Yesterday, French media applauded newly elected President Emmanuel Macron’s summit Monday in Versailles with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This enthusiasm was all the more significant as the newspapers made little effort to hide the fact that Macron was shifting towards Moscow despite Washington’s open hostility to Russia. “In the finery of the castle of Versailles,” Le Monde wrote in its[Read More…]
In a bid to revive the population of critically endangered Pygmy Hogs in its natural habitat a total of 8 captive breed Pygmy Hogs (four male and four female) were formally released in the Barnadi Wildlife Sanctuary of Udalguri of Asssam on May 29 by Khampha Borgayari,Deputy Chief of BTC in presence of Andrew Terry of Durrell Wildlife Conservation[Read More…]
Bismillaàh Some experiences sometimes in this journey called life are beyond words and description .The magnitude of their impact unmeasurable ……all these years I have carried a mystical enigmatical experience within me..merged into my being …the outer self questioning …is it true …possible ? the “ruh” never in doubt of this happening! A normal hectic working day I came back[Read More…]
It is easy to sneer, and availing oneself of this chance, let’s. The celebratory guff floating on the media glow of mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest for giving away $400 million to charitable pursuits is reminiscent to that of Mark Zuckerberg. At least he did not dig up the earth in the process. Within the kernel of philanthropic generosity lies[Read More…]
The problem with our left and secular forces is that they don’t take the warnings of the communal fascists seriously and respond to such situations in a timely manner’ with consistency’. Before every disaster created by the communal fascists, proper signals are given. But yettimely’ and consistent’ responses are rarely undertaken by the left and secular forces. This is where[Read More…]
A few days ago I returned from Veldhoven, The Netherlands, where last April 13 in a breathtakingly fascist act of racism the Mayor of this small Dutch town deported over 600 Eritrean youth attending a conference, kicked out of their hotel and forced to leave the city in the middle of the night. I am not talking about Eritrean youth[Read More…]
We are honored to present this multi-part paper from Andrew Korybko into the emerging New Cold War between China and India. This research will be released over a number of days to facilitate discussion and conversation, with a compiled briefing paper being provided at the end of the series. Theoretical Background Relations between China and India have been souring over[Read More…]
If you love peace, you need to see the channel Republic. You can’t always wait for peace. At times, you have to earn it. Fish it out of the madness which surrounds you all the time. There can be no two opinions on peace, just like you can’t have two suns or two moons. But peace is not about suns[Read More…]
CPDR expresses its deep concern over the brutality with which students’ expressions of dissent are being suppressed across the country. On 27 May, the UP police used brute force against students who were holding a protest at the gate of the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) against the violent attacks on the Dalits of Saharanpur. This protest was organised by Bhagat[Read More…]
As if he has, overnight, been transformed into a master politician, Donald Trump’s 27-hour trip to Israel has left many analysts mystified. Quoting former Israeli political adviser, Mitchell Barack, the New York Times referred to Trump as the ‘Liberace of world leaders”, in reference to flamboyant, piano player, Wladziu Valantino Liberace. The latter, known as “Mr. Showmanship”, was, at times, the[Read More…]
Nazareth: A decision by Donald Trump this Thursday could prove fateful for the immediate future of Jerusalem, the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the region. He must decide whether to renew a presidential waiver, signed by his predecessor, Barack Obama, that expires on June 1. The six-month waiver delays implementing a law passed by Congress in 1995 that requires the US[Read More…]
Of the issues which are totally ignored, for all practical purposes, there’s one that we can spotlight here which — if not addressed post haste — stands to take us over the precipice. That is that if we want to protect our environment , we must talk about population size and growth and actually do something about it.
My life Is a ‘ fatal accident’… An unintended incident Clock starts ticking As my heart starts beating Like countdown before a satellite Exploding into the sky straight I become an identity A family’s entity Assume a name, a caste, a sanctity A religion, a member of a community I start becoming greedy Sucking milk from a dead mother’s[Read More…]
Ransomware worm WannaCry struck at and crippled UK’s National Health Scheme, causing a national emergency of sorts. The operations systems of British Airways, Lufthansa and Air France were targets of cyber attack on passenger handling, causing economic loss but fortunately no accident. All this is cause for concern in India, because of India’s huge vulnerability to cyber attack. Now[Read More…]
I wish the people in India the best of good fortune in this alarming situation taking place in India so as to end beef farming, the beef industry overall and beef consumption. What will the central government start to dictate next? Will it be clothing styles, lack of public schools for girls or people of lower castes, the diet that[Read More…]
The new rule notified under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PCA) Act of 1960 banning cattle trade across India is clear encroachment of states’ rights. It will end federalism and will be a death knell for farmers. It is a virtual beef ban across India and also will destroy the livelihood of millions of farmers. The states have to[Read More…]
With the Trump administration poised to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, a climate bill cosponsored by U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley and Bernie Sanders and known as the “100 by ’50 Act” is sure to be back in the news. In April, Sanders called the bill, S.987, an important step in the fight against greenhouse warming. The leading climate[Read More…]
In the wake of President Donald Trump’s visit to West Asia, is there even a faint glimmer of hope for peace in the most conflict-ridden region of the world? Or, has his visit to Saudi Arabia and Israel from the 20th to the 23rd of May 2017 only strained the region’s undercurrentsof friction and tension? Some reflections on areas[Read More…]
Human Rights defender Thirumurugan Gandhi has been arrested under the notorious Goonda Act by the Tamil Nadu police, for being part of the Candle Light Vigil that was held in Marina Beach on 21st May, in remembrance of the Genocidal War against Tamils in Sri Lanka which killed at least 150,000 Tamil civilians. There was a police action against the protest[Read More…]
The recent announcement that India will build 10 new Nuclear reactors took observers by surprise. In technical terms, India will set up ten new pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs) which are indigenous. Purely from a scientific point of view, this is utter nonsense because of India’s complete lack of experience with this type of reactor. But this article is not[Read More…]
The Palestinian hunger strike protesting Israeli prison conditions was suspended on May 27th after 40 days, at a time when many of the 1000 or so strikers were experiencing serious deteriorations of health, most were by then hospitalized, and the holy period of Ramadan about to commence creating continuity between the daytime fasting of the faithful and the prior desperate[Read More…]
From his big white bird did the President descend upon his dreading European hosts, looking much like natives waiting to be slaughtered or ravished. As Donald Trump pushed his way through NATO members (the Montenegrin prime minister, for one, felt his forceful shove), representatives shot glances of discomfort and bemusement. In a refreshing blast of brutishness, the Ugly American, made[Read More…]
According to President Donald Trump, people who are tortured deserve it. Trump’s initial draft executive order in January revealed his passion for reopening U.S. black site prisons, loading Guantanamo with prisoners, and rewriting the Army Field Manual to redefine allowable interrogation techniques. Sure, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis opposes torture. But multiple CIA agents, military brass, legislators, and citizens have[Read More…]
Farmers in India do a lot of talking about the weather—especially, it seems, when there is no weather in sight. During the month of May, when the land heats up like a furnace and most fields lie fallow, when wells have run dry and the sun taunts from its broiling perch in a cloudless sky, there is no topic[Read More…]
My harvest of poems
will be winnowed.
if done deftly,
the lighter shallow poems
blow away in the wind
while the heavier, meatier poems,
fall back onto the tray,
to become the fire in my belly
like beef.
