, were damaged or overturned by vandals late Sunday or early Monday, in the most serious in a wave of anti-Semitic threats and actions this year. Ultra-right and anti-Semitic forces have been encouraged by the inauguration of Donald Trump, and particularly his elevation of[Read More…]
The President of the United States can hardly be taken seriously, saying much but doing little. His words, often offensive, carry no substance, and it is impossible to summarize his complex political outlook about important issues. This is precisely the type of American presidency that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, prefers. However, Donald Trump is not just a raving[Read More…]
(In spite of a lull after the last year’s upheaval, the whole of Kashmir seems to be simmering like a volcano waiting to eruptanytime without any warning!) Kashmir has witnessed a number of upheavals spearheaded by the youth in the recent years starting from the Amarnath land row of 2008. However, the “Burhan Tsunami” of last July was the most[Read More…]
If the news of Mohammad Fazili, the man who was incarcerated for 12 years with regard to the 2005 Delhi blasts, haunted you for all the torture, misdemeanour and atrocity committed by the police force, know that this is but only a common affair for the citizens of Kashmir. Kashmir, the world’s largest militarized zone, holds record for another dishearteningly[Read More…]
A great many find it hard to understand why we are doing so little to address the issue of climate change. They find it equally difficult to understand the size and reach of the ‘denial’ movement. Which brings me to the title of this piece. It’s not complicated. First off it is obvious on its face that market forces cannot[Read More…]
Let me start with something to dispel the confusion about what models are for. When you deal with complex, adaptive systems, models are NOT meant to predict the future. As John Gall said in his book on complex systems, “systems always kick back” – to which I may add, “and sometimes they kick back with a vengeance“. (another way to[Read More…]
“No one ever really sees a flower anymore.” — Georgia O’Keeffe A rose doesn’t decide to provide its fragrance only for good people, nor deny its beauty to even the most evil people on earth. And a tree offers shade to anyone who comes under its umbrage. Also, with no discrimination. Beautiful fragrance on any day, and shade from[Read More…]
Donald Trump plans to dismantle America’s already weak climate policy, potentially dooming not only this country but the entire world to runaway greenhouse warming. The day after Election Day 2016, star climate scientist Michael Mann was already saying he feared that it was “game over” for the Earth’s climate. But at the same time Trump is taking a blowtorch[Read More…]
Before making their home in Damascus, Gabe Huck and Theresa Kubasak had regularly visited Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, where they developed lasting friendships and deepened cultural awareness. Iraq was steadily deteriorating under thirteen years of U.S./UN imposed economic sanctions. Despite iron clad determination by U.S. policy makers to isolate Iraq, Gabe and Theresa repeatedly challenged the economic sanctions[Read More…]
THE STARK REALITY IS THAT BOTH SOLUTIONS ARE IMPOSSIBLE UNLESS IMPOSED FROM OUTSIDE, AND JUST WHERE DO WE SEE ANY PROSPECT FOR THAT? Israel has created a terrible problem which it is incapable of solving. That is why it has always been the case that the United States must pretty much dictate a solution, but it is unable to do[Read More…]
Nazareth: For more than 15 years, the Middle East “peace process” initiated by the Oslo accords has been on life support. Last week, United States president Donald Trump pulled the plug, whether he understood it or not. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu could barely stifle a smile as Trump demoted the two-state solution from holy grail. Instead, he said[Read More…]
In the most appalling display of hooliganism in the name of nationalism, the members of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) took to violence in the premises of Delhi University over the last two days. The complete impunity that they enjoyed was evident in the fact that despite heavy police presence in campus on both days, the goons were allowed to[Read More…]
“I wasn’t the wrong person to become Jane Roe. I wasn’t the right person to become Jane Roe. I was just the person who became Jane Roe, of Roe v Wade.” Norma McCorvey with Andy Meisler, I am Roe: My Life, Roe v Wade (1994) The late Norma McCorvey changed US legal and political history as the plaintiff “Jane Roe”[Read More…]
Zerohedge’s “Tyler Durden” headlined on February 21st, “Bannon Breaks With Pence, Delivers Warning To Europe” and noted that before U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis reassured European leaders this past weekend that the U.S. is as anti-Russian now as it was under Barack Obama, U.S. President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, had[Read More…]
Manjit was born in 1938 on the eve of Christmas as the first child in a lower middle class Sikh family. As a small child she had developed ‘double-pneumonia’ (inflammation of both the lungs); so severe was this episode that her breathing became very shallow and infrequent. A wise Muslim allopathic doctor was summoned from Old Delhi to her home[Read More…]
Miya main kaisa Musalman hain? I am that Musalman who is being asked again and again again and again if i am from Pakistan when I say My name is Ajmal I am that Musalman for whom it doesn’t make a difference if i am a Khoja, Bohra Sunni or a Shiya But during frisking if my name is asked[Read More…]
as told to Maya Evans February 21, 2017 This is a story about Farzana, translated by her daughter Zarghuna and written up by Maya Evans When I was six life was good; I didn’t know anything outside my mother and father’s world. In the village where I lived it was possible to see the mud houses from far away. The Baba Mountains[Read More…]
It’s not often that a scientist gets to use the words love, creativity, and wisdom in a paper, especially when writing about economics. Perhaps that’s because economics, the dismal science, is obsessed with dismal systems – make that abysmal systems, relative to need. To be clear, I’m not speaking of the specific policies of the US, the EU, China, the[Read More…]
There is a wealth of evidence linking climate change to food security. Rising global temperatures have been shown to have a direct impact on agriculture—especially in developing countries with less capacity to adapt. While such factors have been clearly established, less visible components of food security have not been as thoroughly explored. That’s why MPH@GW, the online MPH program from[Read More…]
At a time when streaming real time feeds through Facebook is setting new trends in mass communication; using the same for exposing police highhandedness resulted in incarceration for an Indian youth hailing from the northeastern state of Assam. Partha Protim Boruah, 24, had a miff with police personnel at one the city’s regular check points on February 12 after he[Read More…]
Communal violence is not new in India. This has existed all along. Despite India adopting the word ‘Secular’ in its constitution, religious tolerance yet remains a dream. Individuals, communal organisations, political parties have in some form or the other played a role in perpetrating communal violence all along. Adoption of ‘Secularism’ has not resulted in a communal free behaviour among[Read More…]
The Story of One Child’s Struggle to Survive: On 2/17/2017 ten year old Ghina Wadi, who has spent the past seven months often in unbearable pain, which for the first month was periodically relieved for only approximately 15 minutes at a time- by heavy injections of morphine, had another of what hopefully this time will be a leg saving operation.[Read More…]
For the ancient Greeks logos meant reason, dialogue and debate. It could also mean speech, the power of language for good or self-gain, an aspect demagogues know well and the sophist Gorgias (5th century BC) warned against. ‘The Greeks had a word for it’ is an English expression and they often did. ‘Hubris’ would be the word to understand[Read More…]
The Seven-million strong American Muslim community, on the receiving end since the ghastly terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001, has ostensibly become target of President Trump’s policies. While the January 27 travel ban may still be affecting American Muslim citizens, some Muslim travelers outside the seven countries targeted by the controversial ban, including naturalized U.S. citizens and green card holders, are indicating[Read More…]
Aspiration for unchained participation in all walks of life is at the core of the spirit of Ekushey February, the Language Day observed on February 21 by the Baangaalees, and now observed as International Mother Language Day throughout the world. Aspiration for unchained participation is the spirit peoples nourish transcending time and ages all around the world as it’s a[Read More…]
I just now read an article that states: Native American slavery “is a piece of the history of slavery that has been glossed over,” says Linford D. Fisher, associate professor of history at Brown University. “Between 1492 and 1880, between 2 and 5.5 million Native Americans were enslaved in the Americas in addition to 12.5 million African slaves.” From Colonial[Read More…]
In the age of “fake news” and President Donald Trump claiming that Sweden was riddled with terror attacks which of course never took place, and of perpetual corporate and state-media propaganda passed on as real news, it is very difficult to separate fact from fiction. Making matters worse, hyperbolic rhetoric goes a long way to confuse the public about what[Read More…]