After 40 days without food, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners have suspended their hunger strike in Israeli jails. The end of the strike came after 20 hours of intense negotiations between the strike’s leaders, including imprisoned Fatah figure Marwan Barghouti, and the Israel Prison Service, according to a statement issued Saturday morning by the prisoners solidarity committee. The committee hailed the[Read More…]
Schools are still shills for our collective addiction to belief in technological fixes as a decent approach to addressing climate change issues. That’s one reason to home school, among many. But my informal survey of home schooling parents nationwide has revealed that virtually no one is teaching youth that only a no-growth vision of economics can possibly give us[Read More…]
Memorial Day will someday mean a double mourning, a mourning for the violent deaths suffered by of millions of American military and a much more agonizing mourning for the deaths, maiming, destruction and suffering these Americans in uniform brought to millions of innocent men, women and children by committing crimes against humanity in their own beloved countries for the[Read More…]
Nowadays, the common sense can hardly believe in the tangible fact that NATO is endangering the safety of the two nuclear powers, Russia and China. Judging by the antirussian campaign in the Western media, as well as the deployment of NATO troops in Eastern Europe and the Far East, it is as if the war has already started. The territories[Read More…]
Don’t take this too seriously; it’s something I dreamed up one rainy Sunday afternoon. -Sigmund Freud (in communication with Abram Kardiner) The psychoanalytic theorist, Eugène Enriquez, informs us that “Charles Darwin and evolutionary sociologists of the nineteenth century used a term of Tartar origin, “primitive horde,” to refer to the simplest possible form of social formation in existence during[Read More…]
a gruesome truth we dare not speak
of violence with its bloody taunt
such terror stories seldom haunt
in lands where casteist pyres reek
Feeding 9 Billion | National Geographic National Geographic1536 × 1152Search by image “Picture of [a] pig farm in Mato Grosso, Brazil, with sows confined …” [Presumably, they can’t stand, nor move. Stuck in one position, they are forced to lie on one side to nurse after being artificially inseminated. They do so day after day, week after week and month after month[Read More…]
Watch blockbuster movies from the “south” and chances are you will start to believe that the world is not really such a desperate place. Perhaps you might even get convinced that under the present imperialist and turbo-capitalist global arrangement things can always get better. If you live in a gutter somewhere in Sub-Continent or Africa, you could simply try[Read More…]
Today is the first day of Ramadan. Muslims in many parts of the world begin their month-long fast today. Most of them are not aware that 1500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are on a hunger strike that began almost six weeks ago. These prisoners have undertaken a hunger strike to protest the denial of their basic human rights[Read More…]
India’s most decorated and retired police officer Julio Ribeiro remembered KPS Gill, former Police chief of Punjab, who breathed his last in Delhi yesterday (May 26,2017) as ‘the best operations officer ..who ended Khalistani terror.… who hunted terrorists down single-mindedly with spectacular success’. Naturally, Ribeiro was supposed to give such tribute to his departed colleague who was second to[Read More…]
In the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013, a grudging acceptance was made by the Obama administration that something had to be done about a roguish surveillance complex unhinged from its foundations. The National Security Agency had overstretched its powers, to the point where it was not only conducting its standard mischief against foreign targets, but against US citizens[Read More…]
Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in August 2011 to June 2014 when the Islamic State overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq, an informal pact existed between the Western powers, their regional allies and the Sunni Arab militants of the Middle East against the Shi’a Iranian axis comprised of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah.[Read More…]
The thirst for war is ancient. As old as disputatious neighbors or rival tribes, it is enticing — a siren call for the strong, presenting as it does a quick, easy and final solution. That it is often not, has hastened the end of royal dynasties (Hohenzollerns, Hapsburgs and Romanovs after WWI) and empires, including the British. There are[Read More…]
Our mornings earlier started with roosters crowing, loud gurgles of the old neighbor, swoosh-swoosh of water flowing (If it is flowing from the taps for the few lucky Indians.) or the sweet sweeps of large brooms cleaning the front-yards. Gone are those backward days. Now our Ache din start with screechy Good mornings, from our phones as early in the[Read More…]
The RSS agenda of Hindu Rashtra draws heavily on the superiority of Aryan race and greatness of Brahmanical values. The ideology constructed by this organisation tells us that Aryans are a superior race. The whole foundation of the concept of Hindu nation as the teacher-leader of the World derives from twin and inseparable notions of the racial theory, promoted[Read More…]
“Anti terror law does not apply on those involved in Gujarat riots.” This was stated by the former Punjab Police Chief K.P.S. Gill in response to a question on anti Muslim pogrom engineered by the Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002. Gill- who passed away on May 26 is often[Read More…]
On the third anniversary of Narendra Modi government, the government of India dealt a death blow to Indian farmers and its federal structure by bringing severe restrictions on cattle trade, virtually enforcing a cow slaughter ban across India. The new rule was issued by the ministry of environment. The environment ministry’s eight-page rule also bans setting of animal markets within[Read More…]
This write-up is in response to the interview of veteran congressman, Mani Shankar Aiyar, published in daily Rising Kashmir of 24th May 2017. Let me say at the outset that I hold Aiyar in highest esteem for his unwavering commitment to secularism. Sticking to secular views against heavy odds and even after his party and its mandarins adopted ‘soft[Read More…]
President Donald Trump has inherited from Obama the mantle as the world’s worst presently operating state terrorist, serial invader, war criminal, killer of children, opiate drug pusher and climate criminal. Trump’s Riyadh speech was a narcissistic concoction of fake news through lying by omission and lying by commission as Religious Right America and Wahabi Islamist Saudi Arabia are united[Read More…]
Barwani, Madhya Pradesh: 25 May 2017:: The people displaced due to Sardar Sarovar Dam, including farmers, laborers, potters etc. held a rally with bullock carts filling the streets of Badwani. Starting the rally from Krishi Mandi, with farmer and fish-workers men and women sitting on the bullock carts, they reached the pillar of martyrdom, where they paid homage to the[Read More…]
It is ten days since the One Belt One Road (OBOR) Summit called and hosted by China at Beijing from May 14 to 15, 2017, concluded. Significantly, India did not participate in OBOR. But the subject is so important for peace, development and stability or otherwise in the region and beyond , that it has continued relevance and requires a[Read More…]
Two emails come in simultaneously into my email box. One almost chortling that California breaks energy record with 80% of state’s power generated using renewable methods. The Golden State generated 67% of its energy from renewables in one day. I stare at the text, truly amazed at California’s drive to get clean. Meanwhile, the second email which is a Greenpeace[Read More…]
South Asian progressive activists came together in Surrey, Canada this evening to denounce ongoing state violence against oppressed communities and minorities in India on the occasion of 50 years of Naxalbari uprising. At a rally organized by Radical Desi, speakers were unanimous in their criticism of the growing attacks on Dalits, Adivasis and religious minorities under the right wing Modi[Read More…]
An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. ― Plutarch It has been said that women who are closest to the world’s most pressing issues are best placed to solve them. Women are economic factors: They produce and process food for the family; they are the primary caretakers of children, the[Read More…]
it’s really simple. what you need first is
a man, preferably alone, poor or looking
poor, carrying no weapons and exhausted
from work, starving, and apparently
belonging to a lower caste or a muslim.
We approach Memorial Day honoring the ultimate sacrifices made by 1.4 million American military men and women who died in America’s wars since 1775. We must discuss the horrific impact of war on surviving soldiers and civilians. For only they can teach us working for peace is a better option than fighting wars. Each death in war brings everlasting tragedy[Read More…]
The first foreign visit of the new French President Emmanuel Macron, after a now habitual trip to Berlin, was to Gao in northern Mali as head of the French military. The visit was an attempt to be seen as paying attention to the efforts of French troops in operations in northern Mali and other states of the Sahel region of[Read More…]
Bat-Hen Epstein Elias’s long article on Iranian Jews is interesting. Parts of it, in fact, are heartwarming. Yet, despite the lack of any serious evidence, the story is entirely framed in the language of fear. Entitled, “All the Jews there live in fear that their telephones are tapped,” the story in‘Israel Hayom’ peddles the idea that, although Iranian Jews[Read More…]
Narendra Modi government is completing three years of its rule tomorrow. It’s time to take stock of the government and the governance. Though three years in a span of seventy years of Independent India is not much, there are some important issues that should be discussed which may provide guidelines for the future. Rise of The Right Since the first[Read More…]
Dear mom and fellow members of the human family, I love my 77-year-old frugal, hardworking, self-sacrificial Han Chinese Singaporean mother, so when Trump’s military/government dropped what they nicknamed the ‘Mother of All Bombs’ ( MOAB ) on Achin District in Afghanistan, I knew I had to do something about this psycho-social disease of ‘war’. I mean, my mom is nothing[Read More…]
Bomb, terrorize and slaughter Middle Eastern majority-Muslim countries for strategic self-interest, but call it humanitarian. Thereby destroy the state’s security and infrastructure creating the perfect conditions for terror groups to operate. Arm, train & fund terror groups who are/have the same ideology as those you claim to be fighting against, but call them rebels. Create 100s of thousands of refugees[Read More…]
(Kashmir’s new revolution is following an idea and not any particular leaders!) Recently, there was a sting operation conducted by a TV network regarding money being received by some of the leaders of the present movement for “Azadi”. In fact, the discovery was proclaimed all over the country like the discovery of the principle of floatation by Archimedes who ran[Read More…]
PUDR strongly condemns the commendation conferred on Major Leetul Gogoi by none less than the Army Chief for taking Farooq Dar hostage, tying Dar to the front of his jeep allegedly to ward off attacking stone-pelters, and then driving around for several hours to warn people that a similar fate awaited them. The incident where Dar was used as a[Read More…]
While fake news industry has existed in some form or other in the past too, the rise of BJP into power has coincided with the disproportionate growth of fake news industry. What makes it alarming is these fake news sites are closely connected to BJP IT cell. They are on a continuous run to produce fake news which is used[Read More…]
Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh is on the boil for over one months as the Thakurs who are also known as Kshatriyas or Rajputs have been engaged in violent attacks on the Dalits in which several people have been killed, several other injured and houses burnt in village Shabbirpur. Western Uttar Pradesh is a very fertile land of powerful[Read More…]
How relocating energy in the commons helps scaling-up renewables & saving energy Is energy a mere commodity, or is it a common good? Why is this relevant in the first place? Here we look at why energy is part of our commons, from the sources to the product itself. In a second time, we will see that relocating energy in[Read More…]
It was time to do the Zionist boogie within a mere period of 27 hours, and anyone wishing to see two muggers of history enjoying each other’s company found themselves peering at Donald Trump of the United States, and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, nearly arm in arm on the recent tilt in US policy. “We understand each other,” effused the Israeli[Read More…]
The United States is the most militarized and jingoistic nation on earth. Its foreign policy is guided by imperialist militarism, neoliberal capitalism and racial xenophobia. For more than sixteen years now, three presidential administrations have carried out a so-called “War on Terror” (GWOT), a perpetual state of war that is waged globally, under the depraved reasoning that “the world is[Read More…]
The thing is, a core group of citizens are — first — going to have to get off of the Untruthful Treadmill that they’re on. Talk about the toxicity of the blacktops that cover the only roads now available. And, then, carve out unprecedented inroads in the realm of the electoral arena.