Sebastopol, California: The Japanese American Citizens League held a “Day of Remembrance” at Sebastopol’s Enmanji Buddhist Temple on Feb. 18 in Northern California. Around 200 people marked the 75th anniversary of the incarceration of over 120,000 innocent West Coast Americans of Japanese ancestry in internment camps during World War II. “They were accused of a crime, sentenced without trial and[Read More…]
First published through EarthLines Magazine, Issue 16 I sing to elephants. It’s what I do. I sing because I like to, and because I believe my elephant neighbours are comfortable in my singing presence. I sing all the time, and it’s when I sing that I know more precisely how I feel. My own speech never does justice to my[Read More…]
The seeds of public awareness of decades of monolithic mainstream media lies, news manipulation & deception sown by a maverick president, who is surely backed by a segment of Wall Street investors whose portfolios are NOT heavily weighted toward the manufacture WMDs and expected gargantuan profits from a new world war, will eventually grow public understanding of US crimes against[Read More…]
That the New York Times demonstrates a systematic editorial bias in favor of Israeli state power and against Palestinian rights is old news. Whether it is reporting on the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement, the deadly Gaza flotilla raid, cease fire violations between the IDF and Hamas, or any other aspect of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians,[Read More…]
“After what came out after the meeting between Netanyahu and Trump, I am not exaggerating if I say that yesterday there was a semi-official announcement of the death of the path of negotiations.” Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Feb 16, 2017 It was supremely wicked, and rapidly meandered into horse muddied waters. US President Donald J. Trump had openly expressed what many[Read More…]
“But I just had no intention of living this way” — from the Counting Crows’ Raining in Baltimore The actions being taken by concerned citizens respecting our collective crises are too prosaic. Overly “prosaic” in the sense that pleas and demonstrations are utterly too straightforward, much too much run-of-the-mill. Will someone, please, consider injecting poetry into activism? The language and[Read More…]
The first few weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency has seen an amazing explosion of mobilizing to oppose him and his administration on oh-so-many levels. And that has been heartening. But it is not enough. The fact is, as things now stand, Trump and his minions can outlast us. And even if we get Trump out of there—which I think is[Read More…]
This book is a tour de force that seeks to answer the complexities that surround the questions linked to gendered understanding of leadership. It adds appreciably scholarly knowledge to the issues related to leadership, union democracy and gender. It shares certain aporetic quality via generating intellectually rigorous critique on patriarchal culture of the trade union leadership. Canonical connections that exist[Read More…]
Valerie Branyan is thankful that she and her husband were together with their two children when the 5.3 magnitude earthquake struck the city of Cushing, Oklahoma, early in November. The couple clutched their kids, eyed the ceiling, and waited. While there were no injuries and only minor damage to their home, properties they own near downtown didn’t fare so well. The[Read More…]
Donald Trump’s obvious affection for authoritarians is prompting worried comparisons of our polarized country to the polarized Germany of the 1920s and ’30s. Since I’m known to see in polarization both crisis and opportunity, my friends are asking me these days about Hitler, the worst-case scenario. I grant the possibility of the United States going fascist, but argue that will[Read More…]
As a developed set of social practices, techniques and ethical norms, permaculture has a lot to say to the world of the commons. This is immediately clear from reading the twelve design principles of permaculture that David Holmgren enumerated in his 2002 book Permaculture: Principles and Practices Beyond Sustainability. It mentions such principles as “catch and store energy,” “apply self-regulation[Read More…]
Muthanga struggle was a milestone in the Adivasi land struggles in Kerala. Fourteen years have passed since ‘Muthanga’ became a lesson for people’s movements in Kerala. Today, the Adivasi land movement initiated under the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha (AGMS) is split between two factions, with C.K. Janu, the iconic leader of the Muthanga struggle in the 1990s joining hands[Read More…]
The UP political situation have brought sharp differences between yesterday’s friend who have now becoming bitter foes. People are posting things on Facebook and whatsApp abusing their former comrades just because one is on the side of Samajwadi Party while other on the Bahujan Samaj Party. I will make certain observations with my own understanding of the two and the[Read More…]
On 7th February,2017 with only 2 hours notice, of about 740 workers, journalists and reporters of Ananda Bazar Patrika group of newspapers of Kolkata were retrenched. This was first reported in December, 2016, but the news was systematically suppressed. It is learnt that The Telegraph and its associated newspapers are being taken over by a powerful business group. It is[Read More…]
In his book, “The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government”, Mike Lofgren called attention to the fact that much of the real power in Washington is not controlled by the President and members of Congress, but is in the hands of multi-billion-dollar organizations that are not only huge, but also unelected and[Read More…]
Has the US corporate media become “adversarial”? With President Donald Trump’s claims of the “dishonest media” and “fake news” at his recent press conference, and liberals defending the corporate media as a “watchdog,” the reality of the situation is hard to determine. Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines adversarial as “of or characterized by opposition, disagreement, hostility” and watchdog as[Read More…]
The doctor studied the test results, raised her head and smiled. “Pregnant,” she said. “Congratulations, you are pregnant!” All I could muster in response was: “Why?” Joy, excitement and fear knotted inside me. My husband and I would soon have a baby, filling our life with love and noise. But a storm of questions raged in my head. I immediately[Read More…]
A Palestinian man was on his way to a chemotherapy session when he was shot by Israeli soldiers last November, his family told an Israeli journalist this week. Muhammad Amar Jallad was being treated for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his family told Haaretz reporter Gideon Levy. Jallad was reported to have died in an Israeli hospital where he was being treated for[Read More…]
2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the seizure of all of Palestine by Apartheid Israel and half a century of brutal Israeli Occupation and further, ongoing Palestinian Genocide. Australia, the world’s leading supporter of Apartheid Israel after the US, invited Israeli PM Netanyahu to visit Australia in 2017 and he will arrive in Sydney next week for a trip abbreviated[Read More…]
The number of anti-Muslim hate groups nearly tripled from 34 in 2015 to 101 in 2016. That’s just one of the dramatic statistics in a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This annual count from the SPLC includes groups like the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other white nationalists, along with anti-government patriot groups and anti-LGBT[Read More…]
AT the 28th Summit meeting of the African Union (AU) held in Addis Ababa on 30 January 2017, Morocco’s readmission to the continental body generated heated discussion. At the end of the day the Kingdom of Morocco managed to win over sufficient member states on its side and it was allowed to join the fold unconditionally. Morocco left the[Read More…]
The Indiabased Neutrino Observaory (INO) proposed to be set up under the Cardamom Hills (09.9632361°N, 077.2729306°E) in the Western Ghats, a UNESCO heritage site, near the KeralaTamil Nadu border with its entry portal in Pottipuram village in Theni district of Tamil Nadu has been opposed by the local communities and the environmentalists. The first INO Risk Audit Report was published in Countercurrents. 2 The main issues raised in the the Risk Audit Group’s articles are: (a) The construction has the potential to cause hydrogeological calamities which will affect the livelihood of close to 10 million people in six districts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, who depend on the waters stored in reservoirs within the INO neighbourhood.3 (b) Violation of the Federal Principles by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate change as this is an interstate project (Kerala and Tamil Nadu States) and the Government of Kerala has not even been informed about it. The appeal against the grant of environmental clearance to INO in the Hon’ble National Green Tribunal, Southern Zone Chennai filed by G Sundararajan is coming up for final arguments in early March 2017. Among the grounds for the appeal was the potential impacts on the aquifer and water bodies. About a year after the filing of the appeal in NGT and some four years after the award of prior environmental clearance by the Government of India, the Tata Institute of Fundamenal Research (TIFR) has kindly uploaded on its website the Detailed Project Report (DPR) of INO prepared in December 2010 by the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (TANGEDCO). With the publication of the DPR it will be easy for Lawyers Sundarrajan and Vetri Selvan to convince the Hon’ble Tribunal about the impending water related disaster if the scientists are allowed to blast the Ghats. This report clearly mentions that tunnelling can disrupt the aquifers, there will be water loss and elaborate arrangements will be made for pumping the water out. Water Loss in INO’s Detailed Project Report The INO proponents were aware of the ‘inevitability’ of aquifer damage as these quotes from INO’s Detailed Project Report (DPR)4 prepared in December 2010 by the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (TANGEDCO) reveal: Read the full report Here[Read More…]