Naxalbari is still alive. Half a century has passed, yet the struggle is as bright as the crimson sun. Naxalbari is alive in the politics of people. The politics of dominating classes with all its power, and after so many years, is still failing to ignore Naxalbari, now, name of a politics, and has failed to wipe out Naxalbari[Read More…]
Every language is an asset; it carries the wisdom of elders, history, and memories. Based on the rich linguistic diversity and multilingualism, accommodating 1652 mother tongues, India has been called as a ‘sociolinguistic area.’In the November 2006, deliveringthe inaugural speech at the 28thAll India Conference of Linguists, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Prof. U N Singh [the then director of the[Read More…]
The Vizhinjam sea port being constructed by Adani Ports and SEZ Private Limited has run into rough weather as the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) report has found that the unfavourable conditions in the concession agreement of the project have gone against the interests of the Kerala State government. The CAG report says that the standard concession period for PPP[Read More…]
Donald Trump made clear from the moment of his arrival in Israel Monday that the purpose of his trip, promoted by the White House and the media as part of a quest for “Middle East peace,” is the consolidation of reactionary regional alliance in support of a US military buildup against Iran. The US president flew to Tel Aviv directly[Read More…]
Some four weeks ago, I posted my text on the “Rights of Rivers” (see here!), with which I had responded to a discussion that was going on in a google discussion group called Radical Ecological Democratic List. That was the beginning of another discussion in the said group: on the right to life of individual chimpanzees. A participant had informed[Read More…]
Our problem: There is a high probability of massive pain and suffering and then human extinction within the next one to two hundred years. The problem extends well beyond global warming denier Donald Trump and his American followers. It even extends into the bowels of the American “Liberal Left” and their US Media. It extends beyond America itself. The problem[Read More…]
Although there’s no reason to take Donald Trump’s erratic behaviour, and his ambivalent and nasty assertions seriously, yet we can’t ignore his latest gimmick, the circus he staged in Riyadh in the name of defeating Islamist terrorism on May 21st. To paraphrase Shakespeare, Trump’s so-called Islamic-Arab-American Summit was “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. The whole thing was[Read More…]
Recently we have seen the mainstream media in the UK, supplemented by the film industry, undermine the struggle of an already oppressed people, the Ahwazi Arabs, by making a film about their plight, but wrongly labelling it ‘terrorism’. There was no coverage of the human rights violations which have been perpetrated upon them by the Iranian regime, nor the[Read More…]
The Podiyam Panda ‘surrender’ is the first one being challenged before a court. The entire experience shows the questionable legality of the surrender process in Chhatisgarh. In the habeas case filed by his wife, Muiye Panda, Podiyam Panda came and went before the High Court under police guard. What value does such a production have? The Supreme Court has held[Read More…]
India spends more on programmes for the poor than most developing countries, but is not getting the expected dividends that significant public expenditure would seem to warrant, and the needs of important population groups still remain partly addressed. This has been haunting social scientists and policy makers . India has ranked a lowly 131 among the 188 countries surveyed for[Read More…]
The KNNPP is a technological hoax, an abominable goof-up. The dogged determination to have commissioned it shows that the authorities is mortgaged to alien corporate interests reminding us of Andrew Undershaft in George Bernard Shaw, “Well, I am a millionaire and that is my religion”.
I wish I remain
In the cozy lap of mother Earth
Safe without pain
Of germination and growth …
Riddled with hypocrisy, clichés and absurdities, President Donald Trump’s speech Sunday before an assembly of monarchs and despots in Saudi Arabia spelled out an agenda of escalating US militarism throughout the Middle East and a buildup in particular toward war with Iran. Hailed by a fawning American media as “presidential”–supposedly eclipsing for the moment the crises and factional struggles engulfing[Read More…]
Julian Assange has been vindicated because the Swedish case against him was corrupt. The prosecutor, Marianne Ny, obstructed justice and should be prosecuted. Her obsession with Assange not only embarrassed her colleagues and the judiciary but exposed the Swedish state’s collusion with the United States in its crimes of war and “rendition”. Had Assange not sought refuge in the Ecuadorean[Read More…]
“You are a unique personality that is capable of doing the impossible.” President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to President Donald Trump, New York Times, May 21, 2017 The business of making money on property, badly, has shifted to the business of making money, greatly, for the US industrial arms complex. This is the technique of President Donald Trump, who has[Read More…]
Historically, this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898. Then the Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war[Read More…]
One inevitable outcome of the phenomenal violence we all suffer as children is that most of us live in a state of delusion throughout our lives. This makes it extraordinarily difficult for accurate information, including vital information about the endangered state of our world and how to respond appropriately, to penetrate the typical human mind. ‘Phenomenal violence?’ you might ask.[Read More…]
It is known scientifically that the Earth System, or Gaia if you will, is organized and functions similarly to other scales of biology, including organisms and old-growth forests. Gaia is a self-regulating, reproducing life-form, and as such is alive. As industrial human growth destroys Gaia’s naturally evolved ecosystem organs, the human family is failing to embrace a rich and truthful[Read More…]
Kafir Qasim Massacre Several truths become manifestly clear to all those who remain truthful to the historical record and to themselves, and who have ever undertaken a serious read of the original imperialistic design and intent of the early Zionist visionaries and plotters towards Palestine in the late 19th century and 20th century; and those who have come after[Read More…]
It is true that every story about the Balkan Peninsula begins with the ancient Illyrians.[1] Historians believe that these Indo-European people were one of the largest European populationsto inhabit the western portion of the Balkans from the coasts of the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic Sea to the Alps about 1000 B.C. Their eastern neighbours were also Indo-European peoples –[Read More…]
In a first in India, the Government of Madhya Pradesh (GoMP) has set up an “Anand Mantralaya” (Ministry of Happiness) with the Chief Minister himself in charge, and a “Rajya Anand Sansthan” (State Institute of Happiness), headed by a CEO. [“Madhya Pradesh to devise Happiness Index”; http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/madhya-pradesh-to-devise-happiness-index/article18516488.ece; The Hindu, Bengaluru; 21 May 2017]. Without in any manner belittling the initiative[Read More…]
(CNS): When major weak-spots go beyond the purview of health ministry, inter-sectoral programming becomes critical to progress towards ending tuberculosis (TB) by 2030, globally. Indian government has committed to end TB by 2025 – a welcome political commitment indeed – but warrants urgent and unprecedented actions to muscle up the required pace to keep this promise. As our governments[Read More…]
For a long time, hats were oversized and expensive status symbols more than tools for protecting people’s heads. During the past half century or so, they have nearly disappeared. A similar destiny may befall on private cars, also oversized and expensive status symbols rather than tools for transporting people. With the disappearance of cars, we may see hats coming back. [Read More…]
Pete and Laura, old friends from Derby were visiting. They were here for a month and wanted to go around and discover the land of Buddha. “We want to go to Agra and see the Taj Mahal”, she said with a mouthful of English accent. “Hmm…Taj Mahal? That’s in Uttar Pradesh, nearer to Dadri where Akhlaq was lynched.” “And then[Read More…]
Alternative ideas don’t come easily to Americans. It seems that Americans imported colonial hierarchal practices from Europe to cultivate them to their own advantage.Over millennia, Europeans had come to accept the authority of Church, Monarchy or State Principalities to be the places wherethe ‘rightful-centres’ existed. The ‘rightful-centre’ was always beyond the reach of the masses. Pontiffs and warlords alikehad[Read More…]
As children, my sister and I used to feel sorry for ourselves from time to time while having a brother, who’s a pathological narcissist. He was by no means easy with whom to interact day after day and year after year while growing up. Pathological narcissism | definition of Pathological narcissism by … medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Pathological+narcissism a psychiatric diagnosis characterized by an[Read More…]
Albert Einstein said, “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking, it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” Changing our thinking requires an understanding of how our brains work. Scientific research has led to the discovery that our thinking brain is strongly influenced by our primitive emotional brain, known as the limbic system,[Read More…]
It is sickening, tiring and frustrating to year after year deal with racism and bigotry. What does it matter whether directed against darker skinned peoples, people from other cultures, people designated as less than equal due to a caste system or the fact that some group wants the resources or land that the other group has and, so,[Read More…]
(CNS): My first personal brush with the severity of asthma was several years ago, when one of my students suddenly started gasping for breath in the middle of her Physics Practical final examination of Class 12. We were clueless about the cause of her sudden affliction. Other than making her sit in the open air and force her to drink[Read More…]
It’s their strutting. That detestable image of the strutting that links them, the strutting and prancing Fascists and their swaggering and parading military cousins, up front for their conveniently concealed corporatist controllers. Il Duce among Blackshirts. A strutting and swaggering couple they are, Fascism and the entrenched class of war. Their distorted visions of gallantry and nation come so naturally[Read More…]
It had been, from the start, a cruel wait and see game. Lacking logic and consistency, the Swedish effort to extradite Julian Assange from the United Kingdom, not for formal charges but the pretext of questioning him over sexual assault and rape, collapsed on Friday. The Director of Public Prosecutions Marianne Ny and Chief Prosecutor Ingrid Isgren, in a press[Read More…]
There is in the U.S. a certain notion of being presidential. Toss missiles at Syria or bomb Afghanistan and everyone reflexively calls it presidential. Added to warmongering is peace making, visiting foreign countries, meeting with foreign leaders, holding joint press conferences with a slew of foreign reporters, all in a whirlwind of activity eagerly seized upon by the home[Read More…]
Nobel Laureate, Economist Amartya Sen, in way back 1990’s introduced the term “missing women”, showing a deficit in the number of women relative to the expected number of women in a region. He argues that “an advantage they enjoy not only after they are forty years old but also at the beginning of life, especially during the months immediately following birth, and even in the womb”. Thus Sen, attributes the phenomenon to the discrimination in basic nutrition and health care.