What is at the heart of the problems erupting worldwide? Is anything good emerging from these multiple crises? Can a new system grow from within the old one? Is it already here, visible and thriving? These questions are addressed by Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Niaros in this report, Value in the Commons Economy, co-published by Heinrich Böll Foundation and the[Read More…]
It was an odd sight for residents of Zaandam, a quaint Dutch town 15 minutes by train from Amsterdam. A public park in a village known for 18th-century windmills and wooden clogs had suddenly filled with rows of white tents. Five hundred refugees, mainly from Syria and Iraq, mostly men, had arrived by bus in October 2015. Most left behind[Read More…]
History may not be as useless as art, but it certainly performs a function that is almost without utility. George Santayana may well have crowed about the warnings of repeating historical mistakes if not learnt – the errant pupil ill-read would simply re-invent the same wheel of folly – but the point was not entirely accurate. What tends to happen[Read More…]
Only one month into his administration, and two days after the ouster of his National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump faces the growing prospect of congressional investigations into alleged ties to Moscow. Powerful sections of the American ruling class are seeking to put the US on a war footing against Russia in a campaign orchestrated by the major[Read More…]
Over 680 people were arrested in a five-day-long campaign of raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency last week, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). A quarter of those arrested had no criminal records. The first immigration sweep by the Trump administration also marks the first arrest of a DACA recipient, 23-year-old Daniel Ramirez Medina. Ramirez,[Read More…]
In a White House press conference Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump backed away from a decades-old pretense by Washington of a commitment to the pursuit of a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead, echoing remarks by Netanyahu, Trump advanced a “much bigger deal, a much more important deal” that “would take in[Read More…]
Rajvir Diler belong to Valmiki community and fighting on BJP ticket from one of the constituency in Hatharas, Uttar Pradesh. A report in several newspapers including Times of India suggest that he has been campaigning in such a way to get the big Jat votes which are decisive in his constituency so he does not enter the houses of[Read More…]
The first month of Trump in office unleashed chaos and turmoil with a series of executive orders threatening women’s reproductive rights, immigrants and sacred water guarded by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Trump presidency was a transition from a regime of secrecy to that of naked power. The legacy of Obama’s covert oppression is now being carried out by an[Read More…]
Empirical historical evidence combined with little common-sense are enough to tell us the type of future options that Israel has in store for the Palestinian people: perpetual Apartheid or ethnic cleansing, or a mix of both. The passing of the ‘Regularization Bill‘ on February 6 is all we need to imagine the Israeli-envisaged future. The new law allows the[Read More…]
(One finds an uncanny resemblance between the rule of Muhammad-bin-Tughluq and the present rulers of the country!) There is a popular saying that the History repeats itself. Muhammad-bin-Tughluq ruled Delhi from 1325 A.D. to 1351 A.D. After Allaudin Khilji he is supposed to have been the greatest Sultan of Delhi. He is fondly remembered for his bold experiments and[Read More…]
The President of the USA simply needs to give up dangerous, immoral notions and statements that can only lead to ever deepening tragedy and further horrific conflicts between us and the presumed “Other.” These all-out conflicts simply need to end.
It is illegal to shout “fire” in a crowded theater. The idea of fire creates intense fear deep in the primitive human brain known as the Limbic System, or emotional center. The “Fight or Flight” reaction is activated causing a stampede, resulting in injury and death. Similarly “Hate Speech” can activate the emotional centers of the primitive human[Read More…]
“Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches I’ll recruit my army from the orphanages….” — from Bob Dylan’s Thunder on the Mountain In Madness and Civilization Michel Foucault makes the claim that the period of the Enlightenment in Europe effected a transformation in the way deviancy was managed. Whereas Medieval and Renaissance society allowed beggars, thieves, and lunatics to[Read More…]
It takes little these days for the darkened air of the Kremlin to have an impact on the politics of other countries. Across continents, it has become a tenured dark eminence with President Vladimir Putin on his irrepressible steed: Where will it strike next? His impact is often alleged, it is almost never quantifiable, but the influence, after a time,[Read More…]
U.S. President Donald Trump made unequivocally clear, on February 14th, that the new Cold War between the U.S. and Russia will continue until Russia complies with two conditions that would not only be humiliating to Russia (and to the vast majority of its citizens), but that would also be profoundly immoral. One of these two conditions would actually be[Read More…]
Neocon and neoliberal war propaganda, as exhibited in the Washington Post, New York Times, etc., “has turned much of the liberal/progressive community” in the US “into a pro-New Cold War constituency willing to engage in a new breed of McCarthyism”, Robert Parry notes today. (This author has personally witnessed similar displays.) Leading Russia expert Stephen Cohen, a professor at Princeton,[Read More…]
After he moved to London in his early 20s, Luke Howard became obsessed with the weather. Howard had a day job running a pharmacy business in the 1790s and early 1800s, but he spent a lot of his spare time staring at the sky. He collected a set of makeshift weather instruments—glass thermometers; a hygrometer (to measure moisture in the[Read More…]
On Aug. 8, 2016, 50 former top-level Republican officials who served under Republican presidents going back to Richard Nixon issued a warning letter. Many had held senior national security posts. They called out the threat to national security posed by President Trump’s lack of self-control and impetuously “erratic behavior” and concluded that he “would be the most reckless president in[Read More…]
In last week’s essay I used the phrase “hard-nosed optimism” to describe the attitude needed now as “an alternative to the lies of divisive bullies who take advantage of the elites’ failures in order to promote their own patently greedy interests.” This is the optimism Antonio Gramsci probably had in mind when he coined the memorable phrase, “Pessimism of the[Read More…]
One-third of all food produced worldwide is wasted, according to the United Nations. The U.K. is no exception, with 15 million tons squandered each year. But while a proliferation of food waste apps hope to combat the problem through technology, FoodCycle is tackling it by serving up hot meals to those who need it — along with providing a place[Read More…]
The Oxford Martin School is based at Oxford University in the UK and has set up the ‘Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations’ (OMC). Bringing together international leaders from government, business and civil society, the OMC aims to address the growing short-term preoccupations of modern politics and business and identify ways of overcoming today’s gridlock in key international negotiations. The OMC’s website says[Read More…]
Donald Trump’s national security advisor, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, resigned late Monday following an escalating controversy in Washington over reports that he discussed anti-Russian sanctions with Moscow’s ambassador to the US in the month before President Donald Trump took office. Speculation within the media was rife Monday that Flynn could either be fired or forced to resign following the[Read More…]
Post-truth, a dubious compound word has been officially recognised and admitted into the Oxford dictionary in 2016 thereby acknowledging its legitimacy. Shamefully, our acceptance of this word into our vocabulary is in truth a measure of our moral inadequacy, because it shows that we are willing to conform, play the game and allow public deceit and political dishonesty to[Read More…]
tur“Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood.” Susan Sontag, On Photography (1977) The photograph is a still image of messages, trapped fleetingly. For that reason, it has been seen as mimicking death, a mask forever preserved. It suspends, a captured meaning hovering in time. That such images become weapons[Read More…]
This year’s budget has once again been lackluster in terms of allocations made to the Education sector. The Kothari Commission recommendation of an allocation of 6% of GDP has remained far from realization, with the allocation hovering in the range of 3-4% every year. Within the education sector also, elementary education is the most fund-deprived and neglected sector. The priorities[Read More…]
Three separate events that unfolded over the past few days, all with varied backdrops depict the pathetic state of patriarchy that we live in under the shadow of a constitutional democracy. The women involved in these episodes belong to vastly different social strata of the immensely complex Hindu society but all are victims of their womanhood in their own respect.[Read More…]