“Frequently the cock combines the lifting of his tail with the raising of his voice. He appears to receive through his feet some shock from the center of the earth, which travels upward through him and is released: Eee-ooo-ii! Eee-ooo-ii! To the melancholy this sound is melancholy and to the hysterical it is hysterical. To me it has always sounded[Read More…]
“Runaway growth in consumption in the past fifty years is putting strains on the environment never before seen.” The United Nations’ Human Development Report 1998 (UNDP Report) WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN – LAMENT When will we ever learn? That “conspicuous consumption” only satisfies our shallow need for positive appraisal, self-esteem and Identity. That happiness is not the result of[Read More…]
Is Israel and its infamous Wall of Separation representative of a modern evolving democratic state, based upon Biblical principles and teachings, as applied towards the original indigenous Palestinian peoples of Palestine, or is it an example of yet another ethnic-cleansing, apartheid state, possessive of the same genocidal-racist tendencies as those 19th century colonial-imperialistic powers – like the United States, Canada,[Read More…]
Articles published in the mainstream media continue to damn Justice Karnan. Permit us to refer to one such article titled “SC right in convicting Karnan, wrong in gagging him, media” (The Times of India, 15.05.2017). The writer Dhananjay Mahapatra, associate editor with The Times of India, has spent about twenty seven years in journalism, twenty two of which have been on legal beat.
Earlier this month former US president Barack Obama spoke in Chicago about his plans to build his presidential center on the city’s impoverished South Side. Astonishingly, when the center is completed by 2021, the accumulated cost of building Obama’s monument to his political legacy could exceed $1 billion dollars. The early-phase spending, which includes the costs of building a library[Read More…]
The costs to be calculated The most important part of these intervention-costs lacking in most of these calculations are the cost and price the intervened countries, the societies and the people in these countries had to pay/are paying. In any of the countries going through intervention process, there’s no scope of pursuing productive, democratic, and educational-cultural-intellectual activities in usual, normal[Read More…]
You say that you want facts – facts and more facts, before you can commit. Before you finally decide to become part of something: a political party, a movement or another human being. You already have plenty of them: an avalanche, a tsunami of facts. “In fact”, your life is overflowing with facts. Most of them are brought directly[Read More…]
“My guilt will never go away,” former Marine Matthew Hoh explained to me. “There is a significant portion of me that doesn’t believe it should be allowed to go away, that this pain is fair.” If America accepts the idea of fighting endless wars, it will have to accept something else as well: that the costs of war are[Read More…]
There’s a phrase that keeps popping up in discussions of Syria. It’s a string of words that always appear together, without variation, which is a tell for propaganda phrases and talking points. In the context of Libya, there was a line about “African Mercenaries”. The one I keep hearing about Syria is that Assad has “Afghan Shia militias” fighting[Read More…]
This afternoon (Thursday, May 18, 2017) CBC’s Power and Politics host Hannah Thibedeau hosted ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk (“ex” as in being forced out of the current Poroshenko government). Apparently Yats has been traipsing around western political circles looking for support for his neoNazi anti-Russian stance in the Ukraine. Support for this would obviously be easy to find in[Read More…]
The current financial system cannot provide sufficient funds now to reduce unemployment or to alleviate the suffering of the 800 million across the world who are in poverty, close to starvation. The only remedy is for governments to provide debt free money without charging interest. This will not be easy. Governments will want to provide infrastructure. Roads, Transport, Hospitals, Schools[Read More…]
Emmanuel Macron wears the crown of Caesar in France today, with Presidential powers of Imperial proportions with his vision for Pax Francais in Africa pointing towards more of “Hollandism”, his predecessors practice of putting more boots on the ground to insure French access to Africa’s natural resources. Africa is Pax Francais’ last major bastion of neo colonialism, and it’s continued[Read More…]
It was one of the brighter acts in a darkening turmoil in the last parts of the Obama presidency, but the decision to commute Chelsea Manning’s sentence added a zest of enlightenment. Manning had already found herself on the slippery slope to doom, having made two attempts at suicide the previous year, and facing the torment of incarceration in a[Read More…]
Agrochemicals are fueling disease and environmental destruction across the world and corporations need to be properly held account for their crimes and charges laid against them in an international court of law.
Tahir Ahmad Mir, a student of Journalism of Kashmir university is a criminal in the opinion of the police because of his alleged involvement of pro-freedom activities and is behind the bars for the last long six months. Tahir was arrested in November allegedly for having involvement in pro-freedom activities during the peak of 2016 uprising. A resident of Kashmir’s[Read More…]
(The Hindutva wave of violence during the elections and after is not really against Muslims and for the safety of the cows. It is an excuse to administer what Karl Marx called the “Opium of the people” to the millions of poor Indians!) The ultimate goal of every religion is to explain the purpose of human existence to make it[Read More…]
First there was the dry. Then it rained high up and far away in the mountains. And water flowed. Life giving water filled the river banks and overflowed. Life giving water which itself gives up its life in a few months when it sinks into the sands of the Kalahari Desert. But while it lasted, it would be called by[Read More…]
As the Devil tiptoes into the room, The little girl’s hands seize the cane As he walks towards doom, His gaze fixed at her bane Brutus will make his deft move, But Caesar’s honour will not demise No longer trapped under his cove, The Damini in her is swift to rise Daddy’s little girl is now mature Ready to strike[Read More…]
Government of the blowjobs, by the blowjobs, and for the blowjobs
Government of the warmongers, by the warmongers, and for the warmongers
Is not war the ultimate blowjob?
The Israeli Knesset (parliament) has hurriedly passed a new bill that defines Israel as the “national home of the Jewish people.” Although the association between Jewishness and Israel goes back to the foundation of the state, the new law also carries clear discriminatory elements that target the country’s Arab communities, numbering nearly two million people. The ‘Jewish Nation-State Bill’[Read More…]
![Intervention: Inter-Parliamentary Union’s No To The imperialist Procedure [Part I]](https://cdn.countercurrents.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/uncle-sam-200x150.png "Intervention: Inter-Parliamentary Union’s No To The imperialist Procedure [Part I] 268")
The Venezuela government has recently accused the US of financially propping up violent opposition groups in the country: Promoting an “unprecedented and systematic attempt” to intervene in the internal affairs of Venezuela. A statement of the foreign ministry of Venezuela said: “US financing and logistical support for violent groups in Venezuela have facilitated an armed sedition”. The statement added:[Read More…]
It has the air of a hunting party, and the quarry, on this occasion, was a lumbering US President with a loose tongue. The individual aiming the rifle in this case was The Washington Post, assisted by the murmurings and breathless whispers of various concerned officials as to what Donald Trump did in his meeting with Russian foreign minister, Sergey[Read More…]
To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. And as long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest. Above quote by Nelson Mandela forces us to think if we are really free and if[Read More…]
Introduction Nearly three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reintegration of the former Communist countries into the capitalist world economy, rightwing populism with authoritarian if not Fascist aspects, is thriving not just in Eastern and Western Europe but most notably in the US that presents itself to the world as a democratic society. An eclectic ideology[Read More…]
Proactive concerned citizens attempting to bring about institutional changes in the midst of our horrid momentum — rife with what makes us wretch morning, noon and night now — must embrace humor as they heft their sad sandbags onto barricades being used to fight the powers that be.
Fifty springs have passed
Number of people martyred
But, till democratic equality is not attained
Future torch – bearer is Naxalbari
With the path-breaking commercial success of the Bahubali series, it has become imperative to highlight certain other noteworthy achievements of the movie. While focusing on grossing billions and establishing landmarks in the world of commercial cinema, the makers of the movie did-not even attempt to window-dress the glaring prejudices and biases that the movie series conveys. The most blatantly and[Read More…]
Image above: the 1998 movie “AntZ”. This post was inspired by a post by Antonio Turiel titled “Of Ants and Men” where he used the example of an ant to discuss the difficulties that humans have to perceive the real problems facing humankind today. Here, I examine again, a little more in depth, the same issue. Imagine yourself as an[Read More…]
The outcome of the French presidential elections did not suggest a France on the verge of rapid, vigorous renewal. It suggested the opposite, a state in atrophy, the Fifth Republic in terminal decline before unleashed historical forces. Dejected, voters feared by way of a majority that Marine Le Pen was simply too potent to be catapulted into the Élysée Palace[Read More…]
Arlington, VA – Ajit Pai, the Chair of the FCC, is on a mission to destroy the Internet by reclassifying it so that it is no longer a common carrier where we all have equal access and repeal net neutrality rules so Comcast, Verizon and A&T can discriminate based on content. Net neutrality protesting outside of Ajit Pai’s home on[Read More…]
Venezuela has been rocked in recent weeks by almost daily protests and counter-protests, as right-wing opponents of socialist President Nicolas Maduro seek to bring down his government. While the media portrays these events as a popular rebellion against an authoritarian government, supporters of the pro-poor Bolivarian revolution initiated by former president Hugo Chavez say the country is witnessing an escalation[Read More…]
Gelhorn prize winner Gareth Porter notes this week that in 2008, after the US had destroyed Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of people and sending millions fleeing, George W. Bush wanted to establish indefinite military occupation of the country. But the then Iraqi government lead by prime minister Nouri al Maliki “rebuffed that demand” and forced the largely defeated US[Read More…]
Nazareth: A display of Israeli-style community policing before an audience of hundreds of young schoolchildren was captured on video last week. Were the 10-year-olds offered road safety tips, advice on what to do if they got lost, or how to report someone suspicion hanging around the school? No. In Israel, they do things differently. The video shows four officers[Read More…]
The US embassy will not be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem before a peace deal between Israel and Palestine is reached. Having talked to the Arab leaders, US President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have finally understood the importance of such a move. It would be an offense not only for the Arab world but[Read More…]
The computer whined
a kind of laugh….