Prime Minister NarendraModi’s picture replacing that of M K Gandhi at the charkha in an official annual calendar has kicked up a storm. Modi baiters have pounced upon this egregious ‘offence’ that the eternal propagandist has committed. It was one thing to appear on Reliance jio advertisements but to supersede the ‘father of the nation’ itself was untenable to many[Read More…]
The human species cannot exist in perpetuity on the earth unless it lives in biological balance with the life around it. Running a net deficit drawdown of the earth’s fertility will not work. Is it not strange that children can understand this statement but world leaders cannot? Ten thousand years in the past, the earth existed in a condition[Read More…]
The amount of bombs dropped by Americans on the innocent citizens of tiny French Indochina was more than twice the amount of bombs dropped in Europe, Africa and Asia during the Second World War, and this includes bombs dropped on the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong by American hero Senator John McCain, who proudly ran for president on his military[Read More…]
On January 19th the New York Times ran a story that probably caused a certain class of readers to do a double-take. It turns out that a year has gone by without there being a single shooting in the Queensbridge Houses. As for a homicide it’s been almost two years. The famous, or long derided as ‘infamous’, 96 building Queensbridge[Read More…]
Interview by Italian magazine Antidiplomatico with the author, Andre Vltchek Q: Please tell us about your recently published book, “Aurora”. A: Aurora is my latest novel. It is short, but emotionally charged and ‘outrageous’. It breaks many taboos, especially those regarding Western, particularly European culture. You know, so many people have this fetish about European culture being refined and superior[Read More…]
PUDR condemns the anti-women stand of the Naga HoHo/ Naga Tribes Action Committee (NTAC) in the context of reservation of seats for women in elections to local urban bodies. The accompanying mob-violence and the threats to women who wanted to contest from reserved seats, reveals the irony that a movement fighting for freedom for Naga people is willing to suppress[Read More…]
Demonstrations in the US continued over the weekend against last week’s mass roundup of immigrants, the first “surge” in deportations since President Donald Trump signed a January 25 executive order dramatically expanding the purview of anti-immigrant police actions. An annual march for civil rights in Raleigh, North Carolina, held Saturday, drew a record crowd of over 20,000. The turnout was[Read More…]
On the back of Brexit, the UK government is planning what could be a disastrous trade deal with the Trump administration. It would likely be worse than the secretive and undemocratic stalled Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal that the EU has been planning with the US. As for food and agriculture, such a trade deal would be contingent on[Read More…]
“The partition of 1947 should not have divided the people of the subcontinent. Today, they look divided because Pakistan and India have been denying the logic of geography, history and shared culture. This policy is harming vital interests of people. Both need peace, democratic governance and respect for pluralism. They must eastablish cordial relations and exploit all possible means of[Read More…]
The film is remarkable and rich, the kind of experience you turn over in your mind for days afterwards, discovering new facets that reflect new themes or ideas. Above all, the film affirms the essential humanity of every person—even and especially the “villain”—and exposes the emptiness and absurdity of revenge-taking.
The Nagada village of Chingudipala Panchayat of Sukinda block in Jajpur district, Odisha caught headlines of the state and national media due to continuous child deaths in July-August, 2016. Now five to six months have already passed. A six-member team of the “Ganatantrik Adhikar Surakha Sangathan” visited the place on 4th February 2017 to know about on-going programs of the[Read More…]
“Rather than advancing a political solution that almost everyone agrees is the only way to solve the conflict, it seems the Trump administration’s actions are just adding fuel to the fire.” Adam Baron, European Council on Foreign Relations, Feb 7, 2016 The seething bickering in Washington has been going on for over a week. Was the first authorised international raid[Read More…]
In the opening of her 1953 short story “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”, the deplorable tramp Tom T. Shiftlet cannot keep his eyes off of “the square rusted back of an automobile.” He totally falls in love with a Ford that hasn’t run in fifteen years, which is sitting in a shed. His love-at-first-sight trembling is interrupted[Read More…]
![By Charles Steinhacker [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://cdn.countercurrents.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/pornography-200x150.jpg "The Dworkin-MacKinnon Anti-Pornography Civil Rights Ordinance 283")
The Dworkin-MacKinnon Ordinance — originally written in 1983 by Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon — was an amendment to a civil rights law. It stands as a mostly ignored template for creating law-based change within the system. Rather than taking the traditional “obscenity” angle, the Dworkin-MacKinnon Ordinance proposed that: Pornography is a violation of women’s civil rights Woman harmed by[Read More…]
It is a conceit of democracy that opposing parties, after months of trying to convince the public the other would be a disaster for the country, should after the election cooperate for the good of the whole. In fact, with rare exception, what happens was postulated by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto over a century ago. Power is contested between[Read More…]
It is my intention to make my entire life a rejection of, a protest against the crimes and injustices of war and political tyranny which threaten to destroy the whole human race and the world … If I say no to all these secular forces, I also say yes to all that is good in the world and in humanity.[Read More…]
Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is: Do you? (1) No one knows, really, as this something is still evolving. As we look back to 2016, though, it is abundantly clear that history has awoken from its slumber. We’ve had a couple events in the West last year: Brexit and Trump. Politically-charged, dynamic events (as Alain Badiou might define them) have been rare in the[Read More…]
Our ‘sensibility’ is not surely an objective-aesthetic experience in terms of understanding, appreciating and even critiquing any art, literature, film etc. But it sometimes demands some ‘common’ sense in, at least, viewing a film. Exorcism is no novel experience in the history of world films. Like stories interwoven around myths and fantasies, devils and evil spirits continue to be a[Read More…]
Donald Trump signed two executive orders on January 25 outlining a series of new measures aimed at setting massive restrictions on immigration to the United States and on tearing those already present in the country away from their children, parents, and other loved ones. Two particularly high-profile components of these measures, the construction of a border wall between the US[Read More…]
A metamorphosis of the human mind far surpassing others seen throughout history will be occurring. Humans finally will have come to an understanding of a harsh reality; by their own actions and inactions they have brought on the beginning of their end. A painful lesson will have been learned, one forcing them to accept the fact that their continued existence[Read More…]
“SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!” Donald J. Trump, Twitter, Feb 9, 2017 It seems in little need of recapitulation, but the Executive Order 13769, otherwise known as “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States,” has been living a charmed and distorted life. It sought to ban, for 90 days,[Read More…]
The confusion stands in the minds, the body and the soul. It gets enhanced by the challenges and ignorance set forth by laws, society, family, peer groups, faith, patriarchal conventions and so-called guardians of custom and social laws. At an age when it seemed that with the assistance of knowledge and technology, the wall of confusion, isolation and loneliness would[Read More…]
Gary Browning’s book unfolds the academic space that endorses the hegemonic reception of global theory.Contemporary intelligentsia do view global theory as a radical theoretical tradition that problematizes the assertions emerged in the context of globalization.In other words,the social movements that emerged against the ruthless penetration of globalisation are categorised into political categories called global theories.Browing in an incisive,theoretical critique does[Read More…]
A three-judge Appeals Court panel issued a unanimous ruling Thursday afternoon rejecting the Trump administration’s claim of “unreviewable” presidential power and sustaining a judicial order that bars enforcement of Trump’s temporary ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, as well as his temporary ban on the entry of refugees from any country. The 3-0 ruling was signed by judges William[Read More…]
The United Nations and humanitarian organizations Wednesday (February 8) launched an international appeal for $2.1 billion to provide humanitarian assistance to 18.8 million Yemenis. This is more than two thirds of the total population of 27.4 million of the war-devastated Yemen. At least 12 million people in Yemen need life-saving assistance in 2017, the UN sources said. “Two years[Read More…]