“You’re on a biometric leash!
We know your thoughts before you strew them
haphazardly about.”
Commanding respect and not demanding is the central virtue of Courts administering justice. Supreme Court of India, being the Apex Court of the land has a constitutional responsibility to set an example in cultivating such a virtue. The method and the manner in which a sitting judge of Calcutta High Court Sri Justice C.S.Karnan has been convicted for contempt[Read More…]
‘Houston, we have a problem’. On the one hand, there is growing acceptance among environmentally conscious people that rich nations and affluent regions of the global economy must dramatically reduce overall resource and energy consumption levels – that is, undergo a process of ‘degrowth’ – if humanity is to bring about a sustainable world order. On the other hand, we[Read More…]
Some believe that the commons are incompatible with commodity markets. Others claim that markets and commons may form mutually beneficial relations with each other. What are your own views on this issue? I think it is entirely possible for markets and commons to “play nicely together,” but only if commoners can have “value sovereignty” over their resources and community governance. [Read More…]
Considering its huge budget, it is perhaps not surprising that there has been so much orchestrated praise in the media for the film Bahubali 2 with its record box office collections. It is disturbing enough but more questionable is the RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya championing the film as an ideal expression of Hindu values . One can give any spin[Read More…]
What a stealthy bugger of a problem. Malware deftly delivered, locking the system by encrypting files and making them otherwise impossible to access unless a fee is paid. A form of data hijacking that can only be admired for its ease of execution, for its viral-like replication that seeks, even hunts, vulnerable “unpatched” computer systems. The global information environment is[Read More…]
I read a Facebook post by an American Liberal comparing the refusal of the French Far-Leftist Jean-Luc Melanchon to choose between Emmanuel Macron and the rightist Marine Le Pen as President of France to the Left’s rejection of the German Social Democrats on the eve of WWI, resulting, ultimately, in the emergence of Naziism. He cited other similar cases where[Read More…]
The environment ministry in India will make the final call after the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee recently gave a positive recommendation for the commercial cultivation of GM mustard. Whether the crop is commercially cultivated could depend on the Supreme Court, which is hearing a case seeking a moratorium on its commercial release. The government has stated it will abide by[Read More…]
Around nine years ago, I read a very powerful poem called “The Hand.” It haunts me to this day as it perfectly summed up the utter travesty, ugliness and brutality of warmongering activities whether nation to nation or in smaller scale regional conflicts. The aftermath of carnage explained in the poetry was straight to the point. It starkly showed the[Read More…]
Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in August 2011 to April 2013, Islamic State and al-Nusra Front (currently Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, JFS) were a single organization that chose the banner of “Jabhat al-Nusra.” Although the current al-Nusra Front is led by Abu Mohammad al-Julani but he was appointed as the emir of al-Nusra Front by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi,[Read More…]
Your honour!
Stifling his right of expression
Punishing him with incarceration
Is nothing different from anticipation
But continued centuries of strangulation
Of justice generation after generation !
After almost 32 years of struggle, lakhs of people in the Narmada valley to be affected by Sardar Sarovar, are being threatened of brutal eviction. The government of M.P has begun sending its emissaries to convey to the farmers, labourers and all inhabitants of the valley that they will have to move out of their homes and hearths, their farms[Read More…]
Soon after the massive Raj Bhavan march on 8th May, the goonda bahini of ex MLA of TMC, Arabul Islam, supported by the police are engaged in all nefarious moves to errorize and attack the people violating the assurances given by the DM on 19th April to the delegation which met him. He had assured that the villagers going outside[Read More…]
The crisis engulfing the Trump administration was compounded Friday by the president’s early morning tweet threatening fired FBI Director James Comey over leaked accounts of a White House dinner that contradicted the story given out by the president in an interview the previous day with NBC News. In the interview, broadcast two days after Trump fired Comey without warning,[Read More…]
Commoners in Bangladesh are raising their voices against rape. There are protest march, meetings, stand-ins. Days ago, an incident of a rape came out to public light. The victims were two university-students. The incident occurred weeks ago in the capital city of Dhaka. But, the victims dared not to lodge any complaint with the concerned authority as the perpetrators were[Read More…]
Years of drought and violence have left half of Somalia’s population in urgent need of humanitarian aid. With food prices rising and animals dying, millions of people don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Humanitarian organizations are working hard to deliver aid to the most vulnerable people in affected areas. To make a donation click HERE UN agencies[Read More…]
Kashmir is said to be paradise on earth. However when India started implementing its policy of ” Kashmir baharat ka atoot ang hai ( Kashmir is a integral part of India ) ” , Kashmir once the valley of red apples became the valley of blood. Successive Indian governments couldn’t resolve the problem and Kashmiris kept the pot boiling. There[Read More…]
If the great Urdu writer, Saadat Hasan Manto was alive today, he would have been 105 years old. I wonder whether his spectacled and now old eyes would be surprised at how the world had further degraded in values of humanism. On second thoughts I doubt todays India or Pakistan with its ever increasing intolerance, extremism and gender inequality would[Read More…]
Official reactions to the recent incidents on the Indo-Pak border ( killing of Indian jawans, the death sentence passed on an Indian national by the Pakistan judiciary , the incessant cross-border firings), follow a predictable pattern. At the diplomatic level, the foreign secretaries of the two states, perpetually miffed with each other, exchange angry notes. At the military level, the [Read More…]
This is a report of an eight-member fact finding team constituted by the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, Mumbai to inquire into the assault on Prof Sunil Waghmare, head of Commerce department of KMC college in Khopoli (district Raigad, Maharashtra). The series of events related to this incident took place between 15th and 17th March, 2017. Following media reports,[Read More…]
Raising alarm over the impact of internet and social media restrictions imposed by authorities in Kashmir, United Nations human rights experts have called on the Government of India to protect the right to freedom of expression and to pursue an open and democratic dialogue to address the region’s social and political conflicts. The UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion[Read More…]
The Trump White House plunged deeper into political crisis Thursday, as President Trump and top aides gave conflicting accounts of how and why Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, and FBI and Justice Department officials flatly contradicted the White House version of events. As the Trump administration scrambled to defend the decision to fire Comey, Democrats have seized on the[Read More…]
While it’s hard to keep up with the shifting reports of how the decision to fire FBI Director James Comey came about, President Donald Trump on Thursday admitted to directly asking the former head of law enforcement if he was under investigation—a move many said presented a shocking conflict of interest. “A dinner was arranged, I think he asked for[Read More…]
The humanitarian situation in Gaza is growing more dire against the dimming possibility of a reconciliation between the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority controlled by Mahmoud Abbas, and the Islamist movement Hamas, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process has warned. UNSCO says the friction between the competing Palestinian regimes that operate under Israeli occupation in the West Bank[Read More…]
The society and humankind has been painstakingly trained, through centuries, to be fascinated by black and white. This is irrespective of the fact that if human soul was to be assigned a color, it most definitely would have to be grey, neither black nor white. So deeply have we been prejudiced that black is associated with darkness, negativity and all[Read More…]
Oh! Mother of civilization !
We are out to destroy
The meticulous creation
You nourished for us to enjoy
In the current context of planned closure of the SSP dam sluice gates (understood as planned for 09 May 2017 by NCA), about 40,000 PAFs (2,00,000 people) in Madhya Pradesh alone, along with their villages and one township, will be drowned. Their forcible evacuation by police action is being planned and is imminent. Such action will bring utter shame on our Republic.