Netanyahu is the PM of nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist-run, genocidally racist, serial invader, serial war criminal, women-abusing, children-abusing, democracy-by-genocide, ethnic cleansing, pathologically mendacious, neo-Nazi, anti-Arab anti-Semitic and indeed anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, race-based kleptocracy Apartheid Israel. Netanyahu has been invited to visit pro-Zionist, US-lackey, climate criminal Australia, the world’s leading supporter of Apartheid Israel after the US, and will address the Australian[Read More…]
Indian freedom struggle is comprised of innumerable set of actions but the most unique and important among them remains contribution of Indian revolutionaries, were handful of youth who kept a clear vision for universal brotherhood and equality. The independence they stood for was of economic, social and political nature. Organizations like Naujawan Bharat Sabha (NBS), Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA)[Read More…]
Money creation, like alchemy, is shrouded in ambiguous language and yields eternal wealth! For most of history these secrets have been used to empower sovereigns to spend money without the painful business of taxing or borrowing. Those foolish enough to try to grasp it with their rational minds are befuddled by unexpected politics, propaganda and paradoxes. In modern times this[Read More…]
With climate deniers sweeping into the White House, it’s time for scientists on the front lines of climate change to speak from the heart. I’m afraid to publish this article. Why? Because I’m a climate scientist who speaks out about climate change, and in speaking out I may be risking my career. But I do so anyway, out of love—love[Read More…]
The police came to Last Child Camp in broad daylight, with armored vehicles and guns drawn, to rip our people from our land. Many water protectors were on prayer walks and in ceremony. We watched from the top of the hill at Oceti Oyate Camp as the troops moved in against them. We sent our prayers to those innocent and[Read More…]
On Tuesday morning after Sunday’s Superbowl football game in TX, USA, I turned on the TV to try to catch the news during breakfast. Every news channel had suspended the news in favor of discussing the parade for the Superbowl football winners from my state of MA. The announcers all sounded deliriously happy or were faking extreme and over-the-top[Read More…]
Despite certain economic and social setbacks, the Western Empire is doing remarkably well. That is, if we measure success by the ability to control the world, to condition the brains of human beings on all continents, and to crush almost all substantial dissent, at home and abroad. What has almost entirely disappeared from life, at least in such places[Read More…]
A few kilometers outside Ahmedabad in Gujarat, I visited a Mahila Shakti Kendra about a year ago. I was amazed at what I saw and heard. In a community building, right in the center of a buzzing market, was a decent sized room. There were info graphics on the wall, a group of women of all ages having a charcha.[Read More…]
Ever since Tamil Nadu’s interim Chief Minister O Panneerselvam turned rebellious, anti-Sasikala voice is gaining momentum all across the state. But unlike Jallikattu, this movement is more pertinent on social media. People have not taken streets to mark dissent against the on-going political tussle. This has raised several eyebrows. A state which saw a sea of youngsters taking streets in[Read More…]
7 in the series JatiIndia: A Flag of Atrocities Caste, Present and Future For more than a quarter century, journalist/activist Teesta Setalvad has worked tirelessly to ensure that India’s Constitution serves the people. Her most well-known work involved exposing, through her group Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), the atrocities committed by Hindutva extremists in Gujarat in 2002. As part[Read More…]
The Trump administration “will be held accountable in court” for its decision to grant the final easement on the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), Indigenous people and environmental allies vowed Tuesday. And with actions planned nationwide on Wednesday, the administration won’t get off in the court of public opinion, either. “The drinking water of millions of Americans is now at risk,” said[Read More…]
The movement to stop the controversial Dakota Access pipeline through financial activism took an important step forward today, as the Seattle City Council voted 9-0 to approve a bill that terminates a valuable city contract with Wells Fargo. The bank, one of the largest in the United States, has provided more than $450 million in credit to the companies building the pipeline.
Wala, 16, always finds a seat away from the windows. The girl is a student at the Hayel Abdul Hamid secondary school in Beit Hanoun, a United Nations facility in the northern Gaza Strip. She has developed a phobia of sitting next to windows, afraid, she told The Electronic Intifada, of stray bullets. Her fear is well-founded. Beit Hanoun lies[Read More…]
A short history Our Earth was formed about 4.56 billion years (4.560.000.000 years) ago by accretion of material from the Solar Nebula. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accretion_(astrophysics) Compared to many other species, the history of mankind covers a very short period. Early modern humans (Homo sapiens) were born in Africa about 200,000 years B.C., and have since spread around the world. This development began[Read More…]
This week, India’s Supreme Court will hear the next installment of the case brought by Aruna Rodrigues to stop the commercial release of genetically modified mustard. The Government of India is attempting to push through the commercial cultivation of genetically modified (GM) food crops. In an attempt to spearhead the drive by making GM mustard the first such crop in[Read More…]
Let us imagine two things. First, that the United States Voters’ Rights Amendment has been enacted and ratified as the result of a mass, nonpartisan, political movement, and that we can take a time trip into the future to see the results. Let’s visit that not-so-distant time and observe what the People have been able to accomplish—once they took control[Read More…]
Recently I came back to my home from Jammu. On reaching Banihall I went directly towards the railway station amid cold, and drizzle. I was trembling due to biting cold. Finally jumped inside the train after waiting for 30 minutes, I luckily found a seat next to the innocent and cute 11 years old boy wearing spectacles. It was the[Read More…]
Distortion? False information? Conspiracy theories? Hacked email? Climate scientists have known all this for decades. What can be learned from their rich experience with climate propaganda. The world is slowly waking up. “Post-truth” was declared the word of the year 2016 by the Oxford Dictionaries. Finally, people start to widely appreciate how dangerous the epidemic of fake news is for[Read More…]
In the waning months of 2016, as the Standing Rock Sioux’s protest raged against the Dakota Access Pipeline (NODAPL), an historic Back To The Future journey was begun anew for the entire human race to ponder. This journey wasn’t just about Climate Change and how to more quickly convert the world from fossil fuels to renewable energies. It was about[Read More…]
I fear that many of us are hating Donald Trump for the wrong reasons. Multitudes are being swayed by mainstream media-inspired demonization of the new US president, based on selective assumptions and half-truths. US mainstream media, which rarely deviates from supporting the American government’s conduct, however reckless, is now presenting Trump as if an aberration of otherwise egalitarian, sensible, and[Read More…]
When the French psychologist and philosopher Michel Foucault wrote Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason in 1973, he did not have in mind President Donald J. Trump because his study sought to answer the question of insanity from 1500 to 1800 only. Still, the book, a milestone both by reason and skill, sheds some[Read More…]
Australia’s prime minister has been politically tone deaf for the duration of his tenure, which was won by the political assassination of his predecessor, Tony Abbott. Since being in power, he has squandered a workable majority, been held in a headlock by reactionaries in his party, and looking every bit the straw man of politics. As he withers, opponents within[Read More…]
This book by G. Srinivas is an attempt to analyse the formation of the Dalit middle class which offers wide range of facts that are important in understanding the formation of Dalit middle class in India today. The book is definitely going to have a scholarly impact on the students and researchers who are interested studying the Dalit middle class
The excessive security measures have forced Kashmiris, historically reputed to be very sociable people, to live in cocoons with only interactions through social networking sites on the internet! The events of the nineties of the last century when armed militancy erupted in the state forced Kashmiris to mostly confine to their homes. There was violence all around with encounters, clashes,[Read More…]
On Tuesday, the United States Army Corps of Engineers filed documents with the US District Court in Washington, DC stating that it intends to grant an easement to Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) so that it can move forward with the completion of the Dakota Access pipeline. It also notified the Senate of its filings, stating that construction is expected to[Read More…]
Nazareth: The Israeli parliament passed the legalisation law on Monday night – a piece of legislation every bit as suspect as its title suggests. The law widens the powers of Israeli officials to seize the final fragments of Palestinian land in the West Bank that were supposed to be off-limits. Palestinian leaders warned that the law hammered the last nail[Read More…]
Introduction The first part gives a brief sketch of Com TN’s political life. The next section given below is an Extract from INDIA MORTGAGED, written by comrade Tarimela Nagi Reddy (1917-1976),[Read More…]