This is a report of the five-member fact finding team constituted by Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR) to inquire into the demolition of homes and police harassment of residents of Ambedkar Nagar, Colaba between 3rd and 7th May, 2017. The Fact Finding Team members were Shraddha (Nirmala Niketan College of Social Work), Tanmay (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research),[Read More…]
Antonio Turiel keeps what I think is one of the best blogs in the world (perhaps the best) dedicated to energy and fossil fuels: The Oil Crash. Too bad that, despite the title, the blog is written in Spanish. But if you can read Spanish or are willing to spend some time to decipher a Google translation, then you can truly[Read More…]
Co-Written by Chitta Ranjan Behera & Dr. Krushna Chandra Bal The order of the Supreme Court delivered on 9 May 2017 while directing the arrest and imprisonment of Justice C.S. Karnan for contempt of court did also forewarn the media not to publish any order issued by him. There are compelling reasons for which we the people of India need[Read More…]
Beijing, the Chinese capital could well be a model for India’s Swachh Bharat mission of cleanliness. Toilets are everywhere in the city, I noticed during my two-week visit to Beijing last month. It could also be a model for us in public transport. I experienced this through my constant walks in different parts of the city and travel by[Read More…]
It is unfortunate that policies otherwise deemed middle of the road and social democratic tend to be seen in Britain as offspring of a lunatic mother long held in indefinite detention at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. But such is the nature of the current electioneering round, which has seen a source, most likely a disgruntled Labour hack, leak the manifesto of[Read More…]
US lackey Australia (Oz) is second only to the US as a supporter of Apartheid Israel that denies 4.7 million Occupied Palestinians all human rights. Oz has a racist New White Australia Policy for visitors and immigrants who must also sign a compulsory Australian Values Statement that hides the ugly reality of a massive Australian culture of mendacity, racism, invasion,[Read More…]
Garbage, pollution, toxins, diseases: All can be carried in the air, via the water supply and through the land, itself. Anyone who doubts that this is so needs only to look at what Indian Point nuclear plant, concerning which 17 million people live within fifty miles of it, has done: It doesn’t take an accident at the Indian Point nuclear[Read More…]
Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek Palestinian refugee camps are up in flames, across the country, a result of the disputes between the rival factions, but also of ‘unsavory’ influences from abroad. As everyone knows here, there are, for instance,the Al Qaida-affiliated militants hiding in the South. There are Israeli incursions into Lebanon, both by land and by water. There are[Read More…]
Now that the Palestinian Islamic Movement, Hamas, has officially changed its Charter, one should not immediately assume that the decision is, in itself, an act of political maturity. Undoubtedly, Hamas’ first Charter, which was released to the public in August 1988, reflected a degree of great intellectual dearth and political naïveté. “Allah is great, Allah is greater than their[Read More…]
With the Iranian presidential election scheduled to take place on Friday, May 19, the six candidates are competing for every vote, with all vying to win the essential backing of the country’s ethnic minority regions, whose peoples collectively comprise over 50 percent of the Iranian population. All six candidates – Hassan Rouhani, Ibrahim Raisi, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, IssaqJahangiri, Mustapha Hashmi[Read More…]
The April 24 attack on India’s Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) contingent by the Maoist insurgents in Chhattisgarh state has evoked sharp reaction not only from the Indian leaders but also from Israel. The ambush left 26 soldiers dead. The incident occurred in the Sukma district of the state that remains under influence of the ultra leftist Maoist insurgency for[Read More…]
“Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.” ― Bertrand Russell We are often taken aback by the vehemence with which our friends, associates and acquaintances disagree with our observations, especially while discussing the political motivation of politicians. We are also surprised by their loyal devotion to the[Read More…]
Buddhism as a religion owes its origin to present day UP as ‘Buddha after attaining knowledge’ , he gave his first sermon at Sarnath, near Banaras. He and his pupils travelled widely in and around UP and Bihar, and propagated his ideas and philosophy before finally attaining Mahaparinirvan (death) at Kushinara (current Kushi Nagar, UP) in c483 BCE. Since[Read More…]
Revocation of suspension orders of upright, Dalit woman officer, Ms. Varsha Dongre, Asst. Jail Superintendent, Raipur Central Jail and restoration of peace and good government in the V Schedule adivasis areas of Bastar
What is important in life? The sages and wise women will tell you that the journey is important, not the destination. But ask veteran journalist and author Sheela Reddy and she will say both are important, the journey as much as the destination. She knows better, I guess, having both journeyed and having reached her destination of having published her[Read More…]
(The Digital India has failed to control the Social Life in Kashmir in spite of the strongest curbs ever put on all the social networking sites sand TV channels!) In the erstwhile Soviet Union there was such a blackout of communications with the outside world that the measure got the name of the “Iron Curtain”. It was virtually an Iron[Read More…]
Most of the mainstream newspapers since the announcement of fare hike in Delhi Metro carried out the same narrative fed to them by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, that the fare hike is the result of Staff Salaries and other Operational expenses incurred by them causing a loss of profit to the Company. The DMRC is registered under the Companies[Read More…]
Marriages in India are considered to be a sacrosanct social institution. Amid the glitz and the glitter of the wedding are men, whose music has become entwined with the wedding affair, the band wallahs. But who are these men, whose job is to be perpetual celebrants on behalf of other people. What kind of existence do these band wallahs lead?[Read More…]
Ever since the Supreme Court of India passed the order on 9th May, 2017 of arrest of Justice C.S. Karnan, a judge of the Calcutta High Court, he has been rendered untraceable. Since the Supreme Court order had put press censorship of sorts,rumours are afloat about Justice Karnan’s whereabouts. A disinformation campaign has been launched in the mainstream media to[Read More…]
I see a lot of books presuming to explain what’s wrong with the economy and what to do about it. Rarely do I come across one with the consistent new paradigm frame, historical depth, practical sensibility, systemic analysis, and readability of Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth. Especially unique and valuable is her carefully reasoned, illustrated, and documented debunking of the[Read More…]
Odisha followed by Madhya Pradesh enacted the so called Freedom of Religion Acts for the first time in India. State of Chattishgarh was carved out of Madhya Pradesh which inherited the same law. Recently media reported of a series of Ghar Wapsi and attacks on Christians led by Dinesh Kashyap, a BJP MP from Jagdalpur, Chattishgarh. I joined a fact[Read More…]
The righteous rage that boils over into lynchings, mobs, suspicions and allegations of blasphemy shows a loss of balance and rationality in our social behaviour. This is a disturbing truth that needs a serious collective introspection. Among other things, a lot of this (self) righteous rage is because of an inability and unwillingness to intellectually confront and address diversity,[Read More…]
If you’re like me, you are probably feeling a deep sorrow in your heart over the news that oil will soon flow through that black snake of death, the Dakota Access Pipeline. Despite the largest gathering of tribes in over 100 years, despite the prayers and militant resistance, despite hundreds of water protectors facing trumped up felony charges, despite the[Read More…]
“Having refused to admit his errors, the [FBI] Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions.” US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Any sense that Donald Trump had found some accord with James Comey of the FBI gathered from his investigative zeal regarding Hillary Clinton’s improper use of a private email server should always have been doubted. Trump[Read More…]
“The essential thing is to WANT to sing.” — Henry Miller “Education in this country just boxes you in.” — Emil White Just prior to Emil White dying, I had a chance to interact with the publisher, artist and well-known friend of Henry Miller at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California in the late eighties. One of[Read More…]
Three eruptions of unintentional poetry plucked from prose works, on topics ranging from homelessness in India to neocolonialism to death.
More than 1,500 Palestinian prisoners entered their fourth week without food on Monday as Israel intensifies its efforts to break the hunger strike. The striking prisoners are demanding improvements in conditions and an end to solitary confinement, heavy restrictions on family visits and administrative detention – prolonged imprisonment without charge or trial. Israel has refused to negotiate with or discuss[Read More…]
The Supreme Court’s order of today (09 May, 2017) sentenced Calcutta High Court judge, Justice C.S. Karnan to six months imprisonment for contempt of court; additionally media has also been barred from publishing pronouncements of Justice Karnan. This order undermines the Constitution of India as it violates Article 19(fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression) and erodes the[Read More…]
Some ten years ago, myself and my friend Pietro Cambi had the weird idea of “retrofitting” Pietro’s old Fiat 500, turning it into an electric car. To understand why we embarked in such a task, you have to consider that we were (and are) both “peak oilers”; but also we were (and are) both Italian and the Fiat 500 is[Read More…]
CDRO expresses deep concern about the intensifying repression on the Dongria Kondhos of Niyamgiri mountains whose sustained resistance against bauxite mining is a fight for their survival and livelihood. CDRO condemns the midnight raid of the CRPF on the night of May 1, 2017 and the illegal and arbitrary manner in which 20-year old Kuni Sikaka was forcibly taken to[Read More…]
The cheer was always going to be qualified. The bubbles would be less effervescent, more a case of relieved sighing rather than frothy exultation. After another electoral hack, and another round of threats, the French election was being played out in an era that may, in time, be given the Trump name. The pollsters did rest a bit easier after[Read More…]
The head of the Iranian armed forces warned Islamabad on Monday (May 8) that Tehran would hit bases inside Pakistan if the government does not confront militants who carry out cross-border attacks. Ten Iranian border guards were killed by militants on April 26. Iran said Jaish-al-Adl (the Army of Justice), a militant group, had shot the guards with long-range[Read More…]
While growing up I learned that a sense of Muslim identity in me is not only a source of pride and joy, but also of great strengths, warmth and confidence. I did not find any conflict in my Muslim identity and being patriotic towards my own country. But gradually, I felt betrayed when I realised that my sense of belonging[Read More…]
Interestingly, “interesting” is an English expression, which may hide one’s actual opinion about something one considers “interesting”. What I read in Bangladesh media in the last one month is very “interesting” to me. Stories that I read are absurd, bizarre, entertaining, frightful, and sickening. I learnt from media reports and articles that there’s nothing immoral, or impossible in Bangladesh today.[Read More…]
The Islamic Republic of Iran has started propagandas for its 12th presidential election which is on Friday May 19. This is not a free election because the major secular political parties are banned and prevented to designate their candidates. Islamic Republic is a misnomer, the regime is neither Islamic nor a republic. It is a theocratic totalitarian regime ruled by a[Read More…]
Hindu Rashtra is the goal of Hindu nationalist politics, which is also called as Hindutva. In contrast to Hinduism, Hindutva is a politics in the name of Hinduism with Brahmanism as the core of the same. In a nutshell Hindutva is a politics based on Brahmanical values of caste and gender hierarchy. The concept of Hindutva-Hindu nation is a modern[Read More…]
India has recently seen a spate of allegations of sexual harassment at the workplace. While analysing the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, we caught ourselves wondering – would the Act have changed anything for Bhanwari Devi?
Dr Ram Puniyani has been one of the foremost voices against communalism and has been active in promoting communal amity and national integration through various engagements at the grassroots. A regular commentator on the important socio-political issues, Dr Ram Puniyani has written as well as edited many books on communalism and for secular polity in India. In this detailed conversations[Read More…]
Poetry has ever been a conversation with self, with the other that we tend to call society, with nature and with mystery that envelopes all beings. Ocatvio Paz, wrote in his introduction to Poesia en Movimiento ( Poetry in Motion ) an anthology of contemporary Mexican poetry : “There can be no poetry without history, but poetry has no[Read More…]
India’s President Pranab Mukherjee inaugurated the much-awaited, three day-long, Centenary Celebrations of Osmania University (OU) on April 26, 2017 at Hyderabad. One of the oldest and biggest, once prestigious, OU has now 720 affiliated colleges with 3.2 lakh students including about 5000 from 87 foreign countries. The HINDU that morning reported: The Vice Chancellor Professor Ramachandram in a media[Read More…]
The death toll rose to at least 37 Thursday in the nationwide protests and street clashes that have gripped Venezuela over the past month. The identity of the latest victims reflects the violent and provocative character of the campaign being waged by Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, as well as the increasingly repressive crackdown being carried out by the government of President[Read More…]
This is the fifth part (of 5 ) of a paragraph by paragraph commentary on a recent article posing as journalism in the March 6, 2017 issue of The New Yorker. I hope to demonstrate that this article is basically a totally mendacious concoction of cold war US propaganda constructed out of unsubstantiated opinions expressed by US government officials[Read More…]
In India, on past one month there are many news reports on various #AadhaarLeaks from Aadhaar seeded Govt services. As of now combined number of Aadhaar numbers leaked will cross 200 million , considering various leaks from Employment Guarantee, minor /student scholarship portal leaks, Social assistance schemes, and various pension schemes. Yesterday I was closely following Attorney General of India’s arguments[Read More…]
The People’s Climate March on Saturday, April 29, 2017, flooded Washington, DC, with over 100,000 protesters. Organizers claimed 150,000, with marches in 330 other cities across the country and in three dozen solidarity events abroad. Coinciding with President Trump’s 100th day in office, the marchers also protested his anti-environmental actions. The previous Saturday (April 22, 2017), thousands of scientists[Read More…]
The world is watching with much fear and anxiety, admixed with some curiosity, the unfolding confrontation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un the supreme leader of North Korea. We still do not know whether the confrontation will lead to hostilities with predictably unpredictable and disastrous consequences or the two sides along with other interested parties will sit down and talk.[Read More…]
I grew up as a sick child, having suffered a chronic cough for over seven years. My parents tried everything to cure my illness. In one of such pursuits, I found myself traveling to Mayong with my father[1]. We travelled in a bus from Sadiya, the easternmost place in Assam, along with many others. Some were known to me and[Read More…]
It was a scrappy affair, and it resulted in a predictable result: the re-election of veteran administrator John Coates as president of the Australian Olympic Committee by 58 votes to 35. Such a process was all in all dull but for the notable lid it had blown off regarding Olympic harmony down under. King Coates, as it were, has ruled[Read More…]
The best possible option with the clueless state government would be to call a spade a spade and stop this provocative Net banning ritual. Instead the Centre should start the institution of “unconditional dialogue” with all concerned stakeholders to put out this long-burning fire. There is no point in trying to divert the focus from the core to its surface.
During the Korean War, the United States dropped more bombs and napalm on North Korea than was used against the Japanese during World War II. The carpet bombing destroyed all of the cities and most of the villages in North Korea. More than 3,000,000 Korean civilians died in the war—most were in the North. Since the war ended with a[Read More…]
It was 1830, the July Revolution forced abdication of king Charles X in France, and Louis Philippe became constitutional monarch. Twenty-eight years prior to this development in France, in 1802, the first factory law was introduced in England; and the law pertained to child labor. In the same year, John Dalton introduced atomic theory into chemistry. In the Congress[Read More…]
British Prime Minister Theresa May has been warned by various political leaders in Britain not to rush to attack Syrian government forces if she wins the general election in June. The Guardian reported that she might hold a vote on military action this summer. If this is the case, it would imply that she wants to press ahead without UN backing. May[Read More…]
The ruins carpeted the city market, rippling outwards in waves of destruction. Broken beams, collapsed roofs, exploded metal shutters and fossilized merchandise crumbled underfoot. In one of the burnt-out shells of the shops where raisins, nuts, fabrics, incense and stone pots were traded for hundreds of years, all that was to be found was a box of coke bottles,[Read More…]
The Balkans has always been cursed by a recurring theme: that each entity within it can, at some point, become greater and more consuming in territory than the next neighbour. Each nation has, and in some instances continues, to nurse dreams of enlargement, pecking away at borders and assuming that few will notice. Strategies of expansion tend to have one[Read More…]
The following piece is extracted from a series of reviews on Common: An Essay on Revolution in the 21st Century, a book by Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, from which Martin O’Shaughnessy summarizes the authors´ nine political propositions: In an earlier post (here), I summed up Dardot and Laval’s position on how we should think the common. What I want to do[Read More…]
Most people assume that oil prices, and for that matter other energy prices, will rise as we reach limits. This isn’t really the way the system works; oil prices can be expected to fall too low, as we reach limits. Thus, we should not be surprised if the OPEC/Russia agreement to limit oil extraction falls apart, and oil prices fall[Read More…]
Lord Palmerston, the 19th century British Prime Minister, has famously said: “The Great Britain has no friends, no enemies, but only interests.” It was rephrased by Henry Kissinger as “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.” This applies to current Afghan politics where Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former anti-Soviet “mujahideen” commander, arrived in the capital on Thursday (May[Read More…]
In Cairo, Pope Francis, once again, did what he usually does best: he snapped at the state of immorality and selfishness, which is governing the world, particularly in the West. The message to Egypt’s priests couldactually be directed at the population of the European and North American cities: “The first temptation is to letting ourselves to be led, rather[Read More…]
One of the metrics of success in a mature capitalist economy is the number of billionaires present in its ranks. This term, billionaire, is the defining adjective of our time. Billionaire hedge fund manager, billionaire real estate developer, billionaire media mogul, billionaire investor, billionaire tech innovator. Where does it go from here? Asked and answered. Quoting from Credit Suisse’s 2013[Read More…]
My younger brother, Rick, wasn’t meant to be born. That is — he wound up as an accidental birth concerning which my mother had mistakenly gotten pregnant only one month after I was born. Her ob-gyn was alarmed by the occurrence. He was the one, along with my mother and my father since the twosome were co-joined in decision-making[Read More…]
A Morning Consult poll published on April 28th showed that “roughly half (51 percent) of Americans said the national political media ‘is out of touch with everyday Americans,’ compared with 28 percent who said it ‘understand the issues everyday Americans are facing’.” Plus: “Thirty-seven percent of Americans said they trusted Trump’s White House to tell the truth, while 29[Read More…]
Lately, it has become a habit of Orientalist apologists of Western imperialism to offer reductive historical and theological explanations of Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the Middle East region in order to cover up the blowback of ill-conceived Western military interventions and proxy wars that have reignited the flames of the internecine conflict in the Islamic World. Some self-anointed “Arabists” posit that[Read More…]
The world is now facing an unprecedented emergency of hunger and famine, with a record number of people requiring life-saving food and medical assistance in 2017. Since the start of this year, the largest humanitarian crisis since the end of the second world war has continued to unfold, while the international community has failed to take urgent commensurate action. The[Read More…]
A decade or two ago, many in India’s development community acted with the best of intentions, but without the best of evidence. If households lack clean water—help build wells ; if people suffer ill health—set up health services; if the poor lack capital to start businesses, give them credit. But the actual reality is not simple, it is very[Read More…]
“I’m back to being an active citizen and part of the resistance.” Hillary Clinton, May 2, 2017 Predictability in these tumultuous times will get you removed from office, or render you unelectable. Such a tendency has more than just a faint stain of the establishment, however accurate this might be in fact. This is not a point the defeated presidential[Read More…]
(Recently a number of retired Generals of the Army including a former Army Chief have opined that Kashmir needs a political solution rather than a military one!) In a recent interview, the former Chief of the Army Staff General Ved Prakash Malik said that Kashmir needs a political solution and bringing peace is not solely the task of the Indian[Read More…]
Welcome to the New India. This is nothing but a world of a Cow Age India. In this Cow Age India, Cows have ultimately achieved an up gradation. From non-citizenship, they have acquired citizenship. They will be offered an Aadhaar number which will become a proof of her Indian Citizenship. About eight crore cows which did not have an identity[Read More…]
The US Air Force sent two B-1B Lancer strategic bombers from Guam to the Korean Peninsula on Monday to engage in bilateral training exercises with South Korean and Japanese military forces. The provocative move was taken amid continuing threats by the Trump administration to launch military action against North Korea. A US Air Force spokesperson claimed that the flight was[Read More…]
There have been over the years since the 1953 armistace periodic increases of tensions related to the policies of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). Currently, the nuclear program and missile launches of North Korea, the establishment of sophisticated anti-missile systems in South Korea, increased sanctions against North Korea voted[Read More…]
Politicians, once they come to power, blame ‘intellectuals’ and ‘liberals’ for slowing down their bid for absolute control and power over all of us citizens. Politicians use the words ‘Intellectual’ and ‘liberal’ to malign, belittle and disparage social thinkers and independent minded social commentators who differ and disagree with them. Social commentators and all those who do not agree with[Read More…]
It has been a lowering conversation, and one that Australia’s politicians have been engaging in with various degrees of discomfort. The Australian prime minister, for one, doesn’t seem to know where to place his feet on this one, showing considerable trouble in navigating the term “Australian values” before probing questions. Would such values, posed Leigh Sales of the ABC to[Read More…]
With little public notice, government agencies at the local, state and federal level, in conjunction with the Pentagon, began exercises at the end of last month war gaming the reaction of emergency responders and the military to the detonation of a nuclear bomb in a major American city. Contemporaneous exercises are taking place around the country involving thousands of emergency[Read More…]
I’m not using the “V” here to allude to the 2009-2011 mini-series, the 1983 television production, the Guy Fawkes mask, Thomas Pynchon’s debut novel or any other silly or pseudo-serious treatment of radical response to the powers that be. Rather, for me, there’s a need to address the repetition that we’re experiencing in the realm of activism, whereby — ad nauseum — vociferous citizens are voicing[Read More…]
Agrochemical manufacturers are knowingly poisoning people and the environment in the name of profit and greed. Communities, countries, ecosystems and species have become disposable inconveniences. Corporate totalitarian tries to hide beneath an increasingly fragile facade of democracy. The agrochemicals industry lobbies hard to have its products put on the market and ensures that they remain there. It uses PR firms and front[Read More…]
Every society has certain taboos – cultural/religious, social, and political – set apart and designated as restricted or forbidden to associate with, or even to bring in ordinary discussion. The Rohingya issue (for some strange reasons) seems to be such a taboo in Bangladesh. Both people and government here don’t want to go beyond certain limits to have a[Read More…]
But if you risk life
Continue strife
Spread collective power
High over the infinite ‘ Sky’ tower
Will the big brother follow you?