We all might concur that stalking in India is an annoyingly rampant issue. However, we must also concur that we will not be engaging with the issue entirely without engaging with the culture that furnishes a celebration, even appreciation, of stalking and voyeuristic behaviour. Two issues that have come to the light in the recent past further gives support to[Read More…]
News related to encounters is quite common, particularly from conflict prone areas in the country. These often get reported from areas such as Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Nagaland, Assam and Manipur. Sometimes the news related to encounters become controversial. There is an official version which describes these as ‘genuine encounters’. On the other side, human rights organizations based on certain factual errors[Read More…]
Being the world’s largest democracy with less than one-fifth of the world average per capita income (nominal), India is not new to ‘political’ slogans, so to speak, more in line with things related to poverty elimination, and therefore, related to affordability. The latest of this sloganeering or initiative, as one may see it, has been on the Digital India campaign[Read More…]
Trumpism is not a uniquely American phenomena. It is the local variant of an ultra-right anti-establishment ideology that has a worldwide manifestation. In Europe there are right-wing anti-EU parties growing in many of the member states in the EU based on anti-immigrant policies and appeals to nationalism and economic protectionism to preserve jobs for native born citizens, as well anti-Islam[Read More…]
Following are excerpts from the Freedom Socialist Party document “Standing on the Edge of Something Big,” adopted at FSP’s September 2016 convention. These sections analyze the political and economic nature of the times and the history leading up to today’s reality. Others examine the decline of capitalist democracy; the 2016 elections; the upsurge in class conflict and social activism; and[Read More…]
I first learned I had Parkinson’s Disease (PD) in 2007. It is a disorder that kills off brain cells that make dopamine — a substance the body needs to control movement, speaking, swallowing and a multitude of other functions. PD afflicts over 1 million people in the U.S. and millions more worldwide. At present, there is no cure and a[Read More…]
Introduction Contrary to the Hegelian assumption that civilization progresses in a linear mode, the contradictions of capitalism between the promise of prosperity for all, on the one hand, and the reality of perpetual capital concentration, on the other, undermines bourgeois democracy and leads toward a more militaristic-police state. The nexus of structural and behavioral violence has not been lost even[Read More…]
Late Monday night, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, approved a bill to retroactively legalize the expropriation by settlers of private Palestinian land that has taken place over the last two decades. Passed by 60-52, the so-called Regularization Bill will legalize around 4,000 settlement homes in so-called unauthorized outposts and settlements. Human Rights Watch swiftly condemned the vote, noting that the Regularization[Read More…]
David Rose popularized the concept of the “pause” in global warming in a 2012 article on the Daily Mail. There never was such a thing, but it became a highly successful meme (*), still widely cited today as proof that global warming doesn’t exist or it is nothing to be worried about. By now, the rapid rising temperatures of the[Read More…]
As an American investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker and novelist, André Vltchek has covered countless armed conflicts around the world. Among his most recent work we find “On Western Terrorism”, a discussion with Noam Chomsky, a renowned expert on propaganda. Together, they explore the legacy of colonialism that lasts to this day and denounce the hypocrisy of the West in regard[Read More…]
Co-Written by Prema Revati and Senthil Babu (This is the second essay in our series on the distress deaths in the Cauvery delta districts of Tamil Nadu, which has now climbed into the 250s.) Credit is what sustains farming and everyday life in the district, and this year, given the non-release of adequate amounts of water from the Cauvery, demonetisation,[Read More…]
Donald Trump’s regime is rapidly reconfiguring the United States into an authoritarian state. All forms of dissent will soon be criminalized. Civil liberties will no longer exist. Corporate exploitation, through the abolition of regulations and laws, will be unimpeded. Global warming will accelerate. A repugnant nationalism, amplified by government propaganda, will promote bigotry and racism. Hate crimes will explode. New[Read More…]
Monsanto is preparing a fresh effort to promote genetically modified (GM) crops to the UK public, according to a piece in The Scottish Farmer. The article notes the company recently appointed former World Bank communications strategist Vance Crowe as its ‘Director of Millenial Engagement’, a job that involves convincing the public about the benefits of GM. In March, Vance will[Read More…]
Co-Written by Stan Cox and Paul Cox Last month, the social-media giant Facebook announced plans to build a new data center near Odense, Denmark. The expansion of server capacity was needed, the company said, to support “richer content” such as live-streaming and virtual reality. The Facebook executive who made the public announcement (live-streamed, of course), noted that the new facility[Read More…]
Verdict is myopic, unscientific, anti-environment and anti-public health February 6, 2017: At last National Green Tribunal (NGT) gave its verdict on February 2, 2017 after its penultimate order of January 16, 2017 holding Respondent No. 9 M/s. Jindal Urban Infrastructure Ltd. guilty of acts of omission and commission but failed to give relief to the residents and birds of Okhla,[Read More…]
I’m not a hot off the shelf book reader. Most of the books I read are suggestions from my friends or found during my reading or research. When Teesta Setalvad’s memoir “Foot Soldier of the Constitution” appeared I simply could not resist. Her indomitable spirit in spite all the wild allegations, smearing of reputation, false cases, public humiliation, personal attacks[Read More…]
The resilience of the US legal system is being tested in the first great and continuing confrontation between the Trump administration and his marshalled opponents. The battle is testing the Republic to its limits, pitting views of sovereign will and legality against each other with near unprecedented viciousness. The wail on the part of the Trump administration is that of[Read More…]
On Friday, Federal District Judge James Robart entered an order halting the enforcement of President Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim travel ban, which has prompted large protests across the US and worldwide. The Trump administration has responded by filing an immediate appeal, arguing that the judge’s order violates a “fundamental sovereign attribute” of the president. Robart’s order was entered in a lawsuit[Read More…]
Ever since tensions again escalated between the government of Myanmar and the Rohingya people on October 2016 and the reinvigorated persecution of the minority group that followed, thousands of Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh — the United Nations humanitarian office’s most recent estimate is 69,000. Scores of them have, meanwhile, been seen begging on the streets between Ukhia and Tekhnaf[Read More…]
Chile is facing one of the worst forest fires in its history. The worst hit areas are O’Higgins, Maule, Biobio and La Araucana, all located in the extreme south of the country, where in addition to small Mapuche farming communities, there are large forestry companies. The fire, fueled by strong winds, high temperatures and an eight-year drought, has had an[Read More…]
Iran test-fired a missile and the U.S. government went ballistic. It put Iran ‘on notice’ — a phrase meaning little but with a distinct menace. Rummaging around in the Obama administration files, the new arrivals soon discovered well-prepared plans for sanctions should Iran’s actions displease. Iran was no longer ‘on notice,’ it was sanctioned. The Iranians are furious, saying nobody[Read More…]
The inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President has ushered in a new era of uncertainty, nowhere more so than in the Middle East. The rules of the game have indeed taken a turn for the better for Bibi Netanyahou, who gave the final push to the construction of 566 new homes in East Jerusalem. The new lodgings will[Read More…]
When the Indian-Canadian and later Indian-American novelist Bharati Mukherjee complained in the 1970s that Canada was more racist than America, many people thought she was harsh in her reading of the Canadian society. Only a handful of people told her that she was right. I personally think she was dead right. I can testify to her anguish in that I[Read More…]
The Trump Administration’s rhetoric and actions have alarmed the world. The protests in response to his visa ban have overshadowed and distracted from a darker threat: war with Iran. Is the fear of the threat greater than the threat itself? The answer is not clear. Certainly Americans and non-Americans who took comfort in the fact that we would have a[Read More…]
WSS stands with the struggling people of Bhangar against the severe repression unleashed by the state in order to establish a power grid and high power transmission lines across the area by force. In the course of this struggle: Two people have died as a result of bullet wounds inflicted by the police and armed goons while several more people have[Read More…]
On Friday, a federal judge in the US state of Washington granted a nationwide stay on key provisions of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travel to most nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries. The most far-reaching court order yet, the ruling by US District Judge James Robart in Seattle clears the way for tens of thousands of individuals stranded outside[Read More…]
Human caused global warming increasingly threatens all we love and care about. Climate change from this warming caused (mostly) by greenhouse gases (GHGs) from our use of fossil fuels is a potent growing risk to our families, our kids and their kids, our communities and country. This radical change threatens most of the species and ecosystems with which we share[Read More…]
Today’s America is a mockery of it. Lady Liberty weeps now. So, let’s ship her back from whence she came, and maybe Europeans will like the symbolism of it. After all: we got it from Europe, just like we got the immigrants from there. Donald Trump might not be able to get Mexicans to pay for his wall that the U.S.[Read More…]
The refugee crisis exploded on the global landscape in 2015 which cautioned the comity of nations that refugees are not socio-political resources. The year 2016 corroborated that the refugee crisis is not going to be a vanishing point of human existentialism. But it has made available an opportunity that to address the plight of flight of refugees in 2017. It[Read More…]
London.: The great tedium of history is that those who refuse to acknowledge its immemorial works tend to see exceptional events everywhere. The next event of terror is singular; the next act of technology inspired hacking is remarkable. Listening to the crackling consternation of the airwaves this Friday morning, the sense of a dark, sulphuric fog, not unlike the polluted air[Read More…]
Outside Southeast Asia, few people know of Palembang, a city on Sumatra, the sixth largest island in the world. A gloomy and immense city, with almost two million inhabitants, most of them living in cramped and squalid conditions. The tropical River Musi bisects the city, a desperately polluted waterway, bordered by slums built on stilts and a few old colonial[Read More…]
Today, microfinance — an approach to financial inclusion based on providing small loans and other financial services to poor people, primarily women — is a global multi-billion dollar industry with operations on all continents .Microfinance had once generated considerable enthusiasm, not just in the development community but also at political levels. It was considered a marvelous innovation and was expected[Read More…]
President Donald Trump signed executive directives on Friday initiating a sweeping rollback of regulations on banks and financial brokers enacted under the Obama administration following the Wall Street crash of 2008. Trump’s actions target in particular the 2010 Dodd-Frank bank regulations and a Labor Department rule set to take effect in April requiring financial advisers to put the interests of[Read More…]
Today’s Times of India has reported that CBI has filed criminal charges against the well known human rights activist Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand. As per the statement of Teesta, refuting all claims of violation of FCRA norms by the CBI, the financial support she has received is after the deduction of TDS. And even if any mistake[Read More…]
One after another, the executive orders roll down from the top office of the land—orders that dismantle health coverage and launch the building of a wall while demolishing efforts at climate protection and access to birth control. And then a new set—excluding from the United States desperate refugee families from seven Muslim countries. That was just in week one. Each[Read More…]
A federal judge in Washington state issued a nationwide injunction late Friday against President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order on immigration—widely denounced as a travel ban targeting Muslims and refugees from war-torn states—that stirred airport protests across the U.S. last weekend and dozens of lawsuits and legal challenges throughout the week. In Seattle, U.S. District Judge James Robart ruled in[Read More…]
In Argentina, people with damaged or broken items meet to repair them at the Repair Club. You can find them on Saturday afternoons, in a park, plaza or workshop, involved in what looks like a strange choreography: they’re not buying or selling, eating or dancing. Instead, they’re repairing things. Clothes, home appliances, toys, books, bicycles: even the most hopeless items[Read More…]
Citizens of the mostly White Anglo Five-Eyes intelligence-sharing club (US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) are 6% of Humanity and are exempt from racist Trump’s anti-Muslim travel bans which apply to the remaining 94% of mostly non-White Humanity encompassing 188 of the 193 members of the UN. Apartheid South Africa at least allowed Japanese as “Honorary Whites”. Humanity’s[Read More…]
When my daughter was five years old, I put three cardboard boxes one day in her bedroom. With a fat marking magic marker, I labeled one “A,” a second one “B,” and a third one “C.” I told her that my doing this task would help her with classification skills about knowing where various items — like toys, clothes, puzzles,[Read More…]
In the waning months of 2016, as the Standing Rock Sioux’s protest raged against the Dakota Access Pipeline (NODAPL), an arduous, historic Back To The Future journey was begun anew for the entire human race to ponder. This journey wasn’t just about Climate Change and how to more quickly convert the world from fossil fuels to renewable energies. It was[Read More…]
Corruption became so integral to Bangladesh that consecutively for five years (2001-2005) it remained the most corrupt country in the world. However, we hear things have changed for the better. On the one hand, the country has become self-sufficient in food; on the other, it’s no longer the most corrupt nation on earth, officially! Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s human development index has[Read More…]
We live in a world in which women living in poverty face gross inequalities and injustice from birth to death. From poor education to poor nutrition to vulnerable and low pay employment, the sequence of discrimination is very hard, but all too common. They face significant constraints in maximizing their But there are also silvery strands in this dark[Read More…]
With assistance from the National Guard, police raided a protest camp in Cannon Ball, North Dakota near the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) site on February 1, evicting and arresting seventy-six protesters opposed to the completion of the pipeline. At about 4 pm, a convoy of bulldozers, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, and Long Range Acoustic Device sound cannons descended upon[Read More…]
In what appears to have been a calculated leak from the highest echelons of the White House, US President Donald Trump reportedly “blasted” Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during a phone call last weekend and then abruptly cut off the call. According to the details first published by the Washington Post yesterday, Trump fumed at Turnbull for asking him to[Read More…]
President Donald Trump threatened to revoke federal funding to the University of California at Berkeley, one of the top public research institutions in the United States, following a protest Wednesday night by thousands of students against Milo Yiannopoulos, the extreme right-wing editor of Breitbart News. Yiannopoulos had been invited by the campus Republicans to speak at the university. The protest[Read More…]
The US Congress took its first legislative action of the new congressional term on behalf of the corporate elite, as the Senate voted by 54-45 to pass a resolution rescinding the Stream Protection Rule adopted by the Department of the Interior in December. The rule restricts the dumping of waste by coal companies engaged in a technique known as “mountaintop[Read More…]
IGP Kalluri, the man alleged to have committed untold atrocities on clueless tribal people in Bastar, and the scores of human rights activists who have tried to intervene time and again in order to demand at least a semblance of justice for these innocent people, (who have been mercilessly mass-murdered, raped, beaten ruthlessly, maimed etc.) has been very graciously asked[Read More…]
While misogyny, racism, and ethnic taunts were conspicuous signposts on Donald Trump’s path to the White House, much of that road was paved with “populist”, “anti-establishment” and “anti-globalization” rhetoric. Trump’s inaugural address featured numerous populist lines (e.g. “What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people”), attacks on the status[Read More…]
John Pilger may certainly be correct in arguing that “Trump is not the Issue” but the way the latter’s propaganda works certainly is. Trump undoubtedly values the propagandistic role in domination and oppression and the fact that it helps obscuring the narratives that explaindomination and oppression.[i] Trump is a master of domination and oppression and his recently acquired power demands[Read More…]
I was deeply saddened upon hearing the news about the murder of six people in a mosque in St Foy, Québec yesterday. While these kinds of killings are commonplace in the U.S., and the killings in other areas of the world greatly outnumber this relatively local occurrence, this one seemed to be more significant. It is not significant just that[Read More…]
President Donald Trump you have placed restrictions on entry of immigrants from seven Muslim countries in your executive order dated 27th January, 2017. You have placed restrictions in the name of security of American citizens and protecting them from the threat of terrorism. The concern for security of American citizens is welcome. So also is the case of being concerned[Read More…]
This year’s union budget has been presented in the backdrop of intensified economic crisis due to the disastrous demonetization, which was nothing but a ploy to increase the liquidity in the banks that were on the brink of collapse due to the massively piled NPAs by the big businesses. The economic survey as well the budget speech was an exercise[Read More…]