“My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.” Boris Johnson, UK Foreign Secretary Few characters in history have seen so much spoken about him for one seemingly so irrelevant. Out of obscure follies and foolhardy decisions, he rose from being a questionable journalist for[Read More…]
Gaza is the world’s largest open air prison. The West Bank is a prison, too, segmented into various wards, known as areas A, B and C. In fact, all Palestinians are subjected to varied degrees of military restrictions. At some level, they are all prisoners. East Jerusalem is cut off from the West Bank, and those in the West Bank are separated from one[Read More…]
The UK BBC and the Australian ABC (Australia’s equivalent of the BBC) pride themselves on superiority over the Yellow Press as typified by the sex and scandal tabloids of the Murdoch media. However, as analysed below, both the Oz ABC and the UK BBC betray their audiences with fake news through lying by omission over horrendous Australian, British and[Read More…]
While most of the European thinkers and philosophers are famous, not all of them are as relevant as Karl Marx who is often referred to as the father of revolution. As a student of social sciences it was a privilege for me to study Karl Marx during early days of my graduation and at doctoral level. The present piece of[Read More…]
Political corruption is a manipulation of policies, institutions and rules of procedure in the allocation of resources and financing by political decision makers, who abuse their position to sustain their power, status and wealth. www.transparency.org It was around midnight, and the family was having their late, last supper. As the clock struck twelve, they heard the dreaded midnight knock![Read More…]
The Coordination of Science and Technology Institutes Students’Associations (COSTISA) expresses its grave concern at the suicide of Sagar Mandal, a 2nd year undergraduate student of IISER, Kolkata on 1st May, 2017. Sagar Mandal, a student from a poor family and rural background, is the latest in the case of suicides by students of the elite science and technology institutes in[Read More…]
It was a cloudy Sunday morning and Vesna was cooking up a storm for her two colleagues from work. All three of them were immigrants from Eastern Europe with similar pasts, comparable presents, and daunting futures. Back in their youth they were oblivious optimists, but a series of debilitating clean sweeps gradually turned them into neurotic toilet scrubbers who could[Read More…]
The large swathes of cotton farms in Central India have been the epicenter of a global crisis that has gripped the rural population in crippling debts and has driven thousands of them to suicide. But the great news is women in this region have creatively and doggedly used the power of hope to reemerge form the ruins. This new[Read More…]
The idiots take over in the final days of crumbling civilizations. Idiot generals wage endless, unwinnable wars that bankrupt the nation. Idiot economists call for reducing taxes for the rich and cutting social service programs for the poor, and project economic growth on the basis of myth. Idiot industrialists poison the water, the soil and the air, slash jobs and[Read More…]
Welcome to the nation!
‘ Doctor President’ Erdogan!
Let dictatorship and despotism
Integrate fanaticism with fascism!
The Trump administration is implementing new deportation priorities with the aim of creating fear as people are lifted from highly sensitive locations like schools, courts and places of worship, says Julia R Wilson of OneJustice. She was of the view that the Trump administration doesn’t believe in ANY immigration. Addressing a civil rights forum of the United Muslims of[Read More…]
Mahatma Jyotirao Phule and Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule (1827 to 1890) fought throughout their entire life for • Decreasing the working hours from 12 to 8 • Special leaves for pregnant women • Abolition of the child labor • First leader to unite the labourers and farmers • Land to the tillers • Special protection for the tenant labors etc. Savitribai[Read More…]
More than 130 years from today, in 1886 May 1st, several thousand workers in Chicago city had participated in the massive strike demanding eight-hour working day and several workers sacrificed their life to achieve this demand. From that day onwards, May 1st is celebrated as the International Workers Day, as a symbol of working class unity against the capitalist class.[Read More…]
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is deeply concerned that escalating tensions between North Korea and the United States of America could lead to war. This view was expressed at the end of the 30th ASEAN Leaders’ Summit in Manila on the 29th of April 2017. Given the gravity of the situation, ASEAN could perhaps have been a[Read More…]
In a continuation of the theater of the absurd, all 100 U.S. senators were driven to the White House to listen to a top-secret intelligence briefing on North Korea. North Korea now has missiles capable of reaching Hawaii and will soon be able to extend its reach to California. As they also have nuclear weapons, putting two and two[Read More…]
The human capacity, notably in cultures where measurements are valued, places much stock in numbering deeds. In the case of the US presidency, power is supposedly meant to translate into something within the first hundred days, a ring fight between the president and other arms of government, a race to the policy making podium. The US political system, in its[Read More…]
Sun zooms into sky
Like aspirations of workers of ‘ Maruti Suzuki ‘
Toiling daily with casting and moulding
And turning and fitting
Gears, accelerators and brakes
Or cushioned seats and side glasses
In the sweltering heat
And iron rust
Early January 1977 Just out of Harvard Law Looking for a job Landing at Yale Law 26 years old 2 hour faculty presentation In faculty lounge To my right Dean Harry Wellington Arrayed left and right Across the room Yale Law Faculty all Most distinguished crowd Sitting in the back Directly opposite Clear line of sight Glaring right at[Read More…]
Nazareth: The Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is due to meet Donald Trump in the White House on Wednesday to discuss reviving the long-cold corpse of the peace process. Back home, things are heating up. There is anger in the West Bank, both on the streets and within the ranks of Abbas’s Fatah movement. The trigger is a two-week-old hunger strike[Read More…]
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 
Flaming Forest, Wounded Valley -Stories from Bastar and Kashmir 
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! 
Veterans Condemn Eviction of Aruna Rodrigues from her Residence 
America’s Wars 
Criminals at Large: The Iraq War Twenty Years On 
Massive White House Protest Against Endless Wars 
From ‘Progress’ to an Economics of Happiness 
On Missing Dr. Strangelove Or How Americans Learned to Stop Worrying and Forgot the Bomb 
The Arrest Warrant Against Putin and International Justice 
Illiberal Democracy and Anti-modernization waves in south-Asia 
To prevent a civil war that is about to happen in Pakistan 
Self-Reliant Farmers Improve their Economics and Also Contribute to Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation 
Where Do We Go From Here 
Modi Government’s crusade against the opposition India’s shift to a Defence-oriented economy, with increasing role for the private sector 
Spent Matters: The AUKUS Nuclear Waste Problem 
Iraq Invasion 20th Anniversary: 5 Million Dead In Iraqi Holocaust 
The Significance of the Paris Commune 152 Years After 
In memory of Anton Semyonovich Makarenko who championed democratic education 
Genetically Modified Animals Bring New Risks and Uncertainties 
When will the suicide of Dalit, tribal students stop? 
Social media and people’s life: A way of good governance 
In USA Black Farmers are Down From 14% to 1.4%, They Need Help 
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…]