Open any newspaper or peruse any website and you’ll find at least one celebrity, one politician, or one pundit demanding that the rest of us “embrace” President Trump and his gang. Some suggest that we “give him a chance” and others say basically that “you guys lost so stuff it and deal with the new guy.” Others, true to the[Read More…]
In an extraordinarily bellicose statement Wednesday, US National Security Adviser Michael Flynn accused Iran of “destabilising behaviour across the Middle East” and warned, “As of today we are officially putting Iran on notice.” He denounced Tehran for carrying out a ballistic missile test on Sunday and accused the Iranian regime, without any substantiation, of responsibility for an attack on a[Read More…]
On Tuesday, Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch, a federal appeals court judge from the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, to the Supreme Court seat formerly held by arch-reactionary justice Antonin Scalia. Within Republican circles, the nomination was generally met with approval. Gorsuch was considered by the “mainstream” Republican establishment to have the requisite right-wing credentials, including his proven reactionary record[Read More…]
London: What role Parliament? Edmund Burke put forth his known idea before the electors of Bristol on November 3, 1774. An ideal, and therefore refutable notion, was advanced: “Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents.”[1] The role[Read More…]
“The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.” Edward Dowling We’re seeing a sudden surge of dictatorial fascistic leaders around the globe. Here’s something I wrote several years ago, trying to explain what’s happening[Read More…]
WSS welcomes the actions taken by the Government of Chhattisgarh to restore its credibility and regain the confidence of the citizens of Bastar. In a series of decisive administrative actions yesterday, the state government announced the appointment of Sri P Sundararaj, IPS as DIG of the newly-created Dantewada Range. Bastar IG Sri SRP Kalluri has been asked to proceed on[Read More…]
The scheduled speech by Milo Yiannopoulos at MLK Student Union at UC Berkeley yesterday, was called off after a student protest. Milo is an editor for Breitbart which is an anti-Semitic, racist, white supremacist Web site. CNN reported that violence erupted at UC Berkeley on Wednesday night hours before Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak. More than 1,500 protesters had[Read More…]
We must fight the encroaching fascism. We must fight it hard and fight it now. This time, fascism is global in its implications and nuclear in its capabilities. Today we are all Yemenis, Libyans, Iraqis, Iranians, Somalis, Sudanese, and Syrians. Today we are all connected humans who will not see the bullies win. Today we are all empaths. Today we[Read More…]
Trump seems like Don Quixote, who invents enemies and fight them and believe to be victorious. It is true that Trump has succeeded in the real estate business. But the administration’s policy is much bigger than estate companies and alcohol factories. However, this does not mean that the world had reached the stage morality has become embedded in politics, but[Read More…]
While the Kashmir valley is physically and politically choked, the “New Maharajas” are enjoying the pleasant climate of Jammu and celebrating the erstwhile Maharaja’s birthday! Kashmir valley has been politically “choked” right from 1947. The expression of true aspirations is an “anti-national” act in Kashmir. Now added to this political choking has come the physical choking! During last couple of[Read More…]
US President Donald Trump promises to be pro-Israel in every aspect. ‘I’m the best thing that could ever happen to Israel,’ he boasted at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Presidential Forum in Washington DC, in December, 2015. For a brief moment, Trump appeared as if rethinking his unconditional support for Israel, when in February 2016, the Republican presidential nominee pledged[Read More…]
President Donald Trump has chosen an ultra-right acolyte of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to fill the vacancy created by Scalia’s death a year ago, nominating Neil Gorsuch, a federal appellate judge from the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Denver, Colorado. Trump unveiled the nomination in a prime-time television production Tuesday night that had been hyped[Read More…]
London: Trump Traumatic Disorder has been making its away across the Atlantic, numbing British officials, activists and commentators on one vital point: Should President Donald J. Trump be able to see the Queen on an official state visit? A good of deal of this was sparked by Trump’s executive order banning travel from seven Muslim majority states. On a daily basis,[Read More…]
John Foran has issued a wake-up call, a “call to arms”, and addressed it to colleagues and comrades:1 I feel spoken to. Not only because of its subject, but also because I am both a colleague and a comrade of Foran. I have namely been both studying and writing about social movements as well as actively participating since the 1950s[Read More…]
(CNS): Lung cancer is the most common cancer worldwide. In 2012, there were an estimated 1.8 million new lung cancer cases (13% of all cancers diagnosed), and 1.59 million deaths (19.4% of the total cancer deaths). According to the latest cancer registry data released by the Indian Council of Medical Research, 0.114 million new lung cancer cases (83,000 in males[Read More…]
His people-friendly rather than corporate-friendly approach is what irks the media and the corporate. What I find in him the most important sign of true maturity is the sign of “Immaturity” for the corporate. He will become “mature” for them as soon as he starts saying things that favour them or when he appears to be coming close to power. For me, a true leader has to be sincere, suave and polished rather than one indulging in melodramatics. And if he is sincerely concerned for the masses irrespective of their identities, he is a real asset for the country. I find these qualities in plenty in him.
If these were ordinary times, progressives might get away with casual images of our political opponents. Those who disagree “lack information,” or “remain prejudiced,” or are “gripped by an emotion like hate.” Reassured, we can return to informational outreach or protests or confrontations and hope that makes a difference. These, however, are not ordinary times. I further expect more instability[Read More…]
Racist Trump America now severely restricts immigration from 7 Muslim countries, suspends all refugee admission for 120 days, and bars all Syrian refugees indefinitely. While Trump’s racist travel ban on citizens from 7 Muslim countries has elicited well-justified outrage from Western media, politicians and commentators, the politically correct racist (PC racist) West resolutely ignores the horrendous, US-imposed avoidable mortality in[Read More…]
Our Global Water Crisis 
3.5 Million March Across France Opposing Macron’s Pension Reform 
Election Commission of India must question the presence political nominees on BEL’s and ECIL’s Boards 
Ihan Omar Introduces Legislation to Combat Islamophobia 
Narendra Modi’s Cricket Coup 
The Big Picture And The Small 
Prophesies, Then and Now – My Life at World’s End 
How the Cuban Government and Its People Collaborated on the Family Code 
Stop Criminalizing Journalism and Human Rights Activism: Release Irfan Mehraj and Parvez Khurram 
Politics of Bhagat Singh’s trial 
The Tragedy of Footpaths: Impressions of a Pedestrian in Bangalore 
Altruism exists in nature, Reciprocal altruism in humans 
U.S. Trying To Cover Up Its Role In Nord Stream Sabotage, Says Seymour Hersh 
Open Letter To Rahul Gandhi, Indian National Congress Party 
Future Scenarios in Ukraine 
West Sends Depleted Uranium Weapons to Ukraine: MEP to Warmongers – “You Make Me Sick!” 
Sri Lanka’s unconvincing response to Universal Periodic Review’s forthright findings 
Kisan Mahapanchayat stages massive rally in Delhi 
The betrayers of Julian Assange 
The Truth About Our Failure to Curb Carbon Emissions 
They’re liars, Mexico’s President on U.S. 
Grameena Pedala Sangham, Telangana State conference, is an important mile-stone 
Imperial Visits: US Emissaries in the Pacific Enough is enough. Restore parliament 
Disgrace at the New York Times 
‘Israel is (Not) Back to Africa’: How African Countries are Challenging Israeli Plot on the Continent 
A Highway to Peace or a Highway to Hell? The Vast Power of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex 
Accelerating Change on United Nations World Water Day 2023 
Defence Daredevilry 
Selling One’s Soul – The betrayal of Christ and Constitution 
Climate Crisis Has Caused Increasingly Irreversible Losses, Says UN Report 
Yarrow Mamout Masjid Dedicated at Georgetown University 
Adolf Hitler, Carl Orff & Sophie Scholl 
Algeria’s Gas vs. Rightwing Ideology: Will Italy Change Its Position on Jerusalem? 
From Balloons to AUKUS: The War Drive Against China 
Paul Keating’s criticism of Australia’s AUKUS deal is damming but not “astonishing”, – in fact, timely! 
In memory of 20th anniversary of the Iraq War 
CBI investigation against Harsh Mandar’s NGO is nothing but travesty of justice 
Concept of Gram Swaraj (‘Village Self-Reliance’) and Its Increasing Relevance for Our Times Indian Democracy & Chaos in Parliament! 
Our beloved K.P.Sasi is no more. Filmmaker, cartoonist, writer, mentor, friend and above all tireless activist championing the cause of every underdog, Sasi breathed his last, mid-afternoon this Christmas day – after battling a medical condition for months. I remember the last time I met him, almost exactly a month before he passed away, at the ayurvedic healing center in[Read More…]
